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In the last 20 years, there’s been a noticeable uptick in the size and reach of foster care alumni networking organizations and events nationwide. Shalita O’Neale has been an active participant in this movement while running her company, Fostering Change Network LLC (FCN). After O’Neale’s mother died when she was 2, the Baltimore, Maryland, native shuttled between family members until officially entering the foster care system at age 13. She has spent her career using that experience to try...

The architect and urban designer Peter Calthorpe was an advocate of transit-oriented development (TOD) and smart growth long before those concepts were buzzwords. In fact, as one of the founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism and the author of the first TOD guidelines (as well as numerous influential books), Calthorpe has done as much as anyone to re-focus American urbanism on walkable, dense, sustainable, transit-rich environments. Now, in an attempt to spread this knowledge even more...

A woman from Honduras, who shall be identified only by her initials, L.C., was granted asylum in an immigration court in Chicago early this year. She came to the United States with her teenage daughter, fording the Rio Grande in Texas, after the girl had the extremely bad fortune of being a passer-by witness to a noonday massacre on a street near their home. Gunmen from the Mara 18 gang murdered eight people, mostly bus dispatchers, because the bus company was balking at paying a tax to the...

When was the last time you beat yourself up for a parenting failure? Perhaps your daughter got a D+ on the math test—and you regret some harsh words. Maybe you’re telling yourself that you bungled advice to your fifth-grader about how to handle an annoying classmate. You couldn’t keep your promise to attend your son’s music recital—and there’s a voice in your head telling you that you’re a terrible parent. But there’s an alternative to that harsh self-talk: self-compassion. According to...

Within days after the tragic killings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, copycat threats started popping up across the country, including my school district. In the weeks since, there have been five arrests made in response to threats against schools in my community. I know students who were so scared to go to school, they just didn’t show up. While no one has threatened my school directly, there has been an additional police presence on campus. Neither I nor my friends feel...

I remember as a twelve year old, sitting alone in our living room after one of our by then typical family melt downs …….trying to make sense of the pain and general devastation of our once very happy family……trying to understand how kind, decent and loving people could cause each other such unrelenting pain, how we could say the things we were saying, hurl insults, act out in anger and rage……I recall saying to myself “wars do these things to people, separate loved ones, wound hearts,tear...

[Editor's note: Dr. Harise Stein at Stanford University edits a web site -- abuseresearch.info -- that focuses on the health effects of abuse, and includes research articles on ACEs. Every month, she's posting the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs. Thank you, Harise!! -- Jane Stevens] Brown NM, Brown SN, Briggs RD, et. al. Associations Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and ADHD Diagnosis and Severity. Acad Pediatr. 2017 May -...

"People do recover from both sexual addiction and sexual offending. I see it every day. They don’t do it alone, and healing does not come easily, but it’s possible for any person who wants it and is willing to put in the work. Usually, once the problematic behaviors are under control, these individuals begin working on the underlying issues (most often various forms of unresolved early-life trauma) that drove them into addiction or offending. That process is incredibly healing, and a great...

Jennifer Donahue, Delaware Office of the Child Advocate, testifies before the HELP Committee (Jennifer Perry on the right) ____________________________________________________________ Some seasoned advocates say legislators are influenced by stories while their staffs are swayed by data. There was some of both at the April 11 hearing on the draft Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018 of the U.S. Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor & Pensions) Committee, but it was the personal stories...

Sixth grader Cayla White (right) helps lead class meditation with Niroga Institute’s Lauren Banister (photo: Laurie Udesky) ________________________________ During the 2014/2015 school year, things were looking grim at Park Middle School in Antioch, CA. At the time, staff couldn’t corral student disruptions. Teacher morale was plummeting. By the end of February 2015, 192 kids of the 997 students had been suspended -- 19.2 percent of the student population. “I was watching really good people...

Trauma is the theme of the 2018 SAMHSA-sponsored (U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day on May 10 th (7-9:00 pm ET) . The virtual town hall, “Partnering for Health and Hope Following Trauma,” will focus on taking an integrated health approach to support children, youth, and young adults who have experienced trauma. The goal of Awareness Days in general is “to raise awareness about the importance of children’s mental health and...

...the chemistry-based explanation leaves out the most important factor: emotional pain. Emotional dysregulation underlies the vast majority of substance use issues. Watching a loved one struggle with any kind of substance dependence fills many of us with worry, confusion, and questions. What can we do? Understanding trauma's role in addiction will help more of us lead the change in attitude we need. If the struggle with drug addiction is so often painful and deadly, why does it happen? How...