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Scene 1

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Scene 2-5

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Identity

Religion

Coming home

Redemption

Death

Disconnection and Reconnection

Reconciliation

Finding the best version of yourself

Chosen family

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-from Kamakura, Japan, and Lexington, Kentucky

-mother is Japanese, father is white

-MFA from Brooklyn College

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Leah Nanako Winkler is an award-winning playwright from Kamakura, Japan and Lexington Kentucky. Her plays include God Said This (Winner: 2018 Yale Drama Series, World Premiere: Humana Festival, Off Broadway Premiere Primary Stages/Cherry Lane), Kentucky ( 2015 Kilroys List/ World premiere: Ensemble Studio Theatre in coproduction with Page 73 and the Radio Drama Network. West Coast Premiere: East West Players ) Two Mile Hollow ( 2017 Kilroys List, Simultaneous world premiere w/ Artists At Play in La, Mixed Blood/Theater Mu in Minneapolis, First Floor Theater in Chicago and Ferocious Lotus in SF) , Death For Sydney Black (t erraNova Collective, Thinking Cap Theater, 2014 Kilroys Honorable Mention) Diversity Awareness Picnic (Clubbed Thumb/Playwrights Horizons Superlab, 2014 Kilroys Honorable Mention), Double Suicide At Ueno Park (EST/Marathon 2015), Linus and Murray (EST/Marathon 2017) and more.

She presented plays with her now defunct theater company Everywhere Theatre Group from 2006-2012 at places like the New Ohio Theatre, The Brick Theatre, Dixon Place, the Ontological Hysteric Theater/Incubator Arts Project and the Prelude Festival.

Leah's collections of short plays, Nagoriyuki & Other Short Plays and The Lowest Form Of Writing are currently available on here and are performed widely in the US, France and Asia. Other publications include Nanjing University's Stage and Screen Reviews, Yale University Press, Backstage, Smith and Krauss, Samuel French and Dramatists Play Service.

She has served on the faculty of New Group's Urban Arts Initiative, ESPA at Primary Stages and the Writer's Foundry at St. Joseph's College, as well as teaching as a guest artist at schools around the country.

Leah is an alumnus of Youngblood at the Ensemble Studio Theater, terraNova Groundbreakers Playwrights Group, the Dorothy Strelsin New American Playwrights Group at Primary Stages and the Lab at WP Theater (2016-2018 Time Warner Fellow)

She is currently a labbie at Ma Yi and a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre. She was a 2017 Ucross fellow with the Sundance Institute. Commissions include Jerome/Mu Performing Arts, WP Theater, EST/SLOAN and Yale Rep.

Leah has also helped her readers by giving away a lot. You can get a Jungle Scout discount coupon if you buy any of the books.

Leah was awarded the first-ever Mark O'Donnell Prize from The Actors Fund and Playwrights Horizons. She is also currently one of the inaugural recipients of a commission from Audible's Emerging Playwrights Fund and was named the 2017-2019 Jerome New York Fellow at the Lark. She is a writer on A24's Ramy upcoming on Hulu and Michael Moore's TV NATION. She attended Tates Creek High School and has a MFA from Brooklyn College. The New York Times called her a "distinctive new voice."

Follow her @leahnanako.

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Leah Nanako Winkler is an award-winning playwright from Kamakura, Japan and Lexington Kentucky. Her plays include God Said This (Winner: 2018 Yale Drama Series, World Premiere: Humana Festival, Off Broadway Premiere Primary Stages/Cherry Lane), Kentucky (2015 Kilroys List/ World premiere: Ensemble Studio Theatre in coproduction with Page 73 and the Radio Drama Network.

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The opening song

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Stephen Foster - My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night

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86.9% White

8.7% Black

4.3% Hispanic or Latino

2.3% Two or more races

1.8% Asian

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"It's all about just telling stories about our lives, the intersections of our identities."

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Left to right, Dan Wu, Charlene Buckles, Mae Suramek and Nima Kulkarni created a new podcast to explore the lives of Asian Americans in Kentucky.

On March 16, a 21-year-old man went on a shooting spree in Atlanta, killing eight people, six of them Asian women.

Shortly after, Lexington chef and activist Dan Wu wrote an essay about the killings, which came on top of a year of spiking violence against immigrants in general and Asian-Americans in particular.

"Meanwhile, you love us for our food, our movies, our martial arts, our anime, our labor, and all the scientific, literary, artistic, and cultural contributions Asian Americans have made to this country," he wrote. "But you do not value our lives. You listen to demagogues who spread lies, hate, and xenophobia. You insult us. You vandalize our homes & businesses. You beat us. You kill us."

Around the same time, Berea restaurant owner Mae Suramek and state Rep. Nima Kulkarni, D-Louisville, appeared together on Renee Shaw's KET show to talk about the experience of being Asian-American in Kentucky. "I called Mae right after the show and said we need to have a continued conversation on this," Kulkarni said. "Maybe a podcast?"

Suramek immediately called Wu, and by May, the podcast was underway. Wu also recruited Charlene Buckles of Louisville as a co-host. Wu and Buckles recorded all 11 in two weeks, and one will drop over the next 11 weeks. "Where Y'all Really From" debuted Tuesday on Louisville Public Media, which had recently set up a podcast incubator to encourage more marginalized voices to produce shows.

Where Y'all Really From? is a new podcast from Louisville Public Media. Leanne Gan

The title, which became the subject of the first show, came out of a question that Asian-Americans have heard countless times.

"People ask where are you from, and we say Lexington or Louisville, and then they say, 'no where are you really from?" Kulkarni said. "We've all heard that before and we all react to it differently."

The podcast is aimed at telling the stories of Asian and Pacific Islanders in Kentucky, a way of connecting the shared experiences of 1.6 percent of the population who are often overlooked or marginalized. The four creators' heritage - Kulkarni is Indian, Wu is Chinese, Buckles is Filipina and Suramek is Thai - highlights how vast the world of "Asian-Americans" can be, whether immigrant or U.S.-born.

"It's all about just telling stories about our lives, the intersections of our identities," Wu said. His favorite interviews included those with Danni Quintos, an Affrilachian poet in Lexington who is Filipina and Japanese, and Angelika Weaver, a victims advocate in Williamsburg who is part Micronesian and part white, talking about living in a very white, very rural community.

Dan Wu, of Lexington, Ky., owner of Atomic Ramen located inside The 90 dining hall at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Friday, Feb. 5, 2021. Wu immigrated to the States from China with his family as a child and says he has had number of hurdles to overcome owning and running a small business in Lexington. Alex Slitz aslitz@herald-leader.com

"This podcast is first of all for Asian Americans in Kentucky and elsewhere who haven't gotten to hear these stories of commonality and experiences because our stories don't get told like this," Wu said.

Wu is taking his own run at normalizing Asian faces in Kentucky's very white politics; on Wednesday, he launched a website to start fundraising for an at-large seat on Lexington Urban County Council. If he's successful, he believes he'd be the first Asian American in the council's history.

Buckles said that in some ways, her experience as an Asian immigrant - she was born in Manila and moved to Northern Kentucky when she was 7 - has more commonality than she realized.

"For myself, it took my a very long time to realize the story is not just about me, but so many others," she said. "We have to tell our stories because it's not an anomaly, because they are overlooked."

Suramek recently announced that she would run as a Democrat for Rep. Robert Goforth's 89th District seat, which covers part of Jackson, Laurel and Madison. Goforth resigned amid domestic violence charges filed against him. The podcast was underway long before she decided to run, but it still related.

Mae Suramek Ryan C. Hermens rhermens@herald-leader.com

"There's only three women of color in the state legislature right now and in terms of when we start thinking Asian American Pacific Islander community in Kentucky, I wonder sometimes if our voices are represented there," Suramek said. "But more than anything, the podcast is really a place and opportunity to tell the stories of the AAPI community that have not been told. We are everywhere, doing great things."

