November 2020

[Ed. note: Elizabeth Prewitt wrote this article in August 2020. On this day, it's worth re-posting, to note that Kamala Harris is not only the first woman, the first Black woman, and the first South Asian woman elected Vice President, but also someone who's well versed in ACEs science.] Nadine Burke Harris, California’s Surgeon General, has a lot in common with the vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris—Jamaican heritage, surname, home state—and a commitment to addressing ACEs and toxic...

CNN's Van Jones wiping away tears; the 2020 election map is projected behind him. CNN's Van Jones reacts to news that Joe Biden was elected President of the United States and Kamala Harris elected Vice-President.

Two more requests for sets of our parenting tips bumper stickers and two more apologies because we haven't the funds to print them. This is a colossal lost opportunity to proactively prevent the aces associated with unsupportive and harmful parenting. Just one bumper sticker will be read thousands of times for years to come. Parenting tips bumper stickers are a unique and powerful way to share parenting wisdom. Good morning, I would love to order a set of the parenting tips bumper stickers.

Amid the chaotic three-ring circus called a national election that may take days, weeks or months to conclude, we voted for the person best qualified to make the USA the best place to be a child. You. By voting, we don’t mean choosing who was on the ballet. Sure, we know how important our elected leaders are on the city, county, state and national levels are. In our work, devoted to ensuring that childhoods are safe from adverse childhood experiences, trauma and social adversity, our entire...

Childhood sexual abuse survivor Michael Broussard is a theatre artist, a speaker, and an activist in the survivor community. His organization Ask A Sex Abuse Survivor began life in 2014 as an interactive theatrical show about survival and healing. More recently Michael has broadened his mission to amplifying survivor voices worldwide.

PLAYING FOR KEEPS The upside of downtime The latest documentary feature film from KPJR FILMS rolls into virtual festivals nationwide. Consider the official definition of play: engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose. And yet hard science and deep wisdom tell us that play is neither silly nor impractical. The desire to engage in enjoyable experiences for their own sake is hard-wired into the brains of all mammals, and humans are no exception.

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk is an expert in the field of childhood trauma. His career, spanning nearly 40 years, has been spent dedicated to study and treatment of traumatic stress in civilian populations. Much of Dr. van der Kolk's research has focused on how trauma has a different impact at different stages of development, and that disruptions in care-giving systems have additional deleterious effects that need to be addressed for effective intervention. Read more about Dr. Bessel van der Kolk...

My clients aren’t running around town wearing “I’m a trauma survivor” t-shirts. Of course they aren’t. Who wants to announce that bad things happened to them? No one! And yet, unfortunately, many live with the aftereffects of trauma every day and don’t know it. Trauma is what happens to your nervous system after you’ve felt unsafe and scared, and powerless to escape or protect yourself. If a person can’t eventually resolve that sense of danger, that person’s nervous system is likely to...

Like many of you, I’m a bit out of sorts and somewhat disoriented right now. Our collective mental health is deteriorating during Covid-19. Recent stats report an increase from 20-40% of adults struggling with mental illness since the advent of the pandemic. Maternal mental health is particularly at risk. Helping children with distance learning, navigating exposure to the news, trying to keep life a bit “normal”, keeping family members fed and supplied, juggling career and income loss, all...

Kids are resilient. Kids bounce back. Tell that to Dave Brethauer , a performance coach in Chicago, who told Genetic Literacy Project that he spent the better part of his adult life “fighting to find” himself following the trauma he experienced as a child. “From the time I was five till 14 I had an abusive stepdad in my life,” he said. To cope, he found himself turning to alcohol, sex, overeating, and exercise addictions – anything to steer his mind away from the memories and pain that...

By Ann Forsyth and Jennifer Molinsky, Housing Matters, November 4, 2020 It’s unclear where baby boomers, America’s largest generation, will choose to live as they age. Will they want to stay in their homes or move to assisted living facilities? Will they want to stay in the communities where they raised families or seek different types of communities and climates? Because of this age group’s size, their housing choices will have major implications for local housing markets. Already,...

By Paige Williams, The New Yorker, November 2, 2020 On January 13, 1919, as the third wave of the so-called Spanish-flu pandemic began, the governor of Ohio, James Cox, delivered his inaugural address. Propagandist bulletins from the U.S. Public Health Service had called the virus “a very contagious kind of ‘cold,’ ” but Cox used his speech to note the “appalling” number of fatalities—the United States ultimately lost some six hundred and seventy-five thousand people. The federal government...