Carol Tanenbaum

I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Psychoanalyst. I live in Los Angeles where I now have a private practice. In 1994 I was introduced to the work of Global Children's Organization, which then was a non-profit set up by a group of Americans to address the emotional-social needs of the children who were suffering through the war in the Balkans. They ran yearly summer camps in Croatia and in Bosnia and I joined them because as a caring being, I wanted to help respond to the trauma that the people of the Balkans and especially the children were suffering. I became the art director at their camps and also part of the administrative staff and spent every summer in the Balkans working with the survivors of the war. It was, of course, devastating and life changing. I learned about the deep impact of war trauma, but also about what resilience looks like. In 2003, after 911, I also, with a group of psychoanalysts and other therapists launched The Soldiers Project, a non-profit that provided free psychological service to soldiers and their families who had been engaged in the Afghanistan/Iraq wars. It too was life changing. It has left me with some tools that might be helpful now. I am now moved, as I was then, to respond to the devastating circumstances of the war in the Ukraine. With the little experience I have had, some things I have learned about living in impossible circumstances, war and it's everpresent ripples, and a calm and empathic heart, maybe I can be of help.