Speaking of which, the second episode features an interview with Dr. Neeli Bendapudi, the first woman and the first Asian American to be named president of the University of Louisville. Laura Ellis, Director of Podcasts and Special Projects at Louisville Public Media, said the interview is a master class in leadership for all women.

"We're talking about this show as learning about experiences of Asian Americans in Kentucky, and I love it that we are centering those voices and not making a product for the white gaze," Ellis said. But also there's a lot that white people will learn from it if they will listen. "Even though it's designed for other Asian American people to feel less alone, I think that making those connections is important across the board because the more we listen to each other, the closer we feel to each other and the less likely we are to be hateful to each other."

This story was originally published September 22, 2021, 10:51 AM.

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'Where Y'all Really From?' is question and answer for Asian Kentuckians in new podcast

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Linda Blackford: "Where Y'alll Really From?" tells the stories of Asian and Pacific Islanders in Kentucky, people who live in every community of the commonwealth, but are often overlooked or marginalized.

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Top 5 Things to do in Kamakura | japan-guide.com

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Directed by Morgan Gould

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Cast Announced for World Premiere of Leah Nanako Winkler’s Kentucky - TheaterMania.com

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EST/The Radio Drama Network and Page 73 present the new play.

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Nicole: Isn’t it sad how friendship fades? Isn’t it sad how all of a sudden you wake up in the morning and you don’t feel proud of who you are? Isn’t it sad how life becomes more difficult and you don’t know why.

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Hiro: The stitched-up wound in my heart inflicted by my childhood gaping open and leaking blood. Red blood.

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Adam: I should have been nicer. Worked harder. Took better care of my hair I hope it doesn’t thin like my father’s will Gee I hope my belly doesn’t swell. Darn. I hope, I hope. I hope I hope I hope I won’t have to spend so many more nights alone listening to Jewel and Joni Mitchell while staring at the stars up above and wishing and wishing and wishing for love!

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Adam: Death has taught me that the world isn’t something you shrink from.

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Earnest: Ephesians 4:31. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

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Grandma: You’ve never tasted no failure. Until you know in your heart that you—yourself—is the damn decaying root that bore the rotten fruit.

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Larry: You’re holding on to so many deep dark places in your past. Maybe it’s time to let it go.

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Masako: My eyes are wide open Hiro. It’s yours that are closed. Don’t you see that family is family? And blood is blood? You can’t escape it.

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Sophie: I saw my reflection in the stained-glass windows of the church and realized I was small but felt strong. And all of a sudden, the pieces of my smashed-up heart began to rearrange themselves. And I rebuilt myself. And the struggle that I lived through, that we lived through, the anger I held on to diminished into the light that is peace. And forgiveness.

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Hiro: I saw my reflection in the windows of those buildings you’re scared of and realized I was small but felt strong. And learned to stand tall. And all of a sudden the pieces of my smashed-up heart began to rearrange themselves. And I rebuilt myself on the concrete. And the struggle that I lived through—the anger I held on to diminished into the noise of the city.

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Laura: But I can’t help but think... Where did my life go? But I always thought...if I could find somebody. Somebody that loves me... Why doesn’t anyone love me?

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Hiro: It saddens me to talk to you. That’s why I never do. But I see myself in you. It’s like I recognize your pain. I feel like I’ll carry it with me forever...I’m scared I will be with someone I won’t know how to love just like you don’t know how to love Mom. Or me. Or Sophie. But I look at you, and I know you love us. And that’s the worst part because it makes me unable to truly hate you.

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Hiro: The important thing is that I want to be. And I know in my heart that I cannot be the best version of myself in Kentucky.

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New Yorker: The playwright Leah Nanako Winkler has created a sort of millennial Odyssey, chronicling the rustic homecoming of a New York City transplant.

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The playwright Leah Nanako Winkler has created a sort of millennial Odyssey, chronicling the rustic homecoming of a New York City transplant. Long in flight from a troubled upbringing, Hiro (Satomi Blair) returns to her native Kentucky in the hope of preventing the marriage of her younger sister Sophie. But Sophie (Sasha Diamond) has found her own kind of escape, in born-again Christianity, and confounds the alienated Hiro with her church-centered contentment, which the play treats with sensitivity. Hiro’s sense of autonomy is further challenged by her abusive father, her immigrant mother, and the childhood friends she left behind. Morgan Gould’s lively production, which includes a Greek-style chorus and a talking cat, has an antic, unruly spirit. Still, Winkler’s story is ultimately a serious one, about the commonplace nature of childhood trauma and the radically different paths people take to recovery.

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-has worked a million day jobs, but writing is always the #1 priority

-always been spiritual possibly because of exposure to Shintoism

-want to show: more nuance in religious people, Kentucky is more than racist white guys or cowboys

-believes that putting BIPOC actors in universal experiences is a political act without being didactic

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Written by Sarah Rebell

Photography by Tess Mayer

January 19th, 2019

Two years ago, playwright Leah Nanako Winkler's play Kentucky opened in New York. It was one of the first times that she'd had a major production of her own work. Now, Leah is back with a new play, God Said This, which is just beginning performances at Primary Stages. Set seven years apart, both Kentucky and God Said This explore the relationships and dynamics of a mixed race family in Kentucky. When her mother Masako is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, New York City marketing executive Hiro returns home to Kentucky for the first time in seven years. Leah recently won the 2018 Yale Drama Series Prize for God Said This and is also the recipient of a 2018 Audible emerging playwrights commission. I recently spoke with Leah about her growth as a writer, what it was like to revisit the world of Kentucky for God Said This, and more.
When did you first become interested in writing, and specifically, in writing plays?
Well, I went to Japanese school, and I was pretty underestimated because I'm half. They told me that I didn't have to learn Kanji, or write in Japanese, and I didn't have to really learn about Japanese history or anything like that. In second grade, we had to write these personal essays, and apparently the teacher thought mine was very good. My mom read it and she was like, "Leah, this is really good." That was the first time that I felt validated, that I was good at something. Ever since then, I've told everyone I wanted to be a writer. I'd moved to America mid-childhood, and this was in Japanese school, but I went to American school as well. I think that theatre kept me out of a lot of trouble. When I found theatre, it translated into, "Maybe I'll direct, maybe I'll write." And then I just started writing little plays. I started because you have to do monologues for drama class, so I would be writing [out] Marsha Norman monologues, and just repeating it out loud to myself to see how it sounded, and recording them on a tape recorder, just to learn cadence and different ways of how words sounded off the page. Then, I would start writing my own monologues. I was also very much into Manga. I read Sailor Moon, Baby Love, all of that. I still read it. It's pretty normal for Japanese kids to make little comics of their own. And I would do that, so I think probably I got a little bit of my sense of dialogue through comics or through Manga as well. So, it's a trilogy of all those things. It's just always been the only thing that I thought that I was good at that I really found my identity in.
Growing up, were you exposed to traditional Japanese theatre, like Noh and Kabuki, as well as American theatre?
Not really. Mainstream Japanese theatre is basically a lot of American theatre. Right now, they're doing a lot of Broadway shows. I did see Noh and Kabuki when I visited Japan when I was a little older, but I didn't grow up seeing Noh and Kabuki. My parents aren't theatre people. I think it might be a class thing; a lot of people will be like, "Oh yeah, my parents were taking me to Broadway shows." They're really expensive, and I didn't even go to New York until I was a senior [in high school]. My first play that I saw was in elementary school. My English teacher put on this annual one-woman show of The Tell-Tale Heart. We had to sign waivers because she was going to bring a knife into the classroom. I remember the knife, and her performance. She would get up in your face. I think that was my first theatre experience, and it was in class. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I think all the theatre that I saw was just high school plays, and maybe a couple of things at the community theatre. There was a Shakespeare in the Park in Lexington, Kentucky. That was sort of the Holy Grail; that was the pinnacle of my dream at the time.
You've mentioned a few elementary school teachers who influenced your development as a playwright. Did you have any other theatrical mentors, perhaps as a teenager in Kentucky or as a young adult newly arrived in New York?
We didn't have an official theatre program. This teacher, Lisa Osterman, basically donated her time. It was essentially a labor of love; she was teaching all of us really high-level Brecht when we were 14 years old. I didn't even realize the education that I was getting. It was just really fun. I literally moved to New York on a Greyhound bus with $4,000 that I had gotten from donating my eggs. I didn't really know anyone, but I met my friend Theodore Nicholas, who's another playwright. He's a New York native, and he was attending Purchase at the time. He gave me a lot of knowledge about who to know, and what downtown theatre was. Young Jean Lee was about to win her first Obie. He was like, "You should email Young Jean Lee." We would look up longingly at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, which used to be Richard Foreman's theatre, then got rebranded as the Incubator Arts, and now is totally defunct. Young Jean had done a lot of shows there, so I emailed her and asked her if she needed any interns. She was like, "Sure." After that I became her assistant. What I learned from her was who's doing the exciting work, and how to self-produce. She wasn't like "Here are the ropes," or anything like that, but I learned a lot just by interacting with people around her and watching her function. That's how I got immersed into the community. Of course I've had many people be super kind to me throughout the years. A lot of people have helped me out and developed my work. But if I hadn't been her assistant, I'm not really sure how I would have even found a way in.

