Blog

I was 5 years old when I had my first encounter with trauma. Too young to comprehend the magnitude of the situation, my first grade class participated in a “Good Touch/Bad Touch” workshop,centered around educating and recognizing signs of sexual abuse. I found relief in finding a safe place to lay down the burden I had been carrying. I went straight to the school counselor and told her, in vivid description, the intimate details of my unwarranted molestation. I remember the grueling...

Addiction is an incredibly complex problem that affects nearly every part of the body. However, the brain is one of the most affected areas and unfortunately, drug use can become a cyclical problem due to the way that it affects the brain. Substance abuse affects multiple parts of the brain. Three of the most affected parts of the brain include the basal ganglia, the amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex. Basal Ganglia The basal ganglia are one part of the brain that is involved in controlling...

According to Alice Miller author of The Drama of the Gifted Child, an Enlightened Witness is “an understanding person who helps a victim of abuse recognize the injustice they suffered and gives vent to their feelings about what happened to them”. Brene Brown author of Daring Greatly states, "empathy is feeling with or alongside someone, while sympathy is feeling sorry for." https://youtu.be/1Evwgu369Jw In Topeka we unpacked and explored the message of the Enlightened Witnesses in our lives.

In life, oftentimes the greatest victories create the best version of your self-concept. As you encounter life and the transitions that manifest from your growth, it can be an overwhelming experience. Of course, it's not easy tackling your old habits, thought process, or behavioral patterns. However, once you become intentional towards grappling your journey, motivation becomes your daily fuel. It’s okay, to find yourself questioning the process, feeling uncertain or even lacking confidence...

I have cancer. Advanced ovarian cancer. It’s hard to put those words together. It’s hard to believe this is real. What I want is to believe is that I’m still in the hospital, groggy from the anesthesia that hasn’t worn off yet. I want to be in an altered state where it’s just the fear talking, a conditioned trauma response sending me to catastrophic thinking. I don’t want this diagnosis. I want this to be a bad dream. Prior to the surgery, the ob/gyn suspected I had a torsed cyst. She...

Robin Saenger, Founding Director of Peace4Tarpon and a Champion for ACEs, will be the special guest for the entire hour on "Breaking the Silence with Dr. Gregory Williams" Radio Show this Sunday evening LIVE at 8:00 pm Central Standard Time.

By Michele C. Hollow, The New York Times, November 19, 2019 As soon as James Griffin gets off the school bus he tells his mom, “Go dance, go dance.” James is 14 and has autism, and his speech is limited. He’s a participant in a program for children on the autism spectrum at the University of Delaware that is studying how dance affects behavior and verbal, social and motor skills. One afternoon while dancing, he spun around, looked at his mother, smiled and shouted, “I love you.” His mom,...

By Jenny Keefe and Nikeyah Flagg, The Chronicle of Social Change, November 21, 2019 A new data project focusing on foster care capacity has illustrated a growing reality across the nation’s child welfare system: relatives are increasingly stepping up to provide care for children removed from their parents. The newly released data, compiled and analyzed by The Chronicle of Social Change, shows that the most recent surge in youth entering foster care is over. It also finds that a majority of...

By Natasha Rausch, Brainerd Dispatch, November 21, 2019 On a grassy landscape along a sidewalk in Lindenwood Park at the edge of Fargo, Grace Poitra and Robbie Lass knelt to pray. Lass, from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, and Poitra, from the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota, had met four years earlier, and started dating just a few days after they’d first met. Now they had a son together, Joey Little Bear. During their relationship, Lindenwood Park had become a...

The 14th Annual Cynthia Lockhart-Mummery Conference hosted by Tulare County Child Abuse Prevention Council (CAPC) began with a 2 hour presentation by Alissa Parker, co-founder of Safe and Sound Schools and the mother of a young child lost during the Sandy Hook school mass shooting. The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, United States, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people, including 20 children between six and seven...

Abreaction – The discharge of emotion involved in recalling an event that has been repressed because it was consciously intolerable. https://www.verywellmind.com/understanding-abreaction-1065382 Acting out – Originally an analytic term referring to the expression of unconscious feelings about a therapist or other authority figures. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/traversing-the-inner-terrain/201204/acting-out Affect . – “A pattern...

Healing our Ghosts is a new podcast by Ana Joanes, filmmaker and creative spirit who brought us Wrestling Ghosts, a groundbreaking documentary about parenting with ACEs. This new podcast has a unique vision: The premiere episode of Healing Our Ghosts is with one of my all time favorite people, Cissy White. She is a brilliant writer, who speaks nationally about the impact of trauma and her healing journey. Cissy believes that trauma survivors must be leading this work and that it is not...