Tagged With "Quality of Early Relationships"
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Trauma-Informed Care is Not a Program For Your Clients
Understanding the long-term impact of developmental trauma, how trauma impacts the brain, and the science of resiliency is a powerful first step toward change. It is exciting to watch people begin to let this knowledge soak in… and even more exciting when they begin to ask “Now what?” As I have worked with organizations across the state, I have found that often what they are really looking for is the curriculum or recipe book that they can follow for their clients or students. Even those...
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Trauma-Informed is Messy Business…
Words like trauma-informed and resiliency get thrown around a lot these days. And for many, the visions they call up are a bit too glossy. You see resiliency and trauma-informed aren’t always pretty. Resiliency can look like closing the bathroom door and collapsing in tears… but then washing your face and going back into the world, carrying the belief that you can survive and the hope that things will get better. It looks like begrudgingly going on that walk with a friend, when the little...
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Two studies shed light on state legislators’ views on ACEs science and trauma policy
New and returning lawmakers take the oath of office on day one of Washington state's 2017 legislative session. — Jeanie Lindsay/Northwest News Network As advocates prepare to see how ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) science, trauma, and resilience play out in the 2020 state legislative sessions — many beginning in January — they are undoubtedly asking: “What does a legislator want?" It may be a stretch to play on Freud’s question: “What does a women want?", but the query captures how...
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UPDATED with The Human Element: Hosting a Film Screening to Start or Grow an ACEs Initiative: How-to Guide
Movie screenings of documentaries, such as Paper Tigers or Resilience are popular ways to introduce communities to ACEs science. Cissy White provides details about how to put on a screening event.
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USDA Announces Record-Breaking Funding for 2019 Farm to School Grants [USDA.gov]
By USDA, July 16, 2019 WASHINGTON, July 16, 2019 – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced today the award of more than $9 million in USDA Farm to School Program grants that will increase the amount of healthy, local f oods served in school s and c reate economic opportunities for nearby farmers. This year marks an all-time high of funding and projects in the program, with grants supporting 126 selected projects across 42 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. These...
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When Hidden Grief Gets Triggered During COVID-19 Confinement
first published by The Meadows 4/15/20 Our sense of loss during the current COVID-19 crisis can trigger hidden emotions from when we experienced a sense of loss before. Whatever early losses you have had in your life — whether they be your own divorce, your parents, or both, or the abandonment of one parent, a childhood or parental illness or death, financial upheaval, constant moving around, or growing up with parental addiction or adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) — they are likely to...
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YBRS survey and report from Monroe County, New York
Elizabeth Meeker, an ACEs Connection member from Monroe County, New York shared that her county schools added ACEs questions to their Youth Behavioral Risk Survey (YBRS) in 2015, which is administered to students in schools. They were kind enough to share the instrument as well as a summary report of findings (both attached here). Elizabeth has indicated that she is available to answer questions that you all may have about the implementation of the survey. Thank you Elizabeth, for sharing!
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3 Concepts to Help Trauma Survivors Move Forward Into Healthier Relationships
It’s good, healthy and human to want love and seek it out. We live longer, healthier lives when we feel close to someone safe. Some people feel painfully disconnected, and long to open up to others. But then they stop themselves from reaching out. As therapists, we want to empower people to build more meaningful connections. For all of us, healthy relationships matter . In fact, deep relationships are essential to life as a healthy human being. For trauma survivors, the act of deepening...
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6 Habits of Hope (dailygood.org)
If we are not present, we will not see what’s happening and therefore miss out on life. Conversely, whenever we pay attention, life reveals itself to us Being present also cultivates intrinsic hope because it gives us more choices about how to act and makes it more likely that our choices will be appropriate in the moment. Mindfulness Being present is not only about noticing what is happening in the external world; it is also about noticing what is happening in our minds. In fact, you can’t...
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A Critical Assessment of the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study at 20 Years [sciencedirect.com]
This year marks the 20th anniversary of publication in this journal of the first of many articles on the adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) research by Drs. Felitti, Anda, and colleagues. As we celebrate the impact of this seminal research, it is also imperative to assess critically its serious limitations: an unrepresentative study population and narrow operationalization of childhood adversity lead to undercounting adverse experiences and misrepresenting their social distribution.
