These are the journal workshops I lead. Most of them can be customized for time constraints, participants, and other issues. For more information, please contact me. See Events and Testimonials for more information.

1. After Brain Injury: Telling Your Story
Whether your brain injury is the result of an accident, surgery, military service, violence, infection, medical emergency, or any other cause, you must now deal with a number of unexpected and unimagined challenges. You have a new story to tell, and this casual, friendly workshop helps you discover it with simple journaling exercises. We use the first journaling workbook for survivors of brain injury, After Brain Injury: Telling Your Story, which I co-wrote with Susan B. Schuster, M.A., CCC-SLP.

In this workshop, you will:
• Write in a welcoming, safe environment about issues related to brain injury, such as loss, changes in relationships, adjustments to post-injury life, moving forward with hope, resilience, and the positives still present in your life.
• Learn and use easy journaling techniques such as Unsent Letter, Dialogue, and Freewrite  
• Find community with others who have also sustained a brain injury.

I created this workshop for survivors of brain injury in 2006, three years after my husband sustained such an injury, and have since facilitated it twice a year in Tucson. This workshop typically runs in weekly 90-minute sessions over six weeks, but it can be easily  adapted to other formats and locations. The major requirement is being able to write or use one’s laptop, although other accommodations may be possible. Top

2. Care for Yourself, Too: A Restful Exploration for Family Caregivers
Being the caregiver for a family member with a serious illness or injury holds both blessings and hazards. One of the big hazards is not understanding how to care for yourself as you perform the heroic task of caring for your loved one.

This journaling workshop is designed as a safe, friendly sanctuary where family caregivers can experience journaling and other self-care techniques in a casual, non-judgmental atmosphere. In this workshop, family caregivers can be themselves and concentrate on their own needs for a few hours a week—and take away easy-to-use methods of caring for themselves while they perform the heroic task of caring for their loved ones.

In this workshop, you will:
• Understand the important need for self-care.
• Identify and experience easy methods of self-care, including journaling techniques.
• Locate internal and external sources of support.
• Learn how to recognize compassion fatigue and how to avoid or ease it.
• Identify and use resiliency techniques.
• Create a plan for enhanced self-care.
• Relax and have fun! Top

3. Journaling to Ease Compassion Fatigue for Family and Professional Caregivers
(First presented at the 2010 National Guard Health Promotion & Annual Prevention Workshop, Atlanta, Georgia for National Guard care providers.)

Compassion fatigue has been described as “the cost of caring for others.” That cost can be high, since it is extracted from the well-being of the person doing the caring. It can occur when the caregiver is overwhelmed by the traumatic, heart-wrenching experiences of family members or clients.

In this two-hour presentation/hands-on workshop, family and professional caregivers will learn:
• What compassion fatigue is
• Symptoms of compassion fatigue
• Antidotes to compassion fatigue