A vivid dream of sleeping children becomes the doorway into a larger reflection on organismic intelligence: the body’s built-in capacity to move toward regulation, safety, and wholeness. Kristin Onderdonk explores what the body already knows, why modern life teaches us to override those signals, and how pausing long enough to listen can reconnect us with a quieter, older form of wisdom.

Real victimization exists, and Diane Russell Chrestman does not minimize that truth. But in this candid reflection, she explores what can happen when suffering becomes an identity. Using lived experience, ACE awareness, and Internal Family Systems language, she examines the victim role as a protector, the relief it can offer, and the courage it takes to build a life beyond the worst things that happened to us.

“Sticks and stones” was never the whole truth. In this Author of the Month reflection, Joshua Bennett-Johnson looks back on childhood bullying from both sides: the child who used cruelty to feel bigger, and the child who later felt the sting of public humiliation. The result is a candid, human essay about shame, empathy, repair, and why words can leave wounds long after the moment passes.