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ACE Surveillance Study of Teachers and Administrators in Public and Private Schools in Southwest Nigeria, West Africa
Note: These findings were presented at the Child Trauma Conference in Lagos on October 25-26, 2019. Rationale: Many children today live with layers of stress both subtle and overt which in this report are collectively referred to as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Specifically, these ACEs are physical, emotional and sexual abuse; physical and emotional neglect; household dysfunction and domestic violence as well as community violence. The children have a life marked by chaos,...
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ACEs Connection launches Cooperative of Communities
The ACEs Connection Cooperative of Communities launches today. We want to continue to contribute to the ACEs movement for as long as it takes to create a worldwide healing-centered culture based on ACEs science. We want that to take hold in this world in the same way electricity has — we only notice it if it isn’t there.
First, a clarification: Nothing on ACEsConnection.com changes! Membership remains free! Everything our current 300+ communities use stays free, and remains free for new ones.
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Adult-child conversations strengthen language regions of developing brain [sciencedaily.com]
Young children who are regularly engaged in conversation by adults may have stronger connections between two developing brain regions critical for language, according to a study of healthy young children that confirms a hypothesis registered with the Open Science Framework. This finding, published in JNeurosci, was independent of parental income and education, suggesting that talking with children from an early age could promote their language skills regardless of their socioeconomic status.
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BABY ACES: When we consider the traumas that qualify as ACEs, babies need their own list.
Babies are obviously very different from older children developmentally, including their ability to understand and process trauma. Indeed, a baby may be completely unaware of an actual ACE— say, the incarceration of their father— which a middle schooler would be painfully aware of. Yet at the same time, the baby could be much-more-acutely impacted by the secondary effect of this same ACE: a sad, stressed, and distracted mother. Similarly, if a parent dies in a car accident when a child is in...
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Building Organizational Resilience in the Face of a Ubiquitous Challenge
Ubiquitous: present, appearing, found everywhere. The challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic fit this definition better than any event I have experienced in my lifetime. We each have a moment when our life changed – a before and after COVID-19. For some it was a few weeks ago – when you worried about laying people off, contemplated canceling events or faced confounding questions such as “How do I keep my staff safe?” For many it was the news of Wednesday night, March 11: suspension of...
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Children of the Opioid Epidemic [nytimes.com]
It was not until her third month of feeling unwell, in the fall of 2016, that Alicia thought to take an at-home pregnancy test. Until then, she assumed her fatigue and nausea were withdrawal symptoms from the Percocets she’d been dependent upon since the year before. “When some days you don’t get enough, you could definitely throw up or wake up feeling sick,” she told me. “It was easily confused with morning sickness.” Alicia, who asked that I use her nickname to protect her privacy, was 26...
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Finger Lakes Resiliency Network (FLRN)
The Finger Lakes Resiliency Network (FLRN) is a Trauma-Informed year long Learning Community that provides education, training, consultation, resources and support to providers who are committed to and invested in becoming trauma-informed. The FLRN was designed to foster organizational growth and development; challenging current practices and utilizing support and shared experiences with other schools and organizations committed to becoming trauma-informed. This network will provide the...
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Five Strategies for Engaging Family Partners [nichq.org]
Families have an unmatched impact on their child’s health, especially during the early years of life when children’s rapidly developing brains are laying the groundwork for their future health and wellbeing. To be the best advocates for their children, families need the right supports, whether they be access to public assistance programs like Medicaid and housing, opportunities to build a strong relationship with their child’s health provider, or resources that empower them to support their...
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FLRN’s 3rd Trauma-Informed Learning Community Cohort
The Finger Lakes Resiliency Network (FLRN) is a Trauma-Informed year long Learning Community that provides education, training, consultation, resources and support to providers who are committed to and invested in becoming trauma-informed. The FLRN was designed to foster organizational growth and development; challenging current practices and utilizing support and shared experiences with other schools and organizations committed to becoming trauma-informed. This network will provide the...
