Tagged With "Playing Hurt"
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Mom’s Reaction to Angry Son Shattering a Mirror Is the Parenting Lesson We ALL Need Today (faithit.com)
It took my breath away when my son stormed into the bathroom, frustrated, angry, fed-up for his very own, very significant to him, reasons. And when he chose to SLAM the bathroom door, causing the heavy mirror mounted to the front to slip out of the hardware holding it in place and crash onto the floor — a million, BROKEN pieces were left reflecting the afternoon light. I was quiet. I surveyed the damage and took a deep breath. Put the dog outside so he wouldn’t cut his feet, put the cat in...
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Mother's Day Can Be Hard: Chasing the Blues
The world has changed in many good ways. All over my newsfeed yesterday and today are posts about aching, loss, grief and divorcing from parents. Mother's Day, Father's Day and other holidays can be hard. At least that loss isn't experienced only in silence now. This year, I've seen many posts more complex than greeting cards. That wasn't always so. I'm not here to tell anyone about how Mother's Day should or might feel and if anger or forgiveness is good or bad, toxic or healthy or what...
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Mothering at the Edge
Life has been so sweet of late and that, for me, has been emotional. I feel a mixture of joy and disbelief. This time of mothering a teen as a parent with ACEs. I sit the edge of my bed sorting socks and memories. A middle-aged mother in so many kinds of transition. Some mornings, I hear her feet soft on carpeted stairs, see her long hair rolling down her back almost touching the hips. I remember when she did not have hips. The years I gathered her up each morning, carrying her down the...
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My son was hospitalized and now he has PTSD
“Grant, do you remember when you were in the hospital?” “Yes… they came to take the blood and I turned into a werewolf.” Original Post It happened quickly. A year ago my three year old had a collarbone fracture, it became infected and within 24 hours the situation was emergent. A week long hospital stay, one month with a PICC line and two months on oral antibiotics. Finally, the labs finally came back normal. The X-Ray was clean. Gillette Children’s Hospital closed our case. But the healing...
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The "F" Words: Fear & Forgiveness
“If your parent is the bear in the living room, it is biologically impossible to run to that parent when they are either over or under reacting. If your parent is scary you can’t run to them. And you also can’t run away from them because you are a child, you can’t function in the world on your own. You can’t make it out there." Donna Jackson Nakazawa We can get so lost in theory, data and facts that our language about trauma, abuse and adverse childhood experiences can become clinical and...
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The implicit bias of, “Mental Illness” and “mentally ill”, a lexicon of hurt.
How can we heal from the implicit bias of “ Mental Illness ” and “ mentally ill ”? I hear these words and it sounds like fingernails scraping down the chalkboard. “ The stain of dehumanization colors the mind, body and spirit and it is not so easily washed away.” - Michael Skinner Recently I read a blog post at the ACEsConnection website, “Erasing My ACES” by Sirena Wheeler. It was posted on April, 19, 2020. It struck a chord with me, many in fact and it put me on a spiral down memory lane.
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The implicit bias of, “Mental Illness” and “mentally ill”, a lexicon of hurt.
How can we heal from the implicit bias of “ Mental Illness ” and “ mentally ill ”? I hear these words and it sounds like fingernails scraping down the chalkboard. “ The stain of dehumanization colors the mind, body and spirit and it is not so easily washed away.” - Michael Skinner Recently I read a blog post at the ACEsConnection website, “Erasing My ACES” by Sirena Wheeler. It was posted on April, 19, 2020. It struck a chord with me, many in fact and it put me on a spiral down memory lane.
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The Link Between Childhood Trauma and Sexual Abuse in Adulthood
Please check out our latest Healing Our Ghosts' podcast with ECHO's executive director and #metoo Harvey Weinstein's silence breaker Louise Godbold. Healing Our Ghosts shines light into the suffering we keep hidden. We are not alone in our struggles and when we share our pain, we lift the shame secrecy that keeps us alone and disconnected from each other and prevents us from healing. With humor and compassion, Ana Joanes interviews a wide variety of guests about their messy lives, how they...
