Tagged With "The Power of Now"
Blog Post
The Language of Flowers
The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red r oses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating mistrust and solitude. After a...
Blog Post
The Legacy of Freedom Writers; How Literature is Helping Children and Teens Find Purpose
If you have ever seen the movie Freedom Writers , you might have thought the story ended alongside the film. However, Erin Gruwell has grown the movement she began decades ago to reach beyond Los Angeles. Now, the Freedom Writers Foundation offers training, scholarships, and curriculum for educators and students in cities across the nation. Their main goal is to work with "unteachable students" and show them they are fully capable of pursuing a collegiate career. Many of these students come...
Blog Post
The Relentless School Nurse: Coronavirus a Book for Children
I am excited to share this children's book that explains the coronavirus to children! Thank you to Donna Gaffney for sending this my way! Retrieved from: https://nosycrow.com/blog/released-today-free-information-book-explaining-coronavirus-children-illustrated-gruffalo-illustrator-axel-scheffler/ The book answers key questions in simple language appropriate for 5 to 9-year-olds: • What is the coronavirus? • How do you catch the coronavirus? • What happens if you catch the coronavirus? • Why...
Blog Post
The Relentless School Nurse: The Angel and the Assassin by Donna Jackson Nakazawa
Author, journalist, researcher, science detective are just a few of the descriptors I can use to depict Donna Jackson Nakazawa. You may recognize her name from prior books, notably, Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology And How You Can Heal . Donna is a gifted science storyteller. She translates complex biological processes seamlessly and describes them in relatable terms that are memorable. The Angel and the Assassin is the story of how neuroscience has been turned on...
Blog Post
The Soulful Journey of Recovery is out TODAY!!!
A groundbreaking new book from the publisher of the New York Times bestseller Adult Children of Alcoholics …The book that started it all! "Tian Dayton picks up where Janet Woititz author of Adult Children of Alcoholics left off…..for those who have grown up in a family with addiction, mental illness, or other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), the heartache and pain doesn’t end when they grow up and leave home. The legacy can last a lifetime and spread to generations unseen. In The...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
The Surviving Spirit Newsletter November 2019
Hi Folks, The latest edition of the Surviving Spirit Newsletter is posted at the website - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/index.php http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2019-11-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_November_2019.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. Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse &...
Blog Post
The TurnAround Mom: How an Abuse and Addiction Survivor Stopped the Toxic Cycle for Her Family--and How You Can, Too! by Carey Sipp
I'm so looking forward to reading this book and then interviewing the author, ACEs Connection SE Regional Facilitator Carey Sipp! From Amazon: If you grew up in a dysfunctional, abusive, or addictive home, you are intimately familiar with violence, uncertainty, and suppressing your feelings. What you may not know, though, is how to create a sane, structured, and serene home for your own family when you never experienced these things yourself. Now you can. Part courageous memoir, part...
Blog Post
The wealthy suffer from an ‘empathy gap’ with the poor that is feeding a rise in inequality
Hey everyone, I'm sharing this article here because it reminded me of some great books I read recently in my Masters of Public Health program. I'll be posting the books throughout the week, so stay tuned! Wealth and income inequality have many causes,...
Blog Post
Thich Nhat Hanh answers children’s questions. "Is Nothing Something?" (lionsroar.com)
Children have a special place in the Plum Village tradition of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. There are special practices, vows, and programs designed especially for children and teens, and Thich Nhat Hanh often fashions the first part of his dharma talks with them in mind. He regularly takes questions from children, and by and large adults can identify with what they ask. Children may be smaller and younger and they may have a funny way with words, but their questions reveal that they,...
Blog Post
This veteran found a creative way to talk about his PTSD with his child. (upworthy.com)
Kastle created the children's book titled, "Why Is Dad So Mad?" to help explain to his 6-year-old daughter his struggles with PTSD. And when it was published, he read it to his daughter for the first time "There’s a section in the book where I describe the anger and things associated with PTSD as a fire inside my chest," he says. "After I first read the book to my daughter, I remember her saying, 'I'm sorry you have a fire in your chest now, Dad." According to the PTSD Foundation of America...
