December 2020

The Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice ( CTIPP ) is inviting individuals and organizations to express their support for a set of executive actions for the Biden-Harris Administration to take “to address trauma and build resilience throughout the country.” Most of these actions could be taken early in the Administration and would not require congressional action with the exception of some recommendations that could be included in a new stimulus package. The recommendations are...

Let me first be clear and state that this is not a comparison to Covid. Now that we have that out of the way let’s continue. I wrote a blog post the other day, and in it, I mentioned that when I was four years old, my mother cut off my right index finger. I have written about this experience in both my book and website a few times over the years. I think about the impact that carrying the scars of our abuse has on us as survivors of childhood trauma, and I can’t help be feel a deep sense of...

Do you know that feeling of relief and excitement when things finally seem to turn around? For most people, the year 2020 has been tough. No exception for me either. A number of my speaking engagements were cancelled and conferences moved online. Unfortunately, I wasn't really prepared for the online rush and I'm still slow to that game. As you can imagine, frustration built and then some depression set in and the next thing you know I've watched too much Judge Judy. And then the email...

First, the bad news: You can’t MAKE a person with complex PTSD change.. You can’t make them heal. You can’t make them learn about the adult effects of abuse and neglect in childhood, and you can’t even make them admit there’s a problem. But the good news is there are things you can do to help a loved one accomplish all these things themselves -- without being controlling or judgmental (those tend to produce resistance in people with CPTSD, which you’ve probably noticed!). I’m going to give...

This Thanksgiving, the band Próxima Parada , who we interviewed on August 14th, 2020 about their trauma-informed and therapy/healing-inspired music on A Better Normal (watch the recording here: https://youtu.be/OLv4F3JQUJM ), launched a heartwarming music video with lyrics to accompany their song Kind Reminder. This turned out to be just the kind reminder I needed to get into the holiday spirit. Given that we work in the field of childhood trauma and adverse childhood experiences, we often...

Educator, Advocate and Community Organizer, ACEs Champion, Jameelah Hanif brings ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Awareness to a Facebook Live Discussion with guests who share their childhood trauma experiences. Our purpose is to educate, empower and encourage others to become trauma-informed with hope that those tuning in will be inspired to educate, empower, and encourage others to spread awareness about ACEs. Please join us & Special Guest Cendie Stanford who is an ACEs Champion...

Listening to the voices from current classrooms, the social-emotional needs that students are coming into classrooms are intense and demonstrate the importance of additional commitments for well-being and self-care. Schools and communities must recognize that teachers have ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) too. Similarly, they enter the profession as “wounded healers," being charged with filling needy hearts with hope. The levels of toxic stress and compassion fatigue are increasing...

We all know that children, especially when young, tend to be very open-minded and non-judgmental. It is during childhood that we should be teaching children how to express their needs by giving them a full vocabulary.

Elizabeth Perry provides an update on her advocacy efforts to increase awareness, prevention and healing of ACEs in the Canadian context through her #ACEs Canada organization.

In late 2018, Roberta Azzo, an operations program manager at Bon Secours St. Francis Medical Center in Midlothian, Virginia, decided to take an all-hands-on-deck approach to infusing the hospital’s culture with a trauma-informed approach to care. This involves recognizing that trauma is widespread and that it can cause all kinds of troubled behavior, learning ways to de-escalate that behavior, and preventing practices that trigger patients and staff who have experienced trauma. The hospital...

In 2015, the pieces that became ACE Nashville began to fall into place. A five-year Community Health Improvement Plan included the support of mental and emotional health as one of its three goals. A core team of individuals from the Metro Public Health Department (MPHD), Prevent Child Abuse Tennessee and the Family Center, a non-profit focused on breaking generational cycles of child trauma, began to meet weekly. And a citywide “consensus workshop” in April of that year—drawing 44...

Lauren Szymonik kept posing the same questions to members of the Empower Action coalition in Marlboro County: “What is the data telling you? What is the data saying about education? What is the data telling you about trauma?” The numbers were clear: according to 2014-16 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) surveys, 56% of the county’s 24,000 adults had experienced at least one ACE. In 2017-18, there were 212 cases of child maltreatment, including abuse and neglect, among the...