5th Annual Healthy Relationships Week

The FIFTH Annual Healthy Relationships Week is here!

For the fifth consecutive year, the Healthy Relationships Initiative is offering a series of programs, resources, and tips to strengthen relationships of all kinds during the week of Valentine’s Day.

Valentine’s Day is not just about romantic relationships either! Valentine’s Day can be a great excuse to get intentional about strengthening relationships with friends and family, too. Regardless of your romantic relationship status, we’re sure that you’ll find a resource to help strengthen a relationship in your life today during Healthy Relationships Week!

Monday, February 15: Young Love: Setting the Tone for a Healthy, Happy, and Safe Marriage

  • Click here to learn more and register to receive a link to view the live premiere of the first video of this series, featuring therapists,  Lauren Bowman and Kalie Moore.

Tuesday, February 16: To register for the live program on Maintaining Healthy Communication & Boundaries in Relationships, click here. 

Sticking to Your New Year’s Resolutions: Tip 2

Being realistic about your resolutions doesn’t mean that you can’t aim big.  Instead, it means finding ways to accomplish your big goals by breaking them down into smaller, realistic goals. For example, if your resolution is to buy a house or finish your degree, you can take that goal and break it down into smaller tasks that will help you get there, such as saving money or taking an additional class. When we’re realistic about our goals and resolutions, we’re more likely to stick with them even when we face obstacles to them.

Sticking to Your New Year’s Resolutions: Tip 1

With the start of 2021 around the corner, it’s normal to have New Year’s Resolutions on your mind.

While it’s true that New Year’s is a good time to think about healthy changes you’d like to make, there are a lot of reasons to make your and your family’s health a priority all year long, including your physical, mental, and relationship health.

To help you set resolutions that you’ll stick to next year, this week, we’re sharing some tips for you to think about. Our first tip is to start small. It can be tempting to want to set big resolutions for the New Year, but the key to sticking to your resolutions is to start small. Even if you have a larger goal in mind, it can be helpful to break it down into smaller goals that help lead to your long-term resolution.

Tips for Keeping Teens Healthy, Happy, & Safe Over Winter Break

By Camila Dos Santos, M.Ed., Program Coordinator of the Healthy Relationships Initiative 

With teenagers limited in their social activities and with many learning from home, winter break can feel especially long for everyone. Parents of teenagers may be interested in the following tips to keep teens healthy, happy, and safe over the winter break:

  • Help them connect virtually with friends and family. Giving teenagers an opportunity to virtually connect with others during winter break can help them tend to their social nature, while keeping them safe during the pandemic. Being mindful about these meetings can help keep them meaningful and positive, such as by introducing themes or game nights.
  • Get them involved in volunteering or help them find season employment. Ask your teen what they may be interested in helping with or learning about, and do your research together.  Your teen can gain valuable skills from a real-life experience such as volunteering or employment. Even if you just end up planning for an opportunity down the line, doing it together can be a valuable exercise for connecting with your teenager and learning about their interests.
  • Give them holiday responsibilities. This can be a win-win situation for you and your teenager! Giving your teen tasks during the holidays give them an opportunity to show responsibility and enhance their self-esteem. It also means that you get a little help around the house! Some tasks can include: cooking or baking a dish or dessert, supervising young children, doing holiday shopping, or running to the post office.
  • Spend time talking about their future. Winter break can be a wonderful opportunity to get to know your teenager better.  Learning about their future plans, such their ideas about where they’ll live, what they’ll do for a living and for fun, can help you get a sense of how your teen envisions their life.  A tip for these conversations: Ask open-ended questions, and then listen. 
  • Help teens cultivate their spirituality and self-care practices. Cultivating spirituality and practicing self-care has many benefits for adults and teenagers alike.  Cultivating spirituality looks different for everyone, but ultimately, it is whatever spiritual practice helps your teenager feel centered and emotionally balanced. The same can be said for your teenager’s self-care practices as well. Check out this previous HRI blog post for helping teens learn about and practice self-care.

Practice these tips to help strengthen your relationship with your teenager and keep them healthy, happy, and safe during this pandemic winter break!

1.27.21 Healing Relationships: Reflecting After a Contentious Election Season

The 2020 election season has brought a lot of tension and challenges to close relationships of all kinds, including families, friends, couples, and co-workers. In this follow-up program, we’ll hear from a panel of UNC Greensboro experts for insights and strategies to understand and navigate tension and conflict after a heightened political election.

Click here to view a recording of this program.

HRI in 2020

 

We all started 2020 with many things that we wanted to accomplish, and for many of us — those goals, plans, and ideas have been postponed or cancelled.  

We believe that having healthy relationships of all kinds can help to overcome even the most difficult circumstances, and it has been our goal this year to create programs and provide resources that can help our audience strengthen relationships in all aspects of their lives. 

HRI is grateful for your support during a very challenging and unpredictable year. We are proud of what we have accomplished in this challenging year, and we wanted to share some of our achievements with our community. 

We look forward to continuing to help the Guilford County, NC community and beyond strengthen relationships of all kinds in 2021!