Blog Post
Tiffany Haddish: "I Know What I'm Supposed To Do Here On This Earth" [npr.org]
Laura's note: I have not read this memoir ( The Last Black Unicorn , by Tiffany Haddish), so this post is not a book review. When I heard this author interviewed on NPR, though, I immediately recognized what she was describing as the theme of her new book: growing up with ACEs--and overcoming them through positive thinking to succeed as an actress, comedian, and now, an author. In the interview with David Greene, Haddish says it best: I hope a little girl or little boy reads this and be...
Blog Post
Trauma Doesn’t Stop at the School Door
My newest book with Columbia Teachers College Press and a sidequel to my book, Breakaway Learners, is now available for pre-order on Amazon and Columbia Teachers College Press. Publication date is June 2020, in time for faculty and staff development and classroom use for Academic Year 2020 - 2021. The title to this blog is the book’s title, and the book probes and offers suggestion for how to facilitate student success for those students PreK—College who have experienced trauma. Real in the...
Blog Post
TUGG closes its doors. Here's how to order Resilience, Paper Tigers, and Cracked Up
TUGG , a distribution platform for independent filmmakers, closed its doors at the end of January. This left the filmmakers who used TUGG to distribute three extremely popular documentaries with the ACEs community — Resilience : The Biology of Stress & the Science of Hope , Paper Tigers and Cracked Up — scrambling to figure out a way to meet the demand. Lynn Waymer, of KPJR Films, sent this information: TUGG is continuing to deliver Paper Tigers and Resilience to all organizations who...
Blog Post
UPDATED Information Regarding Broken Places, Cracked Up, Paper Tigers & Resilience: Hosting a Film Screening to Start or Grow an ACEs Initiative: How-to Guide
Movie screenings of documentaries, such as Paper Tigers or Resilience are popular ways to introduce communities to ACEs science. Cissy White provides details about how to put on a screening event.
Blog Post
Victim to Victory: Memoir
I wrote Victim to Victory, healing generational abuse from my bloodline, during a seven-year journey of being very sick. I am not a writer. I am a healer. In those years of losing my ability to walk and having my family abandon me I turned inward, asking why and how do I get out of this straight jacket. I did everything imaginable, but the pain was chronic and my will was losing strength. In my darkest hours, I would hear a voice during my meditations. I had nothing to lose, so I followed...
Blog Post
What Our Children Need Us to Know, Right Now
Teaching children how to better navigate crisis, right now.
Blog Post
Wheeling to Healing.....Broken Heart On A Bicycle
To ride a bicycle across the United States—Los Angeles to New Jersey—takes courage, a mission, and stamina. I did it twice. The first trip, during my mid-twenties, was done in hurt and fueled by anger. The second, at age 56, was done in the pursuit of healing self and others by collecting stories of other experiences of trauma and healing, dispensing information about human resilience, and sharing a deep belief in the power all people have to engage with and be enlightened by the process of...
Blog Post
Why I believe Gregory Williams, and his book, Shattered By The Darkness, will help save lives and revolutionize healthcare.
When you first hear about it, it sounds unlikely, fact that something that happened to someone in utero, at the age of two months, or four years, or any time in childhood, is what is killing them as an adult, or making them want to die, or making them want to hurt themselves or others. Yet the connection between childhood trauma and adult disease, mental illness, addiction, suicide, violence – most all of society’s ills – is as irrefutable as the myriad truths revealed about it in the...
Blog Post
Why Intentionally Building Empathy Is More Important Now Than Ever (kqed.org)
Those in helping professions like teaching, social work, or medicine can buffer themselves from burnout and “compassion fatigue” with self-care strategies, including meditation and social support . A study of nurses in acute mental health settings found staff support groups helped buffer the nurses, but only if they were structured to minimize negative communication and focused on talking about challenges in constructive ways. English Professor Cris Beam also studies empathy and wrote a book...
