Pat Hays has written a devotional book that gives wonderful insight into the joys and struggles that parenting a child with emotional special needs presents. Her book, My Tears in His Bottle: prayers from the heart of a special needs’ mom , contains excerpts from her personal prayer journal as she worked through the last fifteen years of balancing her calling to be an adoptive parent with the roadblocks she encountered in her neighborhood, friendships, school district, marriage, and church...

Whilst I'm not promoting this book, I am trusting Chris Kresser, a 'functional nutritionist', in his 'endorsement' of Dr Kelly Brogan, to a degree at least. It was Chris Kresser who really started a conversation years ago about gut health, way before the mainstream medical cohort were embracing it. As to a Paleo diet, it's fraught with contentious toing and froing of its benefits, or lack thereof. Depends who you listen to! Chris Kresser seems to have a more nuanced approach to Paleo...

I agree that nutrition is important. I find that people don't drink enough water, and consume too much sugar and caffeine in drinks, and that only keeps the adrenal system activated as well as hosing the glucose/insulin system, already exacerbated by constant stress. It is however, the last place I go when dealing with traumatized people. I have discovered that if they start with a modality that releases the trauma, and teaches self-regulation, the self-regulation will spread to other areas...

Hi Mem, I don't know anything about this particular book or author but I'm a big fan of functional medicine and how my own functional medicine person addresses toxic childhood stress in adults. Thanks for sharing! Cissy

Yes, Cissy. No harm in trying things out of mainstream ideas if it makes sense. Personally I've never been able to stay on one of these type of diets, but have always felt good eating more wholesome food. I try to use the adage: would someone 200 years ago recognise this as food?! There's a big push by some of the functional medicine people to get people to try these ways of eating to ensure against, decrease or at least halt deterioration of the auto immune response, that is caused by...

And yes Leckey, lots of water!

Chris: Thank you for sharing this. The title immediately got my attention. As an parent with high ACEs, I have been constantly raised up by adoptive parents who have learned and shared what they have learned about love, attachment, trauma and parenting. It has not only benefited my parenting but my own healing. Because, unlike many of us with high ACEs in childhood, who have a whole family and maybe generations and generations with high ACEs, that's not always the case with adoptive families...