Your experience with Young Jean Lee touches on a theme that's actually come up in a lot of my recent Interval conversations. It seems so important to give women opportunities throughout the pipeline-not just at the top-so that they can really learn and grow.

Yeah. I mean, it wasn't a job that I applied for or anything. I just roguely emailed her. I think you have to let go of a sense of entitlement when you're interning or assisting because you're lending your services and your help, but you're also learning so much. And it wasn't my only job.
What were some of the other jobs that you had when you first started out?
I've had a million jobs. I worked at Starbucks. Then, I worked at Bath and Body Works. That one was hard because you had to wear heels. I don't know why. I hope they don't still do that. And then, I was a product specialist for Nissan for a year. I was on a team of a bunch of beauty pageant winners, who travelled the country to different auto shows. I guess we were supposed to be experts on the cars, but we were wearing go-go boots and Star Trek dresses, and every hour I had to get up on a rotating platform, and give a bilingual presentation in Japanese. I could talk about my odd jobs for a very long time. I worked admin. I worked with the Asian American Arts Alliance. I was a personal assistant for a very long time to really a wonderful woman on the Upper East Side.
How did you balance these day jobs with your writing?
I didn't sleep. I didn't rest. It was really hard. I also had my own theatre company from 2006 to 2012, so I just worked like a maniac. I'm still working like a maniac. You have to be really ambitious, and you have to work really fucking hard to make it work. For me, writing has always been the number one priority. I love writing. I feel lucky because I love the act of writing a lot. It's what makes me happy. It's what I dedicated my life to, and what I will continue to dedicate my life to. But it's work. You can't be lazy. Laziness will catch up to you in this.
And you write in quite a few different mediums. You are working on something for Hulu now, and for Audible. How do you approach writing for theatre compared to writing for a streaming service or audio plays?
I was one of the first commissioned recipients of the Audible Emerging Writers Fund; it's just like writing a play but thinking about sound as stage directions. In terms of TV writing, it's just a totally different muscle. It's really cool. It has wider access, but I think that you just have to work really hard. But I'm a playwright first. I just kind of always was. I wasn't really trained. I did go to Brooklyn College for my MFA. I just graduated two years ago. But it took me a little bit longer than usual to finish, because a lot of people who go through that program have already been working in theatre for a long time. It's not the traditional program where you're in this incubator, and you're waiting to go out into the world. I had maybe six shows in New York already, and was already working, so you could do it while you were working.
What was your most valuable takeaway from doing that MFA program?
[Brooklyn College playwriting professors] Mac [Wellman] and Erin [Courtney] are great because they don't tell you to write in any sort of style. It's really about sharing work. It's like being in a really cool writers group. But I'd say that all of the very important lessons I learned about being a theatre artist and working playwright, I just learned by being one and making my own opportunities for a long time, and basically failing in front of audiences.
Let's move on to talking about the play that you're working on right now, God Said This. Would you describe it as being in conversation with your previous play Kentucky?
Well, God Said This is definitely a stand-alone play. You can watch God Said This without having read any of my other work, and still have a full story. But, if you had read or seen Kentucky, you would notice that God Said This takes place seven years after the events of Kentucky unfolded, and three of the characters in Kentucky are back for this play. But the main character is not the protagonist of Kentucky, which was Hiro. The main characters [in God Said This] are actually the parents. Also, Kentucky is a sixteen person cast, and it had a lot of songs. It had a talking cat in it. It's very fun, and lively, and a comedy. God Said This is a drama, and it's a cast of five. It veers towards the naturalistic, although you can still tell it's me. So, if you happen to have read Kentucky, there are definitely some Easter eggs. You can track Hiro, Sophie, Masako, and James through that story, but there's a new character too.
What was it like to revisit these four characters you'd known so well, but in such a totally different context?
I hadn't planned on doing this actually. My mom got sick last year. She had this extremely rare and aggressive form of cancer called carcinosarcoma. When my mom was getting treatment, I went back to Kentucky, once a month for six months, to watch over her while she was doing chemo. It's not as dramatic as it sounds. The hospital, the Markey Cancer Center where I wrote the play, has a couch and [my] mom was asleep. I started to [write] in order to cope with the situation, because I didn't know what her fate would be. You never know with cancer; you read about people getting cured, and then you read about people going downhill really fast. And chemo sucks. In order to cope with it, I just started to write. I started to imagine what would happen to this family in Kentucky if the matriarch of that family, Masako, had gotten the same cancer. I started to write and I would take pages back to my writer's group [Primary Stages' Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group] in New York when I would come back. They were the first ones who told me, "This is a play." So then I would go back [to Kentucky] and just keep working on the play. And then I did an end of year reading with them. It was really important to me that it be a stand-alone play, but I wasn't sure [it was]. Once I had that reading I was like, "Oh yeah. You can not know anything [about Kentucky] and see it." But I do think it is cool if you know both worlds too.
Did you learn new things about Hiro and Sophie from exploring this new facet of their world?
Yeah. I mean, Kentucky went up really recently, in 2016, and this takes place seven years later from the characters' lives, but only two years later from my life. So it was cool to imagine what they would be doing. I think that Sophie's optimism is being tested in this play a lot. In the first play, the whole future is ahead of her. She's extremely religious, and [thinks] God will fix everything, but what happens when that gets tested? It's really cool to think about that, and see what a different actor would bring to the role as well. For Hiro, it was really fun for me to think about what she's doing seven later. Kentucky is her journey, deciding if she wants to ever be around her family again, and how estrangement can be healthy, and you have to do what you need to do and create a world for yourself. But then, boom, she's back, seven years later. She's on the rise; she has this job with a $60,000 a year salary and she's bragging about it all the time. It was cool to work with Satomi Blair who's playing Hiro now [and who played Hiro in Kentucky]. She did work in marketing, so a lot of her is in the character. It was cool working with the same actors, and thinking about different nuances. There's also some setup that I did in the first play that comes back in God Said This. At the end of Kentucky, you find out that James, the father, has cirrhosis. And at the beginning of God Said This, you learn that James has had cirrhosis and he's healed. Meanwhile, this super good mom has cancer, so it's just the give and take and unfairness of illness, and how God is indiscriminate and death is indiscriminate.
God, and religion in general, is clearly a very important component to both Kentucky and God Said This. Do you think of yourself as being a religious or spiritual person?
I'm very spiritual. Everyone just assumes that I'm Hiro, and that I'm an atheist. A really big difference between me and Hiro is that I've always believed in God. I'm not a Christian, but I think that there's something there. I wasn't raised on any sort of religion actually. Being tied to Japan, I was exposed to Shintoism a lot, and I love the rituals. I think that's why I do believe in God. In this day and age, I think there's a tendency to have this polarized view of people-the religious rural person and the atheist city person. My sister is a born-again Christian, which I think is great for her, because I see the positive impact in her life. Although, the sister character Sophie is not my sister at all. My sister is this plus-size Instagram model, and she lives near Detroit. My sister has really shown me a different side of what born-again Christians can look like. I think it's boring when religious people are portrayed as dumb in any art form. I just think it's trite and tired. I also think that for New York audiences, I wanted to show a little bit of nuance when it comes to religious people. It was important for me, just as it was important to show that Kentucky doesn't necessarily mean racist white guys or cowboys. There's diversity in red states. The South isn't what you think it is.
Unlike Kentucky, God Said This was written after the 2016 election. Have you noticed a different type of audience response, in terms of themes like the diversity in red states? Do you find yourself having a different approach or perspective?
Not really. I think for me, it's just always been a part of my life. It's always been how I write. When you're not white, or not only white-I'm half white, I'm mixed-you don't consciously try to be diverse. It's just your world, the world that you're around.
In previous interviews, you've spoken about the importance of having characters of mixed race, or characters of color, who are not solely focused on that part of their identity.
I do think that sometimes white writers will arbitrarily place people of color in obvious white roles. I think that whiteness isn't seen as an identity, but it is. I wrote a whole other play about satirizing whiteness, and whiteness is also a stereotype, so I think it's important to be nuanced. It's always great when actors of color get roles, no matter what, but it's important to be nuanced in your writing. I do think that placing actors of color in universal experiences is a political act without being didactic. It's a really good way in. Also, when I have plays that deal with race and class that are a little bit more in your face, I always try to be funny about it, because if I want to hear somebody preach at me, I'll just turn on CNN. So the story is important, the writing's really important.
I'd love to hear more about your thoughts on the relationship that theatre can have to politics. For instance, you successfully protested a production of the Mikado that was going to be done in yellowface. How do you see the role of theatre in a political context?
I think that if your show is racist, then people will say something about it. The Mikado situation was interesting to me because people were like, "Wow, you're so outspoken," but it's crazy not to say something in that circumstance. It's not something that I wanted to do. If you see a production in yellowface, it's crazy not to say something. I think in terms of the role of theatre and protesting shows, it's an inadvertent political act. Any time you're dealing with under-representation, and can show that representation, it becomes a political act. I hate performative activism more than anything actually, so I think if by telling your truth, or the truth around you, that you're being political, then you are marginalized.
Right now you're gearing up for previews for God Said This at Primary Stages. Do you know what you'll be working on next?
Yeah, I have a play called Hot Asian Doctor Husband coming out in Minneapolis in the summer. I'm also going to be working on my play Diversity Awareness Picnic in San Diego in February. My play Two Mile Hollow is continuing to be produced around the country, which is great. The next production is in Arizona, then it goes to Texas. And I'm continuing to work on my play with Audible, which is called Nevada Tan. So, I have a lot in the pipeline.
You're now at a point in your career where your plays are getting produced all across the country. Do you have any words of wisdom to share with young women who want to come to New York and pursue careers as writers?
It's difficult to give advice to people who aren't in the same class demographic as you. If you have your parents' money, and you can start a theatre company, and not pay rent, do that. But the people who can't do that, just get to know everyone. Do your research. I think the most valuable thing for me was when I first got here I was just figuring out who my favorite playwrights working in the city were, and looking at their careers. Honestly, getting to know them or getting to see their work. This is a unique city in the sense that you can meet all of your theatre heroes, unless they're sadly gone. I thought it was the coolest thing that I saw this awesome Asian-American artist [Young Jean Lee] win this major prize, and then I could email her, and we could meet up for coffee. So take advantage of that, because there are resources that you can give yourself. Honestly, just work your ass off, and don't wait for opportunities to be handed to you.