Blog Post
Why We Shouldn’t Shield Children From Darkness (www.time.com) & Note
var viewReq = new Array();function vu(u) {var i=new Image();i.src=u.replace(,&);viewReq.push(i);}...
Ask the Community
Cracked : why psychiatry is doing more harm than good by Davies (2013)
"Why is psychiatry such big business? Why are so many psychiatric drugs prescribed - 47 million antidepressant prescriptions in the UK alone last year - and why, without solid scientific justification, has the number of mental disorders risen from 106...
Ask the Community
Encyclopedia of Trauma: An Interdisciplinary Guide by Charles Figley (2012)
"Trauma is defined as a sudden, potentially deadly experience, often leaving lasting, troubling memories. Traumatology (the study of trauma, its effects, and methods to modify effects) is exploding in terms of published works and expanding in terms of...
Blog Post
Nadine Burke Harris debuts "The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity" in Philadelphia
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris debuted her book, The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity , at the Philadelphia Free Library this evening in a talk and book signing. This first stop in an ambitious book tour that crisscrosses the country reflects a mission that Burke Harris has pursued for nearly a decade: to spread the knowledge about the science of adverse childhood experiences, and about how people can use this knowledge to help solve our most intractable problems.
Blog Post
New Book Coming in October: Adverse Childhood Experiences: Using Evidence to Advance Research, Practice, Policy, and Prevention
A new book will be available October 1st, 2019. Published by Elsevier, Adverse Childhood Experiences: Using Evidence to Advance Research, Practice, Policy, and Prevention will be the first book with Canadian content on the subject. This is exciting news for #TraumaInformedCanada #ACEsAwareCanada #ResilientCanada
Blog Post
New book explores storytelling and resilience.
“Run,” he would shout. On two legs, I couldn’t match the speed of a terrified calf or steer, but I was plenty fast, especially in a sprint, so I’d launch myself across the gravel in front of our trailer while my father stood about ten yards behind me twirling his rope.
Blog Post
New Intervention Fact Sheet: Parent-Child Care [nctsn.org]
A 7-page fact sheet describing Parent-Child Care (PC-CARE) is now available. A dyadic psychotherapeutic intervention for enhancing the caregiver-child relationship and making behavior management more effective, PC-CARE combines teaching and coaching on how trauma exposure affects children’s mental health. Caregivers can be biological parents, relative caregivers, resource parents, grandparents, nannies, or anyone caring for a child. While caregivers play with the child, therapists coach...
Blog Post
New Netflix Gloria Allred Documentary: Seeing Allred. As A Fierce Trauma Advocate, Gloria Shares Her Personal Rape Trauma & Resulting Illegal Abortion
This new Netflix Documentary about radical feminist, civil rights & trauma advocate, Gloria Allred was truly mind blowing. I never knew that Allred’s personal rape trauma and resulting illegal abortion that almost killed her was in part what contributed to imbuing her fierceness as a young lawyer to began advocating for landmark pieces of legislation like the ERA. This documentary features fantastic television clips from as far back as the 60's showing tiny Gloria, with her drastically...
Blog Post
Our Community Page Is Expanding!
As Oliver Wendell Homes once said, “The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of bigger ideas, never returns to its original size.” I am so grateful to all of YOU for making ACEs Connection such a forward-thinking and vibrant site, and for the many ways it’s expanded my own mind to the “dimensions of bigger ideas.” That said, I’m so excited to introduce myself as the new community manager of “Books! Educational DVDs! Documentaries!” A little about myself: I’m a freelance writer and have...
Blog Post
Parent Handouts updated and available In Dari, English & Spanish
The updated parent handouts are now available in Spanish as well as English and Dari. Here's the blog post with links to all three versions of each flyer. All versions of the Understanding ACEs and Parenting to Prevent & Heal ACEs parent handouts can be downloaded, distributed, and used freely. Both flyers were made with generous support from Family Hui, a Program of Lead for Tomorrow, who is responsible for making the Spanish and Dari translations available. These are updates of the...
