Tagged With "sexually abused women"
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Two Decades Later, A Mother Writes Back to the WIC Program She Used
One of my best friends, Heidi Aylward, is a high ACE scoring mother of two. She's also a feisty, funny and has a full life balancing work, parenting, friends and all the responsibilities of tending to home and loved ones. And she is a woman who used WIC . WIC defines itself as "The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant,...
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4 years after integrating ACEs science, Pueblo, CO clinic improves services for families; cuts ER costs, doctor stress
Four years ago, Dr. Leslie Dempsey would never have talked about ACEs — adverse childhood experiences — with her patients. Now ACEs is a common topic. “Just as I don’t feel awkward asking someone if they smoke or do intravenous drugs, I don’t really feel awkward talking about their childhood traumas in a way that it relates to their health. It’s just integrated into obtaining background and social history,” she says. Dr. Leslie Dempsey Dempsey is a physician in obstetrics who oversees a team...
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5 Surprising Ways the Father Wound Harms Women [goodmenproject.com]
I’ve been dealing with the father wound for most of my life. When I was five years old my mid-life father became increasingly depressed because he couldn’t make a living supporting me and my mother. He took an overdose of sleeping pills and was committed to Camarillo State Mental Hospital. Many of us grow up without the presence of a loving, engaged, father in our lives. Some of us lose our fathers through illness, others through divorce, death, distance, or dysfunction. Like most losses,...
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8 Health Conditions That Disproportionately Affect Black Women [Self.com]
(Cissy's note: Many of these 8 conditions impact early and across the life span which means impacting our kids or us, as parents, and making parenting with ACEs even more challenging.) Although being black in this world certainly comes with its struggles, I wouldn't trade that integral part of my identity for anything. Black-girl magic is real. But it's a sad fact that black women are often plagued with disproportionately high incidences or mortality rates for various health conditions, like...
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9 Women Who Have Experienced Postpartum Depression [Glamour.com]
It’s estimated that one in nine women will deal with postpartum depression, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . Chrissy Teigen is not the only star to have learned she had the condition: it can really happen to anyone—famous women included. While postpartum depression is a highly-personal experience and not everyone is comfortable speaking out about it, these strong mamas chose to share their stories—and we can all learn something from them. [For more of this story,...
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A Brief Overview of Post-Partum Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (mathewsopenaccess.com)
Note: Parenting with ACEs can present us with extra challenges. Being pregnant, giving birth and breastfeeding can all be difficult for many of us. The stresses all parents experience can be compounded depending on our own emotional and physical well-being and the support we have (emotional, financial, family, community). In addition, we might have to consider thing such as going on, staying on or going off of drugs for some period of time during and following pregnancy. We don't talk a lot...
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A community-based approach to supporting substance exposed newborns and their families
This information brief highlights a community-based approach to supporting families and newborns affected by substance use. MA EfC developed this brief to address the profound intersection between the Massachusetts opioid crisis, Federal mandates for the development of Plans of Safe Care for substance exposed newborns, and, the MA EfC focus on increasing social connectedness as a means to reduce child maltreatment.
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'A Lifeline' For Doctors Helps Them Treat Postpartum Depression (NPR)
By Ruth Chatterjee, January 15, 2020, for Morning Edition For 1 in 7 pregnant women and new moms, things can feel off. They can have trouble sleeping or feeling connected to their baby, feel weepy, have low energy. They could be clinically depressed, and depression during or after pregnancy is very treatable if it's diagnosed. But only a small percentage of those women get the treatment that they need. Massachusetts is trying to change that. NPR's Rhitu Chatterjee has this story about how...
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A Post in Honor of World Mental Health Day: ACEs - Childhood Traumas - Are the Mother of Almost All Addiction and Disease.
Community is the anti-trauma. Children who grow up in trauma are wired for trauma -- it is the lens through which they see the world -- unless that trauma is disrupted by a love of peace. That peace comes from quiet moments reading, time in nature, time when there is no fear or expectation. It takes a lot for a parent with high ACEs to learn how to calm the mind and body enough to provide that calm space for children. ACEs are crafty. Their impact pops up across the lifespan, and for women,...
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A prescription for... resiliency? [politico.com]
When mothers arrive at Ruth Slocum’s parenting classes, she encourages them to sit on the floor and play with their babies as they talk about first foods or coping with sleep deprivation. She and her co-instructor offer bubbles to blow, and they snap pictures that the women can later turn into scrapbooks with materials they provide. During mothers-only sessions, the women talk about how to recognize and respond to a baby’s cues and how to manage “big feelings” of their own. Slocum’s...
