Blog

By Somini Sengupta, The New York Times, December 2020 The fires sweeping across millions of acres in California aren’t just incinerating trees and houses. They’re also filling the lungs of California’s children with smoke, with potentially grave effects over the course of their lives. The effects are not evenly felt. While California as a whole has seen a steady uptick in smoke days in recent years, counties in the state’s Central Valley, which is already cursed with some of the most...

Trauma. “A widespread, harmful and costly public health problem. It occurs as a result of violence, abuse, neglect, loss, disaster, war and other emotionally harmful experiences. Trauma has no boundaries with regard to age, gender, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, geography or sexual orientation.” To say that COVID-19 has in some way been a traumatic experience for everyone would be an understatement. It has had far reaching effects on individual health and well-being and economic...

Check out the full job posting here: Case Manager 2 Are you excited about helping people with intellectual and developmental disabilities experience personal growth and development, enjoy meaningful relationships, safely live, and fully participate in communities and activities they choose? We are too! Multnomah County Department of County Human Services invites applications for Service Coordinator positions (Case Manager 2 job profile). This recruitment will be used to fill case management...

Dr. Robert Sege, 12/22/20, positiveexperience.org/blog We wish everyone a relaxing and rejuvenating holiday season! Whatever traditions or beliefs your families hold, this is the time of year when many of us can pause, reflect, and celebrate that the long nights of winter are already getting shorter. Over at the HOPE National Resource Center, we have been thinking about everything we have heard, seen, and read in our personal and professional lives. Children’s experiences form the center of...

In this episode of “Delusional Optimism”, Dr. B talks about wiring the brain for wellness. She explains how our experiences in life, from infancy to adulthood, affect our physical and neurological health. Dr. B also opens a discussion on health inequity and advocates for fairer healthcare practices that will positively impact people’s long term health. Listen to how social determinants influence your health and the health of people around you. “Loving relationships mediate trauma, mediate...

Compassion Prison Project: Transforming Prisons and Communities Compassion Prison Project is the brainchild of award-winning film producer Fritzi Horstman, developed as a result of her own experiences with ACEs. CPP's mission is to transform prisons and communities through compassionate action. ACEs are disproportionatelyhigh within the prison system, so CPP is focused on bringing childhood trauma awareness, education and healing to prisons and communities within the U.S. as well as...

Charles Bruner and Kay Johnson, 12/21/20, positiveexperience.org/blog Our country and the world are eager to move toward the coming new year. In 2020, the triple crises of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic downturn, and reckoning on racism have elevated attention to social injustice in both the health care system and our country as a whole. Because of COVID-19, the public and policy leaders have heightened awareness of the importance of physicians, nurses, community health workers, child care...

Part of me wants to scream fuck Christmas. The other part of me wants Christmas to mean something more than presents and stuff. Christmas is so triggering in an already toxic society that says it’s our duty to keep abusive family members in our lives rather than seek peace and health, and it is because, by that understanding, we find ourselves at battle with ourselves over our sovereignty. I think we need to hit the pause button and recognize for a moment that right now, and no, I don’t mean...

If you look around all the friends and partners you’ve let into your life, and discover that there’s a high proportion of trainwrecks and jerks, guess what? Your red flag detector is broken. It’s broken! It’s supposed to be warning you when bad people try to walk into your life (this goes for bosses and jobs too). You’re supposed to get a bad feeling, a sense of aversion to people and situations that are going to hurt you! What shuts down that crucial function is abuse and neglect in your...