Taking Care of You

Are you caring for children or youth in your home, or adult relatives or friends, or both? Are you feeling overwhelmed, tired or worried much of the time? Are you sleeping too much or too little? Do you become easily irritated or angry? Have you lost interest in activities that you used to enjoy? If you answered “yes,” you may be experiencing caregiver stress. Life is full of stress. Caregivers exp…

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What is Health? (Joan Watson)

When I was asked to write a few entries on health for Westminster’s new blog, I said, sure, I can do that. But very quickly the enormity of what I had agreed to do, temporarily paralyzed the presses in my mind. I recovered by checking the definition of blog—opinions, experiences, observations shared with others on a website. So here you have it—health according to Joan! The most famous modern defin…

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A Caregiver Sandwich

Are you an adult who cares for children or teens at home and also has responsibility for caring for elderly relatives or neighbors? If you answered “yes,” you’re not alone. According to a Pew Research Center Report nearly half of all adults in their 40s and 50s have a parent who is 65 or older and are either raising a young child or financially supporting a grown child. Social Worker, Dorothy Mille…

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Who do you think you are?

Exactly in line with Erikson’s works, I have found there to be one major “project” of teen’s high school years. That project is answering the question, “who am I?” As Jason eloquently wrote last week, this is a matter of identity formation, and is a psychological priority for teenagers. This stage is something of a nexus of development for youth ministry. Students who have navigated through the first four …

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Partnership

One of the most prevalent questions in the minds of many teenagers is “so what?” If presented with a great deal of information, even a tremendously beautiful view of the world, we as humans are so frequently compelled to try to figure out what to do with it all. This is why so many students will take an advanced algebra class and come home sighing to themselves and asking “when am I ever going to use t…

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