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Leah Nanako Winkler on God Said This, Kentucky, and More

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Leah Nanako Winkler's new play, God Said This, is just beginning performances at Primary Stages. We speak with her about her growth as a writer, what it was like to revisit the world of Kentucky for God Said This, and more.

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-the ritual of a wedding is similar to the ritual of theatre, both bringing unlikely people together

-personal life becomes the story and the characters

-large cast: representation of her Kentucky, rich in diversity, music, and art

-wanted to see a hapa as hero

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Leah Nanako Winkler-Japanese-born, Kentucky-raised playwright-has been self-producing her work in New York for years. Winkler has a singular voice, piercingly funny and irreverant, and surreptiously affecting. Her plays move fluidly between various styles and sometimes even song. Now, after a sold-out Ensemble Studio Theater (EST) Unfiltered workshop of and making the coveted Kilroy's List of best new plays by female playwrights, Winkler is finally receiving her first full production of a full-length play. Staging Kentucky is no small feat. The play has a multi-ethnic cast of sixteen actors and includes live music and an entire wedding ceremony. Though a deeply and sometimes painfully personal play, Winkler's unique comic sensibilities shine through-included in the assembly of family, friends, and foes greeting Hiro on her prodigal return to Kentucky is the family cat, who is also a fully developed character. She speaks with the Brooklyn Rail about the world premiere of Kentucky, presented by Ensemble Studio Theatre, Radio Drama Network, and Page 73 (P73).

Susan Soon He Stanton (Rail): Tell me about what spurred you to write Kentucky. I've heard it was inspired by some recent events in your life.

Leah Nanako Winkler: Although many of the events, behaviors, and dramatic content of the play are fictional, the play's circumstance of an older sister from New York attending her born-again Christian sister's wedding was inspired by the real life event. I was also a bridesmaid in two other weddings that same summer (my two best high school friends from Kentucky) so, naturally, I was thinking a lot about weddings. I wanted to draw from the mixed emotions many people feel at weddings. I also wanted to look at the theatricality of weddings.

Rail: Tell me more about the theatricality of weddings.

Winkler: I was struck by how much the ritual of a wedding is similar to the ritual of theater. Like a play, we rehearse weddings. We wear costumes. We say lines. Attendees get a little excited then bored then hopefully touched. I began to think about how beautiful weddings can be and how they bring people together. Theater also does that. Both rituals bring unlikely people together.

Rail: What has it been like to see an audience responding to a play that is, quite literally, so close to home?

Winkler: Some of the funniest moments in the play were the most painful for me to write-because pain is essencially truthful and a lot of humor roots from truth. But I like making people laugh, so I don't mind. And at this point, Kentucky has morphed into something so far beyond myself. The elements that initially inspired it-the people in my life, the events I lived through-literally become rewritten into characters and fiction. I do, however, remember a time when I brought pages into Youngblood (EST's writers group) right after my sister's wedding, and I had forgotten to take my own name out of the script. That was deeply embarssing, and I genuinely didn't know if this raw material could be a play. But several writers encouraged and assured me to keep going, and for that I'm so thankful.

Rail: What was the EST Unfiltered workshop production like? You have most of the same cast and director.

Winkler: Unfiltered is a festival of five plays, with two-and-a-half weeks of rehearsal to put the play up on its feet. It's a very writing-centric process, and the script is constantly changing. By the time we got to production, I had made a few overhauls, but it was more about making these people that were so inside of myself and viewing them completely outside of myself-feeling the rhythm of each scene.

Rail: I know you are a frequent collaborator and good friends with Morgan Gould. What has it been like working on this epic play with her?

Winkler: She is literally Super Woman who can juggle sixteen actors and a huge design and production team and make everyone feel important. She stays up with me until three a.m. after preview performances to work through rewrites while also somehow managing to make me laugh. As collaborators I truly believe we elevate each other, and the play leaps forward with each performance because our number one priority is making an extraordinary piece rather than serving our own egos.

I'm so glad EST, P73, and Radio Drama Network never questioned her talent and let our collaboration continue from the workshop, with great enthuthiasm. That speaks volumes about their trust in us as artists and the two of us are just so happy to be in such generous, amazing company for our first big production.

