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I have been sober for over 4 years, by god’s grace, before that however I was a chronic relapser with severe depression. I lived the cycle between treatment, halfway and homelessness for years. I wanted so bad to get sober but that's the thing about recovery, wanting it is not enough, if it were that easy everyone would get sober. My issue was always in the action department, I would talk about what I was going to do constantly and when the time came to do it I always came up short. My...

The California Democratic Committee pass resolution to ban spanking this August, 2019! Ending Physical/Corporal Punishment of Children RESOLUTION NUMBER 19-05.112 WHEREAS there is overwhelming evidence that spanking is harmful to children and families as it increases aggression and violence long term, impacts normal brain development, and is ineffective in teaching responsibility and self-control, and the rationale for spanking is the same that was accepted for men hitting women in recent...

Beautifully written book review by Dr. Eve Rittenberg of Harvard Medical School. https://www.sgim.org/File%20Library/SGIM/Resource%20Library/Forum/2019/SGIM-Oct-7.pdf

Christina is an author, speaker, and truth seeker. She is an advocate of curiosity, courage and honesty as a path to personal transformation. She facilitates workshops as well as working privately with those who are serious about changing their life for the better

The October 3rd ACES Connection daily summary featured a recent brief about tools to measure trauma-informed care (TIC). The article highlight the Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC) Scale as a promising tool for measuring TIC. The ARTIC Scale, previously only available in paper-and-pencil form, is now available on a fully automated online platform . As more governing bodies are mandating trauma-informed services, organizations and service systems are scrambling for tools to...

New article by Elizabeth Perry - Are You Living with an ACEs Legacy? I was and didn't know it until I heard about The ACE Study. Learning about ACEs gave me a sense of relief and freedom from shame. I encourage everyone to check their ACEs.

I am a poet, artist and child psychiatrist. So many youth have told me they have been bullied, and how alone, ashamed, and terrible this makes them feel in the present moment and for years to come. All of us read in the news, and many may even know personally, the diversity of children and teenagers who choose to kill themselves (be that impulsively or by planned action) to escape the pain of being bullied. I cannot even begin to imagine the depth of despair that parents, siblings, families,...

A new documentary film has recently been released called Conviction. It is self-described as A COLLABORATIVE DOCUMENTARY FILM THAT ENVISIONS ALTERNATIVES TO PRISON THROUGH THE EYES OF WOMEN BEHIND BARS I've recently seen the film and highly recommend it. The content is Canadian, but no doubt the issues the women deal with are universal.

By Emma Young, Big Think, October 3, 2019 Imagine seeing a photograph of a suffering child in the war-torn region of Darfur, in Sudan. Most of us would feel compassion towards that child. Now imagine seeing a photo of a group of eight children in the same terrible predicament. You'd feel correspondingly more compassion towards this larger group… right? Well, probably not. Plenty of studies have demonstrated what's known as the "numeracy bias" in compassion — that people's feelings of...

By Deborah Becker, WBUR, October 3, 2019 As Massachusetts considers changing the way it handles young criminal offenders, it is looking at what's happening north — specifically, to Vermont. Vermont is the first state to raise the age above 18 for when someone criminally charged goes to juvenile court, expanding what it's doing in hundreds of lower level criminal cases now. For example, this summer, in a small office in a nondescript government building in Burlington, Vermont, a seemingly...

By Kimberly Burrowes, How Housing Matters, October 2, 2019 Farmers’ markets, community gardens, and fruit stands provide local residents access to healthy, affordable food in many neighborhoods. In areas with fewer grocery stores, farmers’ markets can help close the food access gap. But they don’t serve every neighborhood, and today, one in eight Americans experiences food insecurity—and they’re primarily from low-income households and communities of color. Although physical and mental...

By Carolyn Krause, The Oak Ridger, October 2, 2019 A teenaged girl suffers a knee injury while playing varsity basketball and has an operation. About the same time her older brother has his four wisdom teeth extracted. To block their pain, her surgeon and his dentist prescribe hydrocodone, a powerful narcotic pill. Their parents, who never took such potent painkillers when their wisdom teeth were removed, worry that the opioids their kids are taking might lead them down the path to drug...