Blog Post
People Are Now Stocking Little Free Libraries With Toilet Paper and Food for Neighbors in Need (goodnewsnetwork.org)
There are more than 75,000 Little Free Libraries around the world - and now people are converting them into Little Free Pantries for their communities during the COVID-19 crisis. Pantries from Vancouver, Canada to Arlington, Massachusetts are now filled with toilet paper, canned goods, books, hand sanitizers, and toiletries. To read more of Mat Gaskins' article, please click here.
Blog Post
Pip had high #ACEs
I just finished reading Great Expectations for the second time. I could relate to it much easier this reading as I used an ACEs lens to understand Pip's experiences and challenges. Dickens knew in 1860 the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences. It seems strange to see humanity hasn't really evolved emotionally and socially that much in 160 years. Hopefully the ACEs movement will help propel our consciousness raising.
Blog Post
Poignant Memoir/Self-Help Digs into the Process of Healing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) through Storytelling and Shared Discovery [prweb.com]
Research has proven Adverse Childhood Experiences, known as ACEs, can have a long-lasting detrimental effect well into adulthood. Those struggling with repeating patterns, autoimmune diseases, and behaviors such as addiction and difficulties in relationships now have a profound and personal resource in author Christina Beauchemin’s new book, “Let My Legacy Be Love: A Story of Discovery and Transformation: Tracing Adult Issues to Childhood Hurts”. In this memoir/self-help hybrid, Beauchemin...
Blog Post
Prince Harry and Oprah’s New TV Series Could Change the Way We View Mental Health at Work (thriveglobal.com)
A couple of years ago, Prince Harry joined the ever-growing list of high-profile public figures who are opening up about their mental health struggles. “I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12, and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years, has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life, but my work as well,” Harry said on a podcast for The Daily Telegraph . Now Harry and Oprah Winfrey are teaming up on a series for Apple TV+ that will debut...
Blog Post
RESILIENCE: The Secret of CPTSD Recovery (First in a Series)
When we talk about a history childhood trauma, we talk a lot about the problems — the damage, the limitation on our lives, the sadness. But in reality, a lot of us are thriving despite abuse and neglect in the past. The word for this is resilient. Overcoming the effects of Childhood PTSD is not easy, and it’s not a road I’d choose for anyone. But if that’s the hand life dealt you, it is still possible for you to blossom into a life of depth and love and purpose. Resilience is often mentioned...
Blog Post
Rethinking Resilience: A Review of Change your World
Change Your World is the newest addition to the body of resources on Resilience. It has been written by Michael Ungar, PhD - one of the most informed voices in resilience research. Although the reviewer was skeptical leading up to reading the book, expecting more victim blaming, which is often the predominant theme of resilience promotion, she was pleasantly surprised. She now recommends this book to everyone interested in learning how to build a healthier humanity.
Blog Post
Scilla Elworthy: A Business Plan for Peace (dailygood.org)
A distinguished activist for peace for over 30 years, Dr. Scilla Elworthy has met with scientists and nuclear weapons policy makers from all five nuclear powers. She founded the Oxford Research Group, Peace Direct, and co-founded 'Rising Women, Rising World' and FemmeQ, and was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. She is interviewed here about her latest book, "The Business Plan for Peace: Building a World without War." In it, she points out that while 1,686 billion dollars is...
Blog Post
Self Help: More Than Just a Good Book
I have written before about how I was a self-help book addict. I read every book I could find, re-reading several of them and even going as far as getting them on audiobook so I could re-listen to them hundreds of times. I did this because I absolutely believed in their base principles, and, frankly, I needed a constant reminder. I would listen — and would feel good for 10 to 30 minutes afterwards. But, then life would happen; I would forget everything I learned and I would be right back to...
