April 2023

Our beloved friend and former PACEs Connection staff member, Cissy White, died peacefully in Weymouth, MA, on Sunday morning, surrounded by family and friends. This the obituary the family wrote that appeared here . So many people are holding this angel of grace, strength, beauty, intellect, humor, and compassion in their hearts right now, remembering Cissy’s deep kindness and generous, brave heart. She taught us all how to live. Cissy leaves daughter Kai Schildmeier, mother Nancy Atwood and...

In this milestone 100th episode of Transforming Trauma, NARM Senior Trainer Brad Kammer is joined by Chloé Valdary, public educator, anti-racism activist, and Founder of the Theory of Enchantment program. Theory of Enchantment focuses on bringing compassion to diversity and inclusion training by addressing bigotry with principles and practices based in love and compassion. Chloé has presented Theory of Enchantment to students, school administrators, individuals, and professional...

Community Resilience Initiative (CRI), the inspiration behind the Paper Tigers documentary, is partnering with the Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC). For more than a decade, CRI has been providing trauma and resilience training to thousands of organizations across the country. What caught DOC’s eye, however, is CRI’s adherence to emerging neuroscience, specifically the focus on inclusive interactions. “Prisons are inherently stressful environments for both incarcerated...

Almost everyone has adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) of some kind. However, for some, these adverse experiences are severe enough to leave a mark that lasts decades. Unfortunately, many ACEs come with unexpected financial costs. Families that experience trauma or distress may be hit with unaffordable healthcare costs and typically require extra support from medical professionals and therapists. Many who experience difficulties early in life have difficulty with money and may enter a...

From EndCAN -- According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in seven children experienced some form of abuse in the last year. This, of course, only includes the number of children whose cases were documented—countless other incidents of abuse and neglect are never formally reported. Experiencing trauma as a child can have a life-long impact. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) including abuse and neglect, have been shown to increase the likelihood that an individual...

On Monday, March 27, a shooter entered The Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, and ended the lives of three students and three school personnel. This was an especially chilling event for PACEs Connection staff members, as three staffers live in Nashville. Each struggled with dropping their children off at school the next day. Please join our hosts, Nashvillians Ingrid Cockhren, PACEs Connection CEO, and Mathew Portell, director of education and...

Sooooo....where oh where to begin? I don't usually speak much on politically divisive topics, but when I see a news headline like this... 21 South Carolina GOP Lawmakers Propose Death Penalty for Women Who Have Abortions ... I really just can't remain silent. Now, if you're pro-life, before you quick hit the unsubscribe button - hear me out. The assault on women continues to escalate, and during this month -- Child Abuse Prevention Month -- we have to take a moment to understand how this is...

By Dr. Bob Sege, 4/4/2023, https://positiveexperience.org/category/blog/ HOPE (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences) supports providers collaborating with families to identify goals of care. The HOPE framework calls out individual sources of strength and stamina, and avoids viewing children and families as simply people with deficits that need professional treatment. Family support requires marrying the family’s goals and the provider’s goals. Sometimes goals align naturally, and,...

By Arline T. Geronimus, Illustration: Getty Images, Time Magazine, March 28, 2023 The pathologists who performed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s autopsy noted he had the heart of a 60 year old , although he was 39 when he died. His damaged heart was duly noted in the official record as a curiosity, but there was no question as to the cause of death: homicide; indeed, assassination. A racist hate crime. But if we were to try to understand the poor condition of his heart, we might be flummoxed.

By Ben Conarck and Adam Williams, Photo: Kaitlin Newman/The Baltimore Banner, The Baltimore Banner, March 30, 2023 A years-long evaluation into the effectiveness of Baltimore’s flagship gun violence intervention program, Safe Streets, found that several of its outposts significantly reduced nearby shootings, resulting in fewer homicides, despite “relatively modest” costs to the city and challenges in staffing the inherently dangerous work. The report , led by Johns Hopkins professor Daniel...

By George Institute for Global Health, SciTechDaily, April 3, 2023 The world’s first study to examine the correlation between gender equality and life expectancy has revealed that both women and men live longer as gender equality improves. However, variations in the results between countries grouped by socioeconomic development and geographic proximity indicate that while the improvement in gender equality initially primarily benefits women’s lives and health, it also leads to longer life...

By David Rettew, Psychology Today, February 22, 2023 The last decade of the 1990s was often labeled the “Decade of the Brain,” as many mental health clinicians and researchers emphasized biological and genetic factors as contributing to both mental health and illness. Over the last 15 or so years however, the pendulum has swung the other way, with a lot of focus on the role of traumatic and adverse experiences as the primary contributors to mental health disorders. Included in the expanded...