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Americans don’t feel safe. More than half worry “a great deal” about crime and violence, the highest rate seen in 15 years. Nearly the same proportion believe shootings will become more common over the next decade. And doesn’t it feel like things are getting worse? Each week offers a new horror—the massacre in Orlando, five dead officers in Dallas, a man bleeding out before the world on Facebook Live. “Crime is out of control, and rapidly getting worse,” Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday. “Not...

I highly recommend this post written by Wendy Ellis, DrPH that introduces a short (8:53 minutes) movie about the Building Community Resilience (BCR) movement and puts it in the context of current themes, including racism, inequity and other difficult issues we all find difficult to talk about. Dr. Ellis is the lead investigator for the Building Community Resilience workgroup and Manager of Child Health Policy in Nemours’ Office of Child Health Policy and Advocacy. At the end of July, she is...

In this essay, Sonari Glinton reflected on something he learned from Elie Wiesel: In my college youth, I was quick to want to "get beyond" race. I apologized for what I thought was an unmanly outburst in class. I admonished myself for "not being able to get past it." I remember him leaning in and asking why I would want to forget. Memory, he said, wasn't just for Holocaust survivors. The people who ask us to forget are not our friends. Memory not only honors those we lost but also gives us...

***We have partnered with IEANEA and we will offer ISBE PD credits to Illinois Educators*** CALLING those dedicated to using best practices in human resilience to help others prepare for, respond to, and grow through disruptions and trauma! Join forward-thinking leaders, practitioners, researchers, educators, and community organizations at the beautiful Chicago Cultural Center to address the urgent need, methods, and benefits of building personal and psychosocial resilience. Working across...

How much do you know about Childhood Trauma? Got 30 seconds ?

How much do you know about Childhood Trauma? Got 30 seconds ?

I was raised by Jewish grandparents who grew up during the Great Depression. (I guess this makes me an honorary Baby Boomer, even though I’m technically Generation X.) My grandmother loved to tell me stories told to her by her father, my great-grandfather Max Schumacher, who emigrated to the US from Poland in 1914, and died before I was born. “Your great-grandfather was sitting on the stoop with this little girl, and a Cossack rides by on his horse and pop! shoots the little girl in the...

In May, the Alaska Resilience Initiative partnered w/ First Alaskans Institute & the Native Village of Chickaloon to convene a gathering of Alaska Native and Native American people from every region of Alaska who work on issues of child & intergenerational trauma. The goal was to seek input that would be used to guide the Alaska Resilience Initiative, the training-of-ACEs/Resilience trainers and the curriculum used to present on ACEs, and the overall framing & approach to this work.

This post first appeared at Waging Nonviolence . “It’s okay mommy…. It’s okay, I’m right here with you…” Those were the words of 4-year-old Dae’Anna, consoling her mother Lavish Reynolds after she witnessed the police shoot and kill her boyfriend Philando Castile. Those words are now scarred into the psyche of America, much like words that came before it: “Hands up, don’t shoot.” “I can’t breathe.” “It’s not real.” [For more of this story, written by Kazu Haga, go to ...

What happens to you, emotionally and psychologically, when you watch the news? What happens when you hear of devastating news within your family, at your workplace, or in society at large? For many of us, the first response is often shock, then fear, and perhaps anger or resentment. For individuals who have a history of trauma, primarily severe trauma, repeatedly watching the news or hearing of traumatic news can cause the individual to regress into further trauma symptoms and sometimes a...

Dehvon Davies remembers the mood of last Thursday’s protest in Dallas, right before shots rang out that would lead to the deaths of five police officers . “Most of the people who kind of seemed like citizens, like your regular person who came to join, were very calm,” says Davies, who identifies as multiracial and grew up in a suburb of Dallas. The speakers, on the other hand, “were very passionate, and they shared personal experiences, which they were angry about and you could see that.”...

Naja Tunney’s home is filled with books. Sometimes she will pull them from a bookshelf to read during meals. At bedtime, Naja, 5, reads to her 2-year-old sister, Hannah. “We have books anywhere you sit in the living room,” said their mother, Cheryl Tunney, who curls up with her girls on an oversized green chair to read stories. Naja and Hannah are beneficiaries of Reach Out and Read, an early intervention literacy program that collaborates with medical care providers to provide free books...