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A staggering one-in-three women experience physical, sexual abuse [un.org]
24 November 2019, UN News Here is the grim reality, in numbers: A third of all women and girls experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, half of women killed worldwide were killed by their partners or family, and violence perpetrated against women is as common a cause of death and incapacity for those of reproductive age, as cancer, and a greater cause of ill health than road accidents and malaria combined. The prevalence of the issue, “means someone around you. A family...
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Ensuring Young Children Have Healthy Meals During the Coronavirus Pandemic [clasp.org]
By Rebecca Ullrich, CLASP, March 23, 2020 Practically overnight, the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically altered the daily lives of our nation’s children and families. While everyone—regardless of race, age, gender, or socioeconomic status—is experiencing the pandemic’s effects, the long-term fallout won’t affect all of us equally. Families with low incomes, communities of color, immigrant families, women, the elderly, and people with disabilities who have long been economically...
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Every Woman Was Once a Girl: Why We Need to Talk About the Unique Biological Effects of #ToxicChildhoodStress and #FemaleAdversity on Women’s Bodies and Brains
This is Part Two of my Female Adversity: The Female Body and Brain on Toxic Stress series. (CRUCIAL NOTE HERE BEFORE YOU READ: Boys’ immune systems become dysregulated in response to #toxicstress too, and that leads to disease and changes to the brain that we also need to talk about more openly AND compassionately. Today I’m focusing on girls’ unique immune response to #toxicstress.) So, exactly what happens in a girl’s body, in response to #toxicstress, that leads girls to be more likely to...
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Facing a suicide crisis in his country, this African psychiatrist enlisted grandmothers to step in (washingtonpost.com)
On any given afternoon in a discreet area outside health clinics in the capital of Harare, and surrounding cities, an elder woman can be found on a bench listening intently to another person’s stories. She’s affectionately called a “grandmother,” an appropriate term for her role offering comfort, encouragement and a ready ear. But she’s no one’s grandmother, at least not of the people who sit with her on the bench. Rather, she’s one of 300 older Zimbabwean women who have been trained to...
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Facing Postpartum Depression: The Honesty, Courage and Support It Takes to Seek Help for PPD
“Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able” – Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the Yellow Wallpaper, 1892 It is wonderful to see the birth of a child greeted with warm enthusiasm and support. We celebrate the joy of a growing family, and the excitement of a new life. Relatives and friends often provide gifts and extra help. But for some new moms, motherhood brings on many complex emotions besides the happy ones. While we may greet a new baby with happiness and delight –...
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Family Separation: It’s a Problem for U.S. Citizens, Too (www.nytimes.com)
Excerpts from article written by Shaila Dewan . To read the rest of this article in the New York Times by Shaila Dewan, go here .
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Fatherlessness is harder on Father's Day, but 'father figures,' other role models fill in (usatoday.com)
More than one in four fathers in the United States who have children 18 or younger now lives apart from their children, according to Pew. A movement is growing toward shared parenting or at least collegial “co-parenting” that recognizes the importance of having two parents in children's lives. And in states like Virginia and Kentucky, legislation was recently passed to encourage joint custody. At the same time, federal health officials, educators, doctors, social workers and researchers are...
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Fearing Coronavirus, Many Rural Black Women Avoid Hospitals to Give Birth at Home (PEW TRUST)
By April Simpson, April 18, 2020, PEW Trust Black women are two to three times more likely to die from causes related to pregnancy than white women, regardless of income or education. Black midwives could be part of the solution, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, but restrictions on midwifery make it difficult to practice in many states. Pregnant women in Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi have been calling nonstop to CHOICES Midwifery Practice in Memphis, but the center is...
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#Female Adversity: Growing Up With Female Adversity: The Female Body and Brain on Toxic Stress Series
One thing readers know about the work I do and the books I write, including Childhood Disrupted , The Autoimmune Epidemic , and The Last Best Cure , is that I focus on the intersection of neuroscience, immunology and emotion – while shining a spotlight on WOMEN’s experiences. Connecting these dots is always an underlying theme in my work. Women, girls, toxic stress, the female brain and immune system, autoimmune disease and chronic physical and mental illness — if you care about any of...
