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Founded along the Merrimack River in the early 19 th century, Manchester, N.H., sprang from a utopian vision: create an industrial center to rival its English namesake, complete with sprawling, red-brick textile mills, workers’ quarters, schools, libraries, theaters and parks for all who lived and worked there. But as manufacturing sagged in the latter half of the 20 th century, the city lagged as well. Today, in a transformation that has spanned the past several decades, the city’s business...

Untold numbers of students go to school each day distracted, angry or highly anxious as a result of adverse experiences in their lives. Resilience Re-Set is a campaign to help communities understand why many of these students misbehave or disengage, and give adults resources to support students who live with toxic stress. Resilience Re-Set begins Nov. 1 and is led by KPJR Films in partnership with Childhood Abuse America, American Academy of Pediatrics, ACEsConnection and The California...

Once you see ACEs and trauma you find them everywhere.

Almost daily, Texans read news headlines about another case of inadequate foster care, Child Protective Services workers fleeing their jobs, children at grave risk of abuse ignored by our child welfare system, and, consequently, preventable child abuse deaths. What doesn't make headlines is the number of Texas children who are being saved. We flawed humans often assume our personal experiences are valid reality, and we unconsciously project that experience onto others. For many who've had...

As a single mother of two, Chippewa Falls resident Christiana Wald knows raising children can be difficult. Especially if those children have already gone through the trauma of divorce and separation. Her daughter suffers from severe anxiety so bad Wald said she used to “literally tear rooms apart,” or throw tantrums in public spaces. “People would look at her and think, ‘oh, there’s a naughty kid,” Wald said. “Yeah, she’s behaving in such a manner, but she’s not really a naughty kid. She’s...

The city of Los Angeles is home to 4.9 million people who identify as women , 14,461 of which are counted as homeless. Yet the majority of them, citing fears of assault, harassment, and rape , go unseen. In fact, According to the most recent Greater Los Angeles’ Homeless Count , 65 percent of homeless women are domestic abuse survivors. In order to survive, many women hide, dress masculine, or seek out well-lit areas to sleep in. The notion that women are unsafe alone in public has persisted...

Scott Web, an ACEsConnection member who works at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, sends out this list of links every couple of weeks. Most of the links are from posts on ACEsConnection, and, as you can see, they're organized by category. Some of you have asked if the summaries and links we post can be put into categories. Thanks so much, Scott, for sharing this with the ACEsConnection community! ACEs, Adversity's Impact A year to find out: Can living alone help heal trauma? The...

Two things helped me parent with PTSD and manage PTSD symptoms. They are: 1. learning about attachment 2. learning about ACEs Leaning about ACEs gave me context and learning about attachment gave me tools for how to do parenting differently than it had been done in my own life. That's it. For some reason, neither had been discussed in my traditional "feel it to heal it" type of therapy. When I learned about ACEs I was not shocked that some people have high ACE scores. I was shocked that not...

Copied from my own blog, edited for profanity: theduramater.wordpress.com You guys... I had the most serendipitous day yesterday (Oct 28th), you wouldn't even believe it. I kid you not, by the end of the day I was seeing rainbows. Jake and I went to TEDx Charlotte, held this year at Central Piedmont Community College's Halton Theater, in the Overcash building, and it was an incredible experience. We couldn't get a babysitter for A, our youngest, so we chose which talks we were most...

Imagine if, during the Jim Crow era, a newspaper offered advertisers the option of placing ads only in copies that went to white readers. That’s basically what Facebook is doing nowadays. The ubiquitous social network not only allows advertisers to target users by their interests or background, it also gives advertisers the ability to exclude specific groups it calls “Ethnic Affinities.” Ads that exclude people based on race, gender and other sensitive factors are prohibited by federal law...

One evening 10 years ago, I rushed home from work to pick up my one-year-old daughter at her new caregiver’s house. When I arrived, I found my daughter strapped into her high chair, where she had apparently been restrained for hours. She fell apart when she saw me, sobbing and reaching out from the straps of the seat; her lower body was covered with a rash and a diaper that had not been changed in hours. The day before, her first there, had been little better: she had spent significant time...

Epidemic depression is occurring at a time when the field of mental health appears very robust. There are more mental health professionals treating more people than ever before in history: psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, licensed social workers, counselors, and therapists of all kinds. We have a powerful “therapeutic arsenal” of drugs to make us happier, calmer, and saner. When I leaf through the pharmaceutical ads that take up so much space in psychiatric journals, I get the feeling...