It was a high pitched scream that ripped the night. It wasn’t an owl, or a fox or a coyote. It wasn’t anything I’d ever heard in 10 years of back-packing. And it was close. I got out of my sleeping bag, reassured the six teen-aged girl scouts I had taken on their first backpacking trip that it was on a nearby mountain, not ours, and prayed I was right.
Then I checked the locked chain on the gate of the shelter. We were inside a three-sided, log cabin with a …

People often ask me why I’m willing to talk about my weaknesses, my failures, my living in a van, having been homeless, and having medical or mental health (PTSD/Depression) issues related to being a photojournalist documenting trauma. I talk and write about those things because a lot of people see me as being strong, or intelligent or talented and assume that I don’t have problems, or that the things I struggle with aren’t really difficult. I think it’s important to be transparent and authentic - to acknowledge that I’m not …

Years ago, sometime in 2002 or 2003 I interviewed Robert Ballard - the man who discovered the wreck of the Titanic. It was one of his most well-known discoveries, but it wasn’t his greatest. But it is what the public remembers him for. He even voiced frustration over that fact - that while it was the most famous ship he found, it wasn’t the most significant discovery of his career. He considered his greatest discovery in terms of what mattered to him. His audience judged him on what mattered to …

Most of us are familiar with “the lizard brain.” Few understand that with the right abuse or trauma that lizard can grow into a dragon. When that happens we call the resulting condition PTSD. One of the most prominent signs of PTSD is anger.
All people experience anger in a progression. Healthy anger goes from discomfort, to warmth, to annoyance, to pissed off, to anger, then to extreme anger all the way up to rage if the thing or person making them angry persists and no solution is reached. If the …