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From Compassion Fatigue to Healing Centered Engagement: Turning Trauma Informed Values into Action
To pave the way for a truly strengths-based approach to full healing and recovery for both service users and burned out staff, we must educate them on (1) the central role of primal body responses to trauma (past and present), and (2) the early development of adaptive thoughts and behaviors in response to
traumatic experience.
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Growing Resilient Kids
Resiliency is defined as the ability to bounce back from stressful events we encounter in life. When something we encounter is so overwhelming to us that we become stuck in it, that is one definition of trauma. Resiliency can be viewed as the antidote to trauma. In fact, when we effectively process trauma we have experienced, we often come out the other side far more resilient than before. Our nervous systems have a higher stretch capacity, so to speak. How do we help our kids stretch and...
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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 to Use "Children Impacted by Addiction: A Toolkit for Educators" Thursday, November 1st @ 11 a.m. ET
President & CEO Sis Wenger will address the plight of children living with addiction - an adverse childhood experience (ACE) often accompanied by additional ACEs - in their families, and its impact on their ability to be successful in school. A walk through the toolkit will be included. Register for the webinar here>> NACoA, in collaboration with Addiction Policy Leadership Action Network (APLAN), is proud to announce Addiction Policy Forum's release of Children Impacted by...
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Infancy and early childhood matter so much because of attachment (theconversation.com)
We are born to connect. As human beings we are relational and we need biological, emotional and psychological connection with others . Attachment is the relational dance that parents and babies share together. You can think of this when you see a baby look at their parent and they catch each other’s eyes in a wonderful gaze: the parent smiles and the baby smiles and then the parent kisses and the baby coos. Or, when an infant cries to tell their parent they are hungry, and the parent picks...
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Maternity Group Home Program Funding Opportunity. Applications Due 07/25/2019 [Admin for Children & Families]
Funding Opportunity Application Due Date: 07/25/2019 Maternity Group Home Program *See attached pdf for more info. Description: The Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families' Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) announces the availability of funds under the Transitional Living Program’s Maternity Group Home (MGH) grant program. The purpose to provide safe, stable, and appropriate shelter only for pregnant and/or parenting youth ages 16 to...
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New Intervention Fact Sheet: Parent-Child Care [nctsn.org]
A 7-page fact sheet describing Parent-Child Care (PC-CARE) is now available. A dyadic psychotherapeutic intervention for enhancing the caregiver-child relationship and making behavior management more effective, PC-CARE combines teaching and coaching on how trauma exposure affects children’s mental health. Caregivers can be biological parents, relative caregivers, resource parents, grandparents, nannies, or anyone caring for a child. While caregivers play with the child, therapists coach...
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New Resource for Teens and the Parents/Caregivers who Love Them
In popular culture, the moody adolescent is easily recognizable. Teens are often portrayed as dangerously risk-taking, obstinate, moody and at the mercy of their growing minds and bodies. This unflattering and inaccurate portrayal begins to shape parents’ understanding of adolescence with a skewed perspective, reinforcing the unhelpful belief that this is a stage in the parenting relationship that “must be survived”. At the same time, these low expectations are subversive to the adolescent's...
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Crisis in Care Report
The Greater Rochester Health Foundation convened the Commission on Children’s Behavioral Health in the Finger Lakes in spring 2015, in response to concerns from parents, child care providers, schools, pediatricians and children’s mental health clinicians. They consistently raised alarms about the shortfalls of our region’s children’s behavioral health system: the demands placed on it, its capacity, and in some cases, its quality.
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Panel Discussion: The Need for Promotion and Prevention Efforts
A panel discussion of local representatives from different professional disciplines discussed the data that highlights the need for prevention and promotion efforts. Each panelist provided a single background slide to serve as context for the overall discussion that took place at the Summit. Amy Scheel-Jones: Chief of Planning at Monroe County OMH Dr. Leonard Brock: Executive Director of the Rochester-Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative Jackie Campbell: Director of ROC the Future Dr. Michael...