Rail: Yes. Let's talk about those sixteen actors. Such a huge cast! None of the characters are doubled, it's so rare.

Winkler: Every character in Kentucky came out organically because weddings are huge events, filled with many people from your past and present. All sixteen people shaped Hiro, and everyone is essential to her journey. I didn't initially consider the limitations of having a huge cast in terms of professional producibility because nobody really told me it was crazy. Youngblood is very nurturing. It was only after the workshop production that I was credited for having "balls." But the real reason why Kentucky feels so splashy and ballsy is because I was allowed to be impetuous.

Rail: I loved seeing so many bodies on stage, creating this world in the original workshop. I love that several different groups of people are brought together.

Winkler: Me too! It's an accurate representation of the Kentucky I grew up in, which was rich in diversity and filled with music and art-as opposed to the stereotype of a white guy on a horse (although there's that too).

Rail: And your lead is hapa [half-Asian], like you.

Winkler: And you! At the same time, this isn't a play about hapa or mixed-race identity. It's a story about home, redemption, and finding the best version of yourself. I think it's important to think outside the box when we tell stories about universal themes and to not limit actors of color to roles where they are soley defined by their ethnicity. I've also never seen a play where a hapa was a hero, and I wanted to see one!

Rail: I know the play is set in Kentucky, but why is it also the title?

Winkler: The play is not directly a statement about Kentucky. It's a play about home. The home that I have made for myself is in New York. But where I came from is Kentucky. This is my Kentucky play.

Excerpt from by Leah Nanako Winkler
GRANDMA enters as if from nowhere.
GRANDMA

I sent you a hundred dollars.

HIRO

Grandma.

GRANDMA

I sent you a hundred dollars but you sent it back. Why?

HIRO

Because. You need the money more than I do.

GRANDMA

Nobody should go to bed hungry-

HIRO

I'm not poor anymore Grandma. I have a good job. In an office. I just got a promotion. And in my spare time I play music at open-mics. I'm learning how to play the banjo!

GRANDMA

Who the fuck leaves Kentucky to go learn how to play the banjo? And you never said thank you to me. You never called. It meant a lot for me. To send a hundred dollars to you.

HIRO

Well you can give me the hundred dollars now if it'll make you feel better.

GRANDMA

HELL NO!!!!!!

GRANDMA gives HIRO the finger.

Kentucky by Leah Nanako Winkler runs April 20 - May 22 at Ensemble Studio Theater. For tickets and further info, please visit http://www.page73.org/programs/productions/kentucky/.

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Bringing Kentucky Home: Leah Nanako Winkler

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Leah Nanako Winkler-Japanese-born, Kentucky-raised playwright-has been self-producing her work in New York for years. Winkler has a singular voice, piercingly funny and irreverant, and surreptiously affecting.

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Sunset in Waikiki: Tourists sipping mai tais crowded the beachside hotel bar. When the server spotted my friend and me, he seemed to relax. "Ah," he said, smiling. "Two hapa girls."

He asked if we were from Hawaii. We weren't. We both have lived in Honolulu - my friend lives there now - but hail from California. It didn't matter. In that moment, he recognized our mixed racial backgrounds and used "hapa" like a secret handshake, suggesting we were aligned with him: insiders and not tourists.

Like many multiracial Asian-Americans, I identify as hapa, a Hawaiian word for "part" that has spread beyond the islands to describe anyone who's part Asian or Pacific Islander. When I first learned the term in college, wearing it felt thrilling in a tempered way, like trying on a beautiful gown I couldn't afford. Hapa seemed like the identity of lucky mixed-race people far away, people who'd grown up in Hawaii as the norm, without "Chink" taunts, mangled name pronunciations, or questions about what they were.

Over time, as more and more people called me hapa, I let myself embrace the word. It's a term that explains who I am and connects me to others in an instant. It's a term that creates a sense of community around similar life experiences and questions of identity. It's what my fiancé and I call ourselves, and how we think of the children we might have: second-generation hapas.

But as the term grows in popularity, so does debate over how it should be used. Some people argue that hapa is a slur and should be retired. "[It] is an ugly term born of racist closed-mindedness much like ' half-breed' or ' mulatto,'" design consultant Warren Wake wrote to Code Switch after reading my piece on a " hapa Bachelorette."

Several scholars told me it's a misconception that hapa has derogatory roots. The word entered the Hawaiian language in the early 1800s, with the arrival of Christian missionaries who instituted a Hawaiian alphabet and developed curriculum for schools. Hapa is a transliteration of the English word "half," but quickly came to mean "part," combining with numbers to make fractions. (For example, hapalua is half. Hapaha is one-fourth.) Hapa haole - part foreigner - came to mean a mix of Hawaiian and other, whether describing a mixed-race person, a fusion song, a bilingual Bible, or pidgin language itself.

This original use was not negative, said Kealalokahi Losch, a professor of Hawaiian studies and Pacific Island studies at Kapi'olani Community College. "The reason [hapa] feels good is because it's always felt good," he told me. Losch has been one of the few to study the earliest recorded uses of the term, buried in Hawaiian-language newspapers, and found no evidence that it began as derogatory. Because the Hawaiian kingdom was more concerned with genealogy than race, he explained, if you could trace your lineage to a Hawaiian ancestor, you were Hawaiian. Mixed Hawaiian did not mean less Hawaiian.

Any use of hapa as a slur originated with outsiders, Losch said. That includes New England missionaries, Asian plantation workers and the U.S. government, which instituted blood quantum laws to limit eligibility for Hawaiian homestead lands. On the continental U.S., some members of Japanese-American communities employed hapa to make those who were mixed "feel like they were not really, truly Japanese or Japanese-American," said Duncan Williams, a professor of religion and East Asian languages and cultures at the University of Southern California. He said this history may have led some to believe the word is offensive.

For Losch, "hapa haole" - meaning part Hawaiian, part other - always has been positive. "This is absolutely who I am," he said. The license plate on his car reads, "HAPA H." His family members have been proud hapa haole for generations. An issue for him is when non-Hawaiians call themselves hapa. "There are times when it feels like identity theft," he said.

This is arguably the trickier and more significant conflict around the term. Hapa, middle school teacher Piikea Kalakau told me, means part Native Hawaiian - not part Asian. "I ... am personally frustrated with the world misusing this word ...," she wrote in an email.

When I first learned the term [hapa] in college, wearing it felt thrilling in a tempered way, like trying on a beautiful gown I couldn't afford. Hapa seemed like the identity of lucky mixed-race people far away ...

I followed up with Kalakau by phone. The widespread use of hapa, she said, is a form of cultural appropriation, just as offensive as hula dancer dolls shaking their hips on car dashboards. She said correcting the definition of hapa is part of a larger Native Hawaiian "movement to take back our culture." She said her people were fighting to thrive again after surviving colonization and its damage to their language, culture and population. Kalakau encouraged me and other mixed Asian-Americans to find labels from our own heritages. "I wouldn't use a Japanese word or a Filipino word to describe myself because it doesn't fit," she said.

Mixed-race Chinese-American scholar Wei Ming Dariotis works through this dilemma in her 2007 essay, " Hapa: The Word of Power." In it, she details her difficult decision to stop using hapa, though the term had formed the foundation of her identity and community. "To have this symbolic word used by Asians, particularly by Japanese Americans, as though it is their own," she writes, "seems to symbolically mirror the way Native Hawaiian land was first taken by European Americans, and is now owned by European Americans, Japanese and Japanese Americans and other Asian American ethnic groups that numerically and economically dominate Native Hawaiians in their own land."

The desire of many Native Hawaiians to reclaim this word is often linked to a larger call for change. In Hawaii, a growing sovereignty movement maintains that the late 19th-century overthrow and annexation of the kingdom were illegal and the islands should again exercise some form of self-governance. But even within that movement opinions on hapa vary. I spoke with attorney Poka Laenui, who said he has been involved in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement for more than 40 years. He told me, in the "idea of aloha" - the complex blend that includes love, compassion and generosity - he doesn't mind if the term is shared. "If our word can be used to assist people in identifying and understanding one another, who am I to object?" he said.

