Blog

By Joel Knudson and Jennifer O'Day, Photo: Liv Ames/EdSource, EdSource, February 7, 2022 A s 2022 begins, educators, students, families and communities continue to navigate a state of prolonged and volatile crisis. The persistent spread of Covid-19 has compounded the challenge of ensuring safe and healthy learning environments. Meanwhile, too many students continue to suffer from the ongoing effects of the pandemic — academically, socially, emotionally and mentally. Community schools may...

By Indianapolis Recorder Staff, Photo: OnyxFest, Indianapolis Recorder, February 4, 2022 In 2021, OnyxFest staged six Black-led plays and tripled its audience size from its opening in 2020. Now, the plays can be streamed for free through the end of February on Butler University’s Arts and Events Center (BAEC) website. Sponsored by the Africana Repertory Theatre of IUPUI, the plays included “Fly Blackbird Fly/Voices We Can’t Unhear” by Latrice P. Young and “That Day in February” by Janice P.

From Equal Justice Initiative, February 4, 2022 The New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that imposing a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years on a child is unconstitutional. People sentenced when they were children are now entitled to have their sentences reviewed after 20 years. The court’s decision, issued in January, combined two cases in which children were sentenced under a New Jersey statute that required them to serve a minimum of 30 years without any chance for parole. James Comer...

My wife NaTasha and I are mental health practitioners and published a children's book last year called Just Love Me . Parents, youth, teachers and youth-serving professionals have found this book refreshing so we thought sharing with our PACEs Connection community would be a valuable resource to some of you. See description below: JUST LOVE ME In a world where kids are so different at so many levels, it often becomes overwhelming to determine our thoughts, feelings, and reactions to those...

My wife NaTasha and I published a children's book last year that we think the PACEs community might be interested in. It's called I Got a Big Brain. Using lessons from brain science, we wanted to highlight concrete messaging of resilience based on nurturing adults through the lens of young children. See description below: I GOT A BIG BRAIN Many children experience adversity in their lives at alarming rates including abuse , neglect , parental loss or other household stressors . Although...

FEBRUARY 8-10, 2022 Join us for some or all of this inclusive 3-day online event featuring conversations, meditations, and panel discussions with 40+ experts in healthcare and mindfulness. All summit content will be available to view through February 20. Welcome to the Healing Healthcare Global Mindfulness Summit Our healthcare industry has been delivered to the edges of its capacity by this global pandemic. The successive waves of grief, PTSD, and burnout caused by COVID have yet to be...

By Fontana News Room, Photo: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times, Fontana News Room, February 7, 2022 When I conjure the image of a typical public school — the bright fluorescent lighting, the hard, unyielding plastic desk chairs and the shrill bells that announce the beginning and end of class — the word “calming” doesn’t exactly come to mind. Combine that with the frenetic energy that comes with 15 to 30 students crammed into a relatively small room all day, and you’ve got a recipe for...

In the first article of this series, we focused on toxic positivity and gratitude shaming. We spoke about how while gratitude is an important part of our life; it is unnecessary to be grateful for the harmful things that have happened to us such as childhood trauma. This article will cover how false gratitude and letting go affect those of us who live with the aftereffects of complex trauma. Complex Trauma, What Is It? I realize we cover complex trauma quite a bit here in CPTSD Foundation’s...

By Ellen Barry, Photo: Mason Trinca/The New York Times, The New York Times, February 6, 2022 It would hit Alina Black in the snack aisle at Trader Joe’s, a wave of guilt and shame that made her skin crawl. Something as simple as nuts. They came wrapped in plastic, often in layers of it, that she imagined leaving her house and traveling to a landfill, where it would remain through her lifetime and the lifetime of her children. She longed, really longed, to make less of a mark on the earth.

By Sam Levine, Photo: Karen Focht/Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock, The Guardian, February 3, 2022 Hello Fight to Vote readers, For the last few months, I’ve been following the case of Pamela Moses, a 44-year-old activist in Memphis who was convicted in November for trying to register to vote while she was ineligible. On Monday, Moses, who is Black, was sentenced to six years and one day in prison. Amy Weirich, the local prosecutor, has trumpeted both the conviction and the sentence in press...

By Alí R. Bustamante, Photo: Unsplash, January 31, 2022 Decades of federal and state policy choices have placed the burden of financing colleges and universities on the backs of families instead of in the government’s hands, leading to today’s student debt crisis. Americans currently hold $1.7 trillion in student debt, with a disproportionate share of this debt falling on Black and brown families. Payments on student debt have been paused since the start of the pandemic, and President Biden...

By Molly Minta, Photo: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today, Mississippi Today, February 2, 2002 B rittany Murphree was born and raised in Rankin County, Mississippi, one of the most Republican counties in one of the most Republican states. She went to Northwest Rankin High School where she was the president of the school’s chapter of Teenage Republicans of Mississippi. She interned for Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, and her parents voted for Donald Trump twice (she did too, one time). At the...