Our kids are growing up with access to an enormous amount of information, much of it confusing, disturbing, and emotionally overwhelming. News, images, social media, and global events are always within reach, often without much protection or context. Many of us are carrying that weight too.

We are living in a time when nervous systems, adult and adolescent alike, are often on high alert. There is very little true downtime. Very little space to simply be.

The holidays can be magical and complicated. They’re a time filled with tradition, anticipation, and togetherness, but they also tend to magnify whatever else is already happening in our lives.

Family dynamics can bring old wounds to the surface. Teens and adults navigating eating disorders and substance abuse recovery may feel more vulnerable. The gap between how things look on the outside and how they feel on the inside can grow especially wide this time of year.

September is here, which means summer is in the rearview mirror, school is underway, and we’ve had some time to feel grounded in what the new year is going to bring.

I spent the summer taking in the sunlight, walking outside, and thinking about teens and technology. After listening, reflecting, and diving into new research about teen brains and tech, here are my biggest takeaways:

Every year, the final weeks of the school year seem to arrive all at once. Calendars fill up with concerts, games, performances, exams, graduations, celebrations, and endless logistics. Parents are juggling schedules, decisions, emotions, and the pressure to finish everything well, while many teens are running on empty.

The Boston Marathon is a magical day in the Boston area, there are few events that truly unite a community like this one. This year I was struck by how much the process of running a marathon is similar to the journey of parenting. There is one obvious difference – there is no iconic “Finish Line” in parenting and there really is no end point.

Sometimes it takes stepping away from our everyday lives to see them more clearly.

Last spring, I did something I wasn't sure I could do. I took two weeks away from work to visit my college child studying abroad in Australia. At first, all I could think about were the reasons it wasn't practical. It was too far. Too long. What about my clients? What about everything that would pile up while I was away?

That “Most Wonderful Time of the Year” is upon us. But let’s be honest, while in some ways it can be a very special and celebratory time, it’s not always the glowing, blissful vision that we are led to believe it “should” and will be.

My favorite thing about Eating Disorder Awareness Week is that for one week, people are talking about eating disorders in a way that inspires hope for change.  At the end of every February, everywhere I look I see posts about the prevalence, the symptoms, the experience of having an eating disorder, and what we can do to prevent the development of these conditions.  And then we go back to the status quo – the silence, the barrage of diet and wellness information coming at us, the weight stigmatization and the anti-fat bias.  

The College Application Process and Life After High School Planning is a thing all onto itself. And it really IS a process – a long, exhausting, intense, at times ridiculous, expensive and highly emotional roller coaster. As I look back, I am struck that what is more important than where my kid ended up is how they are on that campus and how our relationship was impacted by the process.

It’s election week in the United States, and mental health is on my mind, specifically how we can prioritize mental health at the voting booths. The rates of anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and overall stress are on the rise across our country and especially in our young people.  We really need politicians and lawmakers who are willing to address healthcare coverage and policies, access to mental health treatment and the issues that are fueling the rise of mental illness and suffering that we are facing.

I recently spent the better part of a Sunday in the Emergency Room in a renowned Boston hospital after my daughter crashed into a tree while biking. She received excellent care and has recovered remarkably well. We were incredibly lucky that the injuries were mostly cosmetic and she did not sustain more significant bodily trauma. But sadly, if her injuries had been of a more psychological nature, I think the outcome would have been far different.

You may have heard that May is Mental Health Awareness Month. I hereby motion to amend the title and make it Awareness AND Action Month. We have a lot of work to do, and there is no time to waste.

It’s been a year of the pandemic: loss, illness, change, uncertainty, loneliness, disruption, financial stress, political upheaval, social and racial reckoning. Whew, what a year. I don’t know about you but I feel exhausted, worried about how what we have experienced will impact all of us moving forward, uncertain about what the future will look like, and also hopeful that we have all learned, grown and are ready for whatever comes next.

January is always a time to reflect on the year that has been and make big wishes and resolutions for the year ahead. This year especially, many of us are eager to say goodbye to 2020 and look forward to “happier, healthier” times. As eager as we all are to move on and look forward, it is also important to take pause, reflect, look inward, and then mindfully and with intention set realistic and authentic hopes and goals.  I believe we are healthiest and happiest when we think, feel and act from a place of within. And truthfully, we can and should do this often and anytime, we really do not need to wait for a new year to reassess our own values and priorities.

Let’s acknowledge we are living through history in the making. Things have changed, seemingly in a flash, for all of us, in similar and in different ways. Daily life has become unfamiliar, unpredictable, frightening and slow-moving. Individual and collective health has simultaneously become the world’s biggest priority and greatest danger. But how do we deal with our own mental health given the enormity of what is happening around us?