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On a recent afternoon at the city hall in Toledo, Ohio, Holly Matthews is teaching her colleagues some slang. “I forgot to tell everyone my new word of the day,” she says. “It’s ‘pookie.’” A pookie, Matthews explains, is another word for a crack pipe. “I checked with Urban Dictionary,” she says, chuckling. Matthews is executive director of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council , an agency that provides criminal justice information services to residents of Lucas County in Northwest Ohio.

Why Adverse Childhood Experiences Matter This material originally appeared in Yoga Therapy Today, published by the International Association of Yoga Therapists. Used with permission. By Matt Erb and Kristine Weber Emily, a mid-30s White female, came to yoga therapy because she wanted to address her fibromyalgia and weight gain. She reported that her weight gain began when she quit smoking a few years earlier. Lack of energy and widespread pain made it difficult to exercise. She also reported...

It is traumatic when your family does not share the food they have. Not because it is in short supply rather it is done out of meanness of spirit. However, as a child, you conclude you are not good enough, you do not belong. It is painful to be excluded.

Last week , in a provocative op-ed in the Washington Post , Naomi Schaefer Riley – a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute – argued that the problem in America’s child welfare system is “not that we’re taking too many children away from their parents. We’re not taking enough.” To support her claim, she cited a mishmash of statistics, including an increase in the national child fatality rate, and then some isolated data from two jurisdictions involving re-entry rates for children...

Angel Benavides, a lanky 14-year-old, dribbles down the basketball court of his school gym in Manvel, N.D. It looks like he's going for a layup, but when he realizes he's unguarded, he stops in his tracks and takes a three-pointer. It's a nice arching shot, but the ball bounces tenuously on the rim and doesn't go in. It's late June and Angel is already thinking about playing for his high school basketball team in Texas, 1,700 miles away. But he doesn't know if he'll get there in time for...

Louise Vincent received a frantic email late one night in July: “Any progress on Adam? They’re trying to get him on a murder charge for his friend’s overdose death.” Adam is a young man in West Virginia who purchased heroin for himself and a friend. They used together. Adam woke up. His friend didn’t. Now authorities hold Adam responsible for his friend’s death. Vincent receives emails like this one with increasing frequency from families and friends of drug users who police claim are drug...

This Labor Day, with President Trump in office, it’s time to realize that the task of creating good jobs for more Americans rests with its cities. Just as cities have led on climate change and minimum wage, they should lead on creating secure, well-paying jobs. The stock market continues its boom and unemployment is at a record low (3.9 percent), but far too many Americans still toil in insecure jobs that do not pay enough to support a family. Almost 70 million American workers—amounting to...

All of us condemned inmates were hurt when Chaplain Chestnut left the prison to pursue other opportunities and, he said, to save his marriage. “Guys,” he told us one day, “I spend more time on death row than with my wife. She gave me a choice: her, or my work. I love her, so I’ve got to go. I’m sorry.” Chestnut’s departure was devastating because he’d always treated us fairly, even favorably, going out of his way to treat us as equals and as parishioners. Before and after executions, he...

Ricardo Rodriguez is a 26-year-old San Diego resident and former foster youth who balances a job in tech with volunteer work and entrepreneurial pursuits. Thanks to his relentless drive and support from key sources, his life has turned out far different from previous expectations. During his childhood, medical professionals said Rodriguez would never be able to walk, talk or understand words. Despite many obstacles, Rodriguez has made his lifelong dream of working in the tech industry a...

The story of Sally Hemings—the enslaved woman who bore six of Thomas Jefferson’s children—is told from the basement of Jefferson’s mansion at his Monticello plantation in Charlottesville, Virginia. The third American president’s legacy barely touches the brick floors and plastered walls of Hemings’s windowless room, their two lives more unconnected at Monticello today than they were in 1791. At George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, slavery is similarly separated from the nation’s founding...

Trauma is everywhere in art. In movies, songs, stories and novels, writers and performers create characters who go through terrible, difficult things and who then respond to the world and other people in it in all the challenging ways we know. Past trauma is a convenient shorthand to explain a character's anger, depression, addiction or bad behavior. In 2013, I was frustrated by the lack of trauma healing shown in art. Where are the songs, stories and films that show the real story, that...

When I recommend the need for self-care to trauma survivors, they say it can feel like a chore. Some of them even roll their eyes and tell me, “You mean you want me to take care of myself? Ugh. Who has time for that?!” It’s tempting for any person to undervalue self-care. But for trauma survivors, resistance to self-care has much deeper roots. Healing takes a focused, gentle approach. Self-Care as a Practice of Welcoming Your Needs Many trauma survivors learned to do without self-care...