Are you cleaning up other people’s messes all the time? Picking up dishes, doing other people’s dirty laundry, solving other people’s fights, calming the waves of upset at home or at work? If so, you are in good company. Sometimes we don’t mind – but sometimes we do, especially when we feel exploited and taken advantage of. If you suspect you may be a Mother Mucker too, check out my Medium blog at https://medium.com/@yvissing/mother-mucker-d35caf70fe72

We resent it when people dump their physical, emotional, relationship, or money muck on us to clean up. I don’t want people to muck me up. For a long time, I found myself cleaning up other people’s messes and I’m tired of it. We find muck makers in the government, in our jobs, and in our homes. We aren’t responsible for the messes they make. If you want to learn more about how not to get mucked up and how to demand that others clean up the messes they make, check out my forthcoming The Book of Muck and my article on Medium now – https://medium.com/@yvissing/muck-80c1a8e2ab81

Why is it that people refer to us by stereotypes?

Salespeople, waitstaff, and people on the street we run into each day may resort to calling us by names that don’t fit us. They have no idea that their labeling words are offensive – or that they have created microagressions that hurt us. In this day and age, glancing at someone and making assumptions about their age, gender, race, ability, profession, or relationship may be totally wrong-headed. There are many positive ways to interact with each other without showing our unintended bias. Check it out at my Mediume blog – https://medium.com/@yvissing/avoid-the-muck-of-calling-people-the-wrong-name-5d99d6a25154

In my forthcoming The Book of Muck, I talk about the challenges that doing for others may cause. Some of us are fixer-addicts. We can’t help ourselves when we see something that needs to be done or when we think someone needs our help. Helping others is an admirable thing – it can be a dimension of boddichitta. On the other hand, helping when it isn’t requested or needed can cause relationship problems. Read more about it at my Medium blog – https://medium.com/@yvissing/do-it-forism-b7f40780ef23

The NGO IASIS is working with the EU and the UN to host an international conference on October 5-6 in Athens, Greece about how to use our networking skills to better protect children and youth. I’m invited to be a keynote speaker there and will be working with international colleagues to advance work on how to better prevent long-term, unintended physical, emotional, social, and financial harm to young people. Check out their website and attend if you can! This is going to be an awesome learning opportunity. https://connecttoprotect.eu/

It’s tough to be a kid in America.  School shootings, child poverty, abuse, hunger, homelessness, mental illness, suicide – it’s time to change the national narrative about how we think about and defend children’s rights.   “What can we do?”  Find out how to make children a national priority at our June 22-24, 2022 conference on Children’s Human Rights in the USA.  It is a virtual zoom conference with over 50 speakers.  You will find details and registration at  

https://tinyurl.com/chrc2022   Continuing Education Credits are available.  

In order to help you learn more about the importance of children’s human rights, I’ve created a Children’s Human Rights Resource, Networking, and Learning Library for you at https://canvas.instructure.com/enroll/GLKDXX 

Remember the millions that marched for their lives and pleaded for gun safety.  Here is a film I made at the Boston 2018 march where people were pleading for sensible gun control –  

Check out my new Medium article on how to prevent another school shooting – https://yvissing.medium.com/what-can-we-do-to-prevent-another-school-shooting-68a9538232d9

Join me in the fight to protect our nation’s greatest treasure – our children. 

An international team of scholars will be joining UCONN’s democracy program to fight for increased use of human rights education as a buffer to extremism. Want to learn more about it? Go to our Facebook link at https://www.facebook.com/SSU.crca/

No one wants to get sick or die, and it is reasonable and understandable that there’s lots of attention on the physical consequences of the virus. The psychological and social consequences of the pandemic are huge and can have long-range consequences. Depression, anxiety, increase of unreported domestic violence and child abuse, social isolation, alienation and anger are just a few of the consequences. Read more about how it doesn’t take a crystal ball to figure out what is going to happen if we aren’t attentive to each other’s mental health needs….. https://medium.com/@yvissing/looking-into-the-crystal-ball-f54e3cd7cea6

There’s lots of talk about populations who are at-risk of getting the coronavirus. One group that few of the officials seem to be talking about is children who are homeless. Where do they go to stay safe if they have no home and how can they study when the schools are closed and they don’t have access to the internet or equipment to do their studies? Read more about what’s happening – or NOT happening for them at https://medium.com/@dianehearus/do-they-count-homeless-children-and-covid-19-e56e96e5f56b

Are you aware that around the country if a child owes any money for school lunch that they may be denied getting anything to eat – and be turned over to collection agencies or be denied access to prom or graduation? Such is life today in America. Learn more in my Public Seminar article. https://publicseminar.org/2019/11/unpaid-school-lunch-fees/