Life Weavings

09/14/2025

A small preview of my chat with Heather Hester, author of "Parenting with Pride: Unlearn Bias and Embrace, Empower, and Love Your LGBTQ+ Teen." Here we had a brief exchange concerning a version of the christian god that promotes eternal punishment. She reflects how that, as a parent, didn't make any sense to her when relating to her son who had told her he was gay.

The whole interview is coming out Tuesday, so subscribe at www.humanitysvalues.com to get notified and listen/watch.

09/09/2025

“To be wrong is not something to be afraid of, and yet we run away from it at virtually every opportunity we can. The oft-used vehicle of escaping from recognizing our limitations is that of a societal structure binding us to a group. It’s really difficult to admit that one is wrong in a group that is saying otherwise or whose identity is tied to a belief/protestation...”

https://open.substack.com/pub/lifeweavings/p/fleeing-to-authority-to-escape-being?r=v5x29&utm_medium=ios

09/03/2025

In this conversation, I talk with Elliot, also known as Secular Rarity, and discuss the importance of building a secular community through connection, dialogue, and positive engagement. We explore the challenges faced by secular organizations, the need for long-term planning, and the power of community in creating change. We emphasize the significance of reframing secularism to celebrate diversity and inclusivity, while also addressing the necessity of participation and action in the secular movement. Ultimately, there's a call for a collective effort to build a vibrant, supportive, and connected secular community that can effectively challenge societal norms and foster understanding across differing beliefs.

An interview with Secular Rarity

08/28/2025

It’s a world of special guest posting, discussing all things related to mind and body health. Here’s one concerning sleep, a topic that comes up quite often with my clients. Sleep is quite often something we neglect, as if by magical thinking we can overcome bodily limitations by thought alone. We do not live in a world of mind over matter, but mind with and as matter.

https://www.humanitysvalues.com/p/sleep-is-the-cornerstone-of-healthy

08/26/2025

"You don’t need to beat yourself up to build strength. Gardening. Playing catch with your kid. Walking loops around the block while listening to old albums. These aren’t workouts, but they move you in ways that count. Activities that feel “non-serious” often yield more consistent results."

Who we are is fundamentally embodied

08/13/2025

Laughing with fellow secular therapists is a highlight of my week. Everett Uhl is a therapist in North Carolina and we had a great time chatting all things therapy, touching on p**n addiction, our mutual love of Acceptance and Commmitment Therapy (ACT), the limits and errors of religious-based therapy, and a few criticisms of the modern therapeutic practice of uncritical validation.

https://www.humanitysvalues.com/p/interview-with-everett-uhl

08/10/2025

We are much more, individually and together, than the current limits of our imagination would have us believe. To explore that potentiality is to ride the flow of our relational lives and not be tossed about when the sea churns, or, and hear me out here, learn to enjoy when the sea gets rough. It is within that uncertainty that we learn to challenge the status quo of our minds and find new ways of diving into a future less burdened by our need for control.

https://www.humanitysvalues.com/p/life-changes-through-interconnection

How relationships shape and direct our individual journeys

07/27/2025

Behavior, in all its forms of emotion/thought/action, also seeks to address social-bonding. This is because we are fundamentally social beings, through which we derive our sense of self and develop/construct meaning and purpose.

As well, we are, within the interconnectivity of our social lives, quite concerned with status. We seek to elevate ourselves in the eyes of those we’ve deemed contemporaries, and by doing so, have a great degree of perceived control over the resources (in all their forms) we have access to. Here we come back to predictive-processing, since by having greater perceived control, we then have a greater sense that our beliefs about the world, our place in it, and how things occur, are increasingly predictable or consistent.

The why and effects of being the hero of our stories

07/24/2025

"The echoes of our actions will often not be known to us, not least because they’ll be too small to measure, but that doesn’t make our daily lives any less potentially meaningful. Our significance is not only to be found in connecting our actions to fighting an amorphous and likely, in part, mythical beast, but in the everyday qualities of treating those around us, including ourselves, with respect and a thoughtful appreciation for their shared attempt at meaning-making. To the person whose life was benefited by an encouraging word, a shared smile, a helpful hand, they’ll have considered the time and energy well spent without concern over whether they were part of a larger fight."

https://www.humanitysvalues.com/p/the-desire-for-significance

07/08/2025

We got a little nerdy and had a lot of fun doing so. Depth psychology, alchemy, the nature of therapy, and how meaning/purpose is a universal desire. Check out the discussion here, on YouTube at "Humanity's Values" channel, and anywhere you get your podcasts.

Humanity’s Values is a 100% reader-supported publication.

06/27/2025

Had fun in an interview discussing my new online class on humanistic principles to consider when leavingg or having already left fundamentalist religious ideologies

David Teachout is a licensed mental health therapist and trauma coach. His approach to religious deconstruction includes embracing a troubled past to evolve ...

06/23/2025

Free introduction to my online class on moving on from religious dogmatism and the trauma that occurs from the experience within it. Principles to explore based on humanism and naturalism, appreciating our humanity rather than condemning it.

Working through Religious Trauma