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Renee Ruchotzke
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An estimated 321,566 children in the United States lost a parent to drug overdose from 2011 to 2021, according to a new study. The rate of children who experienced this loss more than doubled during this period, from approximately 27 to 63 children per 100,000. The highest number of affected children were those with non-Hispanic white parents, but communities of color and tribal communities were disproportionately affected.
From Science Daily 05/08/24
As I haveΒ become more familiar with the key term, ACE, adverse childhood experience, the above fact jumped out at me this morning. Having a parent with a substance abuse problem is an ACE in and of itself, but to lose a parent to their addiction takes the trauma to another level.
The question was raised on the list last week about how to help families deal with grief from the loss of a family member. How does a therapist help a family deal with the loss of a parent to an overdose? How much of the grief becomes disenfranchised and unattended due to the shame, guilt, and ambiguity of such an event?
This sermon podcast begins with a reflection from worship associate Sara Ford.
On this Motherβs Day, amidst rising conflicts near and far, let us lean into inspiring stories from our global Unitarian community and ancestors, including Dr. Lotta Hitchmanova, a Jewish journalist from Prague who spoke out against the Nazis and then dedicated her life to humanitarian efforts. Dr. Lotta helped literally thousands of children impacted by the second World War and the decades following it, she worked with the Unitarian Service Committee in Europe and then established a branch in Canada.Β
Excerpt from the below-linked essay:
The current UUA, the two UU seminaries and some national UU groups are trying to transform UU from a liberal church into a fundamentalist utopian political collectivist movement.
Collectivists prioritize the movement's goals over individual rights, freedoms and liberties. Thus, throughout history, utopian collectivist religious and political movements have employed various methods that dehumanize their members. These methods include considering members primarily as generic categories and cogs in the system rather than unique individuals, removing basic civil rights and individual liberties, authoritarian governance, dogmatism and propaganda, undermining basic democratic rights, suppressing viewpoint diversity, and shaming and guilt-tripping members into compliance.
The classic book on this topic is social philosopher Eric Hofferβs The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.
The Unitarian Universalist Associationβs systematic dehumanization of laity
In Social Work education there is a huge emphasis on systems thinking. Our human development courses are usually entitled something like "Human behavior and Social EnvironmentΒ I, II, III. The jargon phrase is "person - in - situation".
Having been trained to think in systems terms, I am always alert to the social influences on individual behavior and this morning I was reminded of this quote from an interview that Yascha Mounk did with Richard Reeves about his book, "On Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What Tod Do About It."
As a 78 year old white cis male born at the end of 1945 on Christmas Day, 12/25, I was right at the beginning of the "baby boomers", and grew up with Leave It To Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, and Father Knows Best. The changes I have seen in my lifetime brought about by the birth control pill introduced in 1960 have been seismic in social arrangements. As a Psychiatric Social Worker, I have watched these social forces influence my clients, their families, communities, and society at large in the Western world.
There are so many observations that are worthy of making note of. Perhaps one of the most significantΒ is the increasing number of fatherless children growing up in our society. I am wondering what other people are observing as a result of the change in the role of the male in our society?
WWUUD stream 