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Stop for just a moment and reflect upon your desires. If there were no hurdles to overcome (such as financial restraints, fears, health concerns, spiritual uncertainties, etc.), what would your “perfect life” look like? Where would you live? Who would be in your close circle? Would you be working? If so, doing what? What would you do for fun? What goals would you be achieving?

“A new public service announcement released by March For Our Lives, the organization formed in the days following the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. , imagines exactly that. In the two-minute spot, titled “Generation Lockdown,” a young girl leads an active shooter training session for a group of employees at an office in Southern California.” (YahooNews, 2019). I highly recommend visiting the link below and watching the video. It reveals an...

Trauma-informed care is the new gold standard. For the last several years, Echo has been providing professional development in trauma-informed care but we’re beginning to notice a worrying aspect of the new push to train staff and transform systems. Some human service professionals are seeing ‘trauma-informed care’ as another skill to add to their resume or a box to check off on a grant proposal. But if the information stays with the professionals and is not used to empower survivors, then...

By A. Hosack, & K. Hecht, P. Berman Claire was falling fast, she could feel the crash coming. The ground was getting closer. She would hit the tree tops, and these would kill her. Would th at be for the best - finally , relief from her pain ? Yet, Davy needed her- she couldn’t die, she had to hold on. She looked up at Dr. Berman who was just sitting there quietly, watching her. Was this therapy? Was this supposed to help her? Why did she feel like she wasn’t falling any more when she saw...

There’s an anecdote that Ruth Wilson Gilmore likes to share about being at an environmental-justice conference in Fresno in 2003. People from all over California’s Central Valley had gathered to talk about the serious environmental hazards their communities faced, mostly as a result of decades of industrial farming, conditions that still have not changed. (The air quality in the Central Valley is the worst in the nation, and one million of its residents drink tap water more poisoned than the...

On a late February afternoon, Angela Crawford, an English teacher, stood in front of about three dozen Philadelphia educators—mostly young, black women—as they all swapped stories of small victories and challenges in their classrooms. Dressed in a “Black Lives Matter” T-shirt and slim black slacks, Crawford, at one point, reflected on what has helped her remain resilient while working in some of the nation’s least resourced and most segregated classrooms for 23 years. “Black women are...

I'm standing deep in snow on a moonlit night on an island in the middle of the Bering Sea, watching the people of this community, nearly all of them Siberian Yup'ik, await the arrival of walrus hunters who are bringing in one of the principal sources of food for the village. For the past few weeks, I've been a guest art teacher at the high school here, learning about the community's triumphs and struggles, so I'm feeling invested in the outcome of the hunt. A student I'll call Molly walks up...

Mental Health Promotion and Disease Prevention: It's About Time. Shatkin JP. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry . 2019 May;58(5):474-477. doi: 10.1016/j.jaac.2019.01.012. PMID: 31029197 Childhood Adversity and Intimate Partner Violence in Adulthood: The Mediating Influence of PTSD in a Sample of Women Prisoners. Jones MS, Peck BM, Sharp SF, McLeod DA. J Interpers Violence . 2019 Apr 26:886260519844277. doi: 10.1177/0886260519844277. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 31027448 Similar articles...

Friday, April 12, 2019 marked an exciting, auspicious, and perhaps pivotal day in the history of Monroe County, Indiana. That’s a lot of adjectives—and pressure—to pile onto just another glorious spring day in Bloomington. But I think many folks who virtually congregate on a site that supports communities implementing trauma-informed and resilience-building practices grounded in ACEs science would agree that a county’s first-ever ACEs conference deserves a little ballyhoo. But this ACEs...

Is our country looking in the wrong places in our efforts to prevent child neglect? By focusing on individual families accused of maltreatment, are we letting society off the hook? That is the contention of a new paper by researchers at the University of Connecticut, University of Illinois and Georgia Tech, who say we can reduce child neglect by putting more money in the pockets of poor families. The authors say our current approach is a version of the "streetlight effect." "A guy is looking...

https://soundcloud.com/jane-mulcahy/firkin-crane-event-towards-an-ace-aware-trauma-responsive-ireland This event was an open discussion with survivors of childhood trauma and professionals working in the Early Years sector, education, health, addiction and homeless services about the desirability of raising public and political awareness of the prevalence and impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in Ireland and the need for a collaborative cross sector trauma-responsive approach for...

I want to be sure you are all aware of this opportunity. The Brain Change Summit is a FREE 10-day online event. It’s currently underway and the speakers have been really outstanding. For registration and further details: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/brain-change-summit/free-access#a_aid=5c82ab8fc7797&a_bid=48584946 I’ll be speaking on Calming the Fear-Driven Brain on April 30 at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET. Once you’ve registered, you will be able to watch the speakers here:...