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This essay is part of a special issue of PREE magazine that seeks to raise awareness of the causes and impacts of ACEs in the Caribbean and elsewhere. PACEs Connections is working closely with PREE to ensure the issue reaches a broad audience. PREE is a unique online magazine for contemporary writing from and about the Caribbean. This special issue on ACEs is co-edited by children’s writer Juleus Ghunta and PREE’s editor-in-chief Annie Paul. The initial Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)...

National Grief Awareness Week "Crying isn't the hurt, it is the process of being unhurt". Althea Solter ------------ The chronic grief of children and youth who are impacted by a parent's substance use can often go unacknowledged or be invalidated. As such, it is important for professionals to understand the chronic loss that can occur in a child's life when a parent struggles with addiction, particularly if both parents struggle. This grief can be compounded by a stigma that prevents...

Healing from complex trauma takes time, and having a treatment team that is supportive and well-trained in trauma-informed care can be an enormous help. In this article, we shall discuss together more disciplines you can have on your care team and how they can help you heal. Your Trauma Treatment Team In a former post , we examined what disciplines you might expect on a mental health treatment team: a psychiatrist and a therapist. We also covered some of the forgotten members who can also...

The Identified Patient is a concept where an individual in a family “acts out” in their behavior dysfunction coming from their family when it reaches a point where that patient can no longer tolerate it. What does that mean? Imagine you’re a child in a family where there is much more conflict and anger between your parents than there is cooperation and lovingness. As you step out into the world, something we refer to as Separation, and you run into an obstacle or a victory, you look back...

Women’s Resilience Circle Join Coach Kristie in this multigenerational approach to what it means to identify as a woman in our society. Using the We Are Resilient approach as the foundation, we will examine how our Cultural Patterns have shaped how we view the world, each other, and ourselves. Some topics include Protective Patterns and Safety, Resilience and Health, and The Power of Coming Together as Women. This circle meets once a week for six weeks. $79 to join, or join for free with...

We Are Resilient Coach Certification ––Q and A meeting Are you interested in: Reducing stress and burnout and supporting the mental health of those around you? Creating stronger, more connected teams that can better navigate equity issues? Support the implementation of We Are Resilient in your team, clinic, school or organization? The next round of We Are Resilient Coach certification is enrolling participants for the next session, beginning the first week of January 2022. (Date and time...

This is an urgent call to those of us who believe in trauma-informed and healing-centered schools that support the whole person. After reading the recent NBC article “Parents protesting 'critical race theory' identify another target: mental health programs , ” I quickly put aside the blog I had been working on because I knew this was too important. Concerns from colleagues about the rising backlash against increased priorities of mental health and social-emotional learning (SEL) have been...

By Louise Lief, Photo: Ted Auch/FracTracker Alliance, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2022 Powered by thousands of early-career scientists and students, a global movement to transform scientific practice has emerged in recent years. The objective is to “expand the boundaries of what we consider science,” says Rajul Pandya, senior director of Thriving Earth Exchange at the American Geophysical Union (AGU), “to fundamentally transform science and the way we use it.” These scientists...

By Simon Hattenstone, Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, The Guardian, November 29, 2021 R ita Moreno pops up on my computer screen in a bright red hat, huge pendant necklace and tortoiseshell glasses. “Well, here I am in my full glory,” she says from her home in Berkeley, California. And glorious she sure is. Moreno is a couple of weeks short of her 90th birthday, but look at her and you would knock off 20 years. Listen to her and you would knock off another 50. Can I wish you an advance...

Forward-Facing Face to Face: Embodied Trauma-Informed Care Our bodies have the power to convince people we serve that we are trustworthy, but how? This workshop will equip professional caregivers to offer embodied trauma-informed care to traumatized communities by teaching them how to interrupt their threat response and offer cues of safety from a relaxed muscle body instead of cues of stress. Join us Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 5:00pm Arizona Time for 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝-𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐞...

The Washington Department of Health sent out a reminder that while some are celebrating this holiday season others might be grieving. Please reference the article below for a few helpful coping strategies to use this holiday season. Behavioral health coping strategies focus on resilience this holiday season OLYMPIA -- The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) recognizes this holiday season may bring with it some unique emotional challenges. While some may be celebrating renewed...

By Avrum Weiss, Image: M.MEDDAH/Pixabay, Psychology Today, November 21, 2021 Saturday Night Live recently aired a brilliant sketch titled “Man Park.” In the sketch, a young man waits anxiously for his partner to return from work. He has few if any friends, and has had little social interaction all day. She listens, barely managing to feign interest in his data dump about the series of banal events of his day. As is often the case in heterosexual relationships, she reverts to the role of...