one of the people who inspired me on this subject is mark brackett from yale who has devoted himself to building social and emotional learning curricula, a particular program that he developed at yale, designed to build emotional literacy and be comfortable, not just talking about emotions but recognizing what you are dealing with and it starts very powerfully, seeing how teachers and parents talk about emotion, we all feel sad sometimes. this is what it feels like to me. to talk about that and experience sadness at the same is true for loneliness. when we talk about experiences that can encourage a child to feel that way to give them permission to talk about it as well. it is important to make it clear that being lonely is not a sign that you are broken are deficient in some way but to normalize it. we all experience loneliness. we show it in different ways but it is invisible a lot of the time. can't always see it in other people. doesn't mean it is not there. it is important for kids. when it comes to trauma especially, one of the things i was struck by, when i write about in the