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The Mother that Never Was (www.beatingtrauma.com) & Commentary
Elisabeth Corey wrote this essay piece about her mother. It's honest, painful and difficult to read. Many will be able to relate. Our bonds with our parents can be complicated (no matter what our ACE score). But it's even more so when our relationships have been filled with ACEs and the hurt, betrayal, and scars that can accompany them. Once we survive childhood and are not dependent on our parents we may have lots to sort through. Things that are not easy to live with or make sense of. Her...
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The Relentless School Nurse: Healing Our Ghosts Podcast Has Launched
Healing our Ghosts is a new podcast by Ana Joanes, filmmaker and creative spirit who brought us Wrestling Ghosts, a groundbreaking documentary about parenting with ACEs. This new podcast has a unique vision: The premiere episode of Healing Our Ghosts is with one of my all time favorite people, Cissy White. She is a brilliant writer, who speaks nationally about the impact of trauma and her healing journey. Cissy believes that trauma survivors must be leading this work and that it is not...
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter April 2020
Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran The Surviving Spirit Newsletter April 2020 http://www.survivingspirit.com/ http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2020-04-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_April_2020.pdf Hi Folks, Obviously we are all experiencing some very trying times and...
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter April 2020
Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran The Surviving Spirit Newsletter April 2020 http://www.survivingspirit.com/ http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2020-04-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_April_2020.pdf Hi Folks, Obviously we are all experiencing some very trying times and...
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter May 2020
Hi Folks, The May edition of the Surviving Spirit Newsletter is posted at the website - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/index.php or PDF - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2020-05-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_May_2020.pdf To sign up for an e-mail copy, please write to me @ mikeskinner@comcast.net or sign up @ Website via Contact Us, Thanks! Michael . “ Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” - Helen Keller The Surviving Spirit Newsletter May 2020 – please...
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How to Deal With Childhood Trauma and Build More Meaningful Adult Relationships [scmp.com]
By Luisa Tam, South China Morning Post, October 27, 2019 Unresolved childhood issues that often lie dormant for years can suddenly come flooding back. Not only can this be painful for the individual, but it can hurt our relationships with other people, especially romantic ones. They say a difficult childhood can have many lifelong negative effects, such as the inability to form meaningful and long-lasting relationships, build trust, or intimacy with another person. We all desire love and...
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How to Parent CALMLY (and Raise Happier Kids) When You Have Childhood PTSD
So many readers have written to me sharing their worries -- and their success stories -- around raising happy, healthy children despite having their own PTSD from childhood. The fear that we'll hurt the kids can hold us back from setting limits, yet losing control of kids' behavior can escalate discipline into a recipe for nervous system dysregulation and emotional overwhelm. In this video I talk about my worst parenting mistake, and how I.... ( Read More and watch the video at the Crappy...
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How to Support Someone (Like Me!) Who Has Experienced Trauma
This blog post and infographic is dedicated to the wonderful man (too shy to want to be named) who has had the patience and sheer tenacity to stick around for six years while we have figured out what I needed as a trauma survivor to be able to tolerate a relationship with a romantic partner. (And for him to tolerate me!) If you didn't have a safe, stable nurturing relationship with your primary caregiver as a child, you need and yearn for that kind of connection as you go through life. And...
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Immigrant teens, parents explore ACEs, resilience in 5-week course with family doc
Dr. Angela Bymaster, a family doctor in San Jose, Calif., was determined to find a way to teach ACEs science to her patients. Teens would come to the Washington Neighborhood Clinic clearly depressed by a range of problems at home that were contributing to risky sexual behavior and marijuana use, as well as preventable health problems like extreme obesity.
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In Posthumous Memoir "Playing Hurt", Sportscaster John Saunders Faces His Demons [wbur.org/hereandnow]
Earlier this week, Robin Young of the NPR/WBUR Boston radio program “Here & Now” interviewed Wanda Saunders, widow of the late sportscaster John Saunders. John Saunders’s memoir, “Playing Hurt”, was published posthumously on August 8, 2017. Saunders died in 2016. The book is about Saunders’s struggle with severe depression, in part a result of abuse by his father. The link below includes audio of the interview, the text of interview highlights, and an excerpt from “Playing Hurt”. I...