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For Addicted Women, the Year After Childbirth Is the Deadliest [pewtrusts.org]
Katie Raftery was in a Massachusetts prison for drug-related crimes when she found out she was pregnant with her second child. A longtime heroin user, she was released to a residential drug treatment program where she stayed for seven months, until her baby was born. She got through pregnancy and drug treatment without a hitch and delivered a healthy baby boy with no complications. But at exactly six weeks after childbirth, Raftery said she started feeling lonely, empty and disengaged. The...
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From Promise to Practice: Aligning Housing and Services to Support Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence [howhousingmatters.org]
Historically, approaches to ending homelessness and those for ending IPV have operated, at best, in parallel. Despite evidence that domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness among women , youth, and families and that abuse and its impacts continue long after survivors leave relationships, very few survivor-centered housing options exist . But this is beginning to change. Ending homelessness for families and youth is now a national priority. In response to this shift, several IPV...
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Frontiers of Resilience - Echo Changing the Paradigm Conference 2018
"Frontiers of Resilience" is the theme of Echo's Changing the Paradigm conference in March 2018 and we wanted to make sure that ACESConnection members got a preview of our not-to-be-missed speakers and workshops as well as a special discount (see end of article). The much anticipated Dr Ken Hardy will be speaking on the "Healing the Hidden Wounds of Racial Trauma." (He was scheduled to speak at our conference in March but a snowstorm prevented him from traveling.) The preeminent scientist on...
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Gathering in Topeka, Kansas for the Educators’ Art of Facilitation Chapter III
I never believed that a man who abuses anyone physically, emotionally or verbally is simply a monster.That's too simple.There is a reason why men do what they do, and don't do and in order to help men and women to not be hurtful to themselves or others we must as I said in my last post ”help them heal.” We must advocate for a world in which we don't punish, we transform. I have always believed this on many issues, from domestic violence to drug addiction to other acts of criminality. We...
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Gathering in Topeka, Kansas for the Educators’ Art of Facilitation continued
We can not solve problems from a distance from ourselves or from each other. The way we muster the courage to heal is to walk the journey together. Any effort to create policy change, structural change, or even programatic change will not succeed unless there is an explicit healing perspective. It begins with a deep understanding that we all come hurt and that those hurts often mean that in striving to relieve our own pain we hurt each other. “Hurt people, hurt people.” It is simplicity on...
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Girls From Low-Income Backgrounds Are Truanting Because They Can’t Afford Sanitary Products (www.buzzfeed.com) & Commentary
Girls from lower-income backgrounds are missing days of school because they can’t afford sanitary products. A campaigner with Freedom4Girls, a organisation that provides women and girls in Kenya with sanitary products, told BuzzFeed News they were contacted by a concerned police officer working in a school in Leeds who had noticed a pattern in some girls’ truancy. “There is a problem, but we just don’t know how big,” campaigner Tina Leslie told BuzzFeed News. She was told by the officer,...
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Going beyond asking what happened: building beloved community
“Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.” –bell hooks One of the most notable descriptors of trauma-informed care is shifting the question of what is wrong...
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Health Care System Fails Many Transgender Americans (npr.org)
In the basement of Casa Ruby in Washington, D.C., transgender men and women in their late teens and 20s, mostly brown or black, shared snacks, watched TV, chatted or played games on their phones. Many of them, said Corado, are part of the 31 percent. That's 31 percent of transgender Americans who lack regular access to health care. The finding comes from a new poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Corado pointed to one crucial word...
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Helicopter vs. Free-Range Parenting: How The Child-Rearing Techniques Affect Kids' Adult Lives [MedicalDaily.com]
Parents often say that raising a child is one of the most rewarding and important roles you'll ever play. While there is no clear “best” way to raise a child, recent survey results from Kobe University in Japan have revealed the lasting effects that different rearing techniques can have on children’s personalities, wealth, and overall happiness after they’ve left the nest. For the project, the researchers surveyed 5,000 women and men about their relationships with their parents during...
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Helping New Parents Make Room for Uncertainty
A new program for parents and infants, thanks to generous support from Mill Town Capital , is coming to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The Hello It’s Me Project shines a spotlight on these tender new relationships, investing resources around the birth of a baby with the long-term goal of building a healthy community from the bottom up. When world-renowned child development researcher Dr. Ed Tronick spoke in the spring of 2018 for an audience of a wide variety of practitioners in Berkshire County...
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How a Men's Group Helps Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse
By Bert Pepper MD., March 18, 2020, Psychology Today How a men's group helped survivors deal with secrets of the past. When I was a young psychiatrist, I worked with Vietnam veterans traumatized by what happened to them, what they had seen, and what they had done. As I treated these veterans and studied PTSD , I realized that what I was learning could apply to help women. The first rape crisis units and shelters for battered women opened in the 1970s, at which time we also began learning...
