By understanding the difference between sex and sexual abuse, trauma survivors can understand that unwanted touching they experienced in the past was not sex. Sex is always consensual in a way that feels safe and pleasurable. Abuse occurs without your consent, and is never your fault.
I wish you peace along your healing journey. I hope you find your positive affirmations that keep you motivated and moving. If you want to borrow mine, just remember . . . you are lean, you are strong, you are grounded, you are motivated, you are happy, and you are a dancing machine!
Today I'm honored to be a guest to The Grass Gets Greener podcast, sharing the story of inter-generational trauma, the unintended consequences of leaving a violent relationship, and the heavy-lifting needed to pursue healing that I wrote about in my memoir.
ACEs, Adversity's Impact ACEs linked to higher health care costs in adulthood Beyond the ACE score: Examining the relationship between timing of developmental adversity, relational health and developmental outcomes in children Toxic stress: The other health crisis politicians should be talking about California doctors to begin screening for trauma Lupus patients with adverse childhood experiences report worse disease activity and overall health, study says Dr. Gabor Mate on childhood trauma,...
By Rebecca Ruiz, Mashable, March 23, 2019. Teens don't need to read the headlines to know that they and too many of their peers are feeling lonely, sad, anxious, and suicidal. Recent headlines, however, confirm what's happening in their lives. This week, a Pediatrics study documented a 28 percent increase in psychiatric visits to the emergency room for American youth. The research, which looked at survey data collected between 2011 and 2015, found even higher rates of increased visits for...
By Ingrid Helander, PsychCentral, July 1, 2019. Do your nerves overwhelm you sometimes? Do you frequently find yourself burdened with anxiety or stress? Anxiety attacks and symptoms of stress can be overwhelming and terrible. You don’t like how you feel, but you don’t understand it, and you don’t feel like there’s any was you can possibly find out how to deal with anxiety when it strikes you. Anxiety symptoms can be severe and stress management is hard when your own body doesn’t know how to...
A newly established national group of experts known as TIHCER (pronounced “tīs-er”) recently convened for a first-time working meeting at The University of Oklahoma in Tulsa to advance the important cause of T rauma- I nformed H ealth C are E ducation and R esearch. The gathering brought 26 members representing 10 states. This diverse group of experts comprise members from a variety of healthcare professions — medicine (physicians and residents/medical students), clinical psychology,...
Graduation day - a picture of my mother and me after I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminal Justice (Corrections) studies from Kent State University in June 1977. This was seven years after that fateful summer of 1970 when my mother and I realized that our family needed some help. When I look back at that time, I marvel at the love of GOD and the love from both parents as they began to realize that the harmful consequences of their domestic violence squabbles and of my father’s...
BY SIMON ROMERO, ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, MANNY FERNANDEZ, DANIEL BORUNDA, AARON MONTES and CAITLIN DICKERSON, NEW YORK TIMES, JULY 6, 2019. CLINT, Tex. — Since the Border Patrol opened its station in Clint, Tex., in 2013, it was a fixture in this West Texas farm town. Separated from the surrounding cotton fields and cattle pastures by a razor-wire fence, the station stood on the town’s main road, near a feed store, the Good News Apostolic Church and La Indita Tortillería. Most people around...
By Traci Pedersen, PsychCentral, July 6, 2019. A new study finds that a large number of adults who buy legalized cannabis have been able to cut back or completely quit taking their pain and/or sleep prescription drugs. The findings, published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, add weight to the theory that widening access to medical cannabis could reduce the use of prescription painkillers, allowing more people to manage and treat their pain without relying on opioid prescription drugs.
By Daily Local News, July 5, 2019. Legislation to implement trauma-informed education in Pennsylvania schools has been signed into law by Gov. Tom Wolf, largely thanks to a bill authored by state Rep. Christina Sappey, D-158th Dist. Earlier this year H.B. 1415 and S.B. 200, which would implement approaches to student learning that recognizes the signs and symptoms of trauma and integrates that knowledge into education-based policies, learning, procedures and practices, was introduced by...
By P. Berman, & K. Hecht, A. Hosack I can’t believe it. Tommy’s mom invited us over for ice cream after library next week. I didn’t even try to make her like me! Wow, Claire didn’t even know what to think. She had just gotten off the phone with Mary, the mother of one of Davy’s friends at the library. Mary was one of those really organized moms who rushed her child in on time and rushed her child out after the story was over; she never seemed to be searching for one of Tommy’s shoes in...
High percentages of incarcerated women suffer from untreated PTSD. One quickly expanding program is successfully using dance to help them move forward. When 38-year-old Cassy Bustos first saw a poster advertising the Dance to be Free program at La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo, Colorado, she felt a rare spark of excitement. It was Spring 2016 and Bustos was in the midst of serving her three-and-a-half year sentence for first-degree burglary and third-degree assault. Prison was...
Judy Kane moved to Tarpon Springs from Richmond Va. in 2015 to be closer to family. In Richmond, she worked in the fields of Information Technology and Residential Real Estate. In Tarpon, Judy started a new business, Aligned Consciousness where she helps people rewrite subconscious self-limiting beliefs. The month before moving to Florida, Judy met Peace4Tarpon partners Robin Saenger and Mary Sharrow at an event where Judy first heard about Peace4Tarpon and Trauma Informed Community. The...
By Patricia Cohen, The New York Times, July 4, 2019 HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — A widening income gap and sagging social mobility have left dents in the American dream. But the belief that anyone with enough gumption and grit can clamber to the top remains central to the nation’s self-image. And that could complicate Democratic efforts to frame the 2020 presidential election as a referendum on a broken economic system. Americans, who tend to link rewards to individual effort, routinely overestimate...