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Parental Disengagement in Childhood and Adolescent Male Gun Carrying [pediatrics.aappublications.org]
OBJECTIVES: To examine the association between parental disengagement in childhood and adolescent gun carrying and determine whether this association is accounted for by externalizing problems and affiliation with delinquent peers during early adolescence. METHODS: The sample included 503 boys (55.7% African American, 40.6% white, 3.7% other) recruited from first-grade classrooms in Pittsburgh public schools. Multi-informant assessments were conducted regularly (semiannually then annually)...
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"PCEs" and "ACEs" Are Two Sides of the Same "Childhood Experiences" Coin
This collection of reports, shared with edited highlights, is posted in hopes of raising awareness of the importance of Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs). Please share widely on social media. 1. Seven Early Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) with Potential Benefits in Adulthood Below are the seven items on the positive childhood experience (PCEs) psychometric analysis. For each item, respondents are asked to respond "yes" or "no" to a prompt, "Before the age of 18, I was..." Able to...
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Recognizing and Attending to Intergenerational Trauma
A mother brings her 8-year-old son to the pediatrician after his teacher repeatedly asks her to have him evaluated for ADHD. The trauma-informed pediatrician knows that childhood trauma exposure can resemble hyperactivity associated with ADHD. The pediatrician asks the mother to privately complete an adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) questionnaire and asks to do one with the son as well. The questionnaire reveals that the son had witnessed his mom being physically abused by her last two...
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Some 350 Florida Leaders Expected to Attend Think Tank with Dr. Vincent Felitti, Co-Principal Investigator of the ACE Study; Expert on ACEs Science
Leaders from across the Sunshine State will take part in a “Think Tank” in Naples, FL, on Monday, August 6, to help create a more trauma-informed Florida. The estimated 350 attendees will include policy makers and community teams made up of school superintendents, law enforcement officers, judges, hospital administrators, mayors, PTA presidents, child welfare experts, mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, philanthropists, university researchers, state agency heads, and...
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Strengthening Families: Increasing positive outcomes for children and families [www.cssp.org]
We engage families, programs, and communities in building key protective factors. Children are more likely to thrive when their families have the support they need. By focusing on the five universal family strengths identified in the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework , community leaders and service providers can better engage, support, and partner with parents in order to achieve the best outcomes for kids. How We Do It The Strengthening Families framework is a...
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The First Five Years Matters: Quality of Early Relationships determines Lifelong Health
Quality of Early Relationships determines Lifelong Health The first relationship—usually this is between the mother and her infant—has an enduring impact on all later stages of human development. This relationship which occurs has been described by Bowlby’s attachment theory, which at its core, is about how the mother helps the infant regulate emotion. The mother-infant attachment communications are essential because they directly affect the development of the brain. Dr. Allan Schore, the...
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The Many Faces of Grief
“…Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding…. And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self….” – From The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran There are many kinds of loss that we can encounter in life. However, losses surrounding addiction can be particularly confusing; they tend...
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The Ten Books That Changed My Life - Healing ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and Building Resilience
Teri Wellbrock offers a list of those books that had a profound impact on her life and helped her create a life filled with tranquility and joy. While she may not have agreed with every word written, she did find powerful answers, delicious little tidbits, and inspirational guidance within each book.
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The Trauma Resiliency Model: A “Bottom-Up” Intervention for Trauma Psychotherapy (Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association)
Grabbe L, Miller-Karas E. The Trauma Resiliency Model: A “Bottom-Up” Intervention for Trauma Psychotherapy. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association. 2017; 24 (1): 76-84.
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The Who, How, and What of Leadership… and where trauma-informed fits in.
Are we born leaders or is it a skill that we cultivate? Strong leadership is a lot like resiliency. Although we can be born with qualities that may make it a little easier, it develops in relationship with others. It is truly cultivated by building our individual skills, having the support of others, and being willing to do our own work. Being a leader means you know Who you are, you get that How you do the work matters, and you are intentional about What you do. Combining these three...
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"Addiction begins with solving a problem, the problem of human pain, emotional pain"
In his groundbreaking book , In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction , trauma and addiction expert Dr. Gabor Maté writes, “There are almost as many addictions as there are people.” ACEs Connection founder and publisher Jane Stevens read that quote as a springboard to asking Maté to define addiction and explain whether or not it is always rooted in adverse childhood experiences. Maté, along with filmmaker Michelle Esrick and Saturday Night Live star Darrell Hammond,...
