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Cissy's Note: This post below with an offer for some free tickets to see Wrestling Ghosts was shared in the Parenting with ACE s community, thanks to @Charlotte Graham! However, I know many care about parents, parenting with ACEs who are on the main page so I'm sharing here as well with my review of this movie. I saw it last week and IT IS SO POWERFUL!!!! This documentary is so honest, raw, real, and powerful. It made me sad, hopeful, heartbroken, and encouraged all at the same...

Self-care is the sum of things you do for your emotional and physical wellbeing. Getting enough sleep, brushing your teeth, and eating well are classic examples of good physical self-care. How to take good care of yourself emotionally may be harder to see from the outside. Your ability to view your inner world with compassion and curiosity is one sign. Noticing your emotions and thoughts with gentle awareness is another inward sign of emotional self-care. Knowing how to find and turn to...

Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran The Surviving Spirit Newsletter August 2018 Hi folks, Hard to believe that we are at the end of August, I swear the older I get, the faster time flies by, even when I have purposely slowed down my life, at least I think I have. Oh well, as they...

Allie Armbruster had a charmed childhood, but she almost lost it all to drugs, including heroin. Now 32, she's sober and studying to be a lawyer to help change the system from the inside. Her road out wasn't easy. For Allie Armbruster, 32, the road to law school was as rocky as they come. The application process alone took guts. "These are law schools, and the goal is to learn and uphold the law," she told 11Alive's Jennifer Leslie . "I've spent the last 10 years of my life breaking the law.

Tulane child psychiatry professor Dr. Stacy Drury will receive the 2018 Norbert and Charlotte Rieger Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement in October at the AACAP’s 65th Annual Meeting in Seattle. Photo by Paula Burch-Celentano.

Sara is a young, pregnant, single mom who didn’t know where to start. There were so many wolves at the door and she had no clue as to which one to take on first, or even if any of them could be driven away. Her toddler son had just been removed from another child-care center due to behavioral challenges. Without child care, Sara was on the brink of losing her job, which meant the family would be evicted from their apartment and forced to live on the streets. It seemed she had nowhere to...

A mom walked her child in to school at an Oklahoma City Public School last week and the child candidly shared that they'd slept in their car and that is why he was late. This isn't a made for television movie or something that only happens in other cities ... this really happened and happens quite often in our schools. More than 3,000 Oklahoma City Public Schools students identified as homeless last year. Homelessness causes children to be tardy, absent, hungry and suffering from anxiety and...

Virtual Webinar Date: Tuesday, August 28, 2018 Time: 1:00-2:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time Cost: Free To register, Click here today! In this webinar you will learn about: • Learn the 7-Question Motivational Phone Call Script and additional techniques such as “stick and move” and “complements” to quickly put your parents at ease and excited to attend treatment. • A free monthly article using a real case to illustrate the step-by-step process of how the FST | Family Systems Trauma Model utilizes...

Amy Moseley, community coalitions manager for Children’s Trust of South Carolina, had worked with mothers and babies in maternal-infant health care and with children in foster homes, with victims of sexual assault and individuals with disabilities. She’d noted how poverty and other adversity unspools over the lifespan, how health disparities can persist through generations. Learning about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) “was seeing the thread between all the areas I had worked in. It...

Alexandria, VA - In recognition of the challenges a new school year presents for children and adolescents, Mental Health America (MHA) is providing new resources on student mental health ( http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/back-school ), with an emphasis on web-based tools that can be easily shared across social media platforms. This year, MHA has developed tools and resources to help increase understanding of how traumatic events can trigger mental health issues and is providing materials...

Ryan Crotwell's memories of growing up in French Settlement are filled with mental snapshots of abuse at the hands of his alcoholic father. First he remembers kneeling on rice. Then the whippings started — "switches, belts, whatever was within reach." Crotwell, 34, recalls acting out in school and receiving brutal punishments at home. He was institutionalized for psychiatric treatment twice before his 10th birthday and diagnosed with various psychological conditions including attention...

With school starting up this month, there is a lot of excitement (if not always enthusiasm) brewing in my house and throughout all of our neighborhoods as kids get prepared. New clothes, school supplies, sports practices, registration and finally the first day of school. All of the annual rituals. That’s what it should be about. All the fun stuff before they get back to work. Increasingly, though, our schools find themselves thinking about safety. Parents worry. Parkland, Florida, may be a...