Jennifer Silverstein

Author: Jennifer

  • Investing in The Labor of Care: Guaranteed Basic Income as Climate Resilience

    Originally posted in the Climate Psychology Alliance – North America blog I am an Infant-Family Mental Health Specialist. I am captivated by the extraordinary potential, and the profound vulnerability, that marks the beginning of each life. I have been a homebirth midwife, doula, residential counselor, case manager, parent educator, and therapist. I have experimented with…

  • The Day the Sun Didn’t Rise

    Soft hair on my face tickles me awake A small voice Mom there is something wrong with my body I’m wide awake, but it is still night time   The clock, the only light teases us with its numbered face, 7:15 No sweetie I reply it is morning time it’s just dark outside today  …

  • Trauma Anniversaries in a Changing World

    Originally published in the Climate Psychology Alliance-North America blog Spring has sprung early again this year in Northern California. And with temperatures at a record setting 90 degrees last week, it appears to be ending early too. It took my New York body a long time to adjust to California’s Mediterranean climate when I first…

  • Teaching the Love of Plants: Nature Therapy with Children

    Originally published in the Climate Psychology Alliance-North America blog By Jenni Silverstein, LCSW, Santa Rosa, California My  new “office” is a garden hidden behind a berm at a therapeutic farm. The farm rescues animals and brings children from foster and group homes to tend them. Each creature comes with its own story of being saved from…

  • When the Tubbs Fire Changed My World and My Practice: Holding Space in the Era of Climate Crisis

    Originally Published in the Climate Psychology Alliance – North America Blog Psychotherapists, regardless of our theoretical background or treatment modality, share a common critical capacity: the ability to hold space for difficult emotions and experiences. This capacity is hard to measure, define, or teach. It entails a moment-by-moment dance of empathy, compassion, presence, self-reflection, and…

  • A Mother’s Love, 2021

    You master crawling a spark of rushing energy I shut doors in your path as you crumble beneath me “My job is to keep you safe, my love” I whisper, and turn you back “I must keep you safe” I explain as I pull your small body down from the heights of the couch hold…

  • British Petroleum will Manipulate Me No More

    I don’t remember when I first heard of the Carbon Footprint. But over the years, the idea escalated from a troubling thought into an obsession. The average American puts 16 tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. That is 4 times the global average, and 16 times more emissions than people in the global…

  • A Tale of Two Fires: 25 Years in California

    When I was 20 years old, I worked as a counselor at a backpacking camp in California’s Trinity Alps mountains. An East Coast city-girl by birth, I loved camping and hiking and mountains but I’d never seen a peak above 3000 feet, and I’d never set foot in the wilderness. That summer, I was graced…

  • Love and Grief in the Redwoods

    A very wise midwife once told me, “you cannot vibrate in love and fear at the same time.”* I pondered this for a long time, believing it made sense, but not embodying it. Until one evening years later, when I had a profound experience in my first garden. I had been practicing a form of…

  • The Four Seasons: A Creation Story

    THE FOUR SEASONS A Creation Story, by Dani age 6 Once, before there were trees or plants or animals there were only the 4 elements:  Water, Fire, Air, and Earth. At first Water and Fire were enemies; Earth and Air were allies. But then a new alliance came. Earth and Water were allies – and…