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Last weekend I saw The Grinch at the movie theater with my nephews and family. Everyone knows the historic tale of the Dr. Suess book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Grouchy green guy steals Christmas from innocent town in an attempt to make his own pain go away. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t work, and the kind hearts of the Whos in Whoville show the Grinch that the spirit of Christmas comes from their hearts and not material goods. I guess this was the first time I watched The Grinch in...

“All I do know is as we age, the weight of our unsorted baggage becomes heavier . . . much heavier. With each passing year, the price of our refusal to do that sorting rises higher and higher. . . . "

Video of the first-ever performances of LOOK FOR ME, the musical about healing from trauma, is now available on YouTube. Look For Me was created to challenge one of the most pervasive myths about trauma and PTSD: that the damage done by traumatic experiences is a life sentence. The video now available is from performances of a 25-minute excerpt of the show presented at the New York New Works Theatre Festival in September, 2018. The excerpt captures the full storyline of the main character,...

Was corresponding this week with Dr. Claudia Gold this week and learned about an amazing webinar series for parents. Here's a link to the interview with @Claudia Gold. "Make some room in your life for people who listen to you - wherever that is. If no one is listening to you, you aren't going to be able to listen to your child." Dr. Claudia Gold That is one of my favorite quotes from the webinar. Here's more about the entire parenting series: Here's the link to the rest of...

As we discussed the Seven Mindsets, I was reminded how I had made a concerted effort to change my thinking patterns and create new habits filled with positivity instead of focusing on the struggles when I first started out on my healing journey.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ( PTSD ) is a relatively common condition, affecting nearly seven percent of people over the course of a lifetime and over 3.5 percent of people in any given year, according to the NIMH from National Comorbidity Survey data. Other estimates suggest even higher rates, more so in at-risk groups. PTSD is more than two times higher in women than men, and PTSD is associated with higher suicide rates. Fifty to 70 percent of US citizens are expected to experience major...

Immigration authorities separated Vilma Carrillo—a domestic violence survivor whose asylum application has been denied—from her young daughter in May, shortly after their arrival at the United States border, where Carrillo applied for asylum. In July, when a federal judge ruled that all separated families had to be reunited, Carrillo, together with a group of other immigrant mothers, was transferred to Texas, where she awaited reunification with her daughter. But upon discovering that her...

For decades, the federal Free and Reduced-Price Lunch (FRL) program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been used as a proxy to identify economically disadvantaged students. Participation in that program has been limited to students from low-income families, defined as those earning below 185 percent of the federal poverty line. FRL has been widely used in state school funding formulas and accountability systems to identify at-risk children. But in 2010 Congress enacted two changes...

Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of trauma, such as physical or sexual abuse, neglect or family dysfunction. And what is one of the most important factors in building resilience? Healing, hopeful, honest and trusting relationships. Those relationships are the heart of the work we do and the people we serve. The National Council for Behavioral Health’s 9th Trauma-Informed, Resilience-Oriented Approaches Learning Community is a year-long initiative that provides you with...

The 7 Mindsets consist of seven ways of thinking and using our minds that are demonstrated by the highest and happiest achievers in history (see www.7mindsets.com for more about the background of The 7 Mindsets). Interestingly, these Mindsets not only show the way to a great life, they show the way to a great relationship. They also reveal the basic flaws of a relationship that is really not good for us, no matter how strongly attracted we might feel to it! Let’s begin with an understanding...

When Maddy Nadeau was a toddler, her mother wasn't able to care for her. "I remember Mom was always locking herself in her room and she didn't take care of me. My mom just wasn't around at the time," she says. Every day, her older sister Devon came home from elementary school and made sure Maddy had something to eat. "Devon would come home from school and fix them cold hot dogs or a bowl of cereal — very simple items that both of them could eat," says Sarah Nadeau, who fostered the girls and...

People who experience childhood maltreatment frequently have perturbations in their brain architecture, regardless of whether they develop psychiatric symptoms, but a study in Biological Psychiatry found additional alterations in people who don't develop symptoms. The study, by researchers at McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, suggests that the additional changes may help compensate for the effects of maltreatment. The findings shed light on the mystery of why some children are...