Linguist and consultant Keao NeSmith told me he was shocked the first time he heard hapa outside of a Native Hawaiian context. NeSmith, who grew up on Kauai, learned more about the wider use of hapa when interviewed for a PRI podcast last year. Hearing the episode, his family and friends were shocked, too. "It's a new concept to many of us locals here in Hawaii to call Asian-Caucasian mixes 'hapa' like that," NeSmith said. "Not that it's a bad thing."

NeSmith cited the mixed nature of language and culture in Hawaii as one reason the use doesn't bother him. "We borrow Portuguese terms all the time, Japanese terms all the time, English terms all the time," he said. He called it hypocritical for a local person to protest someone using a Hawaiian word when "it's perfectly fine for us to do that and steal from other cultures and ethnicities."

I asked Williams, editor of the forthcoming essay collection Hapa Japan (to which I contributed a chapter), about his decision to use the word in his work. Why not the Japanese term " haafu"? "Haafu" seemed too narrow, he said; it implies a person has one parent who's a Japanese national. "It seemed like at least in the U.S., the term 'hapa' had a big umbrella feel to it," Williams said.

That broad interpretation of the word may have its roots in Hawaii, where I have friends descended from Japanese and Chinese immigrants who grew up thinking hapa meant part Asian. Elsewhere in the islands, "hapa haole" continued to mean part Hawaiian. This makes literal sense in that "part foreigner" describes only what is different, with the dominant race or culture assumed. It's like how I might answer, "half Japanese" to "What are you?"-type questions; where whiteness is normalized, it doesn't have to be named.

The idea that hapa means multiracial people of Asian and/or Pacific Islander descent spread to the U.S. mainland with the help of academic and artistic work like Kip Fulbeck's The Hapa Project. College hapa clubs also introduced the term to many mixed-race Asian-Americans at a formative stage in their lives. One of the first student groups was the Hapa Issues Forum, founded in 1992 at the University of California at Berkeley. My friend, the mixed-race Taiwanese-American novelist Shawna Yang Ryan, told me she first heard of hapa as a student at Berkeley via the Hapa Issues Forum. "They had shirts that read '100% Hapa,' and I wore mine all the time and spread the word (literally)," she wrote in an email. I had a similar experience at Brown University, when, in 2004, I joined the newly formed Hapa Club.

Since then, hapa has become a meaningful part of who I am. But now I understand this frustrates and offends others. Now, when I think of hapa, I think about the history of Hawaii and identity theft. I think about helping obscure a group of people by swapping my story for theirs.

Hapa is a word I don't think I should use anymore. But I also don't know how I will let it go.
Akemi Johnson is a writer and contributor to Hapa Japan, forthcoming from USC Ito Center/Kaya Press in January 2017.

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Many young mixed-raced Asian-Americans embrace the Hawaiian word "hapa" to describe their identity. But are they legitimizing a slur, engaging in appropriation, or just making an old word new?

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If you're a 5C student...maybe take this class?

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If you're a 5C student...maybe take this class?

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hearhere is a community that aims to create a platform for diverse Christian perspectives on issues of faith, culture, and society.

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hearhere Journal of Christian Thought - Medium

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Read writing from hearhere Journal of Christian Thought on Medium. hearhere is a community that aims to create a platform for diverse Christian perspectives on issues of faith, culture, and society.

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1 Corinthians 13:13

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

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Processional, Presentation, Moment of Silence, Homily, Prayer, Exchanging of Vows, Unity Ceremony, Exchanging of Rings, Pronouncement, Recessional

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If you or your partner follow the Christian faith, you're likely planning a traditional Christian wedding ceremony. However, with six branches worldwide that are ultimately divided into dozens of denominations in the United States alone, there's a great deal of variety in the wedding ceremony traditions practiced in different Christian houses of worship. That being said, several common threads exist. Knowing what traditions you might choose to include in your vow exchange (and gaining a deeper understanding of the meaning behind said traditions) will help deepen your appreciation of the experience.

"I'm new old-school," says The Reverend Roxanne Birchfield, MDiv (Rev. Roxy), a non-denominational Christian minister who officiates weddings across the country through her company, Married by Rev. Roxy ®. "I believe God gives us the gift of choice." That means that she'll add to, subtract from, and adjust Christian wedding ceremony traditions according to what makes sense for her couples, and she empowers others planning Christian wedding ceremonies to do the same.

Meet the Expert

To help you do just that, Rev. Roxy shares the most common Christian wedding ceremony traditions, which, as a whole, is called the "Order of Service." They proceed in the following order.

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10 Christian Wedding Ceremony Traditions

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If you or your partner follow the Christian faith, you might be planning a Christian wedding ceremony and want to include some common traditions in your vow exchange. Here, learn all about the most common Christian wedding ceremony traditions straight from an expert and begin crafting your perfect celebration.

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Definition, Impact, How to Help

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Childhood trauma involve aversive, distressing experiences that can affect a child's ability to function and cope. Unfortunately, it is all too common. An estimated 46% of children experience trauma at some point in their young lives.

While kids are resilient, they're not made of stone. Adults often say things like, 'They were so young when that happened, they won't even remember it as an adult.' However, it is important to recognize that childhood trauma can have a lifelong effect.

"As children's brains develop, they are learning how safe or unsafe the world is through their experiences," says psychotherapist Yolanda Renteria, LPC. "A child has to develop a way to protect itself from what it deems unsafe; the ways in which a child protects itself shape their adult personality."

Because of this, it's important to recognize when a child may need professional help for dealing with their trauma. Early intervention can also prevent the ongoing effects of the trauma into adulthood.

What Is Childhood Trauma?

Childhood trauma is an event experienced by a child that evokes fear and is commonly violent, dangerous, or life-threatening. Also sometimes referred to as adverse childhood experiences or ACEs, there are many different experiences that can lead to trauma.

Physical or sexual abuse, for example, can be traumatic for children. One-time events like a car accident, natural disaster (like a hurricane), the loss of a loved one, or a major medical incident can take a psychological toll on children as well.

Ongoing stress, such as living in a dangerous neighborhood or being the target of bullying, can also be traumatic for a child-even if it just feels like daily life to an adult.

Childhood trauma doesn't even have to involve experiences that occur directly to the child. Watching a loved one endure a major health issue, for instance, can be extremely traumatic for children. Violent media can have this effect too.

Childhood Trauma and PTSD

As many as 15% of girls and 6% of boys develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following a traumatic event. Children with PTSD may re-experience the trauma in their minds over and over again. They might also avoid anything that reminds them of the trauma or re-enact the trauma in their play.

Sometimes children believe that they missed warning signs predicting the traumatic event. In an effort to prevent future traumas, they become hypervigilant in looking for signs that something bad is going to happen again.

Children with PTSD may also:

Act younger than they are (such as by sucking their thumb)

Experience trouble focusing

Feel more depressed or anxious

Find it difficult to be affectionate with others

Have increased anger and aggression

Have issues in school

Have trouble sleeping

Lose interest in activities they once enjoyed

Lose touch with reality

Seem detached, numb, or non-responsive

Worry about dying young

Even children who don't develop PTSD may still exhibit emotional and behavioral issues following a traumatic experience. Here are some things to watch for during the weeks and months after an upsetting event:

Anger issues

Attention problems

Changes in appetite

Development of new fears

Increased concerns about death or safety

Irritability

Loss of interest in normal activities

Problems sleeping

Sadness

School refusal

Somatic complaints like headaches and stomachaches

Impacts of Childhood Trauma

Traumatic events can affect how a child's brain develops, which can have lifelong consequences for them physically, mentally, and socially.

Physical Health Impacts

When a child experiences a traumatic event, it can impair their physical development. The stress can impair the development of their immune and central nervous systems, making it harder to achieve their full potential.

