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By Poppy Noor, The Guardian, August 16, 2021 When a shackled Mansoor Adayfi was lumped on to a heap of shivering, naked bodies in the pitch black, a hood over his head and muffs around his ears, he assumed he was going to die. He had just been conducting research in Afghanistan, and was expecting to begin university at the end of the year. Instead, he was accused of being an al-Qaida leader, kidnapped by Afghan warlords and handed over to the CIA. He was kept in a prison camp in Afghanistan,...

By Heather Tirado Gilligan, California Health Care Foundation, August 16, 2021 Jenise Dixon fell behind on rent after losing her job in the film industry last year. Dixon, who lives in Los Angeles, applied for rent relief in April and has yet to receive any help from the billions in federal funds set aside for that purpose. Despite her pending aid application and local and federal protections against eviction, Dixon’s landlord has served her with an eviction notice, Sam Levin reported for...

By Laura Reiley, The Washington Post, August 15, 2021 The Biden administration has approved the largest increase to food assistance benefits in the history of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a move that will substantially retool the program to provide the targeted assistance advocates have long argued is desperately needed by poor families. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is expected to announce Monday morning that benefit amounts for the program, formerly known as food...

By Amber M. Northern and Michael J. Petrilli, Fordham Institute, August 2021 America’s hardnosed focus on academic achievement in recent decades has not improved schools nearly enough. Part of the recent move to incorporate other educational goals, such as perseverance and self-discipline—often under the banner of “social-emotional learning” (SEL)—is a response to our schools and students still being off-track two decades after passage of No Child Left Behind and almost four decades after A...

The Potts Family Foundation supports a vital program that is helping Oklahomans become aware of the Adverse Childhood Experiences study (ACEs Study) and the risks that trauma and toxic stress can impose on our health and development, especially when experienced before the age of 18. This initiative also highlights the protective factors that we, as individuals, families, workplaces and communities, can foster that decrease the negative impact of adversities and allow people and communities...

Dear NC partners, Over the past couple of years, by survey and multiple conversations and meetings, we have asked those of you on the ground doing the important work of bringing communities together to prevent and address ACEs what you need to enhance the good work you’re doing. By far, the desire to connect with peers doing similar work has risen to the top as the #1 priority/desire that you and your colleagues wanted us to address and provide. We are excited to announce the first gathering...

Many times, the reason we spend so much time feeling not good enough is that we have so much negative self-talk going on in our minds. Not only does our inner critic put us down, but it also replays the messages we heard during the trauma we survived. If we were told we were ugly, we internalized those words and thus began to believe that we were unattractive and not good enough.

When people feel burned out, stressed out, and left out they are much more likely to seek comfort from artificial, illicit, and pharmaceutical substances. I’ve seen trauma result in too many kids encountering the juvenile justice system; too many women (usually) who are subjected to domestic violence; and too many police officers who see no other option except for suicide. At the heart of most, if not all, of these challenges is trauma that is connected to or exacerbated by narcotics.

The pandemic has been a challenging time for everyone and especially for those whose professional life was severely impacted by it. Lockdowns, social distancing measures, and the fear of catching Covid infection have altogether pushed many people working in the beauty industry to the verge of a financial crisis. Even today, when vaccination processes have begun, people still avoid visiting beauty salons as a beautician cannot provide them with a beauty treatment without touching them. As a...

Magic is a retrospective. A look back at the process of trauma recovery. In this collection of several exhibits by Heidi Hardin, she closes the many chapters of her trauma story in this final online exhibition titled Magic: The Art and Science of Aligning the Energies of My Personality with the Intentions of My Soul…a retrospective (Magic...) Magic... as a retrospective is fleshed out with the addition of two exhibitions: Oklahoma Is Not OK! and The Ideal Point that now have been added to...

By Denise Lu, Charlie Smart, and Lazaro Gamio, The New York Times, August 12, 2021 Nearly every county in the United States became more diverse in the last decade as the nation recorded its first drop in the white population in 2020, according to detailed data on race and ethnicity released by the Census Bureau on Thursday. More than a third of the nation now lives in counties where people of color are a majority. The decline in the white share of the population is a continuation of the...

By Maanvi Singh, The Guardian, August 12, 2021 The Bootleg fire stampeded through southern Oregon so fiercely that it spit up thunderclouds. But when the flames approached the Sycan Marsh Preserve, a 30,000-acre wetland thick with ponderosa pines, something incredible happened. The flames weakened and the fire slowed down, allowing firefighters to move in and steer the blaze away from a critical research station. That land belongs to the Nature Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit that...