Blog

High percentages of incarcerated women suffer from untreated PTSD. One quickly expanding program is successfully using dance to help them move forward. When 38-year-old Cassy Bustos first saw a poster advertising the Dance to be Free program at La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo, Colorado, she felt a rare spark of excitement. It was Spring 2016 and Bustos was in the midst of serving her three-and-a-half year sentence for first-degree burglary and third-degree assault. Prison was...

Judy Kane moved to Tarpon Springs from Richmond Va. in 2015 to be closer to family. In Richmond, she worked in the fields of Information Technology and Residential Real Estate. In Tarpon, Judy started a new business, Aligned Consciousness where she helps people rewrite subconscious self-limiting beliefs. The month before moving to Florida, Judy met Peace4Tarpon partners Robin Saenger and Mary Sharrow at an event where Judy first heard about Peace4Tarpon and Trauma Informed Community. The...

By Patricia Cohen, The New York Times, July 4, 2019 HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — A widening income gap and sagging social mobility have left dents in the American dream. But the belief that anyone with enough gumption and grit can clamber to the top remains central to the nation’s self-image. And that could complicate Democratic efforts to frame the 2020 presidential election as a referendum on a broken economic system. Americans, who tend to link rewards to individual effort, routinely overestimate...

Understanding ACEs research can aid us in facilitating social transformation. It changed how I see myself, others and nature. I am convinced it can help each of us.

Back in the spring, I was in the middle of putting together a panel on community interventions for ACEs when the conference planning chair suggested adding Tara Shephard. We had an amazing panel that day, but Tara hit it out of the park. Her love and care for African-American girls in Arkansas and the adversities they face was apparent in every word she spoke that day. To give some background, Tara is an author, education and mental health advocate; an auditor for the American Correctional...

A few months ago, a school nurse who experienced a school shooting reached out to me to express her feeling of isolation and asked for support. She wanted to know if I knew of any other school nurses she could connect with who also lived through this nightmare. The nurse has asked to remain anonymous and I certainly respect her decision. Her email left me reeling, thinking of how I could support this very brave, but very wounded school nurse. Where is the support for school nurses who have...

An important discussion about use and misuse of mindfulness. From the apps on our phones to the magazines at our grocery stores, we're inundated with tips on using "mindfulness" to reduce stress. But San Francisco State professor Ronald Purser argues that the mindfulness advertised is more like "McMindfulness": well-packaged, individualized complacency that preserves the status quo. Instead of linking our unhappiness to larger social structures, we identify it as self-imposed -- and are told...

"Between the ages of twenty & forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity" ~W.H. Auden During my 20s, I definitely did a lot of the work aimed towards answering the question, "Who am I?" I remember it as a time of feeling completely confident one moment and then unsteady &...

#Independence Day #ACE Study Inner #Resilience & 2 books to recommend: 1. Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child = Understand Your Self 2. Your Inner Voice = Self-Healing techniques that are clinically-proven Most people do neither & repeat the same mistakes for decades. Do most people know how to finish with unfinished emotional business? Rapes, ACE Scores, Traumas, deaths, divorce, breakup, PTSD. failures, catastrophes, problems from upbringing? In 1 week, I co-facilitated...

Wrestling Ghosts provides audiences a rare opportunity to bear witness to the healing process. At each and every screening we hear that seeing what healing looks like changes lives. And without fail we are asked “how can I show this movie?” and we weren’t satisfied with the answer we could give them. Our focus has been community and educational screenings, but not everyone can organize a screening and we are committed to reaching as wide an audience as possible!

By A. Hosack, P. Berman, & K. Hecht My mom told me good friends help. I can tell Tommy is scared. I know something that might help. Davy is sitting next to Tommy at the library. They had just heard a mom read a book about the 4th of July. To make the book more interesting, the new librarian had turned on a video that had fireworks in it. Davy’s mommy had warned him that fireworks could make very loud sudden noises. When the video came on, he jumped each time he heard the firework explode...

Building Resilience and Belonging through Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Starr believes, as its founder Floyd Starr did, that there is no such thing as a bad child. And, when you provide a safe environment, when you treat a child with dignity and respect, it changes a child’s heart. And that, in the end, is what changes a child’s life. It’s a powerful story that we have been helping children write for over 100 years at Starr Commonwealth. For all students on Starr’s campus, this approach is applied...