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How Do You Heal After Pregnancy Loss? For These Couples, The Answer is Publicly (nationswell.com)
About one in four women who become pregnant will miscarry, and one in 160 will experience a stillbirth. Of those women, a growing number are dealing with the devastating pain and grief in new ways, particularly in their use of social media. Sharing their personal stories, it seems, helps these couples deal with their grief and begin the process of healing. Sharing on social media helps families break through the isolation of miscarriage and stillbirth, according to Denise Cote-Arsenault, a...
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How It Feels & How We Heal: Parenting with ACEs Chat Quotes (You Tube, Database, PDFs, Links)
Parenting with ACEs is sharing inspiration, information, and expertise from our chat series in 3 formats. Parenting with ACEs: How It Feels & How We Heal Quote Collection (pdf version below as well) Quotes Database (pdf version below as well) Links to Chat Transcripts and before and after-the-chat blog posts. Thanks to everyone who showed up, who shared, and who is doing the important work that is our mission (prevent ACEs, heal trauma, build resilience). We know that work happens...
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How Living in a Black Female Body Incites Perpetual Attack [psmag.com]
Before scores of professional athletes brought black Americans' thorny relationship with love of country center stage, did you know that, in 2014, a black girl in Texas had started her own protest ritual of sitting during the Pledge of Allegiance? Much like how today's athletes are citing racial injustice as reasoning to exercise their First Amendment rights, the Houston senior, who has declined to be named, recently stated the following: "We live in a country where there isn't justice and...
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How Parental Incarceration Affects a Child’s Education [TheAtlantic.com]
This past summer,The Atlantics Sarah Yager wrote about the rising popularity of prison nurseries as a means of saving costs, enhancing morale, and reducing recidivism among the ever-growing female inmate population. Such...
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How Racism May Cause Black Mothers To Suffer The Death Of Their Infants [npr.org]
Editor's note: This story contains language that may be offensive. In February 2009, Samantha Pierce became pregnant with twins. It was a time when things were going really well in her life. She and her husband had recently gotten married. They had good jobs. "I was a kick-ass community organizer," says Pierce, who is African-American and lives in Cleveland. She worked for a nonprofit that fought against predatory lending. The organization was growing, and Pierce had been promoted to...
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How Schools Are Handling An 'Overparenting' Crisis [NPR.org]
Have you ever done your children's homework for them? Have you driven to school to drop off an assignment that they forgot? Have you done a college student's laundry? What about coming along to Junior's first job interview? These...
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The Tragic Myth about ADHD [blogs.psychcentral.com]
A new report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the number of teen-aged and young adult women being medicated for ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) has risen by 344%. The CDCP noted that in 2006 about 1% of the female population were medicated for ADHD, but by 2015 the percentage had climbed to 4%. The study focused on women between the ages of 15 and 44 who had private insurance. About 5% of the general population has ADHD. The disorder used to...
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The trauma of second-generation Holocaust survivors [www.theguardian.com]
Morgan's note: This great article has a story about the Goldbergs and the Franks (as in Anne Frank, whose diary is widely read, and her family), and how the daughter of Hilde Goldberg seeks to share her family story as a way to find her voice, be liberated, and move forward. Read the rest of the article here . Morgan Vien, Practicing Resilience for Self-Care and Healing
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'They Took My Kid': Rural Docs Help Moms Fight Addiction [medpagetoday.com]
By Ashley Lyles, MedPage Today, November 19, 2019 Patient: I'd gotten pregnant again and I was using through my whole pregnancy, and I didn't receive prenatal care. He was born and he's fine and everything. The [Department of Social Services] let me bring him home. Then a week after I had him, I relapsed really, really bad. Then, I got really messed up and they took my kid. Reporter: The opioid epidemic has taken a toll in rural areas, especially on pregnant women. Doctors and healthcare...
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TIC: News and Notes for the Week of October 21, 2019 [dhs.wisconsin.gov]
ACEs, Adversity's Impact There is only one boat: The myth of normalcy by Dr. Gabor Mate Understanding historical trauma to strengthen community Childhood trauma linked to early, premarital childbirth and poor health for women Early life racial discrimination linked to depression, accelerated aging When mothers are killed by their partners, children often become 'forgotten' victims. It's time they were given a voice Children's language skills may be harmed by social hardship Does racism...
