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By Terry Gross, NPR, July 8, 2019. In 2015, Travis Rieder, a medical bioethicist with Johns Hopkins University's Berman Institute of Bioethics , was involved in a motorcycle accident that crushed his left foot. In the months that followed, he underwent six different surgeries as doctors struggled first to save his foot and then to reconstruct it. Rieder says that each surgery brought a new wave of pain, sometimes "searing and electrical," other times "fiery and shocking." Doctors tried to...

By Madeline Will, Education Week, July 5, 2019. HOUSTON — On Independence Day, hundreds of educators marched to a shelter for unaccompanied migrant children, chanting calls for freedom. The protesters are delegates to the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union. The NEA is holding its annual representative assembly here July 4-7. But the protest was not sanctioned by the NEA—it was a grassroots march organized by educators, who were horrified to learn their...

By Matt Barnum, ChalkBeat, July 1, 2019. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have catapulted a long-running debate about “busing” and school integration back into the news. Harris’ criticism of fellow Democratic presidential candidate Biden for his vigorous opposition to court-ordered desegregation in the 1970s has also sparked fresh debate about whether those efforts were successful. What do we know? In the most basic sense, they did succeed. School segregation dropped substantially as courts and...

By understanding the difference between sex and sexual abuse, trauma survivors can understand that unwanted touching they experienced in the past was not sex. Sex is always consensual in a way that feels safe and pleasurable. Abuse occurs without your consent, and is never your fault.

I wish you peace along your healing journey. I hope you find your positive affirmations that keep you motivated and moving. If you want to borrow mine, just remember . . . you are lean, you are strong, you are grounded, you are motivated, you are happy, and you are a dancing machine!

Today I'm honored to be a guest to The Grass Gets Greener podcast, sharing the story of inter-generational trauma, the unintended consequences of leaving a violent relationship, and the heavy-lifting needed to pursue healing that I wrote about in my memoir.

ACEs, Adversity's Impact ACEs linked to higher health care costs in adulthood Beyond the ACE score: Examining the relationship between timing of developmental adversity, relational health and developmental outcomes in children Toxic stress: The other health crisis politicians should be talking about California doctors to begin screening for trauma Lupus patients with adverse childhood experiences report worse disease activity and overall health, study says Dr. Gabor Mate on childhood trauma,...

By Rebecca Ruiz, Mashable, March 23, 2019. Teens don't need to read the headlines to know that they and too many of their peers are feeling lonely, sad, anxious, and suicidal. Recent headlines, however, confirm what's happening in their lives. This week, a Pediatrics study documented a 28 percent increase in psychiatric visits to the emergency room for American youth. The research, which looked at survey data collected between 2011 and 2015, found even higher rates of increased visits for...

By Ingrid Helander, PsychCentral, July 1, 2019. Do your nerves overwhelm you sometimes? Do you frequently find yourself burdened with anxiety or stress? Anxiety attacks and symptoms of stress can be overwhelming and terrible. You don’t like how you feel, but you don’t understand it, and you don’t feel like there’s any was you can possibly find out how to deal with anxiety when it strikes you. Anxiety symptoms can be severe and stress management is hard when your own body doesn’t know how to...

A newly established national group of experts known as TIHCER (pronounced “tīs-er”) recently convened for a first-time working meeting at The University of Oklahoma in Tulsa to advance the important cause of T rauma- I nformed H ealth C are E ducation and R esearch. The gathering brought 26 members representing 10 states. This diverse group of experts comprise members from a variety of healthcare professions — medicine (physicians and residents/medical students), clinical psychology,...

Graduation day - a picture of my mother and me after I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminal Justice (Corrections) studies from Kent State University in June 1977. This was seven years after that fateful summer of 1970 when my mother and I realized that our family needed some help. When I look back at that time, I marvel at the love of GOD and the love from both parents as they began to realize that the harmful consequences of their domestic violence squabbles and of my father’s...

BY SIMON ROMERO, ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, MANNY FERNANDEZ, DANIEL BORUNDA, AARON MONTES and CAITLIN DICKERSON, NEW YORK TIMES, JULY 6, 2019. CLINT, Tex. — Since the Border Patrol opened its station in Clint, Tex., in 2013, it was a fixture in this West Texas farm town. Separated from the surrounding cotton fields and cattle pastures by a razor-wire fence, the station stood on the town’s main road, near a feed store, the Good News Apostolic Church and La Indita Tortillería. Most people around...