Blog

By Dani Blum, Illustration: Debora Cheyenne Cruchon, The New York Times, April 4, 2022 Nancy Méndez-Booth was diagnosed with PTSD after she delivered a stillborn baby in the winter of 2008. Within an hour after she rushed to the hospital, in labor and exhilarated, a doctor told her that the baby she had spent years planning for had no heartbeat. When she returned home from the hospital, Ms. Méndez-Booth said she felt as though she had “arrived from Mars”; she got lost in her own apartment...

By Renee Menart, Photo: Rob Marmion/Shutterstock, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, April 1, 2022 Children’s books centered on characters involved in the justice system can support kids with incarcerated parents and offer a compassionate window into this experience for broad young audiences. Incarceration is harmful not only to people held in confinement but to the health of their children , who, for example, may experience post-traumatic stress from witnessing a parent’s arrest or...

By Richard Mendel, Photo: Getty Images, The 74, March 29, 2022 T he COVID-19 pandemic has been a nightmare for teenagers. The U.S. surgeon general and the American Academy of Pediatrics recently declared a nationwide adolescent mental health crisis, as did the president of the United States . Academic achievement tests show wholesale learning loss. School attendance has plummeted. And these difficulties are being felt most among students who were already behind before COVID — youth of color,...

By Alaa Elassar, Photo: Don Hankins, CNN US, April 3, 2022 California is calling upon Native American tribes to bring back the once-prohibited practice of lighting controlled burns to help prevent devastating wildfires that have wreaked havoc on the state . Gov. Gavin Newsom's Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force has launched a new plan -- "Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire" -- that relies on the help of Native Americans to revive their cultural burning practices,...

Are You Sick Of Will Smith’s Slap? (There are 2 TV shows on ACEs in this blog.) He has dad trauma from age 9; Trauma doesn’t get better with time; Trauma gets stronger when it’s not resolved; Trauma gets pushed down into the body; Trauma freezes emotions at the age it occurred; Will smith is a 9 year old boy in a big body. Will needs to find ACE trauma informed care and the only way to be sure the right care is to reach out to ACE co-principal investigator, Vincent J. Felitti MD. Will...

What happened this past winter caught me by surprise. Stepping from my car at a hip coffee shop in Carrboro, North Carolina, the first words I heard were that most potent of racial slurs for Black Americans, repeated angrily from a nearby vehicle. I tried to ignore the harassment, but on the third shriek, I turned around. A hairy arm shot out of the passenger side of a green pickup, and an angry male voice yelled, “White power!” as the truck sped away. I continue to reflect on the lasting...

The camp counselor tapped me on the shoulder, drawing my attention from the dream catcher that I was busily crafting and said, "Rachel, honey, let's go for a walk." I hopped up from the table right away! The dream catcher reduced to a pile of popsicle sticks and blue and green yarn, no longer a potential vessel for driving away the nightmares. I was excited that my camp counselor wanted to spend some time with me. I had been at camp for about a week, and already I was so enamored with this...

April is National Child Abuse Prevention month. For the entire month of April, co-hosts Ingrid Cockhren , PACEs Connection CEO, and Mathew Portell, director of communities, will examine America's history of child abuse and neglect and outline how this history connects to our current child abuse crisis. In Part one of this series of episodes dedicated to the systemic nature of child abuse and neglect in America, Cockhren and Portell will discuss the different layers of influence embedded...

Please join us in honoring the Trauma Resource Institute's 2021 Ambassadors of the Year, Magdalena Sunshine Serrano, LCSW, and New Hanover County, North Carolina!

Join me for the upcoming Facebook Live event where I present the rationale for Canada to repeal section 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada, to embed in our legislation the bodily autonomy of children, protected from the use of force as a means of discipline. 63 countries around the world have banned corporal punishment. Canada is NOT one of them. I believe if we are to prevent Adverse Childhood Experiences and Increase Positive Childhood Experiences, embedding the protection of the bodily...

By Lisa Marsh Ryerson, Image: Screenshot from article, NationSwell, April 1, 2022 Older workers are a ready, willing, and able talent pool — but many feel the workplace isn’t an accommodating place for them. According to an AARP report, more than 78% of older workers have seen or directly experienced age discrimination in the workplace. On top of that, 64% of workers 50 years of age and older believe employers see their age as a disadvantage in getting hired, and 79% of those 65 and older...

By Zoe Sottile, Photo: Steve Helber/AP, CNN US, April 2, 2022 The Rappahannock Tribe, a Native Tribe in Virginia, has reacquired 465 acres of sacred land at Fones Cliff. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and US Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams celebrated the tribe's reacquisiton of the land Friday, according to a press release from the Department of the Interior . "We have worked for many years to restore this sacred place to the Tribe," said Rappahannock Tribe Chief...