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Loving An Orchid: Understanding Child Abuse Trauma's Impact [psychologytoday.com]
By JoAnn Stevelos, Psychology Today, August 21, 2020 As a child, I was an orchid but lived like a dandelion. I have always prided myself on my resiliency, for surviving a long and painful childhood filled with abandonment, psychological, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse . Child abuse can do that to you—give you a false sense of self and what resiliency really looks like. Resiliency is not just surviving. This false narrative of resiliency can take years to undo. One approach is to try...
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8 Categories of Adversity That Shape Health: Adverse Babyhood Experiences (ABEs), ACEs and ACEs+, ACREs, and More
As I've discovered since leaving my career as a family doctor, retraining as a somatic trauma therapist, and scouring the research for 20 years - adversity of all kinds, in all phases of our lives, and in past generations influences our health. As does discrimination. Like ACEs, these 7 additional categories of adversity shape health. They increase opportunities for prevention, identify early indicators of risk, and offer more tools for healing chronic illness and other effects of trauma.
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What Science Reveals About Gratitude’s Impact on the Brain (mindful.org)
New research sheds light on the physiology of gratitude, bringing us closer to being able to understand and harness the health benefits of this powerful emotion. How Gratitude Strengthens the Mind-Body Connection Given the clear relationship between mental and physical health, I thought that understanding what happens in the brain when we feel gratitude could tell us more about the mind-body connection—namely, how feeling positive emotion can improve bodily functions. I also thought these...
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Ben Winter
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The most important thing you can do with your kids? Play with them! says Dr. Bruce Perry
“The most important thing you can do with your children is play with them!” said Dr. Bruce Perry, noted child psychiatrist and author. He was answering the question, “How do we prepare our children to go back to school next fall?” Perry, a brain expert specializing in how children are impacted by trauma, gave a presentation on his neuro-sequential model of brain development to more than 800 people at an Austin Ed Fund event Monday evening. The co-author, with Oprah Winfrey, of the new book...
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Criticizing ACEs in Peer Reviewed Professional Journals Impairs Child Abuse Treatment
Criticizing ACEs in Peer Reviewed Professional Journals Impairs Child Abuse Treatment Jeoffry B. Gordon, MD, MPH May 23, 2021 As a family doc practicing in San Diego I was privileged to hear Dr. Vincent Felitti talk about his inspired development of the ACEs questionnaire and its association with many adult mental and physical diseases directly from him only a few years after his original insight. Yet, although I had a lively clinic and learned how to manage a vast array of medical...
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California advocates press for expansion of visiting rights to incarcerated loved ones
In a recent nightmare, 8-year-old Jovina dreamt that her father got COVID-19. He was getting sicker, but she and her mother weren’t able to get there in time. “There,” in her father’s case, is a cell at the California Correctional Center (CCC) in Susanville, California, nearly 300 miles from where she lives in San Jose. In Jovina’s mind are a swarm of worries about her father’s welfare, her mother Benee Vejar reports. If an earthquake shakes the Bay Area, Jovina says, “What if the building...
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An Indigenous Pedagogy for Decolonization (aupress.ca)
Discussions about Indigenizing the academy have abounded in Canada over the past few years. And yet, despite the numerous policies and reports that have been written, there is a lack of clarity around what pedagogical methods could help to decolonize our institutions. In Sharing Breath: Embodied Learning and Decolonization , edited by Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong, contributors demonstrate how the academy cannot be decolonized while we still subscribe to the Western idea of mind...
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Gentle Men: The Healing Power of Vulnerability (mindful.org)
Growing up, I was taught that traditional male attributes are things like toughness, emotional reserve, strength, power, and staunch individualism. This image of a “traditional man” feeds into once-clear-cut roles like winner and provider . Edward M. Adams and Ed Frauenheim suggest that this version of masculinity is confined : both limited and limiting. In their 2020 book, Reinventing Masculinity , Adams and Frauenheim write, “Confined masculinity focuses more on a man’s sense of...