Blog

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you may remember I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago about the 7 steps most child abuse survivors must take in order to heal. I received a wonderful response to it from several of you. Thanks! If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, here’s the link: LINK In this blog post, I’d like to discuss the second of these 7 steps: Develop Courage. As you know, we don’t start out on our healing journey feeling courageous. In the beginning, courage is...

When you look inside a classroom, there are some things you cannot see . . .

Pregnancy is often welcomed with joy and hope however, many challenges and distress may still occur during a mother’s pregnancy. Any concerns simple or complex may impact the wellness of the mother, her baby and cause stress on her multiple relationships. Oftentimes, mothers have to face planned or unplanned life changing events.

A groundbreaking new play about trauma, TRIGGER, was most recently featured at part of the training and inspiration provided to community members participating in the 4CA Policymaker Education Day on July 11, 2017 in Sacramento at the state Capitol.

Dr. Altha Stewart is the president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association. Photo by Allen Gillespie/UTHSC __________________________________ At a July 18 forum “The State of Mental Health Care: Challenges and Solutions” in Washington, DC, Dr. Altha Stewart, president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association, was the first speaker to raise the opioid crisis and quickly identified trauma as a root cause of the epidemic. Stewart assumes the presidency of the APA in May, becoming the...

Jane Goodall is my hero; has been since i was a child. My friend shared a link to her Master Class and I thought of sharing it with the ACEs Connection community. Although she talks about environmental conservation in the trailer for her Master Class, at about one minute in she says "To create change is not by confronting something head on but by telling stories, meeting with people, listening to them and then trying to find a way to reach the heart. If we think locally, get together with...

Nearly 1 in 5 American adults deals with a mental illness or substance abuse problem each year, a U.S. government study says. Oregon has the highest rate, and New Jersey the lowest, according to 2012-2014 data analyzed by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Overall, almost 44 million Americans 18 or older had a diagnosable mental, behavioral or emotional disorder in the past year, researchers said. They reviewed national surveys on drug use and...

For more than a decade I have interviewed more than 1,000 kids in 35 states. What of these kids who were sentenced to long sentences and JLWOP, life sentences without parole? These kids become adults who become geriatric. These are the people I have interviewed for the past year. Miller v. Alabama ruled that even in capital cases, juveniles cannot be given life without parole. Montgomery v. Louisiana made these cases retroactive. In Florida when these people don’t get to go in front of a...

What does it mean to be a "trauma-Informed community"? It's a question we at Peace4Tarpon ask ourselves frequently - and the answer evolves as we discover through this journey who we are and how we are. I am still processing the story I am about to share with you. It's not the feel-good type with a tidy ending but more like a series of snapshots cut into puzzle pieces that don't quite mesh. They look like they should all fit together, but they really don't and maybe they never will. The...

I always find the best things posted on the Trauma Flowers Facebook page. Today, it was this essay by Chelsea Stinson. However, the piece that was missing for me was the link between ACES and children’s rights. As this is an American documentary, it did not surprise me that this was missing – children’s rights just aren’t part of the US discussion. In Scotland, we have the opportunity to make this link more explicit. In a segment of the film, primary school children are participating in an...

Last week, in Denmark, Malthe and Lærke Knudson had a baby girl they named Emma. That same day, the Robinsons—Dale and Beth—had a little baby in the United States. They called her Rachel. Right now, they’re just two little babies keeping their parents awake at night. But Emma and Rachel were born in countries that have very different priorities, and that’s going to lead to pretty different futures. It all boils down to this: Though Danes pay a lot more than Americans in taxes and government...

One out of every five phone calls to 911 in Memphis is a mistake. Of the 130,000 emergency calls in 2016, some 25,000 of them are really non-emergency calls, for everything from misdiagnosed stroke symptoms to simple sore throats. The city dispatches thousands of ambulances to residents who really just need to see a doctor. This adds up: Medical bills start at $1,000 per ambulance ride, and another $1,000 for an emergency-room visit. The costs only go up from there. Plus, 911 call volume in...