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It Makes Sense
I felt inadequate and ill-prepared to speak to licensed mental health professionals about ACEs. But when I was asked to attend the 40th Annual Training Institute on Behavioral Health & Addictive Disorders in Clearwater, Florida to represent ACEs Connection, I was honored and eager. My background is in health planning, not mental or behavioral health. I review health data and look for gaps and inequities. My time is spent looking for and addressing the health needs of a community. So,...
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When Should a Child Be Taken from His Parents? (www.newyorker.com)
Excerpt from an article written by B Larissa McFarquhar. The Illustration (above) is by Anna Parini. What should you do if child-protective services comes to your house? You will hear a knock on the door, often late at night. You don’t have to open it, but if you don’t the caseworker outside may come back with the police. The caseworker will tell you you’re being investigated for abusing or neglecting your children. She will tell you to wake them up and tell them to take clothes off so she...
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When the Body Attacks the Mind (www.theatlantic.com)
One day in February 2009, a 13-year-old boy named Sasha Egger started thinking that people were coming to hurt his family. His mother, Helen, watched with mounting panic that evening as her previously healthy son forgot the rules to Uno, his favorite card game, while playing it. She began making frantic phone calls the next morning. By then, Sasha was shuffling aimlessly around the yard, shredding paper and stuffing it in his pockets. “He looked like an old person with dementia,” Helen later...
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Why Parents Need to Know About ACEs
If we are lucky enough to be healthy, we probably don't worry all that much about health. If we are sick, we think about health issues all of the time. If we are lucky enough be wealthy, we probably don't worry all that much about money. If we are poor, we think about money stuff a lot. If we aren't hurt by racism or sexism or one of the many "isms," we might not even be aware these inequities exist. But if "isms" have hurt us, made life more difficult and less fair, we're probably acutely...
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Writing to Heal, Yoga to Feel & Survivor-Led Resources Online
I love yoga and writing. I need yoga and writing. Both are relatively affordable and can be done alone and at home or in community. Both have been central to my survival, recovery and growth which I write about below. I also love sharing and supporting survivor-led resources created for survivors and others. Here are two links to those if you want to get to those right away. There are more details about each following the essay: Write Your Story, Heal Your Life Summit: Alaura O'Dell...
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You Save Me Every Day (cagedmomements.com)
Beautiful and honest essay by Heidi Aylward , the same one featured in this story, except this time - the entire essay is in her own words. There are times when I don’t think I can feel joy. There are times that I feel things I don’t want to or know how to deal with. There are moments when I am so crippled by a bad feeling, that it sweeps my emotional legs from beneath me, and I’m simply stuck in it. Emotionally. Sad, or mad, or hurt and stuck there. There are days that begin badly and ones...
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Your Rights During an Investigation (www.risemagazine.org)
INTERVIEW BY RISE PARENT LEADERS When you’re investigated by child protective services, you have to make decisions every step of the way. You have to decide what information to share, whether to enroll in services, and, if you wind up with a case, whether or not to go to trial. You can’t know for sure what will help or hurt your situation. But the more you know about investigations, the better able you are to make educated decisions. Here Jessica Weidmann, a lawyer formerly with the Center...
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Opioid Addiction: Advice for Parents
Given the way the media portray opioid addiction, it's natural to react with panic or moral outrage when you discover your child struggling with the problem. It's not natural to calm down and try to view your child as someone who is using opioids to cope with serious problems, though that is likely the case, according to research.
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Parenting through the Storm Book Review
Parenting Through the Storm: Find Help, Hope, and Strength When Your Child Has Psychological Problems , is written by Ann Douglas. The author, a member of this group and network , has a warm, open and honest tone. She's a parent and gets that parents and kids are sometimes or even often scared, struggling and in crisis. She knows. She writes about the time she almost lost her daughter, thirteen at the time, to death by suicide. Her daughter was vomiting and sleeping, restlessly, all night...
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Parenting with PTSD Book Cover
I can't wait to read this book. The cover is beautiful and tender. This parenting (with ACEs, with PTSD) is sacred, hard and important work. We need all the resources and support we can get. This book has more than a new cover. While the Trigger Points Anthology had honest essays from those of us parenting after abuse, this one has that plus new chapters and expanded and in-depth resources. There's lots more about ACEs, as well, and s Some of the new chapters are written by our own ACN...
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Perspective of an adopted Son!
