Monadnock Mind Body Medicine- Nadine Laughlin, APRN, MSN, CNM

07/13/2025

"Want to know how to truly support a parent, friend, or relative who has a loved one struggling with substance use?
Start here: STOP SHAMING. Stop calling us names. Stop giving us ultimatums. Stop pretending that stigma saves lives. It doesn’t. Stigma kills.

Please, don’t call us “enablers.”
This label assumes we have control over someone else’s behavior; that our actions are to blame for their addiction or that our love is what’s keeping them from recovery. It suggests that if we just cut them off or withheld help, they’d suddenly get better. That’s not how addiction works. People aren’t puppets. Our support isn’t the problem. And our love does not cause their substance use.

Please, don’t tell us to “let them hit rock bottom.”
This is not only cruel, it’s dangerous. Rock bottom can be death. It assumes the only path to recovery is through suffering and that family and friends should do nothing but wait. But research shows the opposite: hope, connection, and positive reinforcement support change. You don’t have to stand back and watch someone drown to prove you’re not enabling. In fact, the most effective thing we can do is raise the bottom and offer stability, love, and options so people have something worth climbing toward.

Please, don’t call us “codependent.”
That word pathologizes love and implies we benefit from our child’s pain. It’s insulting and untrue. We don’t stay close because we’re broken. We stay close because we’re human. Compassion is not pathology.

Please, don’t demand we use “tough love.”
Tough love says “make them behave responsibly.” But no one can make anyone change. If unconditional love doesn’t stop addiction, why would conditional love do the trick? Love is not about control.
Tough love is not love.
Love is love.

Addiction is defined as compulsive use despite negative consequences. So more punishment, more shame, more abandonment? That’s not the answer. The problem is not a lack of suffering, it’s a lack of hope, connection, and access to real help.

If stigma and isolation worked, we wouldn’t be living through the deadliest overdose crisis in history."

Kathleen Cochran
Moms for All Paths to Recovery

07/09/2025

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Adaptogens are a class of herbal medicines that are used in Traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic medicines for centuries to promote a sense of well-being.

07/05/2025

I love the science and the spirit of Abdominal Therapy, a deeply nourishing and restorative massage that focuses on the abdomen, pelvic bowl, and lower back. In this body of work we recognize that the body's vital flows - blood, lymph, nerve, and energy flows - are essential for good physical and mental health. We know that we register so much emotional experience in our belly, and it is easy to hold tension and pain here.
This technique, which comes from the Mayan medicine tradition, is restorative on many levels. It helps us to bring release, refreshment, and relaxation to our deep core, uplifting our energy and health.

Link below for more info and to schedule a 90 minute appointment at my Keene or Peterborough, NH office.

07/02/2025

A workshop to honor, explore, and share together our experiences of pain and healing in grief.

Sunday, July 27, 9:30-noon. Keene, NH.

“Embrace your grief, for there your soul will grow.” ~ Carl Jung A workshop to honor, explore, and share our experiences of grief. Sunday July 27, 9:30 am - noon. $35. Nadine Laughlin, APRN - Certified Grief Educator Monadnock Mind Body Medicine, 7 Elm Street, Suite C200, Keene, New

06/16/2025

A new study shows that music therapy is as effective as cognitive behavioral therapy at helping cancer patients and survivors heal emotionally.

05/22/2025

I missed National Nurse's Week last week, but reflecting on it this morning.

I became very interested in the soul of healing when I was a very young girl, about 4 years old, kneeling beside the bed of my mother who was deep in an illness - lupus - that was very mysterious to me.
I could feel, in the unintellectual way of a child, the soulful landscape of her illness.
It felt both dark and luminous at the same time.

In the 30+ years I have been a nurse, it has always been that soulful landscape that is most compelling to me.
I'm always aware of the weaving of physiological, psychological, emotional, spiritual, social experience in the topography of illness and health.

I have always felt a mission of sorts, to help build bridges between clinical medicine - which I highly respect, study, and utilize - and the soulful aspects of medicine that nourish the soil from which healing arises.
For me, this is the beauty of integrative, mind/body medicine.

05/19/2025

Explore a moving story of confronting anxiety, childhood trauma, and finding hope through meditation and connection.

04/22/2025

in Palliative, Hospice and End-of-Life Care

04/19/2025

How a personal struggle with prescription drug addiction shaped Harvard Medical School instructor Dr. Peter Grinspoon’s perspectives on the use of medicinal cannabis.

The implications of using medical ma*****na as an alternative to prescription drugs are certainly not a new discussion topic. “We’ve been using cannabis for 5,000 years,” Harvard Medical School instructor and medical cannabis specialist Dr. Peter Grinspoon pointed out in an interview with the ...

03/30/2025

Hello all ~
I am happy to be offering Arvigo Abdominal Therapy sessions for women, at my new Keene office beginning in mid-April.
This is a lovely, gentle, and very healing treatment, for body/mind/soul.
You can see more info about Monadnock Mind Body Medicine at my website linked below.
Feel free to contact me with questions or if you would like to schedule an appointment.
Happy, healthy Spring!
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03/22/2025

We all will face mental health challenges in our lifetimes, to varying degrees, directly and indirectly, but with certainty. The Unfixed Mind chronicles the real-life stories of individuals living with mental health conditions, capturing the humanity and complexity of navigating such diagnoses in to...

03/21/2025

Antidepressant withdrawal is a very real experience for many people, and too often misunderstood or mismanaged by health care providers.
There are evidence-based ways to proactively minimize potential withdrawal reactions.

Eight individuals from Australia each with lived experience of antidepressant withdrawal share their personal stories and valuable educational insights. Thes...