Blog

I'm just going to say it, Mother's Day sucks for some people. As this day approaches each year a familiar feeling creeps over me. It appears at first as irritability and fatigue but eventually reveals itself as my old friend "unresolved grief." I lost my mom suddenly in 2005, and later became a therapist for children in the foster care system. These life experiences make me acutely aware that not everyone has a mom to celebrate on Mother's Day. Some mothers abandon their children. Some...

Every week day, the Ten Percent Happier team shares a live, half-hour "sanity break" which includes five minutes of meditation practice. Earlier this week one of the topics was on addressing (and maybe changing or resolving) family habits and dynamics coming up more often or with more intensity during the pandemic. The video is below and the link to the Ten Percent Happier Live site is here.

Resilience is a muscle that needs to be built with practice. A few short months ago we were all sharing our plans and goals for 2020 – a new decade full of hope and possibilities…resilience is called for more than at any other time in our lives. Now we are all trying to navigate a whole new world. We’re trying to learn how to cope up with the stress caused by coronavirus, how to protect our emotional health, how to manage work life balance, how to deal with anxiety and fear in these times,...

Most of you reading this blog don’t see what I see every day. As you do your best to keep in touch with your network of ACEs prevention partners and to make the day pass without a tense altercation with the boss, the kids, the spouse, the co-parent, the grandma or the “friends” on social media, the fight of the century is going on. Three-headed Hydras vs. the Heroes of Planet Earth. You can’t find it on Netflix. Yet. It’s playing out in video conferencing calls between your elected leaders...

Registration open at https://www.traumaresearchfoundation.org/trauma-conference/2020 For the past three decades our conference has brought together leaders from the fields of neuroscience, attachment research and innovative trauma treatments. We provide a unique place for a dialogue between scientists and clinicians, and an opportunity to become familiar not only with the latest advances in brain science as it pertains to clinical work, but also with a range of evolving treatments for...

Social-emotional learning & wellness online courses for certificate hours or graduate credit, free resources, discount codes, and new website.

By Vivian Watts, The Virginian-Pilot, May 6, 2020 In my career as the former executive director of Fairfax CASA, as well as my work as the former secretary of Transportation and Public Safety and in the Virginia House of Delegates, I have fought to protect vulnerable children from abuse and exploitation knowing that our failure to do so has catastrophic consequences. For more than 20 years clinicians and social scientists have studied the impact that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and...

By Bruce Schaller, City Lab, May 4, 2020 The oldest trope in America is back: Cities are bad. Cities mean density and density means human contact, and human contact, in the crucible of the pandemic, means illness and death. That idea is hardly new. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote during urban epidemics in 1800: “When great evils happen, I am in the habit of looking out for what good may arise from them as consolations to us. … The yellow fever will discourage the growth of great cities in...

By Richard E. Besser, USA Today, May 5, 2020 One might think it’s good news that more than half of all states are either partially reopening or have plans in place to reopen after a nearly two-month COVID-19 shutdown. If those states were truly ready, this would be good news. But many of the plans being rushed out now are almost certain to fall hardest on those people who will not be able to protect themselves or their families. Whether because of lack of access to health care, low household...

By Perri Klass, The New York Times, May 4, 2020 Pediatric patients are not the sickest group right now, or the group most in danger. But pediatricians are worried, worried for children and families, for now and for the future. On our conference calls and Zoom meetings, everyone is worried about how stressed families are right now, about what we hear from our patients or their parents about the strain of staying home — or about the strain of parents whose work requires that they go out. About...

Leaders in ACEs/trauma/resilience movement from nine states in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic and the District of Columbia gathered for a networking call on May 1 to learn about flexible funding opportunities for states under the CARES Act, ways to get involved in advocacy, and share their successes and challenges in building statewide coalitions. The meeting of leaders was organized by ACEs Connection and the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) in response to COVID-19...

By Reema Amin, Chalkbeat New York, April 30, 2020 After years of searching in vain for the right school for her son, Erendira Matamoros was hopeful she found a good fit. David, a 14-year-old who is autistic and primarily speaks Spanish, is legally entitled to a small special education classroom led by a bilingual teacher, but that’s hard to come by in New York City. Only about a third of the roughly 5,500 students who required small bilingual special education classrooms this fall were...