Blog

Toddlers may be ever so adorable but they can also be frustratingly poor at listening and respecting other people's feelings. So how are they able to grow into social butterflies a decade or two later, often capable of extraordinary friendship, loyalty and perceptiveness? While social development is a long process that lasts into our teens, our earliest experiences of forming social bonds are a lot more important than it may seem. In fact, studies have suggested that they have repercussions...

When he died, I got sick. He was family—if not by blood then by love. A friend's father. For all but the first few years of my life he had cared for me when others had faltered. He sheltered and fed me, taught me to question and listen and believe, in equal doses. And then, when I was 30, he was gone. My grief felt like the final moment of falling down, when you hit the ground and rise up too quickly, your body in shock—over and over again. There were times when I would go blank; dark holes...

Jamira Burley knew both perpetrators and victims of violence in her family and in her Philadelphia community. Now 27, she was raised largely by older brothers because her parents were in and out of jail. “My brothers had to become adults before they could fully experience their childhood,” she said. They took care of the family by whatever means available, which often resulted in run-ins with the law. “Whether that was selling drugs, getting into fights to protect the younger siblings, it...

Many cultures have rules for new mothers and babies. The Latin American cuarentena and the Uzbek chilla represent 40 days of rest and social support. In China, women rest in bed for a month ; in Korea, for 21 days . In the United States, however, the time for rest, bonding, and recovery often is determined not by tradition, or even by a doctor’s recommendations, but by the new mother’s employment situation. This is certainly true for Tara, who asked me not to use her last name to protect her...

Last Friday, February 26, 800 people filled the Laguna Honda Hospital & Rehabilitation Center in the beautiful Twin Peaks area of San Francisco. They were there for a Black History Month event coordinated by the San Francisco Health Network, featuring two outstanding clinicians, Dr. Joy DeGruy (Social Work) and Dr. Ken Hardy (Psychology). The full conference title was: Racial Trauma: Healing Ourselves, Our Clients, & Our Communities Addressing the aftermath of historical trauma and...

As many of you who read my posts know, I advance a healing protocol that contains five levels to work through. The first level is termed “Knowledge.” Because I believe that childhood trauma is a fundamental root cause for many health and behavior issues, I felt it was important to take information about a client about the existence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s), if they have any, and discuss it with them. This concept is straight out of Dr. Felitti’s experience at Kaiser...

Laura Guzman, who directs a Homeless Resource Center in San Francisco, discusses chronic homelessness using a trauma-informed perspective.

In the United States, daycare is a booming business. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the daycare industry to be among the country's fastest growing through 2020, according to Forbes. Roughly 11 million kids under the age of five in the U.S. spend every work week in some kind of childcare setting. Parents put their faith in childcare centers—and the governmental departments that regulate them—under the assumption that their children will be safe and cared for until they return. But a...

Learning in midlife to juggle, swim, ride a bicycle or, in my case, snowboard could change and strengthen the brain in ways that practicing other familiar pursuits such as crossword puzzles or marathon training will not, according to an accumulating body of research about the unique impacts of motor learning on the brain. When most of us consider learning and intelligence, we think of activities such as adding numbers, remembering names, writing poetry, learning a new language. Such complex...

A bright red tablecloth adds a pop of color to Ashara Manns' kitchen at her home in Flint, Mich. The substitute teacher is at the stove, where she pours two bottles of water into a stockpot before dumping in big bags of mixed greens. "Normally, I would rinse these with the running water, so hopefully they're still safe," Manns says. Flint residents have been told not to drink or cook with the city's lead-tainted tap water, so Manns and her husband, Bennie, rely on bottled water to prepare...

Rosa Ana Lozada grew up on a two-block-long street in a San Francisco neighborhood pocked with trauma: domestic violence, child abuse, the frequent wail of police sirens. “It was unsafe to walk the two blocks to the bus stop,” she recalled. “In my community, we learned that police officers were not our friends because they were only seen when bad things happened.” For Lozada, now CEO of Harmonium, Inc., and a member of the San Diego Trauma Informed Guide Team, home and family were the...

It was a birth of a different kind with a two-year gestation period. “We are celebrating the birth of The Nest,” said Jenifer Blumberg, executive director, at the open house for The Nest on Thursday, Feb 25. The Nest is a two-level pink colored home with several rooms and three bathrooms that was bought and furnished to give young pregnant women or mothers and their children a cozy place to live to help them succeed in life. Those moms will soon take up residence in the house. The idea for...