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Michael Mendizza

Writer, Filmmaker

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Parenting, Preventing Violence

Do No Harm

Promise First Do No Harm

By
Michael

We forget. Nonviolence begins in the arms of nurturing mothers and fathers. We feel numbed-shock, sadness and rallying pockets of rage as another wave of violence ripples through our collective psyche. Personally, I celebrate our nation’s youth, like the boy ...

Story And Leading Into Play

Story and Leading into Play

By
Michael

Until age five or six early child’s play is 90% self-play. The child may be with other children or an adult who are doing similar activities, but the focus of the child’s play is still personal. Group play requires a ...

I Wish02

I Wish…

By
Michael

Parents and the people who care about children understood how different the child’s reality is from our, more or less, adulterated version. What does adulterated mean? Tainted, mixed, polluted, contaminated. What we call reality is filtered by experience, our ideas, ...

Starship Earth

This gift we are given

By
Michael

Planet Earth is a tiny speck in the galaxy called the Milky Way. Traveling at the speed of light, rough estimates suggest it would take 100,000 light years to traverse. Do consider that a light-year, the distance light travels in ...

Taiming The Dragon

Taming the Dragon Within

By
Michael

Marshall Rosenberg’s core principles of nonviolent communication are sound. Personal conflict arises when needs (and their underlying feelings) are not being met. We then find ourselves in one of two positions: frustrated because our needs are not being met or ...

Comming To Our Senses

Returning to our senses

By
Michael

Bev Bos noted, “Experience isn’t the best teacher, experience is the only teacher.” I was sharing with Barbora, a bright twentyish lass from the Czech Republic, how the nuclear family, mother-father-children living in isolation, emerged as the extended family, still ...