Did you know a pair of headphones and an iPod can transform lives?
Forrest Reed does, and he’s made it his mission to share the power of music with as many people as possible through his work planning benefit concerts for the music therapy advocacy nonprofit, TunesWork.
A therapist once told Kim Frisella that if you stay in bed, you know what the results will be. But if you get up, you at least allow for the opportunity of change.
Frisella has had days when just making it from the bed to the couch is a major accomplishment. But she’s not hiding anymore. She’s telling her story to help others see that recovery is possible as a speaker for Stop Stigma Sacramento, a project overseen by the Sacramento County Division of Behavioral Health Services. Stop Stigma is designed to promote mental health, and reduce stigma and discrimination, as part of Sacramento County’s Mental Health Services Act.
In the past five months, two life-changing events rocked the world. COVID-19 brought serious health challenges and is still taking far too many lives. The virus exposed our vulnerabilities, from hospital capacities to assisted-living safety protocols. Also exposed were the slender margins of our economic system.
Then came the horrendous murder of George Floyd and the mobilization of the Black Lives Matter movement. Millions peacefully protested against racial injustice in our city, state and nation.
It was in March when I saw the Facebook meme, “I would like to exercise the 90-day return provision on the Year 2020.”
As more than one person has observed, 2020 has proven to be the conflated sum of cataclysmic elements from the 1918 flu pandemic, the financial crisis of 1929 and the social seismicity of 1968.
An 8-foot high, multi-paneled glass door off the dining room folds back, opening the home to a secluded backyard patio. At the opposite end of the vast room, a large kitchen window overlooks the front yard’s lush garden landscape. When the panoramic patio door and kitchen window are fully open—no intrusive screens involved—the effect is like standing in a serene oasis with a cross breeze that may bring in a dragonfly or two.
“When designing the house, I told our architect, ‘I want to bring the outside in,’” homeowner Helen Wheeler says.
