Insideout - Healing Happens

04/01/2026

Yes....

03/03/2026

A little something to celebrate in all of this...

02/03/2026

Most Americans know George Washington as the “Father of the Nation.” Very few know the name Oney Judge.

Oney Judge was an enslaved Black woman owned by George and Martha Washington. She worked as Martha Washington’s personal attendant, meaning she was constantly present, constantly watched, and constantly vulnerable.

In 1796, while living in Philadelphia (then the nation’s capital), Oney Judge did something extraordinary.... she escaped.
She fled north to New Hampshire, where slavery was functionally ending. George Washington spent years trying to recapture her. He used federal resources. He enlisted friends. He tried quiet coercion and public pressure.

He failed.

Oney Judge lived the rest of her life as a free woman; poor, hunted, and unprotected by the law. But FREE! Years later, she gave interviews explaining exactly why she ran: she knew she was about to be given away like property.

For years, visitors to President’s House, a National Park Service site, could learn about Oney Judge and the nine enslaved people who lived and labored in the same house where Washington governed the nation.

That exhibit didn’t diminish the founders... It told the whole truth.

This exhibit was also removed by the Trump administration’s executive order to “restore truth and sanity to American history,”.

Not revised.
Not expanded.
Removed.
Why?

Because stories like Oney Judge’s complicate the mythology that Trump and his supporters revel in. Bathe in. Believe in.

Our complicated history forces us to hold two truths at once:
• America was founded on ideals of liberty
• Those ideals were denied to the people who built it

If Oney Judge disappears from public memory, George Washington becomes uncomplicated again.
Good. Pristine. White.

If slavery becomes background noise, freedom becomes abstract. If resistance is erased, obedience becomes the default story.

Black History Month exists precisely because people like Oney Judge were never meant to be remembered.

She wasn’t loud.
She wasn’t armed.
She wasn’t protected.

She simply refused to remain property.

That is not “divisive history.” This is not "false" history. This IS
American history, a part that this administration seeks to erase.

And if the truth makes us uncomfortable, that’s not a flaw, that’s the point.

02/16/2025

This....as you engage with the "difficult angel:"

From the poet....
This blessing has been on my mind and heart again lately, and I wanted to leave it here in case you might need it. Sending very many blessings and so much gratitude for you.

JACOB'S BLESSING

If this blessing were easy,
anyone could claim it.
As it is,
I am here to tell you
that it will take some work.

This is the blessing
that visits you
in the struggling,
in the wrestling,
in the striving.

This is the blessing
that comes
after you have left
everything behind,
after you have stepped out,
after you have crossed
into that realm
beyond every landmark
you have known.

This is the blessing
that takes all night
to find.

It’s not that this blessing
is so difficult,
as if it were not filled
with grace
or with the love
that lives
in every line.

It’s simply that
it requires you
to want it,
to ask for it,
to place yourself
in its path.
It demands that you
stand to meet it
when it arrives,
that you stretch yourself
in ways you didn’t know
you could move,
that you agree
to not give up.

So when this blessing comes,
borne in the hands
of the difficult angel
who has chosen you,
do not let go.
Give yourself
into its grip.

It will wound you,
but I tell you
there will come a day
when what felt to you
like limping

was something more
like dancing
as you moved into
the cadence
of your new
and blessed name.

—Jan Richardson
from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

Image: "The Wrestling Is Where the Blessing Begins"
© Jan Richardson

Featuring the distinctive work of artist and author Jan Richardson, we offer images for worship, education, and contemplation. Individual downloads, annual subscriptions, and art prints are available. Visit Jan’s primary website at janrichardson.com.

02/16/2025

11/20/2024

Reading this today on Medpage Today:
Problematic Algorithm Cuts Mental Health Care

A major insurer used algorithms and gaps in regulation to cut off mental health care to the patients who needed it most, according to a ProPublica investigation opens in a new tab or window.

For nearly a decade, insurance giant UnitedHealth Group has been using algorithms to identify providers offering too many services, and then cut off reimbursements. This is referred to as 'overutilization' -- when patients are getting what UnitedHealth deems as too much care, like having therapy sessions twice a week.

California sanctioned UnitedHealth for this algorithm-driven practice back in 2018, but the company only had to apply its corrective actions to California-based plans. Massachusetts and New York also found the system illegal but faced similar issues where their power ended at state lines.

Every jurisdiction where UnitedHealth operates would have to successfully bring a case against it for these practices to end, the article stated. One former UnitedHealth employee told ProPublica he felt like "a cog in the wheel of insurance greed."

ProPublica details how UnitedHealth and its subsidiary, Optum, which handles mental health coverage, have slipped through the cracks of patchwork regulation.

11/11/2024

Medicine for today: know that you are held

You walk in circles and wish
and pray
and worry
and call out
and wail
and beg for evidence that it will be okay,
that it all works out in the end.

No such confirmation comes
so
you stop.

Sit on the ground
in the middle of it all

the stress
the fright
the pit of worry
threatens to swallow you.

In the stillness you sense an embrace.

The seen and unseen hold you.

You may not know what tomorrow holds.
You just know that you are held.

- Octavia F. Raheem, Rest Is Sacred

11/07/2024

This...

11/04/2024

https://www.rattle.com/holding-vigil-by-alison-luterman/?utm.......YES.....Yes....yes....

My cousin asks if I can describe this moment, the heaviness of it, like sitting outside the operating room while someone you love is in surgery and you’re on those awful plastic chairs eating…

07/14/2024

"I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." --Martin Luther King Jr.

07/14/2024

Open NOW to new clients, in person or online.