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I was yet to turn 40, and my body was already breaking down. It had been a few months since I hurt my back carrying groceries. The injury would not heal, hampered greatly because I weighed close to 600 pounds. I had ignored my morbid obesity for years — even after I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. I shrugged and took pills, but still refused to change my diet or embrace exercise. That changed one day in February 2015, when I was reporting a column at Mercy Medical Center and had to stop...

Last October, I wrote the post “ Parenting with ACEs ” that described how, after reading a post by Christine Cissy White , a light bulb went on for me. As a result, we changed the ACEs in Parenting group name to Parenting with ACEs . We felt that was more on target with people’s experiences. I mean, who isn’t parenting with ACEs? (Well, a few very lucky people are, but not the majority….and we’re all on a mission to change that!) Since then, we’ve upgraded and reorganized the group. It’s...

I used to sneak away for a hot bath as often as possible when my daughter was in the need-me-every-minute years. I'd soak long past when the water went cold and I felt guilty at times but sometimes I needed to be alone. To read poetry. To have some physical space. To exhale. I didn't always know where or how to pamper or self-care myself. There were few adults I trusted. I believed in attachment-style parenting and wanted to be there all of the time. And that even made me feel guilty when I...

Appearing before the powerful Senate Finance Committee in Washington, DC, recently, Dr. Maggie Bennington-Davis, psychiatrist and chief medical officer of Health Share Oregon, devoted a significant portion of her testimony to the role of adversity and toxic stress during childhood on adult health, both physical and emotional. She explained how Health Share Oregon—that state’s largest Medicaid coordinated care organization—examined the people with the costliest health bills and found them to...

Efforts to understand and embed trauma informed practice in all types of settings have been accelerated by teaching people the power of re-framing the key question asked by so many providers from: "what's wrong with you?" to "what's happened to you?" Now two nurses in California have made a slight twist to that re-framing - suggesting that health care providers shift from asking patients "what's the matter?" , which typically elicits a response only about current physical distress, to "what...

Mothers who have had children by different partners are more apt to be depressed and stressed than those whose children have the same father — and they might receive less social support, too, according to a new study published in the Journal of Family Issues. "If she has a child with a new partner, is her depression and her parenting stress impacted?" is the question that Paula Fomby, an associate research scientist at University of Michigan, set out to answer with the help of data collected...

Tukaram Jadhav was barely surviving off of his tiny cotton farm when he killed himself last September. His widow, a petite mother of two, pulls her purple sari tightly around her, and says she discovered her husband as he lay dying. "I was the one who found him. I was sleeping and woke up to the powerful smell of pesticides that we use to farm," Bhagyashree Jadhav says. She says she thought there had been a spill. "I asked my husband if he smelled it, then I realized he couldn't speak. He'd...

There is no disputing the adage that “into each life, a little rain must fall,” and the occasional need for a protective umbrella, but what do you do when the shower becomes a downpour that doesn’t seem to quit? One shattering loss can be enough to derail a person for years, even for life. But tragedy seems to stalk some people, and it is reasonable to wonder how one goes on in the face of repeated painful losses. Deborah S. Derman, a professional grief counselor in suburban Philadelphia,...

The ACEs Messaging Group, an ad hoc group of ACE Task Force Members and Community Partners, convened on Tuesday, May 10 th at Friends Center. This meeting served as first re-convening of this group since work that had been done in 2015 around developing messages about ACEs, trauma, and resilience that “catch-on”. The group began by discussing some of this former work and reviewing some guiding principles as they move to narrow messages and test them with focus groups throughout Philadelphia.

This article is written by Darcia Narvaez, PhD and is posted on Kindred Media . It got my attention because the title, How to Stop Disrespecting Your Kids" is geared specifically to parents. I'm a parent. That's rare. Many articles are written about parents but not to parents. And sometimes, articles talk about parents in ways that are so condescending they are hard to read. This article gives parents direct access to the ACEs test and the Aces Too High website which is also great to see. It...

When a child is acting out or not paying attention in school, it might not be because he or she is misbehaving. It might be because a parent was arrested the previous night. Teachers don't always know about the traumatic events a child experiences at home, but a new program being organized in Mercer County could give teachers notice when one of their students need to be handled with care. Andrea Darr, director of the West Virginia Center for Children's Justice spoke May 6 at Mercer County...

In the Resnick Education Wing 10 floors above the main stages of historic Carnegie Hall, a teenage girl named Breanni stood nervously in front of the crowd. She was chosen to kick off the Musical Connections concert this week, presented by Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. JJIE New York Metro Bureau logoBut Breanni stood frozen before her peers and family members, well-dressed in black and white, her long hair styled in braids. She struggled to recite her poem, which would be the...