Sharing Your Story and Healing Your Life
October 20, 2015
Hosted by Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D.
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Many people have traumatic experiences during childhood and must then deal with shame, loss, hostility, and other complex ramifications. Feeling poisoned by their own anger or constrained by a victim mindset, some struggle to forgive what seems unforgivable. For Brenda Adelman the personal trauma included her father killing her mother. Then, making matters worse, he married Brenda’s aunt. Brenda had to deal with this internally. Writing her story just for herself was one step toward healing. Performing it as a one-woman show gave others permission to tell their stories and so begin shedding the layers that were holding them back from healing. Later Brenda earned an M.A. in spiritual psychology, and became a life coach, storytelling mentor, and expert guide for those who want to forgive and set boundaries. She shares her story and her work in this episode of Family Matters.
Family Matters
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Our goal is to share good ideas about helping all kinds of families handle the challenges and problems that are common in today’s world. We seek to help people heal, grow, and thrive in a culture in which marriage, parenting, and other family relationships are under great stress.
We will feature experts on a variety of family matters. Topics may include building and maintaining healthy relationships, family mediation, divorcing with minimal damage, strengthening marriages, LGBT families, forming and maintaining stepfamilies, single parents, creating constructive separation agreements, addiction, preventing or ending abuse, and other Family Matters.
Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D.
Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D is an author, speaker, professional family mediator, Director of Colin Family Mediation Group, and a Founding Member of the Academy of Professional Family Mediators (APFM).
Having survived a nightmarish divorce, Dr. Colin actively supports divorce reform efforts, teaching people how to take a lot of the pain, financial cost, acrimony, and trauma out of divorce. She also loves learning and teaching about building healthy relationships and solving family problems long before anyone has a reason to consider divorce. She has been a foster parent, a married parent, a divorced single parent, and a remarried stepparent.
Formerly a research psychologist studying attachment and other aspects of human development, Dr. Colin has been providing family mediation services since 1999. She specializes in helping couples and ex-couples develop co-parenting plans and financial agreements that support their children’s security, self-confidence, and healthy development as well as their own adult well-being.
Dr. Colin has published two books, “Human Attachment" and "The Guide to Low-Cost Divorce in Virginia: How to Do It Yourself.” She has also written a variety of articles published in journals and on the Internet.