Specifically, it notes that exposure to repeated trauma increases a child's risk of developing:

A 2019 review of 134 different research-based articles adds that exposure to adverse experiences as children increases the risk of developing several different conditions-such as autoimmune diseases, pulmonary disease, cardiovascular disease, and cancer-in adulthood, as well as increasing levels of pain.

Mental Health Impacts

Childhood trauma can also have an impact on mental health. Psychological effects of traumatic experiences can include:

Children exposed to complex traumas may even become disassociated. Dissociation involves separating themselves from the experience mentally. They might imagine that they are outside of their bodies and watching it from somewhere else or they may lose memory of the experience, resulting in memory gaps.

Research published in Psychiatric Times further notes that the prevalence of suicide attempts is significantly higher in adults who experienced traumas such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, and parental domestic violence as a child.

Relationship Impacts

A child's relationship with their caregivers-whether they be parents, grandparents, or other familial or non-familial adults-is vital to their emotional and physical health. The attachment children have with their caregivers can help them learn to trust others, manage emotions, and positively interact with the world around them.

When a child experiences a trauma that teaches them that they cannot trust or rely on that caregiver, they're likely to believe that the world around them is a scary place and people are dangerous. This lesson makes it incredibly difficult to form relationships throughout their childhood and into their adult years.

Children who experience trauma are also likely to struggle with romantic relationships in adulthood. A 2017 study in the Journal of Family Psychology found that spouses with a history of child abuse tend to have less satisfying marriages, even when still in the newlywed phase.

Renteria notes that the lasting effects of trauma often depend on the nature and severity of the event. In some cases, it may lead to feelings of anxiety or avoidance coping that some partners may find frustrating or confusion.

Yolanda Renteria, LPC

She also explains that some common relationship struggles that can stem from such trauma include:

Difficulty trusting

Being physically and verbally distant

Defensiveness

Difficulty being vulnerable

Difficulty giving their partner the benefit of the doubt

Difficulty with communication skills

Difficulty seeing their partner as their ally

Other Impacts

Sometimes the impact of childhood trauma extends beyond physical or mental health and relationships. For instance, some studies have connected adverse childhood experiences with an increased risk of becoming a criminal offender by the age of 35, oftentimes committing offenses that are serious and violent.

Additional impacts can include:

Being easily "set off" and having more intense reactions

Engaging in high-risk behaviors (such as driving at high speeds or unsafe sex)

Inability to plan ahead or prepare for the future

Increased risk of self-harm

Lack of impulse control

Low self-esteem

Trouble problem-solving or reasoning

Children experiencing traumatic events may also have a reduced ability to parent their own kids later in life.

Untreated Childhood Trauma

How to Help Children Who Have Experienced Trauma

Social support can be key to reducing the impact trauma has on a child, even as far as reducing their risk of suicidal ideation. Here are some ways to support a child after an upsetting event:

Encourage the child to talk about their feelings and validate their emotions.

Help them understand that they are not at fault.

Answer their questions honestly.

Reassure the child that you'll do everything you can to keep them safe.

Stick to a daily routine as much as possible.

Be patient as each child recovers at their own pace.

Depending on the child's age and needs, they may be referred for services such as cognitive behavioral therapy, play therapy, or family therapy. In some cases, such as when there is a diagnosis of PTSD, medication may also be an option to help treat their symptoms.

How to Heal From Your Own Childhood Trauma

If you experienced trauma as a child and still have some healing to do, there are several actions you can take to help you better cope. Among them are:

Talking to a mental health professional can also help you start to heal. Therapeutic options may include a number of trauma-informed therapies, such as cognitive processing therapy (CPT), trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), among others.

You may also want to reach out to reputable organizations able to help childhood trauma survivors. The Disaster Distress Helpline offered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is one option. If you prefer to communicate via text, the Crisis Text Line is another.

A Word From Verywell

While it's normal to have some level of distress following a traumatic event, it's not out of the question that children can return to a healthy state of functioning-and some kids are less affected by their circumstances than others.

If childhood trauma has created negative effects, it is never too late to get help. Whether you've adopted a teenager who was abused over a decade ago or you've never received help for the traumatic experiences you endured 40 years ago, trauma treatment can still be effective and beneficial.

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The effects of childhood trauma can be debilitating and last a lifetime without early intervention. Here's how to recognize the signs of trauma and get help.

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Humans love redemption stories. Our movies, literature, and folklore focus heavily on someone trying to make up for a mistake or tragedy in their past. Maybe it's something they did, or perhaps it's something that was done to them. Each story pulls you in with the hope that the protagonist can do something to mend or maybe even build upon that experience.

Did you ever think that we gravitate towards these kinds of stories because it represents our deepest desire? Every one of us has experienced or even carried out betrayals. And even though we all typically know what we should do, we often choose to do the exact opposite. And looking at the world around us, it's easy to see that things aren't the way they're supposed to be. Something's broken-and we desperately want to know it can be redeemed.

Redemption in Scripture

In many ways, the Bible is a story of redemption. On a macro level, it's the story of humanity's fall, our broken relationship with our Creator, and then God's plan for reconciliation and redemption. But throughout the narrative, we see how God is constantly in the redemption business.

The Bible doesn't simply tell the tale of humanity's redemption in the abstract but it also gives us individual tales of redemption. We see Abraham, Moses, and David all commit sins and witness their repentance and redemption. For redemption to work in the grand scheme of things, it needs to operate on an individual basis, too.

Let's examine a dozen key biblical passages about redemption.

1. Let the redeemed tell their story (Psalm 107:2-3)

Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story-
those he redeemed from the hand of the foe,
those he gathered from the lands,
from east and west, from north and south.

For the Israelites, redemption was experienced in relation to enemies. Thus, throughout the Old Testament, we watch God's people fall into cycles of disobedience, occupation among foreign adversaries, and eventual salvation by God's hand.

But Psalm 107 also talks about God's redemption from desert wanderings, slavery, shipwreck, famine, and drought. Jesus told us that the enemy comes only to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10), and that destruction manifests itself in many ways-and God can deliver from all of them.

It's important to recognize how these two verses can be read in light of the redemption that Jesus offers.

John tells us that the reason Jesus appeared was to "destroy the works of the devil." The writer of Hebrews communicates it this way:

"Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death-that is, the devil-and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death" (Hebrews 2:14-15).

God has undoubtedly redeemed us from the hand of the foe, and others' redemption happens when the "redeemed of the Lord tell their story." In essence, this is what it means to fulfill the Great Commission.

2. He provided redemption for His people (Psalm 111:6-9)

He has shown his people the power of his works,
giving them the lands of other nations.
The works of his hands are faithful and just;
all his precepts are trustworthy.
They are established for ever and ever,
enacted in faithfulness and uprightness.
He provided redemption for his people;
he ordained his covenant forever-
holy and awesome is his name.

Psalm 111 tells us that not only are the things God does faithful and true but also His law is trustworthy. The works of the Lord's hands and the words He has spoken are established in faithfulness and uprightness. What exactly does that mean? Are these things found in God's consistent faithfulness? Yes! But there's more.

The very next Psalm tells us that the righteousness of the upright endures forever (Psalm 112:3). God's works and words are not only established forever in His character but also in ours. This is one reason that redemption is so critical. The redeemed begin to resemble their Creator, and in their uprightness, people witness the goodness of God.

3. Return to me, for I have redeemed you (Isaiah 44:21-23)

Remember these things, Jacob,
for you, Israel, are my servant.
I have made you, you are my servant;
Israel, I will not forget you.
I have swept away your offenses like a cloud,
your sins like the morning mist.
Return to me,
for I have redeemed you."

Sing for joy, you heavens, for the Lord has done this;
shout aloud, you earth beneath.
Burst into song, you mountains,
you forests and all your trees,
for the Lord has redeemed Jacob,
he displays his glory in Israel.

