Here's another in a little series we're posting over on the Lancaster County (PA) ACES & Resilience Connection site to promote a regular practice to "take five" (minutes) for self-care. Sharing with the wider ACES Connection community in case it's helpful. Peace. Be well, everyone. In an article last week in Harvard Business Review, titled “That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief”, grief expert David Kessler names the multiple types of losses we’re experiencing in the midst of the...

Awe: a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder. An overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like. Here's another in a series of "Take Five for self care" posts we're putting on our Lancaster County (PA) ACEs & Resilience Connection page. Wanted to share them here for the broader ACES Connection community. Carl Sagan once said, "Every aspect of nature reveals a deep mystery and touches...

Hi ACES Connection community - over at our Lancaster County (PA) ACES & Resilience Connection page, we've been posting a series called "Trauma Informed Care Take Five" or "TIC TAKE FIVE". Here's one of them - just wanted to share in case it's helpful to others out there. Hope everyone is finding ways to stay safe, healthy, and resilient. ...

One plump, juicy, dusty purple Concord grape. That’s all it took for a sudden, overwhelming mix of rage, loss, sadness, and panicky fear to flood over me, leaving me sitting in my kitchen, shaking, heart pounding, with tears streaming down my face. Then, blind-sided, I wondered, What the hell just happened? The short answer: That one tiny grape was a trauma trigger, though I’d had no idea before popping it into my mouth that it would be. It turns out that the smell (and taste) of that one...

(Cissy's note: I asked/begged Melanie Synder to share this post with the wider ACEs Community as it had only been shared on the newly formed Lancaster County, PA ACEs & Resilience Connection Community . Often, those involved in ACEs initiatives are flat out and hard-pressed to find any time to share blog posts or photos. When possible, please do. Posts need not be long, in-depth, or capture all the work the community has done or is in the middle of.... Share a snippet, a celebration, a...

The outpouring of responses to my blog about my Mom’s addiction (https://traumainformedlancaster.wordpress.com/2017/05/14/what-my-moms-addiction-taught-me-about-shame-resilience-and-grace/) has made me realize how many families are in this same struggle. As I’ve told some of the people who contacted me to thank me for sharing it: it’s been a long road to this place and I’m still learning and faltering and crying and getting back up every day. But, if my sharing the struggle this vulnerably...

Today would have been my Mom’s 76th birthday. Mom died eight months ago after a 50+ year battle with the grave disease of addiction and, in her later years, significant mental health issues. Here's what my mom's addiction taught me about shame, resilience, and grace: https://traumainformedlancaster.wordpress.com/2017/05/07/what-my-moms-addiction-taught-me-about-shame-resilience-and-grace/

Like the thousands of miles of mountain roads I've driven on this 3-week trip to visit trauma-informed communities in the Pacific Northwest and Canada (I drove a total of 3,011 miles, to be exact!), the road to develop a trauma-informed community has loops, twists and turns. And as with any journey, there are bound to be wrong turns, dead ends, roadblocks, detours, and days when you just plain get lost. Thankfully, there are increasing numbers of tour guides and roadmaps to help...

Here's a second post from my recent visit to Walla Walla to learn all I could from them about how they've developed a trauma-informed community. ( ICYMI: here's my first post mapping out Walla Walla's step-by-step approach to building a trauma-informed community ) Integrating the knowledge about ACEs, brain science, and resilience into practice has been a cornerstone of Walla Walla's trauma-informed community initiative. At every monthly meeting of their Community Resilience Initiative (CRI)...

Like the sweet onions for which Walla Walla is famous, the story of this community's 10+ years of investment in becoming a Trauma-Informed Community has many layers. Teri Barila is the person widely recognized as the initial champion and catalyst for Walla Walla's trauma informed approach, after she attended a conference in 2007 where Rob Anda, one of the original authors of the ACEs study, challenged attendees to take the information he had presented about ACEs and "get something started in...

Another stop on my 3-week fellowship trip, visiting trauma-informed communities in the Pacific Northwest and Canada, was in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Here's a summary of some of the work they're doing to implement trauma-informed care in their agencies that serve children, youth and families: Coeur d'Alene's journey to implement trauma-informed practices in their schools and youth-serving agencies got kicked off in a big way with a keynote presentation in October, 2014 to the Idaho School...

Here's another post from my 3-week fellowship trip, visiting trauma-informed communities in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. This one is about the Calgary Urban Project Society, or CUPS, and how they're leveraging brain science and collaboration to end cycles of poverty and trauma: The Calgary Urban Project Society, or CUPS, was founded in 1989 with a vision to help people overcome the challenges of poverty and attain brighter futures. Over the past couple of years, with their involvement...

Our local community foundation has awarded me a year-long fellowship to delve into the topics of trauma, trauma-informed communities and resilience. Part of the fellowship includes a 3-week trip I'm currently on to visit agencies and communities that have done some in-depth work to implement trauma-informed care, to learn all I can from them to take back to our own community in Lancaster County, PA. I am blogging about each of the places I visit and thought the ACES Connection community...

The RMO for Returning Citizens, a prisoner reentry coalition in Lancaster County, PA, is leading an effort to build the foundation for a trauma-informed criminal justice system there. Our efforts to train all corrections officers and parole officers about trauma are highlighted in this article: http://lancasteronline.com/news/local/trauma-informed-training-for-lancaster-county-corrections-and-parole-officers/article_dfc9a524-292f-11e7-b008-8f12e2682c1f.html