There is a national challenge to understand child and adult welfare. I have spent my whole life...42 years being trained to advocate and teach healthy dynamics, and for me it was life and death because my ACE score was either going to be a crutch or a gift. My training began in my mother's womb. I started my development out being fed stress chemicals, and fear chemicals, because my mother was surrounded by toxic stress, poor choice behaviors, and a family who did not support her. She is one...
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Please stop saying parenting is hard for everyone & read Parenting with PTSD instead
Sometimes, we feel anxious, intrusive, or afraid when changing or bathing or own babies. Sometimes, we feel sick to our stomachs and worried while potty training, nurturing, or disciplining our toddlers. Sometimes, we feel shame-filled and ill-equipped when talking about puberty, body parts, or sexuality because of how and where we were compromised by caregivers as children as in our bodies, homes, and families. P arenting is brutally hard for some. If affection, attention and intimacy have...
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Positive Childhood Experiences offset ACEs: Q & A with Dr. Robert Sege about HOPE
Tufts University medical professor Dr. Robert Sege directs the Center for Community-Engaged Medicine and is nationally known for his research on effective health systems approaches that address social determinants of health. He is also the principal investigator for the HOPE framework (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences).The HOPE framework is based on research that shows how positive childhood experiences can mitigate the effects of adverse childhood experiences. Sege and colleagues...
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Pueblo, CO, clinic rewrites the book on primary medical care by asking patients about their childhood adversity
In October 2015 in Pueblo, CO, the staff members of a primary care medical clinic – Southern Colorado Family Medicine at the St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center – start asking parents of newborn babies to kids five years old about the parents’ adverse childhood experiences and the resilience factors in their lives. They ask the same questions of pregnant women and their partners in the hospital’s high-risk obstetrics clinic. The results are so positive after the first year that the clinic starts...
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ACE Fact Sheets to Give Your Doctors, Patients & Beyond (free downloads)
I was first inspired to create a fact sheet summarizing the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) after reading a comment in “Got Your ACE score?” A reader wished she had a form to give her doctor that documented the vast body of evidence explaining how early trauma increases risk for chronic physical and mental health conditions and much more.
I could relate.
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ACE Surveillance Study of Teachers and Administrators in Public and Private Schools in Southwest Nigeria, West Africa
Note: These findings were presented at the Child Trauma Conference in Lagos on October 25-26, 2019. Rationale: Many children today live with layers of stress both subtle and overt which in this report are collectively referred to as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Specifically, these ACEs are physical, emotional and sexual abuse; physical and emotional neglect; household dysfunction and domestic violence as well as community violence. The children have a life marked by chaos,...
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Adults Can Help Teens Manage Academics During Trauma [usnews.com]
As 2017 comes to a close, many teens are feeling the effects of devastating events, including school shootings , natural disasters and terrorist attacks. "They are bombarded constantly, and they are very connected to it," says David Head, director of mental health and wellness for Communities In Schools Houston, part of a national nonprofit that provides services to underserved students. Students directly and indirectly affected by these events may be feeling the effects of trauma –...
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Answers to Commonly Asked Questions about Addiction (www.thefix.com)
Many of us have struggled with addiction and/or lived with and loved people who are. Maybe addiction impacted our lives as children, adults or both. Maybe we know a lot about addiction or are still learning. This a rticle is written in Q&A format by a writer at The Fix with lived experience. Here's an excerpt. How do genetics play a role? Why do some people in the same family become addicts while others don’t? That is the $60-million-dollar question. Science cannot provide a definitive...
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Anxious Attachments in Relationships
As an Asian male in his forties and a single dad to a teenage son, I've always felt it hasn't been easy to meet women that I can connect with. In addition, my track record of being in relationships has been far from stellar. As a childhood abuse survivor, I unknowingly took the pain I endured into my relationships. With zero self-awareness, I was insecure and needy, which resulted in a lot of angry outbursts and emotional abuse towards my partners.
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Asylum-seeking fathers separated from children by ICE [sandiegouniontribune.com]
Four fathers fleeing death threats from gangs in Central America traveled thousands of miles to reach the safety they saw in the U.S. border. Then immigration officials forced them to hand over their children. The men were together when officials came to take their children about two weeks ago. They haven't been able to talk to their children even by phone since then, they said. “They took him without clothes, without my authorization,” said Eric Matute Castro, 33, one of the fathers, about...
