Photo Credit: Shutterstock This Mother’s Day I want to acknowledge the countless women across our nation who dread this day for many reasons: abandonment, abuse, adoption, abortion, and other often-hidden secrets. My thoughts today are especially with women who’ve undergone the heartbreak of abortion. A survey sponsored by CareNet in 2015 verified that more than 4 out of 10 women who’ve had abortions were churchgoers when they had their procedures. This statistic should cause Christians to ask serious questions about where the church is missing the mark in meeting the needs of women and teens ..read more

Photo Credit: Shutterstock By Shelly Beach When we hear the word “Christmas,” our minds typically run to festivities, food, family, gifts, and gatherings. But for many people, Christmas can feel far from joyful. The realities of life ultimately bring separation, grief, loss, brokenness, and other challenges. Physical, relational, and circumstantial blows can overwhelm us. We may  feel we don’t have the strength to face the holiday season and be tempted to withdraw from those who want to offer support. The Christmas blues can also come from harried schedules, unmet expectations, busted bu ..read more

One of the most frustrating aspects of living with trauma and PTSD is isolation. It can be virtually impossible to explain how you feel or why you feel the way you do to other people. This is often a source of shame and embarrassment. People with PTSD often find themselves isolating. They may also give partial explanations to friends and loved ones because they know that the reality that they live will sound senseless to those who haven’t experienced it. Friends and family cannot understand how trauma alters the physical function of the brain because they have not experienced it. People make ..read more

Blog by Shelly Beach © 2017 Sunday, September 10th marked World Suicide Prevention Day While I never attempted suicide, I have struggled with depression and several periods of life when I struggled with suicidal thoughts. I’ve never written or spoken much about these battles, but perhaps my story can help someone gain perspective on their own depression. I experienced a childhood sexual assault when I was around ten years old. I never told anyone what happened because of overwhelming fear and shame. I was in trauma therapy for weeks before I even remembered the experience. My most profound ex ..read more

Raising Stalker Savvy Kids: How to Keep Kids Safe from Abuse By Guest blogger Dawn Damon, award-winning author of When the Woman Abused Was Me   In June of this year, 51-year-old Wisconsin school bus driver was charged and jailed after keeping a 15-year-old girl on his bus, pressuring her to come home with him, and forcing unwanted physical contact with her. He was charged with child enticement, child abduction, and stalking. This case and others like it are far too prevalent. We can bewail culture, poor parenting, the government, schools, the media, political parties, or the high school ..read more

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It’s been eight months since I walked through emergency room doors and asked for an MRI of my brain. I knew something was up. It was the same old feeling I’d had in 1999 when I knew something was seriously wrong with my head. And I was right. My MRI showed a large SOMETHING. The problem has been figuring out what it is. My diagnoses have ranged from an aggressive and deadly form of tumor, to multiple sclerosis, and finally to a stroke or bleed in my brain stem. Over the course of eight months, I’ve been seen by more than seven doctors in multiple hospitals. Every doctor has overturned the diag ..read more

  Tomorrow, July 21, I will be talking about Love Letters from the Edge: Meditations for Those Struggling with Brokenness, Trauma, and the Pain of Life on WZZM TV’s Take Five. The show airs from 9-10am ET. Be sure to ask friends, educators, medical professionals, ministry workers, those who work in the justice system,and employers to listen in for valuable information on post-traumatic stress disorder and the toll it takes on those who have experienced trauma in its many forms ..read more

Photo Credit: photographyblog.dallasnews,com Most people associate PTSD with veterans returning from war. They don’t see PTSD as an issue that affects babies, children, teenagers, young adults, professionals, in fact, anyone of any age, background, race, or from any demographic region can be affected by PTSD. PTSD is far more common than we think. If you attend a rural church of 100 people, at least 5 adults and adolescents in your small congregation suffer from PTSD. If you attend a church of 1,000 in an urban area like Atlanta or Chicago, approximately 250 adults and adolescents ..read more

Few people have received more media coverage in the past weeks than Josh Duggar and the Duggar family. The family became well-known for their television show (Fill in Ascending Large Numbers here) Kids and Counting. Josh is the oldest of the Duggar children and in recent years has become an outspoken political voice among conservatives. (Paint target on his back here from both political liberals and Christians whose feathers are ruffled by girls in dresses and home schooling, among other Duggerish practices.) I’ve watched the show on and off, which I find preferable to reality choice ..read more