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Social activist and former foster care youth Shenandoah Chefalo was forced to move 50 times during her childhood, and that experience coupled with her ideas to improve the foster care system that she survived resulted in her book, “Garbage Bag Suitcase.” The book, which took over four years of research and writing to complete, describes Chefalo’s dysfunctional upbringing and journey through the foster care system. She also offers insight into the problems and potential solutions surrounding...

Three years ago, federal Judge Shira Scheindlin declared the New York Police Department’s “stop and frisk” operations unconstitutional . An audit of these stops found that black and Latino New Yorkers were approached and patted down by police at a far higher rate than white New Yorkers, yet they rarely were found to be in illegal possession of guns or drugs. As a result, then-NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly ordered the police force to wind down “stop and frisk” practices, which it did...

T he Saturday morning after St. Patrick’s Day, 22 patients are locked up in a nondescript detox facility on the outskirts of a Midwestern suburb. A couple of the men and women checked themselves in; a few more arrived in a police car; the rest were brought here by a worried friend, partner, or parent. A trio of volunteers from a local chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous has just arrived to hold a meeting. Those willing to join the circle recite the Serenity Prayer, listen to someone read "How it...

17-year-old Lew Blank was fiddling around with the Weldon Cooper Center’s Racial Dot Map when he discovered something disturbing about Wisconsin, where he lives: More than half of the African-American neighborhoods in the state are actually jails . Not only that, but the rest of the black neighborhoods across the state are either apartment complexes, Section 8 housing, or homeless shelters—the lone exception being a working-middle class section of Milwaukee. Sharing this info on the Young,...

“I am already dead! I have been buried.” said a young south Asian girl on the psychiatric ward. Prior to her admission she had stopped going to school, and instead isolated herself in her room spending hours on the internet searching for her grave. She was not eating much and losing weight. There had been occasions when she wandered off at night. With poor eye contact and slow speech, she added: “I can feel the worms crawling inside my body.” After an assessment she was found to have...

For years, Teri Barila had tried to coax newspaper reporters in Walla Walla, Washington , to write about brain science, ACEs, and resilience. They didn’t bite. Then, on a crisp December evening, 1600 people—many of them inspired by years of community organizing—crammed the town’s largest venue for a screening of Paper Tigers, James Redford’s documentary about the dramatic reboot of a local alternative school after its principal became an advocate of trauma-informed care. Suddenly, reporters...

Fifty-one years ago in the White House Rose Garden, former President Lyndon B. Johnson announced the launch of Head Start. “Five- and 6-year-old children are inheritors of poverty's curse and not its creators,” Johnson told his audience as he explained that the federal government would be, for the first time, funding education and health services for children living in poverty in the form of a public preschool program. That first summer, according to a press release from the time, the...

Contrary to popular belief, most people do care about the welfare of others. From an evolutionary standpoint, empathy is a valuable impulse that helps humans survive in groups. In American schools, this impulse has been lying dormant from a lack of focus. But in Denmark, a nation that has consistently been voted the happiest place in the world since Richard Nixon was president, children are taught about empathy from a young age both inside and outside of school. Children in the Danish school...

I was inspired to write the poem, "Freedom's Song of Sorrow", by the violent and tragic murders of black men in our nation following July 4th -- brutal murders of police, culminating with the violence in the world with the Bastille Day terrorist massacre in Nice, France. The poem actually began in the 1990's when I wrote the poem, "America's Children are Singing", inspired by Walt Whitman's poem, "I Hear America Singing", and my witnessing abuse and neglect of young children whom I cared for...

Healing Early Developmental Trauma Distance Learning Video Series, once completed with your funding support, will provide integrated knowledge and practical tools for parents, grandparents, teachers, partners and a wide range of practitioners who work with early developmental trauma.

The latest adverse childhood experiences survey from the California Department of Public Health shows that 42% of the population has an ACE score of 3 or higher; 16% have an ACE score of 4 or higher. Those with an ACE score of 4 or higher are: 3x more likely to be current smokers 4x more likely to have a depressive disorder 2x more likely to have asthma 2x more likely to be obese 4x more likely to have COPD 3x more likely to have a stroke Here are a few other highlights from the six-page...

Has your church heard about ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences)? If not, I am sure you have seen the effects in your communities and your worshipping communities. Those in our congregations as well as those in our neighborhoods are struggling under the weight of unresolved trauma, persistent toxic stress, and the dysfunction that results from broken relationships. No matter what we might want to tell one another, “Everything is NOT fine.” In our home state—where 17% of children have...