May 2020

By Jan Hoffman, The New York Times, May 16, 2020 The coronavirus patient, a 75-year-old man, was dying. No family member was allowed in the room with him, only a young nurse. In full protective gear, she dimmed the lights and put on quiet music. She freshened his pillows, dabbed his lips with moistened swabs, held his hand, spoke softly to him. He wasn’t even her patient, but everyone else was slammed. Finally, she held an iPad close to him, so he could see the face and hear the voice of a...

By Steven Harper, Moyers & Company, May 13, 2020 Pandemic Timeline: Where Are the Tests? By June 1, more than 100,000 Americans will have died from COVID-19. Compare that to South Korea’s 262 and Australia’s 98 current fatalities, where unlike Trump, leaders quickly implemented widespread testing and tracing programs. Public health officials isolated infected individuals, traced their contacts with others, followed the potential spread of the virus, and targeted the response. As Trump...

By Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, May 8, 2020 S ix weeks ago, ahmaud arbery went out and never came home. Gregory and Travis McMichael, who saw Arbery running through their neighborhood just outside of Brunswick, Georgia, and who told authorities they thought he was a burglary suspect, armed themselves, pursued Arbery, and then shot him dead. The local prosecutor, George E. Barnhill, concluded that no crime had been committed . Arbery had tried to wrest a shotgun from Travis McMichael before...

By Liz Ohanesian, The Orange County Register, May 14, 2020 Harry Potter. Batman. X-Men. Pop culture is loaded with stories about characters who experienced life-altering events and not only persevered but thrived. In fact, it was the X-Men stories that helped author Janina Scarlet understand her own trauma. Born in Ukraine, Scarlet survived the Chernobyl disaster before coming to the U.S. with her family as a refugee. She’s also a survivor of sexual assault. “I wanted to be able to help...

By British Broadcasting Corporation, May 14, 2020 A grieving mother said she had to cope with the death of her premature baby alone because coronavirus restrictions prevented her family visiting hospital. Faye Mceniry went into hospital on the first day of lockdown and gave birth to baby Tula Bea in Brighton on 26 April. She died 11 days later, which was the first and last time Mrs Mceinry was able to hold her child. [ Please click here to read more .]

When Jay'Aina Patton was three, her father, Antoine, went to prison for gun possession. It wasn’t until she was seven or eight that Jay’Aina (or “Jay Jay” as friends and family call her) really understood where her father was. She also knew just how difficult maintaining a relationship with him was. Her father was imprisoned hours away. Her mother, raising two children on her own, could only afford to take them to visit twice during his seven-year incarceration. They couldn’t make up the...

By PBS News Hour, May 17, 2020 The Rev. William J. Barber has long tackled the issues of race, poverty and hatred. His Poor People’s Campaign in June will hold a digital assembly and march on Washington to draw attention to civil rights issues. Hari Sreenivasan spoke with the reverend about the impacts of COVID-19 on communities of color for our on-going initiative "Chasing the Dream: Poverty and Opportunity in America." Hari Sreenivasan: Reverend William Barber, thanks so much for joining...

By Philip Montgomerey, The New York Times, May 16, 2020 Before the crisis hit, I was working on a lot of studio-based portraiture work. All of those assignments had to be put on hold when the pandemic closed down the country. That was a really jarring reality, but I’ve since come to see it as an opportunity to dive back into my background in reporting. A lot of my early assignments were to capture the mood of the city. It felt haunting. People were still processing what was happening, and...

By Elissa Tosi, WBUR, May 14, 2020 As a psychotherapist, my work is all about connection. It’s about supporting my clients by cultivating an understanding of who they are and where they’ve been. But therapists are people, too, and we have our own issues. We fight with our partners, apologize to our kids for bad parenting moments, get sick, lose loved ones, the list goes on. We often have to put our stuff aside in order to focus on the client’s reality, and our ability to do that is a skill...

Find in this post the slides from the Systems Transformation Better Normal call, featuring RYSE Youth Center's Associate Director Kanwarpal Dhaliwal. A link to the call recording is also provided.

Hello Friends, Check out this article Sacramento News & Review just wrote about me and my book “The Gifts of Adversity.” https://sacramento.newsreview.com/2020/05/18/taming-the-inner-storm/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=taming-the-inner-storm Carolee

Leaders in the ACEs/trauma/resilience movement from 10 states across the U.S. Midwest gathered for a networking call on May 11 to learn about flexible funding opportunities for states under the CARES Act , ways to get involved in advocacy, and to share their successes and challenges in building statewide coalitions. The meeting was organized by ACEs Connection and the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) in response to COVID-19 and the growing interest in organizing...