Books, Organizations, Tools and Games
Resources
BIPOC
-
IRCO's mission is to welcome, serve, and empower refugees, immigrants and people across cultures and generations to reach their full potential.
Click Here to Learn More -
Rehumanization of children through a model grounded in the neuroscience of love, demonstrating data informed, anti-racist, resiliency-based and culturally affirming education.
Click Here to learn more. -
The Racial Equity Support Line is led and staffed by people with lived experience of racism. We offer support to those who are feeling the emotional impacts of racist violence and microaggressions, as well as the emotional impacts of immigration struggles and other cross-cultural issues.
Click here to learn more.
Housing
-
“Since originating in 1972 as a Multnomah County demonstration project providing residential care for adolescents struggling with homelessness and drug abuse, Janus Youth Programs has provided a second chance for at-risk youth with few resources, and no place to turn for help.”
-
Multnomah housing resources
-
Get answers to legal questions, sample forms, and information about the courts, lawyers and social service organizations that provide services related to Housing.”
LGBTQIA+
-
“Gender Diversity improves the well-being of children and adults of all gender identities and expression by providing education, increasing awareness, and offering insight into the wider range of human experience.”
-
List of resources available to individuals in the Portland metro area
-
Oregon LGBTQ Youth & Family Resources is a curated hub created by the Oregon Family Support Network in partnership with the Family Acceptance Project to connect LGBTQ youth, families, and providers with statewide and national supports.
Crisis
-
The Oregon Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence’s Find Help page provides a searchable, statewide directory of community-based and tribal domestic and sexual violence agencies, shelters, legal services, and advocacy programs.
It also lists national helplines and culturally specific resources—like the National Domestic Violence Hotline, StrongHearts Native Helpline, and the Anti-Violence Project—and includes guidance about confidentiality for survivors.
-
“The Trevor Project will significantly expand the diversity and representation of its crisis contacts in alignment with national youth demographics, while maintaining excellent service quality, including high de-escalation rates for the youth who reach out.”
-
“Portland Street Response, a program within Portland Fire & Rescue, assists people experiencing mental health and behavioral health crises.
The program is currently responding citywide and you can request our service by calling 911.”
Books
-
Click here to learn more.
Resmaa Menakem argues that racialized trauma is stored in the body rather than only in ideas or policies, and that healing must start with somatic work. He centers distinct bodily responses across the “black body,” the “white body,” and the “police body,” showing how each carries patterned tension and threat reactions passed down through generations. The book offers clear, practice-based somatic exercises and grounding rituals designed to help individuals and communities notice, release, and transform body-held trauma. For example, one exercise involves focusing on one's breath to center the body. This is done by taking deep, slow breaths while visualizing stress exiting the body with each exhale. These exercises help calm the nervous system and foster a sense of safety. Ultimately, Menakem calls for collective, body-centered practices that interrupt cycles of violence and create safer, more grounded ways of relating across racial lines. -
Us by Terry Real presents a robust, practical blueprint for couples entangled in recurring conflict patterns—what he sharply defines as pursuer/distancer or critic/withdrawer dynamics.
Real draws on Relational Life Therapy and clinical cases to reveal how ingrained, self-protective behaviors learned in childhood prevent partners from genuine intimacy.
He highlights accountability, honest dialogue, and repair, arguing vulnerability is a learnable skill, not innate.
Filled with targeted exercises and frank, compassionate advice, the book seeks to propel couples beyond blame and stalemate toward steadier, more connected partnerships.
-
In Mating in Captivity, Esther Perel explores the paradox that love seeks closeness while desire often needs distance, arguing that security and eroticism require different conditions. Drawing on clinical cases and cultural observation, she shows how domestic familiarity, predictability, and caregiving can erode erotic tension and leave partners wondering where desire went. Perel invites couples to cultivate curiosity, play, and autonomy—through boundaries, mystery, and imagination—to rekindle attraction instead of treating desire as merely a problem to be solved. Practical and provocative, the book challenges conventional wisdom about intimacy and offers clinicians and partners new frameworks and practices for nurturing desire alongside commitment.
Click here to learn more.
-
Where Should We Begin? — A Game of Stories is a conversation card game created by psychotherapist Esther Perel that’s built to spark deeper, vulnerability-forward storytelling between partners, friends, or small groups.
Players draw cards and respond to prompts that invite reflection on love, memory, identity, and conflict, using either the game’s structure or looser improvisation depending on how intimate you want the conversation to be.
Many people use it as a relationship tool to build empathy, improve communication, and practice honest, therapist-informed conversation in a playful setting.
Click Here to learn more. -
This intimacy card game uses therapist-informed prompts to help partners lean into honest conversation without pressure. Players draw themed cards, answer or reflect, and practice listening and repair in a low-stakes setting, a simple, playful tool for building emotional closeness and better communication.
Click Here to learn more.click here to learn more