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To Zoe’s Mom: I See You
I am not even sure where to start. But, I know I need to write about this. I need to give this to the world. Perhaps to another mother who is facing the darkness and can’t see her way out. Perhaps she is watching her children caught in the cyclone that is her life. I think she is who I am writing this for. And maybe for me too. I am doing some amazing work with a community that is fast becoming dear to my heart. I look at the people who keep showing up that are trying to wrap their heads...
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Trauma-Informed Social Justice: Q&A with Dr. Bukuloa Ogunkua
Cissy's Note: I work with people who challenge systems and policies, who reform or start non-profits, and who see hope and promise where others see despair or destruction. While some folks shake their heads or shrug indifferently in the face of injustice and suffering, others organize, mobilize, and channel their time and energy towards making a change. Maybe a physician hosts an annual conference bringing trauma-informed approaches to medical practice. Perhaps a woman shares ACEs 101...
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Treatment is Prevention: An Argument for Trauma-Informed Mental Health Treatment
By ACEs Connection members Andrea Blanch , Ph.D. and David Shern , Ph.D. It is becoming increasingly clear that toxic stress and trauma play an important role in the development of mental health and addictive disorders. We have recently...
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Trigger Points — finally, a parenting book for moms and dads who survived child abuse [acestoohigh.com]
Trigger Points is the first book written, edited, published by survivors of childhood abuse geared towards parents who are survivors. THE FIRST! THE ONLY! It includes essays from more than 20 men and women survivor parents...
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Untreated perinatal paternal depression: Effects on offspring (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
Note: So many of us mistakingly believe hormone-related changes in pregnant women are the only cause of depression for new parents. Not so, as many fathers and adoptive parents know. This abstract suggests the following: Hence, facilitating access to vigorous and evidence based treatments is a public health opportunity for improving the quality of life of depressed parents and their children. Evidences emerging from this review actually suggest that the traditional gender-focused approach to...
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Webinar: Cultivating Our Best Selves in Response to COVID-19 | Tuesday, March 17 at Noon PDT
How to use the skills of the Community Resiliency Model (CRM) for self and others to be the calm in the storm as we face the unknown. Free Webinar Tuesday, March 17 at Noon PDT Speakers: Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW Linda Grabbe, PhD, FNP-BC, PMHNP-BC Zoom Webinar Registration Link: https://zoom.us/j/715837300 Additional ways to join are listed at the bottom of this post. About the webinar leaders: Elaine Miller-Karas is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Trauma Resource Institute and...
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Webinar: Key findings from the Listening to Mothers in California Survey
Webinar: Key findings from the Listening to Mothers in California Survey. For more information and to register, please see below. Webinar is Thursday, September 20 , from 12-1:00 PM In 2017, a team led by the National Partnership for Women & Families surveyed more than 2,500 women in California about their views and experiences with childbirth. The results, which will be released September 12, reveal what is and isn't working with maternity care in the Golden State. Join us Thursday,...
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Weinstein Accuser Criticizes Defense Lawyer for ‘Disgusting Way’ of Treating Sexual Assault Survivors (www.lawandcrime.com)
Cissy's note: Another great interview with @Louise Godbold keeping the conversation centered on survivors, the ACEs study, healing, and change. She talks about how "trauma begets trauma.," in a way that gives a wider context and remains hopeful. I'm so grateful for Louise and her tireless work and insights, even when it means making herself vulnerable and allowing us to get beyond headlines to understand, at every step the experiences of survivors who come forward as well as organizations...
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Weinstein Accuser Criticizes Defense Lawyer for ‘Disgusting Way’ of Treating Sexual Assault Survivors (www.lawandcrime.com)
Cissy's note: Another great interview with @Louise Godbold keeping the conversation centered on survivors, the ACEs study, healing, and change. She talks about how "trauma begets trauma.," in a way that gives a wider context and remains hopeful. I'm so grateful for Louise and her tireless work and insights, even when it means making herself vulnerable and allowing us to get beyond headlines to understand, at every step the experiences of survivors who come forward as well as organizations...
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What If I Told You?
What if I told you that I was a victim of child sex abuse? As a survivor of child sexual abuse , I have a clear understanding of the importance of addressing stigma and shame as it pertains to sexual abuse, sexual assault and rape. Victims, especially young children, often do not disclose sexual abuse. Those who are witnesses of child sexual abuse, or who are trusted by survivors enough that they confide in them, are often ill-equipped to handle the responsibility. And, many times, parents...