Support Groups Blog

Birthdays and holidays make us introspective, we start thinking about life, our own lives specifically.  These passage of time markers seem to come back around faster and faster each year!  Every year we make goals, some of us write them out, some of us mark them on calendars and journals, and some of us just file them away mentally.  Goals regarding education, life events, travel, mental health, physical health...we set them and often forget them, until we reach another birthday, holiday or life milestone and suddenly we remember to look back over the last few months to see

This week is Teacher’s Appreciation Week in the United States, where teachers get loads of loot that they probably do not want or need. What they should get is a well deserved pay raise, but we digress. Teachers are an amazing breed, case in point, this week we attended a school play, a middle school play to be precise.

Spring is such a joyous time in books and movies isn’t it? The flowers are coming up, people are dancing for who knows what reason, the music is playing sweetly, pies are baking and no one is ever mad about anything! In real life Spring is kind of awful for any of us with allergies, pollen is everywhere, our cars look like a fairy exploded on them, our shopping carts are full of allergy meds and our arms look like pincushions from Allergy Shots.

Our title probably has you belting out the “Frozen” tune right about now and while the movie and songs were amazing, we want to focus on something a bit deeper. Where do we go from here, here being 2 days after the George Floyd trial where his murderer, a cop, was held accountable, something that doesn’t happen as often as it should. In the court of law, jurors have to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty and deserving of a verdict proclaiming that. Our hearts are heavy, we have spent the last year mourning so much death and loss.

Just typing the words Toxic Relationships gives us the chills and not the “Oooooh Netflix just dropped the newest season of my favorite show” type of chills! It is the type of chills that comes from being either a survivor or a current victim and neither are cheer inducing. When you picture the word Toxic, what comes to mind? We picture trash, poison, the skull and crossbones image, and maybe chernobyl. Incidentally when we look back on our own toxic relationships, vastly the same images come to mind.