With all the carnage we have seen recently in the news, we need to consider what we know about talking with someone who has lost a child. Parents who lose children to illness and accidents need and deserve to be supported by their families and friends to help them move through the painful process of grieving. But how do we learn to be that person who comes close to someone in this horrific pain? In some ways, responding with loving messages and actions, expressing compassion, and just being present makes sense and can happen almost naturally. Let’s learn how to be that person who knows how to ..read more

Once again, our headlines are filled with the story of the tragic shooting and multiple deaths in Uvalde, TX. For days the news headlines have reported on the horrific details of this tragedy. Podcasts, newscasts, journals and social media speak of the ways to make such tragedies something that never happens again. Yet here we go again with the same rhetoric we have heard before and with nothing actually preventing future attacks on schools. Each innocent child and adult killed, each wounded person, each who witnessed the massacre, each parent, sibling, classmate whose lives have been changed ..read more

I would be remiss to continue my normal posts on non-profit leadership in light of the tragedy that has occurred with the mass shooting at the Robb Elementary School. This has been a devastating week in our country and for all those who have been involved in this brutal set of murders in this Texas community. I send sincere sympathy and condolences to the families who have been so tragically impacted by the loss of their children and loved ones. I am so concerned for all the students who may never feel safe in a school again. I grieve for a community that has been completely disillusioned by ..read more

In my last blog I shared some of my thoughts about why Will Smith behaved as he did at the Oscars, suggesting his amygdala hijacked his behavior, a concept proposed by Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence. As I shared my thoughts with friends and colleagues, I received mostly strong opinions that a person has to be able to control impulsive behavior regardless of their trauma history. I decided to check in with my friend and mentor, Dr. Bruce Perry, to see what his thoughts were. I was taken aback by information he shared with regard to how the amygdala actually does and doesn’t ..read more

Some of the lasting symptoms of COVID-19 can be defined as collective trauma. In fact this form of PTSD will leave lasting effects to many Americans and others in the world. As we have conversations with one another we recognize that we are just not the same as we were two years ago. Many of these deficits are due to this collective trauma phenomenon. This syndrome is described in an article by Hope Reese in a recent article on the Discover Magazine website. It is something that we should be aware of as we assess our own emotional and relational health post-COVID-19.  Here are some excer ..read more

As important as it is to understand what trauma is all about, it is really the symptoms after having experienced it that can so profoundly impact someone’s life. Whether physically painful and/or emotionally devastating, trauma often leads to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with its many very troubling symptoms. These symptoms include ongoing fear and anxiety, being easily triggered by any reminders of the initial trauma, being dissociative and/or hypervigilant and sometimes reenacting aspects of the original traumatic experience. PTSD can greatly interfere with a person’s quality of lif ..read more

By now most everyone is aware that the pandemic has been a source of extreme sustained toxic stress that has contributed to many mental health issues for adults and children: anxiety, depression, loss of motivation, desperation, frustration, and anger to name a few. Those who have trauma histories can be more deeply impacted because the pandemic and its accompanying stress resonates against the stresses of previous traumas. For those who have not had had significant traumas in their lives, the pandemic can be a first experience of feeling powerless and having to deal with life-threatening iss ..read more

ABC’s 20/20 aired a documentary on November 19 entitled Escape from a House of Horror in which Diane Sawyer interviewed two young women who described their lives and their escape from living for decades in a family where all the children were horrifically abused. We learn how a family of 13 children were starved, beaten, chained to beds, lived in filth and were never allowed out of the house. Because so much was captured in photos and videos, viewers were exposed to many graphic scenes and descriptions of the atrocities these children endured, from the oldest child who was in her late 20s dow ..read more

A significant part of supporting student success in school is the regularity of their attendance. Often as we are dealing with students who have struggled to succeed in school, truancy and lack of attendance is a significant part of their profile thereby leading to inability to achieve academic success. It is easy to assume that this lack of attendance is a part of their rebellion or resistance to be in school. However, it is often the case that there are other factors within their home or community that may be contributing to these absences. In a recent article published on The Conversation ..read more

How important is it for you to oversee your life? Do you believe you actually are in charge of your life? We may think we know why we are behaving the way we are and we may think we know how to control our behaviors. I think an important awareness is that, for several reasons, we are only partially in charge of our lives. Let’s consider the impact of significant trauma in someone’s life. Much of my focus in these blogs has been on the nature and principles of trauma. Those of us with significant trauma histories cannot just snap our fingers and decide not to have those histories continue to i ..read more