This is a story about a little sheep who’s afraid of shadows. He sees a shadow one day and runs away from the shepherd, getting lost in the woods and surrounded by shadows! Every shadow that he sees ends up being something he shouldn’t be afraid of. But later the shadows come from things that are frightening, especially for a sheep. This story is inspired by Psalm 23 and the Lost Sheep parable told by Jesus in Luke 15. The sheep in the story is like us in many ways, and we need to know we ...

In this 2024 conversation with Travis Glen Sebera, Schwartz explores what the Internal Family Systems [IFS] model encompasses and how healing our own inner world can create ripples of compassion that extend from ourselves to our communities. These internal parts of the self can debilitate us with paralyzing fear, shame, feelings of not being good enough, and other enfeebling influences. Schwartz describes the goal of IFS is to help the internal parts of the self to transform from their ext...