Joanna Hulton, Ph.D.

Family Therapist, Author & Educator

For me, it has always been all about the children.
 
It started long ago when, as I child, I suffered at the hands of the adults around me. Mental illness held a tight grip on my family, making home an unpredictable environment that needed my constant attention and management. As childhood wounds found their place inside my nervous system, I became extremely adept at at the game of survival.
 
My creativity, capacity to engage in fantasy, and love for nature got me through times that were emotionally hard. I lived a secluded life in a self-made shelter that shook violently with each passing storm; luckily its foundation withstood the pressure.
 
Much of my time was spent observing and listening to those around me, in an attempt to understand and predict their behavior. With this understanding I could more or less keep myself safe. My empathy turned out to be the very shield that protected my self-development, albeit a wobbly one.
 
Leaving home to go to school was the promise of a new future. I can still conjure up a faded image of the nursery school I attended, a place where colors were brighter, smells were sharper, and new sounds meant something exciting and wonderful was happening. There was the thrill of opening a brand new box of crayons, playing with instruments that turned our classroom into a joyous cacophony of rhythm, and yes, of course the most important, the most intriguing resource of all, the books.
 
Believing I was the luckiest child in the world, I did not realize that school was something that all children experienced. My earliest teachers filled me with hope and desire. To them, I was likable and lovable; and in their simple ways they reflected this back to me as I sat, hard at work, creating things at my miniature desk, or outside when I got my swing to go higher than the day before. I was, in the words of one teacher, “the still water that ran deep.” I finally felt understood.
 
By the time I entered first grade, my sister had been born. She was a beautiful baby who unfortunately echoed the emotions of the family with her constant shrieking and colicky displeasure over being alive. Life as I knew it would never be the same. My parents, now even more stressed, fell apart at the seams. Like all the king's men and their beloved Humpty Dumpty, I was never able to “put them back together again.”
 
My first grade teacher reported my sturdy intelligence and creativity; but it fell on the deaf ears of my distracted parents, who did not appreciate how much I loved school. And thereafter, school was no longer the pleasure it had been. By second grade, what was happening at home was taking its toll on me; and by year's end I was described as depressed, unable to express myself and lacking the confidence to achieve academically. And because most of my teachers responded with a profound lack of empathy, my memories of school are tinged with regret and pain. It would be years until, with the help of several teachers and mentors, I started to discover my value and what was holding me back.
 
Because of my childhood, my work is sacred. It continues to educate and support teachers, parents and children. Spending decades in the intersection of education and psychology, I am the author of two books, maintain a private practice, and lecture and supervise other professionals. My website https://www.thechildrenspeaceinitiative.org merges knowledge and empathic support, fulfilling its mission is to change lives and indeed, in its way, to change the world.
 
Having so much more to share, I am excited about this partnership with Brainz.