Blog Post
Sex Trafficking Prevention: A Trauma-Informed Approach for Parents and Professionals (Book Resource)
Just a quick post to share this book resource I heard about this morning from Beth Grady . The author is Savannah J. Sanders and here's a bit more about her and this book, from Amazon (where I've just ordered my own copy): Drawing from her own experience being trafficked plus her insights gained from years of advocacy and anti-trafficking work, the author speaks directly not only of the realities of trafficking that occur in our own communities but also the solutions that we can all be a...
Blog Post
Short Video to Explain Why Puberty Can Make "Just say 'No'" Difficult
Interestingly, it is brain developmental processes occurring during puberty that make "just say 'no'" difficult for tweens and teens. As I mention in the video, there is more on this in my upcoming book - 10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You'd Stop! - which is now available for pre-ordering on Amazon at https://tinyurl.com/yyg3lxgc .
Blog Post
Someone like me
I am a survivor of non-recent systemic (CSA) child sexual abuse crimes committed by three perpetrators.
Blog Post
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book is the story of race in America — and of Coates himself [vox.com]
We Were Eight Years in Power , the new book by Ta-Nehisi Coates, is not precisely new. It’s a collection of eight articles Coates wrote for the Atlantic, starting in 2007 during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, concluding this year with the start of Donald Trump’s administration, and including some of Coates’s greatest hits, including his much-lauded 2014 article “The Case for Reparations.” What’s new is that each of the eight articles isintroduced by an essay in which Coates lays out...
Blog Post
Tara Westover: ‘In families like mine there is no crime worse than telling the truth.’ (www.theguardian.com)
Tara Westover grew up preparing for the End of Days in rural Idaho with radical survivalist Mormon parents. She didn’t get a birth certificate until she was nine and had no medical records because her father did not believe in doctors. She and her six older siblings worked in her father’s junkyard. As she grew older, her father’s beliefs became more extreme and one of her brothers grew violent. At 17, she decided to educate herself as a means of escape. Within 10 years she had earned a PhD...
Blog Post
The Body Keeps The Score (Bessel van der Kolk, MD)
FINALLY IT IS HERE!!!!!! Got mine by Amazon yesterday and on my Nook after midnight on the 25th. Been reading it straight through!!! This is an awesome book to cut through all the stuff that will likely not work and it tells...
Blog Post
The Books That Helped Me Transition from Trauma to Triumph: A Book Review Series - "Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life"
Learning to find my gifts within my chaos has changed everything. Everything.
Blog Post
The Books That Helped Me Transition from Trauma to Triumph: A Book Review Series - "The Power of Now"
The author takes us on a journey into a deep place within us, a place where the truth is known "within every cell of (our) body"; beyond the masks we wear, the criticisms we've cloaked ourselves in, our over-thinker personas, fueled by the old doubts we've absorbed into our beings.
Blog Post
The Books That Helped Me Transition from Trauma to Triumph: A Book Review Series - "The Power of Now"
The author takes us on a journey into a deep place within us, a place where the truth is known "within every cell of (our) body"; beyond the masks we wear, the criticisms we've cloaked ourselves in, our over-thinker personas, fueled by the old doubts we've absorbed into our beings.
Blog Post
The Community Resilience Reader: Essential Resources for an Era of Upheaval (reader.resilience.org)
National and global efforts have failed to stop climate change, transition our society from fossil fuels, and reduce inequality. We must now confront these and other challenges by building resilience at the level of communities. The Community Resilience Reader: Essential Resources for an Era of Upheaval (Island Press, 2017) combines a fresh look at the crises humanity faces, the essential tools of resilience science, and the wisdom of activists, scholars, and analysts working on the ground.
Blog Post
The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity (Dr. Nadine Burke Harris)
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris was already known as a crusading physician delivering targeted care to vulnerable children. But it was Diego - a boy who had stopped growing after a sexual trauma - who galvanized her to dig deeper into the connections between toxic stress and the lifelong illnesses she was tracking among so many of her patients and their families. A survey of more than 17,000 adult patients' "adverse childhood experiences", or ACEs, like divorce, substance abuse, or neglect, had...