About Margaret Howard, MFA, LCSW

I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in Carbondale, Illinois, and Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Social Work at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

​​​Selected Publications and Interviews:

• Happening now: Presentor, The Breathe Network training course, "Healing Sexual Trauma: A Professional Training in Trauma-Informed Care." This is a training course for healing arts practitioners. The unit I participate in is "Transformative Perspectives on Healing, Justice and Self-Care". Registration is open until September 30, 2019, and can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/healing-sexual-trauma-a-professional-training-in-trauma-informed-care-tickets-61759045969?fbclid=IwAR3nAJP7eFKE78RO5EqgTvBAdEJ5HbeM5UzaJ3Fj2_Y9CfHOl00CdXzmrVY
• Afterword, in Brendon Abram's Teaching Trauma-Sensitive Yoga: A Practical Guide. (North Atlantic Books/Penguin Random House) Click here to order.

Afterward by Margaret Howard

• Podcast Interview with Shannon Crow for The Connected Yoga Teacher, "Trauma Training For Every Yoga Teacher with Margaret Howard" 2017
  
• Interview with Gail Sheehy for Politico, "America's Therapists Are Worried About Trump's Affect On Your Mental Health" October, 2016
• Interview: Wisdom of the Wounded Healer, with The Breathe Network, August 19, 2015
• Yes! Magazine, August 26, 2014
• Huffington Post Interview, National Freedom Day, 2013
• The St. Louis Beacon, Commentary, 2013
• Huffington Post Live "How Big Data is Fighting Human Trafficking: Google, CNN, and Others Share Solutions

HuffPost Blog​ Click Here Includes:

• How to Not (Even Accidentally) Be a D**k When Your Person Has Anxiety
• Part I: Trauma Training Should Be Mandatory for Yoga Teachers
• Part II: Trauma Training Should Be Mandatory for Yoga Teachers
• ​Part III: Trauma Training Should Be Mandatory for Yoga Teachers​
• One Last Word on Yoga and Trauma
• Winter, the Puritans, and the Decolonization of Your Being
• How Memes Are Hurting Trauma Survivors
• 11 Healthy Ways to Grieve

​Licenses/Credentials/Governing Bodies

• Certificate: Licensed Clinical Social Worker,
  State of Illinois / 149.021153
• Certificate: Licensed Clinical Social Worker, 
  State of Missouri / 2014033182

Member of the Breathe Network

​Training, Theory, and Orientation
Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), licensed to practice in Missouri.
Master of Fine Arts in Writing (MFA)
Formal Education
Master of Social Work, Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, 2011
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 2000
Bachelor of Science, University Studies, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 1994

​Selected Post-Graduate Trainings:

• Laurel Parnell's Attachment-Focused EMDR
• EMDR 1 and 2, EMDR Therapist
• Somatic Experiencing (SE), One Year
• Many Depth and Jungian Workshops and Trainings, including in Dream Work
• Training in Mental Health Work with Veterans (I am an US Army veteran, 1979-1981)
• Various Trainings in General Mental Health and Trauma
• ASSIST training in suicidality
• Multiple trainings in response to domestic violence, human trafficking, sexual assault
• Daniel Foor's Ancestral Medicine courses

Margaret's practice orientation works within the intersections of earth and ecological psychology, body/somatic psychology, Jungian-influenced depth and dream work as modernized and influenced by Toko-pa Turner, Sharon Blackie, Daniel Foor, and others, with EMDR resourcing and processing as appropriate, focusing clinically on trauma and anxiety in women.  This work is in relationship with the how trauma and anxiety express in the body, the personal unconscious, the collective unconscious, intergenerationally and within the community. Margaret's work and perspective includes the effects of colonization, slavery, capitalism, and other abusive systems as they impacted our ancestors and ourselves in the present time. This work engages deep archetype and family inheritance of traumas and patterns (in adoptees as well as those raised by biological parents), and recognized the importance of all life to our wellbeing, including animals, plants, and the very land we live upon. Theoretical influences include Van der Kolk, Ogden, Porjes, Levine, Estes, and other doing research and work in the triune brain model, the autonomic nervous system, and the mind/body. At the center of this is a mindfulness orientation. 

Before embarking upon this work Margaret lived a varied life, including as a stay-at-home mother, a professional writer, college writing instructor, women's health advocate, aspiring midwife, journalist, technical writer, and very part time private chef.

Born in Illinois, Margaret has lived in several states in the US as well as Germany and Sweden. She has studied with elders of land-spirit recognizing spiritual traditions, always being careful not to co-opt, colonize, or romanticize. My professional work is to remain neutral spiritually and to respect and facilitate each person's belief or non-belief. 

Margaret occasionally does consulting work around human trafficking policy and the treatment of post-trauma in survivors, emphasizing the need for survivor-led policy and services. Margaret has worked with the Coalition Against Slavery and Trafficking Los Angeles, ATTEST, and is a former board member of the Central Missouri Stop Human Trafficking Coalition.

Margaret is a mother, grandmother, writer, musician. sustainable gardener, reader, writer, animist, and proud-ass crone.



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