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By Aallyah Wright, Pew Research Center, August 18, 2021 Over the past three years, Melisa Ingram, a 50-year-old Detroit resident, has had her 2017 Ford Fusion seized twice by the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office. The officers claimed that Ingram’s ex-boyfriend, who had her car at the time of the seizures, was involved in illegal activity. Under Michigan’s civil asset forfeiture law, the police could seize and sell the car if they suspected it was involved in a crime—even though Ingram hadn’t...

By Shirley Dor, The Lily, August 18, 2021 It’s Aug. 14, 2021, and I wake up to the familiar tone of numerous notifications. WhatsApp notifications are beaming every second. I do my typical routine: ignore the notifications, so I can practice mindfulness. To my dismay, mindfulness goes out the window the moment I pick up my phone and see the first message: “Shirley! Haiti was struck by an earthquake.” In shock and unprepared to see what I know will traumatize my entire day, I do what my...

By Aneri Pattani, National Public Radio, August 21, 2021 For years, Kayla West watched the opioid epidemic tear through her eastern Tennessee community. As a psychiatric nurse practitioner, she treated people with mental illness but felt she needed to do more to address addiction. So in 2020, when the state created a position to help hospitals improve addiction care in the emergency room, West jumped at the opportunity. She knew that many people with substance use disorders land in the ER,...

Seasonal affective disorder is a form of major depression that affects an estimated 10 million Americans with another 10-20% having a milder form. SAD is four times more common in women than men. SAD doesn’t only occur in winter as it can also form in the summertime, but that is much rarer.

One after one, time after time, from both men and women, young and old, white-collar and blue-collar, the message was the same, “I’m not worthy. I’m not important. I’m not enough.” It shouldn’t surprise us then when we seek to protect ourselves by displaying anger, hiding our emotions, turning off our feelings, becoming rebellious, engaging in dark humor, developing eating disorders, numbing ourselves with drugs and alcohol, being promiscuous, self-destructive, or disconnected.

As an organization change strategist who has been working with clients for the past 30 years to help roll out new technologies or install new post-merger cultures, I’ve seen millions of wasted dollars occur because true adoption did not take hold. While the root causes for this are various, one core reason can be attributed to the failure to consider and support the whole person – physical, emotional and spiritual - of the stakeholder. One of the first steps we take with clients when working...

By Sammy Caiola, National Public Radio, August 22, 2021 Annie Walker woke up one morning in 2019 with little recollection of the night before. She had bruises on her arms, legs, wrist and lower abdomen. "But I literally had no idea what had happened," she says. "And, for days, I was trying to put the pieces together." She knew she had gone to a Sacramento bar and restaurant with a group of people, and she remembered drinking there and being left alone with the man she'd later identify as her...

By Annie Reneau, Upworthy, August 19, 2021 Tony Hillery was living the high life, running a limousine company and wearing Prada suits, when the financial crisis of 2008 hit. He lost his business and lines of credit and felt like he was too old to start over. He kept reading about underfunded schools with no art, gym, or music—a sharp contrast to the private schools his kids had attended. So one day, he decided to take the subway to Harlem to see what he could do. "I couldn't have been more...

At some level, I have learned to accept that US immigration policy is racist. And at some level, I’ve learned to accept that it is “legal” for US immigration policy to be racist, at least from a Hobbesian perspective, which holds that the state can do whatever it wants in whatever lands it controls by force. This country has always had a “preferred” class of immigrants it wants to attract, while trying to stem the tide of those deemed undesirable by the white powers that be. We didn’t like...

By Summer Sewell, The Guardian, August 20, 2021 Black farmers throughout the south call Cornelius Blanding daily to ask when the money might come from the US Department of Agriculture . Updates aren’t coming any other way. Blanding and his staff at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives do their best to stay on top of a federal debt relief program that should have started to pay farmers in June. They field calls and answer questions with limited information from the USDA, knowing only that...

The most power is in the conversations and daily practices that occur each day. Each person’s self awareness and developing awareness of how trauma impacts behavior and relationships can provide an opportunity for healing and breaking the cycle of creating more trauma.

Founders of the Diaper Bank of Skagit County celebrate the adoption of their project by the United Way of Skagit County. On July 1 st ,2021 the United Way of Skagit County became the new home of the Diaper Bank of Skagit County . Founded by retired community members Calista and Dean Scott, the Diaper Bank is a Certified Diaper Bank Member of the National Diaper Bank Network, and one of more than 200 diaper banks across the nation and 8 in WA. DBSC became a non-profit in 2018 and reached a...