Sarah Harrison-Cragg, MSW, RSW

11/04/2025

https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSyAHXdo1/

542 likes, 73 comments. “1. “Some people can’t rest until everything shines,” she said. “It’s not about order — it’s about control.” Studies from Stanford show that repetitive cleaning can drop cortisol for a moment, then spike it again when a new mess appears. The brain links calm...

10/19/2025

When breast cancer strikes, normal life shifts to include doctors' appointments, surgery, and—depending on the type of cancer you have—port placement, chemo, side-effects, hospitalization, radiation, and medication.

But even after someone rings the victory bell, and you're officially "done," the reality is, many cancer survivors are embarking on a new perilous journey.

This is because the treatment process itself can leave you with symptoms of PTSD, particularly when those around you minimize or dismiss the pain of the treatment process or give you the message that everything will go back to normal, afterward.

Therapist Anna Lock shares how she came to recognize her own post-cancer PTSD and provide others with support and validation.

Read full article here: https://bit.ly/4hw4R8J

10/11/2025

The secret to reducing childhood anxiety is actually quite simple: just let kids do more stuff on their own, says Lenore Skenazy, cofounder and president of Let Grow, an organization dedicated to normalizing childhood independence. In conversation with TED’s Whitney Pennington Rodgers, Skenazy dis...

10/11/2025

Activities that benefit you, even if you never get any better.

10/11/2025

Choose your kids. Always. ❤️

That doesn’t mean condoning everything they say or do, or devoting every waking moment to their service.

It simply means choosing them — and what lies in their best interest — in every possible moment.

Sometimes that looks like modelling good self-care and nurturing other relationships, like your partnership. You’re still choosing them when you show what healthy relationships look like — and when you give them a happy parent in a peaceful home.

Sometimes it means being “the bad guy” instead of “the coolest.” Choosing to lead them. To make the hard calls, to tell them the truths no one else will — for their benefit.

Sometimes it means living through the heartbreak of watching them leave the nest — to study, to work, to build lives and loves that belong to them. Letting them make the choices they need to make.

Choosing our kids doesn’t mean we stop choosing anyone or anything else.

I was once told that when someone new to love enters your life, you don’t take away love from others to give it to them — your love multiplies to make enough.

In the same way, when someone makes your life better by being in it, it doesn’t mean your life wasn’t already full before they came. Your heart was whole then, and it expands again now.

So yes — choose your kids. Choose to love them, guide them, uplift them, teach them, celebrate with them, and learn from them. Choose it all.

Because they need you to be in their corner — and you likely need(ed) the same from your parents, too.

Quote Credit: ❣️

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09/10/2025

09/08/2025

In the beginning, our children need us to hold them steady — to be the arms that carry, the presence that protects, the safe place that doesn’t move when everything else feels uncertain.

But as they grow, what they need shifts.

They don’t need us to shield them from every wave. They need us to show them how to navigate. To step back just enough so they can feel their own strength, while knowing we’re still close enough to turn to.

That’s the quiet evolution of parenthood: we don’t stop being their home. We stop being the walls that hold them in, and start becoming the light that helps them find their way back.

Because home isn’t a place they outgrow. It’s a presence they carry — one that steadies them when they’re small, and guides them when they’re grown.

We don’t raise them to need us forever. We raise them to move through life knowing we are with them, even when we’re not beside them. ❤️

Quote Credit: ❣️

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09/08/2025

09/07/2025

I heard something today that felt like someone quietly rearranged the furniture in my soul.

Gabor Maté, in a conversation with Mel Robbins on her podcast, said:
“No two children grow up in the same home. Even with the same parents.”

And he’s right.
By the time each child is born, the people raising them have already changed.
A father may be softer now, or more guarded.
A mother may be freer, or more worn.
The marriage may be blooming… or quietly cracking.
Money might be scarce, or finally enough to breathe.

And then there’s *us*—the children.
We come with different hearts, different fears, different ways of hearing the same words.
One child feels loved in the quiet; another feels abandoned in it.
One thrives under structure; another wilts.
The same hug, the same house, the same parents—yet completely different worlds.

It made me think about the stories we carry.
How we assume we all lived the same childhood because we shared a roof.
But we didn’t.

We were each raised by a different version of our parents… a version shaped by time, by trials, by joy, by fatigue.

And maybe part of growing up - truly growing up - is making peace with this.
To forgive the versions of our parents who couldn’t give more.
To honor the versions who somehow gave anyway.
And to understand that the love was real, even when it looked nothing alike.

Because you see, love isn’t static.
It’s a living thing, it's changing, faltering and blooming; just like the people who give it.

Here’s my video reflection and excerpts of the interview: https://youtube.com/shorts/l3NUPuoX5AM

08/26/2025

The superb Rhonda Kay with creative and art based therapies that are great for your mental health, well being and soul. Give her a call.

Therapy doesn't have to be about talking! You can express yourself in many ways with Expressive Arts Therapy - contact us to learn more or go to our website.

08/02/2025

Grief

Growing Around Grief

Grief doesn’t simply pass with time; it reshapes you.
At first, it fills every corner of your life, leaving no space for anything else.
But slowly, you begin to grow around it.

Grief does not vanish, it remains, a part of you,
but your life expands to hold both the sorrow
and the possibility of joy again.

You are not who you were before the loss;
you are someone new,
carrying the weight of love in a different form.

Grief changes your heart, your priorities,
and the way you see the world,
not by erasing the pain,
but by teaching you how to live alongside it.

~ 'Growing Around Grief' by Spirit of a Hippie

✍️ Mary Anne Byrne

~ Art Unknown via Pinterest