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Oklahoma children are more likely to experience toxic, adverse conditions at home than children in other states, but there is hope for a better future, Senate lawmakers were told Thursday. State health officials said recent studies show Oklahoma ranks as the worst in the nation when it comes to the number of adverse childhood experiences. Such experiences include neglect and abuse, drug use in the home, exposure to domestic violence, living with someone who is mentally ill, having an...

The root causes of health disparities lie in policies and practices that distribute power and resources such as housing, education, employment and health services inequitably. For example, law enforcement agencies—including police and Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) officers—disproportionately target, surveil and perpetrate state violence against communities of color . Ample research shows that the unjust government practices associated with the enforcement of immigration policies ,...

Now, it might seem, is the golden age of female agency—a newly empowered era for women, or something approaching it, a time when cheeky porn stars taunt presidents on Twitter, fed-up movie actresses tell what producers did to them in hotel rooms and restaurant basements, and serial abusers suffer, at long last, some consequences for their acts. Somewhere, as I write this, a once-obscure psychologist named Christine Blasey Ford is asserting her right to tell her story in her own time in her...

By the end of fiscal year 2018, the federal government will have spent approximately $331.2 billion (about 8 percent of total spending) on children, according to a report released Thursday by First Focus, a bipartisan group that advocates for children and families. The report—which the organization compiles annually and which calculates total spending on children across multiple different programs, departments, and categories—finds that spending on children in fiscal year 2018 increased by...

The 2018 Building Strong Brains Tennessee ACEs Summit took place last week in Nashville, TN. The theme of this year’s summit was “Celebrating Successes and Imagining Possibilities” and there is plenty to celebrate. Tennessee is one of the most innovative states when it comes to ACEs awareness. Tennessee understands that childhood trauma is the root cause of its poor health outcomes, high rates of addiction and other ailments. And Tennessee is doing something about it. Tennessee’s leadership...

Forty years after Thomas Berry’s “The New Story,” new generations are seizing on the power of narrative. In Berry’s view, a central cause of the West’s ecological hostility was its separation from nature—a separation that was at once spiritual, religious, psychological, emotional, intellectual, and philosophical. The root of the eco-destruction was an anthropocentric (human-centered) Western worldview that saw an existential gulf, a “radical discontinuity,” between the human and natural...

This is the era of the survivor. The people who think that we can go back to business as usual have not understood that we have become emboldened to speak our truth and to demand that we are treated better.

Dear AcesConnection community: Below is a note of invitation to trauma informed providers in the Bay Area from Ana Joanes, the creator of the documentary, Wrestling Ghosts. This is a film about a young mother healing from childhood trauma as she raises her young sons: it is heartwarming, inspiring, and serves to break the isolation around the struggles so many of us face when we parent with ACEs...

Bringing Back the Humanity Anger plays no small role in current conflicts such as those in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the North-South problem, and so forth. These conflicts arise from a failure to understand one another’s humanness. The answer is not the development and use of greater military force, nor an arms race. Nor is it purely political or purely technological. Basically it is spiritual, in the sense that what is required is a sensitive understanding of our common human...

Trauma-Informed care represents a major shift in paradigm and practice. It has been defined as a system that realizes the widespread impact of trauma and adverse events, and seeks to actively resist re-traumatization of our clients by changing procedures and practices. Despite the recent calls for trauma-informed care across service sectors, providers continue to ask "What does it look like?" In my recent book, Through a Trauma Lens: Transforming Health and Behavioral Health Systems, I share...

If you have experienced a single traumatic event, multiple or prolonged trauma, or exposure to toxic stress, and are experiencing these or other frightening symptoms, please reach out for guidance - talk to your doctor, a therapist, anxiety coach, or expert in the field of trauma recovery and resilience. Healing is possible and you are so very worthy of that gift!

Cissy's note: One of the best blogs I've read recently and describes why I am passionate about sharing information about ACEs/Pair of ACEs personally and professionally but don't support universal #ACEs screening of adults or children, particularly parents and survivors of ACEs. I still worry that ACE scores will be used to further marginalize, shame, and other individuals and families. We know, thankfully, that #ACEs happen to all people, regardless of class, race, gender, etc. which is...