We are RESILIENT! Once we learn to regulate an overactive stress response, ACES survivors are well experienced to work under stress, make sound decisions and overcome ANY and ALL obstacles. WE LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY!! We must learn to mitigate the harm and leverage our strengths!

During the 2018 ACES Conference in San Francisco, I had the incredible opportunity to present my work on Historical Trauma. 

In our journey to healing Historical Trauma and ACES, we must use a Relational Approach because all healing begins with relationships. Science has proven that positive therapeutic outcomes are more dependent on the relationship between the clinician and the client than the therapeutic discipline used during the healing sessions. Indigenous practitioners view healing through a Salutogentic lens rather than a Pathogentic model. Instead of focusing on what is wrong, we build on what is RIGHT! The beautiful child that curses you to your face and throws the chair across the room has the gift of courage and transparency. Once you love that child despite the behavior, build a relationship and she feels safe enough to regulate the stress response, that child's behavior will reflect love, courage and loyalty; her true self can come forth. Ethno-therapy is a great tool to support establishing a positive self-image. Understanding your ethnic group's collective history in a particular country or community, can ignite the healing process and allow for the development of self-worth. 

The Traditional Medicine contribution to healing indigenous people starts with Decolonization. Through the process of colonization, we have been conditioned to experience life through the eyes of dominant culture. In Indian Country, when a child hears the voices of the ancestors that child is often diagnosed with some form of psychosis. In many indigenous communities around the world, the veil between the physical world and the spiritual world is thin. Ancestors talk. Deities manifest. We cannot invalidate the parallel realities. In African cultures across the Diaspora, children are groomed to care for their parents, grandparents and elders. A 10 year old boy that watches over his sick mother will be described as parentified in western behavioral health. If that same child watched over his sick dog, he would be lauded as kind and compassionate. That same 10 year old who cared for his mother, will grow up and care for his elderly mother in his home with his family around him. Remembering our egalitarian ways will help restore the family, which is the foundation of indigenous communities. It is important to Re-engage with our cultures, and restore our religious rites and ceremonies. We must intimately know our cultures and how to practice them in day to day life.  In regaining our identity, we will begin to heal.

***Please find the attachment to view the poster that simplifies the The Symphony of Traditional Medicine and Western Medicine to Heal ACES and Historical Trauma. poster-draft2.pdf