Jennifer Silverstein

Category: Mindfulness

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • A Story of Dani: Making Meaning Together

    The human brain, born so immature, is shaped by the environment in which it develops. Our earliest experiences matter. Yet it is not the actual experiences that define our unfolding sense of self; it is the meaning that we make of them (Hornstein). If we were securely attached as children, by adulthood we have developed…

  • Mindful Parenting

    I have been blessed with a flourishing mindfulness practice for many years. As a therapist providing mindfulness-based treatment, I was constantly reminded of how to access mindful presence, and prompted to walk my talk by doing so. It has served me well. Though mindfulness is explicitly not about seeking a certain state of mind, its…