No, we don’t need the president nor congress. We do need the following people in your county to stop business as usual and focus on preventing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). City mayors City counselors County commissioners School board members These local elected leaders—many of them your neighbors and colleagues—have the capacity to collectively understand the emotional and financial costs of ACEs and trauma. We can’t have family-friendly cities and counties while we live in an...

What can one teacher really do about trauma This idea of “therapeutic encounters” or “therapeutic moments” should be one of the first things we teach pre-service teachers. What I love about this concept is that it both gives us permission, and it holds us accountable. It gives us permission to play an active role in the healing of others, because that role can be a tiny empathetic moment, a personal question, a joyful high-five. It also holds us accountable, because this work isn’t too hard...

Words like trauma-informed and resiliency get thrown around a lot these days. And for many, the visions they call up are a bit too glossy. You see resiliency and trauma-informed aren’t always pretty. Resiliency can look like closing the bathroom door and collapsing in tears… but then washing your face and going back into the world, carrying the belief that you can survive and the hope that things will get better. It looks like begrudgingly going on that walk with a friend, when the little...

Great article everybody can serve a role in helping children heal