Through the prophet, God reminds Israel of His mercy. Despite what seems to be a never-ending cycle of disobedience, God continues to forgive and redeem them from their enemies. Pay special attention to the second part of this passage. Israel's redemption causes creation to respond in celebration and joy because the Lord's glory is revealed in His redemption.

Paul tells us that "the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." (Romans 8:22). Just imagine the party creation will throw when the story of God's redemption is made available to everyone on earth!

4. You redeemed my life (Lamentations 3:55-60)

I called on your name, Lord,
from the depths of the pit.
You heard my plea: "Do not close your ears
to my cry for relief."
You came near when I called you,
and you said, "Do not fear."

You, Lord, took up my case;
you redeemed my life.
Lord, you have seen the wrong done to me.
Uphold my cause!
You have seen the depth of their vengeance,
all their plots against me.

The speaker talks about their desperation. Like many of us, the writer of Lamentations becomes desperate for the Lord when it becomes evident that they cannot save themselves. The Lord responds with attentiveness and compassion.

The thing about the Lord's redemption isn't just that He swoops in and rescues us. Like the speaker in Lamentations, the Lord takes up our case against our accuser.

5. To save the world through Him (John 3:16-17)

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

There's a reason John 3:16 is one of the most well-known verses in the entire Bible. It beautifully sums up the New Testament's redemption message. God loved the world so much that He sent Jesus to redeem each individual who puts their faith in Him.

Verse 3:17 is a crucial corollary. God has never desired condemnation; He's always longed to redeem us, and reconciling the world to Himself is the entire focus of Jesus' incarnation.

6. He is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption (1 Corinthians 28-31)

God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things-and the things that are not-to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God-that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord."

The interesting thing about God's redemption is that it's set up so that we can't take responsibility for it. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians, Christ crucified is a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. Israelites couldn't fathom the idea of a Messiah claiming to be God and being killed as a criminal. Everyone else can't get past the idea that salvation isn't achieved through effort and the right philosophies.

In the end, it is Jesus who has secured our redemption. It is Jesus who sets us apart and makes us holy. And it is Jesus who is the source of our righteousness.

7. God's redemption has come to the Gentiles (Galatians 3:13-14)

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole." He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

God promised Abraham that the whole world would be blessed through his descendants (Genesis 12:3). But Israel frequently lost the plot and made their relationship with God solely about them.

By the time Jesus came, they were expecting a Messiah who would overthrow Rome and restore Israel. But Jesus came to fulfill God's promise to Abraham. His redemption wouldn't just be for Israel, but for the entire world.

8. Redemption through His blood (Ephesians 1:7-8a)

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us.

The very word redemption is about paying a price to purchase something or to pay a ransom. So when Paul says that we have redemption through His blood, he's talking about the price that was paid for our redemption. Our ransom was paid with the Savior's very life.

It's important to recognize that we also have the forgiveness of sins. This is part of our redemption. Sin leads to bondage and death. We needed to be redeemed from the penalty of our sin, and that's part of what Jesus bought with His blood. Not only that we could be forgiven for our sins, but that we could be bought back from the penalties.

9. Rescued us from darkness (Colossians 1:13-14)

For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

A lot of the language Paul uses comes from his Hebraic upbringing. An Israelite reading these words would associate them with the Exodus. God swooped in and rescued the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt, and He led them to a promised land that would become their home.

Exodus becomes a metaphor for a spiritual problem that God's redemption solved. Namely, how could He rescue His creation from a sinful kingdom that they have often willfully embraced? How could He reconcile Himself with people who belong to another kingdom?

Jesus went into this dark dominion and took upon Himself the punishment for humanity's sin. This act ransomed them from the enemy's kingdom and brought them into the kingdom of God.

10. He redeems us from all wickedness (Titus 2:11-14)

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope-the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

Redemption isn't just about saving us from the past to be assured about our future. Redemption offers us a reset. We have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into God's kingdom. But we've also been redeemed from the fruitlessness of worldly passions.

Our gratefulness for God's grace should help us be self-controlled, but part of the inheritance that comes with redemption is God's Spirit deposited in each of us to teach and empower us to live godly lives.

11. He has died as a ransom (Hebrews 9:15)

For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance-now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.

The word "testament" means covenant. That's why Christians divide the Scripture up into two parts, the old and new covenant. The old covenant was represented by God's law. A carefully prescribed list of rules describing how to worship God and live a godly life.

Jesus is the high priest of the new covenant. He reveals to us the covenant and then He offers Himself as the only acceptable sacrifice to inaugurate it. His redemption sets us free from our sins committed under the old covenant, and it also fulfills the requirements of that covenant-ushering in a whole new relationship between God and humanity.

12. Redeemed with precious blood (1 Peter 1:18-19)

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

In a section of his epistle on holiness, Peter reminds His readers that they have been ransomed. And we need to remember that in the way that we live. Our choices need to be driven by thankfulness for the kindness and grace God has demonstrated toward us.

If someone had paid a high monetary price for our freedom, we would feel responsible to honor that gift with the decisions we make. We'd appreciate such a gift and desire to live worthy of it. Peter gently reminds us that the price paid to deliver us was more expensive than that. Jesus actually paid the ultimate sacrifice to redeem us. And while this knowledge shouldn't fill us with constant guilt or shame, it should inspire us to live lives worthy of this gift.

God's glorious grace

God's redemption wasn't offered because we deserved it. It was His love and mercy that drove Him to rescue us. He freed us from our bondage to the law and the enemy to walk in new freedom in Him.

If you're unfamiliar with Jesus' story and ministry, you can watch the "JESUS" film or the " Life of Jesus " based on the Gospels of Luke and John (respectively). Either film would be a great place to familiarize yourself with God's redemptive story.

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12 Bible Verses about Redemption - Jesus Film Project

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Humans love redemption stories. Our movies, literature, and folklore focus heavily on someone trying to make up for a mistake or tragedy in their past. Maybe

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Sequel to Kentucky that stands alone: God Said This

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Sequel to Kentucky that stands alone: God Said This

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More serious, naturalistic

Dives into Masako and James' stories

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In Christianity, no. To Jesus, his family members by faith are closer to Him than those related to him by blood. He defines family as those who are doing the will of God.

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Can a family still love each other despite religious differences?

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Can a family still love each other despite religious differences?

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Yes. In Winker's words, this is a family that doesn't know what to do with each other. They care deeply about one another, but that doesn't excuse all the violence and aggression. Hiro has the privilege of having a therapist, but her family doesn't. If they did, the therapist would most likely suggest that they go to family therapy together instead of trying to face the unknown on their own.

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The play could've easily gone to really dark places if Da'ran's family didn't prioritize forgiveness in moments of tension. It's not because they're some sort of heavenly creatures without feelings; rather, they chose to forgive because God forgave everyone in the first place. And what a beautiful thing that is.

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How does one's upbringing inform their attachment style and coping mechanism?

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How does one's upbringing inform their attachment style and coping mechanism?

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For Hiro, the turbulent relationship between her parents inevitably led to distrust in long-term relationships and marriage. By inference, Sophie had probably been there, too, before she turned to Christianity and met Da'ran. It's evident that both sisters have deeply rooted rage, trauma, and insecurity; because of Masako, they also inherited her big heart, resilience, and sarcasm.

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Scene 6-12

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Scene 13-17

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Scene 18

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Secure: Da'ran

Anxious: Adam

Avoidance: Sophie

Disorganized: James

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Hangout with Leah Nanako Winkler, Meghan Kreidler, and Eric Sharp | Mu-tini Hour

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Hangout with Leah Nanako Winkler, Meghan Kreidler, and Eric Sharp | Mu-tini Hour | Theater Mu

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The importance of gratitude, respect, strength, vulnerability, communication, diversity, and a sense of play

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The importance of gratitude, respect, strength, vulnerability, communication, diversity, and a sense of play

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Prelude 12  Leah Nanako Winkler/Everywhere Theatre Group: WORK HARD PLAY HARDER, October 3rd 2012