Writing & Thinking

Lessons on love, repair, and the long work of family.

Essays and reflections — for parents in the middle of it, and for the broader field of youth mental health.

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March 2025 · Hopelab · 4 min read

Stepping Into an Era of Systemic Support for Youth Mental Health and Well-being

A call to move beyond fixing young people toward systemic, loving, and spiritually-attuned support for youth mental health and well-being.

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Moss and lichen on a granite outcrop, evergreens rising into low cloud. — "The container around the family matters almost as much as the container around the young person."

Earlier writing

March 2024

Essay

The Role of The Sacred in Systems Change

What if the deepest leverage point in any system is not strategy or capital, but the quality of presence we bring to it? An essay on contemplative practice and structural change.

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2 min

May 2023

Working paper

Learning From the Climate-Mental Health Convergence

How the emerging field of climate-aware mental health is teaching us about complex care. Lessons from a global cohort working at the intersection.

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2 min

January 2022

Environment International

Global Priorities for Climate Change and Mental Health

A peer-reviewed framing of priority actions for governments, philanthropy, and civil society as climate change reshapes mental health worldwide.

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2 min

2021

Cities & Health

Towards mental health-friendly cities during and after COVID-19

Co-authored research on what it takes for cities to become genuinely supportive of mental health, drawn from a multi-country urban initiative.

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2 min

January 2016

Contemporary Family Therapy

The Family Throughout the Therapeutic Wilderness Process: Our Stories

Co-authored with Cynthia Cohen — and including my own family's story, told through my mother's eyes and mine. What two families learned by sending their sons to wilderness therapy, and what came after.

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3 min