Ruth R. Williams, LCSW

11/28/2023

My account has been hacked. If you get any communication from this account, please delete immediately.

11/23/2023

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! May you find reasons to be grateful. ❤️🙏🏻💐

11/13/2023

From INSPIRIVITY

10/25/2023

Wow! Amazing!

Anna Stork and Andrea Sreshta were graduate students at Columbia University's School of Architecture in 2010 when a devastating earthquake struck Haiti. In one of their classes, they were assigned to develop a new innovation to help with disaster relief. Many students focused on designing shelters but, after speaking to a relief worker in Haiti, the two discovered that an often-ignored need following disasters was access to light. The pair focused on designing an inflatable, waterproof, and solar-powered lantern -- since then, they have donated over 100,000 lights to people in crisis around the the world, including shipping thousands of solar-powered phone chargers to help Ukrainian refugees! And, while their unique lantern is designed to meet the needs of people in the aftermath of a disaster, it has also become popular with outdoor enthusiasts and for home emergency kits, especially since they added a new model that doubles as a solar cell phone charger.

After their lantern is charged in the sun during the day, the LED light provides hours of light -- a feature that not only makes it more eco-friendly but essential in emergency situations when batteries are hard to find. Due to its inflatable design, it also provides diffuse light like a lantern so it can be used to illuminate a room or tent. With their latest design, they also added the ability to recharge devices such as cell phones from the solar charger. While a handy feature for hikers and campers, this new feature is also potentially life-saving in emergency situations. Whether a backpacker lost in the woods or a refugee relying on their phone to find safe passage out of a war zone, the new light gives people the ability to charge a phone anywhere.

Since founding their company, Stork and Sreshta have donated tens of thousands of lights to aid organizations, helping refugees in Ukraine and Syria and people struggling after the hurricane in Puerto Rico. They have also worked with aid organizations to help create safe spaces for women and children following disasters, such as after the massive earthquake in Nepal three years ago. As Sreshta explains, "conditions once the sun goes down can be very unsafe, especially for women and children. After the earthquake Haiti, there were many cases of violence, kidnapping and r**e. Light is a basic human need, but [conventional technology] costs too much to ship and pack as part of disaster relief." Now, thanks to the work of these two creative innovators, more people will have access to the gift of light and connection during the darkest of times.

To help support their work and stock your emergency kit, all of their solar products -- including their lantern with a solar-powered phone charger -- are on sale for 15% off this holiday season (with the code MIGHTYGIRL) at https://luminaid.com/mightygirl

Anna and Andrea are also featured in an excellent book about female innovators and inventors throughout history: "Girls Think of Everything," for readers 8 to 13, at https://www.amightygirl.com/girls-think-of-everything 　

For an inspiring book for tween girls who love to invent and tinker, which includes a variety of hands-on STEM projects, we highly recommend "Gutsy Girls Go for Science: Engineers" for ages 8 to 11 at https://www.amightygirl.com/gutsy-girls-engineers

For two fun picture books about Mighty Girls who love to invent, both for ages 4 to 8, check out "Interstellar Cinderella" (https://www.amightygirl.com/interstellar-cinderella), and "Doll-E 1.0" (https://www.amightygirl.com/doll-e-1-0)

For invention kits and toys to encourage your Mighty Girl's interest in inventing, check out our blog post "Building Her Dreams: Building and Engineering Toys for Mighty Girls," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=10430

For more inspiring stories of pioneering girls and women throughout history, you can sign-up for A Mighty Girl's free weekly email newsletter at https://www.amightygirl.com/forms/newsletter

09/28/2023

Funny… but, for many, this may hit a little too close!!!

Good to know.

07/22/2023

Wow! Powerful! I encourage those who actually SEE this to take a moment to read it. From a therapist’s perspective, some of the “simple” (profound) insights are worth breathing in.

A few years ago, my therapist said, “I think you’re done, Geneen. You’ve worked hard, and you can continue, but I think you’re done.”
Done?
It’s not that I wasn’t a little thrilled; I’d spent 40 years in therapy, but I didn’t think done would look like this.
I thought I was going to be fixed. That all I needed was to try hard, feel what I’d never allowed myself to feel as a child and my nervous system would be calm; I’d live in parasympathetic mode like my husband does, where everything is already and always OK.
I thought my obsessions and neuroses would have been scoured with quintessential Borax so only the sparkling, sane parts would remain. With the right combination of therapists, I’d be healed—and the rest of my life would be free.
Instead, I still [at times] feel like an exposed nerve.
In therapy, I learned that no is a complete sentence, that being nice is overrated, and that no feeling is intolerable. I learned that when I feel hurt or angry, it’s always because one of my top three tunes is playing in my mind: I’m a victim, I’m unworthy, and there’s never enough.
The most shocking part of being done with therapy is that there is no one to whom I can hand myself and say, “Here, you fix her. I’m not up to the task.”
At some point therapy meets spirituality and fixing ourselves meets the realization that there is nothing more to fix. There are always going to be challenges on this body-personality dimension. When I take myself to be the unending always-forgiving space in which the drama is unfolding, I am already always fine.
Finally we have to fall on the sword of knowing what we know and stop pretending that we don’t know it. Until that moment we act like children who are stuck on the wrong planet, in the wrong bodies, with the wrong families and we spend our time searching for more, better, loving parents and ever more creative/addictive ways out. And when we forget, which happens less and less often, we keep reminding ourselves that even that from which we want to be saved most of all—death itself—is just closing our eyes.
This is an excerpt of I Thought Someone Was Coming. Read more at the link in bio.
Quote via Laurie Jean Sennott