Jennie Powe Runde 

How am I feeding myself?  What nourishes me?   What nurtures me?  What is feeding my sense of self?  and-   What am I hungry for?  What nutrients have been missing and how can I give myself more of what I need? As we explore the fourth of the five SEEDS that promote wellbeing , we look at our Diet. In doing so, we expand our understanding of diet beyond food to consider how what we eat, and how we feed ourselves- is tied to culture, community, and identity. While studying int

multiracial woman wearing flowy blue outfit, moving as if dancing in a field as sun sets behind her In the world of mental health, the body can often be regulated to an afterthought. We may imagine the body simply as a vehicle to transport the brain.  Exercise, like education, can be a loaded word. Folks moving through the world in a body- especially in a marginalized body-  can experience so much judgement and morality attached to body size, shape, and ability- it’s difficul

text on a neutral background with red, pink, and blue accents stating: A good question: Who gets to decide? As a person of mixed...

Image a card held in my hand with an African Proverb written on it that reads: What you help a child to love may be more important than what you help him learn The second of the 5 seeds we're exploring is Education. When you think of education , do you think about sitting in a classroom, learning from a teacher who lectures from the front of the room, while the student diligently listens and takes furious notes? While that can certainly be part of what feeds and nurtures us,

picture of a print of a sleeping child craddling a heart as a pillow Sleep- the first seed to plant for self care. Can we pause for a moment to talk about the phrase “self care”? I know it’s a phrase that is so overused that it can lose its meaning. Or, it’s a phrase we use without an idea of how to meaningfully apply it to our everyday lives.  As I mentioned last week, Dr. John Arden’s SEEDS framework lays out 5 areas that need our attention in order to maintain optimal hea

How do you take good care of yourself? Growing up in the late 80s and 90s there was a lot of information out there about what we needed to do to be happy, fit, loveable, and ‘cool’. This was, unfortunately, the era of ‘heroin chic’ aesthetic (yes this was actually a thing), so you can imagine that most of the information was- at its best- confusing or unhelpful, and at its worst outright dangerous and toxic. Unfortunately, the available information has gotten more clear, help

Before moving into private practice, I used to work for a large Bay Area non profit. This agency worked with what was called "emotionally...

Showing up and letting your art be seen by others takes courage. I've been lucky enough to sit with folks courageous enough to bring...

It all happened very quickly. The other day I was running an errand, driving along on a beautiful day with the windows down and music...

How do you take care of yourself when you're feeling sad or "off"? Most of us have ways that we get through our toughest times- this...

I'm not sure how you feel about goal setting- I know it can be an energizing and exciting experience for some, while being anxiety...

The end of the year is a time for reflection and reassessment. And quite a year it has been.... I like to imagine these transition points...

I have a question for you- do you consider yourself an artist? There's a quote I love, often attributed to Pablo Picasso, which goes...

One of the things I love and appreciate about expressive arts therapy is that it gives us an opportunity to look more deeply at a...

in order to allow ourselves the opportunity to grow, to change, to learn new things, we have to be brave enough to stand in a place of vulne

Have you ever reached out for support, and instead of finding a helping hand, you found...nothing? Or, even worse, the person that you...

When people ask me what I do, the response is often , "Oh...that's sounds interesting!", then they look at me expectantly, waiting for me...