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Beyond Trauma: Building Resilience to ACEs (brochure)
Wish you had a fairly easy and short way to share all about ACEs? Wish it was in-depth enough to share with teachers, doctors, nurses and therapists but not so long or jargony it puts family and friends to sleep? Here's the perfect thing to share when you've been all up in the faces with ACEs and want to back up your words before, during or after. This brochure is comprehensive but not so long that it remains in the "I'll get to it later," pile. Please feel free to print, forward, download...
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Bringing Baby Home Educator Training
Bringing Baby Home Facilitator Training comes to Santa Ana, November 14-15, 2019. Research continues to show that our children are most fragile in the first years of their life. Even the strongest relationships are strained during the transition to parenthood. Lack of sleep, never-ending housework and new fiscal concerns can lead to profound stress and a decline in marital satisfaction – all of which affect baby’s care. Not surprisingly, 67% of new parents experience conflict, disappointment...
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CA pediatrician develops, tests, gets state OK for whole-child assessment tool that includes ACEs
Over the last dozen years or so, many pediatricians, astounded by the ramifications of the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on the children they care for, began integrating this science into their practices. The most common approach has been to ask parents about ACEs using a questionnaire, and to use this information to counsel parents and identify resources for the family. Different practices have been using different questionnaires: Some ask parents for their ACE scores...
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CA pediatrician develops, tests, gets state OK for whole-child assessment tool that includes ACEs
[Editor's note: This blog was first posted in April 2017. Dr. Marie-Mitchell updated the assessment by modifying a few of the questions, so we are republishing with the new assessment, one in Spanish and one in English.] Over the last dozen years or so, many pediatricians, astounded by the ramifications of the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on the children they care for, began integrating this science into their practices. The most common approach has been to ask parents...
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Cannitta’s Story: Surviving, Not Living (www.lsnj.org)
I just saw this video and comment on my friend Heidi's Facebook page and it made me teary. Here's the video: Here's Heidi's comment: I hope she does because she's been a mom at 16 who is poor and has an ACE score of 9 and who has had to fight to become and to feel safe. We need people like Heidi running programs and organizing support because getting it, having lived it makes one know things those who haven't don't.
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Childhood violence and the Whac-A-Mole effect
Whac-A-Mole players ( by Laura ) _______________________________________________ Many people and organizations focus on preventing violence with the belief that if our society can stop violence against children, then most childhood trauma will be eradicated. However, research that has emerged over the last 20 years clearly shows that focusing primarily on violence prevention – physical and sexual abuse, in particular – doesn’t eliminate the trauma that children experience, and won’t even...
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Choked & Soared: Public Speaking about Parenting After Childhood Trauma
I gave a keynote address to over 100 people. I’m not bragging. It was an epic failure. And an epic personal triumph. I traveled alone, spoke in public, met new people and shared meal times with total strangers! I tackled social anxiety, figured out flights, luggage and directions. I went in elevators and walked halls alone, without pepper spray. I searched in closets and under beds for monsters and then was able to fall asleep, and stay asleep, without drinking. Twice. Huge. Enormous.
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Dr. Gabor Maté & Full-Potential Parenting, Even When It Is Hard
Note: Allison Morris had dozens of experts in her summit series through Full-Potential Parenting. I took notes only on those by Donna Jackson Nakazawa , Gabe Maté and Sebern Fisher (coming later this month). Though the audios are no longer available, for free, they can be purchased for $100. or less (depending on the year), here. Forgive me for sounding like an advertisement, I don't know Allison personally. I am a huge fan of all parent-led resources and wish I discovered this series...
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Re: Perspective of an adopted Son!
Thanks sharing this Matt: You wrote: "This works the same for divorce. Healthy people don't hurt or abandon their children, so what happened to my parents to cause them to abandon me at birth?" Can I ask how you got to this wisdom and perspective? For me, a kid abandoned by one parent, I was just mad for a long time. My compassion and understanding about intergenerational trauma is growing. I still have a range of feelings but hurt/mad isn't the ALL of it. Thanks again for posting here! Cissy