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Excerpt from essay published on the Attachment & Trauma Network blog and written by @Julie Beem The read the rest of Julie Beem's blog post, go here .

Early this year, a group of boys from Seattle’s Catholic, all-boys O’Dea High School attended a party. As football players from a team that would go on to win the state championship, they were influential among their friends. At the party, a couple of the players noticed an escalating sexual encounter involving another boy they knew that didn’t look quite right. “It was a shady situation,” a group of girls who had been at the party latertold the O’Dea football coach, James Beck, who gathered...

Ten large technology companies in Silicon Valley did not employ a single black woman in 2016. Three had no black employees at all. Six did not have a single female executive. In stark contrast, women outnumbered men in the executive ranks of two Silicon Valley companies, and at another firm, nearly a third of executives were women of color. A first-of-its kind analysis of 177 of the largest San Francisco Bay Area tech firms by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting found that...

Trauma from childhood is, in essence, an injury to the ability connect with people. And that's why so many people who were traumatized as kids experience loneliness throughout their lives -- sometimes even when they're surrounded by people. In this post I share a 10-minute video excerpted from my online course "Healing Childhood PTSD." it's all about loneliness and disconnection, and how to reconnect again. READ THE POST AND WATCHED HERE.

“I get the most emotional about the courage the people have, when people step into a void and try something new,” Laura Porter responds to a question about what lights her fire, what keeps her going during the difficult chapters. Laura will be giving the closing plenary lecture at the 2018 Beyond Paper Tigers conference, and her knowledge of ACEs science, community resilience, and social change is extensive. For many years, Laura has worked with Rob Anda, a principal investigator of the...

A four-minute film produced for the UnLonely Film Festival and Conference last month featured a young woman who, as a college freshman, felt painfully alone . She desperately missed her familiar haunts and high school buddies who seemed, on Facebook at least, to be having the time of their lives. It reminded me of a distressing time I had as an 18-year-old college sophomore — feeling friendless, unhappy and desperate to get out of there. I didn’t know it then, but I was in the age bracket —...

New York City’s Public Design Commission (PDC) reviews the design of “anything that is visible,” explained Justin Moore, the commission’s executive director. “Sewers, we don’t look at.” On top of the city’s parks and public buildings, the commission is finally taking on public housing. In May, the PDC released Designing New York: Quality Affordable Housing , a guide for developers, designers, and community members that lays out the commission’s ideas. There are eight design categories,...

Arkansas just became the first state to implement work requirements for its Medicaid program. Similar Medicaid waivers have been approved for t hree other states, and seven more are pending, spurred in part by the Trump administration’s guidance last year. Now, if able-bodied adults on Arkansas’ Medicaid rolls don’t go to work, study, or volunteer for 80 or more hours a month, they will lose their health insurance coverage in three months. A study by the Urban Institute in May estimated...

The author wrote on the condition of anonymity because of the gang-related threats she and her family face in the United States and in El Salvador. I came to this country from El Salvador in 2014 seeking safety for myself and my son. Instead, I found myself locked in a family immigration detention center. It’s an experience that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. When I heard news stories of nearly 3,000 children separated from their parents at the border, my heart broke for them. Now President...

Weekend after weekend, the wave of emergency department (ED) patients would arrive. Oral and maxillofacial surgeon Jonathan Shepard would treat shattered jaws, knife wounds and other facial injuries at the hospital in Cardiff, Wales. These injuries stemmed from brawls in bars and nightclubs where broken glasses and bottles were wielded as weapons. Strangely, Dr. Shepard found that only 23 percent of these assaults treated in the hospital were reported to law enforcement. Harnessing the Power...

In August 2015, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha was having a glass of wine in her kitchen with two friends, when one friend, a water expert, asked if she was aware of what was happening to the water in Flint, Mich. Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician in Flint, knew that the city had changed its water source the previous year. Instead of channeling water from the Great Lakes, residents were now drinking water from the nearby Flint River. She had been aware of some problems with bacteria after the switch,...

FOCUS Pittsburgh knew it was onto something when it piloted its model for strengthening communities — starting with the knowledge that social service help will not stick unless trauma is confronted. In 2015, FOCUS chose the 2900 block of Webster Avenue in the Hill District to start a block-by-block approach of bringing people together toward healing. The group is only into its second area — the 900 block of Bryn Mawr — but people around the country are validating that it is onto something. A...