Blog

I was thinking today that I might make t-shirts and coffee mugs that say, “professional joy stalker.” It would come with a list of blissful things to remind myself and others to appreciate. As my friend Lynn says,” What if joy is stalking us?” and all we need to do is be still long enough to notice and marinate in multiple daily pleasures. I love that idea but it didn't come naturally to me. What came naturally was fear. I was always on the search for danger, betrayal, and disappointment. I...

Achievement and success can mask underlying pain in such a way that it festers and continues to hold power over us.

National DEC Awareness Day April 28th April 28 th is National Drug Endangered Children Awareness Day. In partnership with the United Way of Greater Plymouth County’s Family Center, the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office has a federal grant from the Office for Victims of Crime to provide support to children impacted by substance use in their home and to train first responders and schools in trauma-informed practices. The Plymouth County Drug Endangered Children’s Initiative is a...

By Amy Joyce, Ellen McCarthy, and Washington Post Staff, The Washington Post, April 27, 2021 Nothing about the past year has been easy for parents. They’ve lost loved ones, lost jobs. They’ve been cut off from their children’s grandparents, cut off from child care, cut off from friends and support systems. They’ve missed out on graduations and bar mitzvahs, proms and vacations. They’ve juggled remote school and remote jobs, or been forced to put themselves and their families at risk by...

By Anne Stuhldreher, Cal Matters, April 27, 2021 Growing up, Blossom Sergejev was lucky if she talked to her mother once a week. Usually it was once a month. Even then their conversations ended almost as soon as they started. She and her brother and sister had a timer to make sure all three got their fair share of their mother’s time – five minutes each. “There was no small talk on those calls, and it wasn’t at all light-hearted,” Sergejev says. “We got down to the grit of what was going...

By Cory Turner, National Public Radio, April 26, 2021 The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a new effort Monday to feed millions of children this summer, when free school meals traditionally reach just a small minority of the kids who rely on them the rest of the year. The move expands what's known as the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer, or P-EBT, program into the summer months, and USDA estimates it will reach more than 30 million children. "If children and children's learning...

By Kara Grant, MedPage Today, April 26, 2021 In the wake of Derek Chauvin's conviction for the murder of George Floyd, clinicians and mental health professionals are calling for the recognition of ethno-racial trauma (ERT) and the implementation of cultural humility into all clinical practices to improve care for Black patients. ERT has been defined by researchers as "individual and/or collective psychological distress and fear of danger that results from experiencing or witnessing...

By Emilia Mense Caby, SheKnows, April 26, 2021 In the immediate aftermath of the guilty verdict of Derek Chauvin , I reeled at the news of another death from another police shooting, this time a child. As more information came out about Ma’Khia Bryant , my heart continued to crack open. As a former foster care case manager and violence prevention specialist in schools, I knew many girls like Ma’Khia: Girls whose young lives were shaped by trauma and who were not given the resources or...

Adversity can be a powerful word especially when you are a Trauma Counsellor aware of ACEs. This revolutionary study on the impact of our Adverse Childhood Experiences has provided us with so many answers as to why we are the way we are. At least it did for me and the people I work with every day. It has also raised many important questions. One being, how can one build resilience through past adversities? How did I do it? Having done the ACE test and getting a maximum score of 10 on it, I...

I have been writing about the baby's experience for many years. After the book by Brene Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead came out, I decided that I wanted to be one of the people she wrote about who lived whole-hearted lives. She describes them as people who would not sit by and simply watch life go by, but those who were willing to enter into the arena and dare greatly, erring, getting dirty and fully engaging in life.

A little more than three years ago, Oprah Winfrey did a segment about childhood trauma on 60 Minutes. One of the people she interviewed was child psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Bruce Perry . "It is my hope that our story about trauma-informed care will not just be impactful, but will also be revolutionary," Winfrey said at the time the segment was aired . "Doing the segment It certainly has caused a revolution in my own life." I think all of us who learn about the science of positive...

It has been approximately one year since leaving my position as the Waupaca County Health and Human Services director, reminding me how quickly times passes. So much has happened over the past year… good, bad and indifferent. The world has changed, and we’ve changed with it — we’ve learned so much about doing things differently, and that sometimes different is better. It is hard to believe that we can go back to what we knew as ‘normal’. In fact, I would say it is our moral obligation to not...