History. Culture. Trauma

This week's episode is an excerpt from a recorded interview of Donna Jackson Nakazawa conducted by PACEs Connection team members, Carey Sipp & Natalie Audage. The interview occurred on October 12th, 2022 and is the second installment of PACEs Connection's Connecting Communities One Book at a Time initiative. In this interview, Donna Jackson Nakazawa discusses her latest book Girls on the Brink (2022), which focuses on the impact of modern society on adolescent girls. Anyone caring for girls today knows that our daughters, students, and girls next door are more anxious and more prone to depression and self-harming than ever before. The question that no one has yet been able to credibly answer is “Why?” Now we have answers. As award-winning writer Donna Jackson Nakazawa deftly explains in Girls on the Brink, new findings reveal that the crisis facing today’s girls is a biologically rooted phenomenon: The earlier onset of puberty mixes badly with the unchecked bloom of social media and cultural misogyny. When this toxic clash occurs during the critical neurodevelopmental window of adolescence, it can alter the female stress-immune response in ways that derail healthy emotional development.

Pride Month occurs in the United States every June to commemorate the Stonewall riots, which happened at the end of June 1969. During this month, we recognize the impact LGBTQ+ people have had in the world. This week's episode is an encore discussion with Joe Brummer. Brummer uses his own life experiences to impact schools across the country to shift their paradigm towards strengthening individual and student school experiences through restorative practices. Joe is the survivor of child abuse, bullying, and two separate violent anti-gay hate crimes. What began as a personal healing response to the trauma has transformed into professional involvement in community and restorative justice. Since 2010, Joe has actively helped schools implement peer mediation programs and school-wide restorative practices. As a private consultant beginning in 2015, Joe has designed a trauma-informed approach to restorative practices and infused this model in schools. He is the author of the book, Building a Trauma-informed Restorative School.

Each year millions of Americans face the reality of living with mental health struggles. The collective trauma of COVID-19 has exasperated our country’s mental health crisis. May is Mental Health Awareness Month. This week we have an encore discussion with Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz. Lewis-Pankratz will share her life experience in rural poverty and the impact systems, including foster care, had on her journey. Rebecca grew up in addiction and poverty. Against all odds, Rebecca, with three young sons in tow, was able to fight her way out of poverty and the trailer park in 2011. She was able to do so because a local poverty resolution project found Rebecca and activated her journey. She later went to work for that non-profit and then went on to build multiple projects like it to help more families.

As we continue to reflect on Mental Health Awareness month, please enjoy this encore episode with special guest, and former PACEs Connection team member, Dr. Donielle Prince. Research has found that there is credibility to the term mind-body connection. There is a clear link between our thoughts, feelings, emotions and our physical body. At this point, should we, as a society, stop separating mental health and physical health? Are they not one in the same? Please join us this week as our guest, PACEs Connection's very own Dr. Donielle Prince, discusses the mind-body connection with our host Ingrid Cockhren. Through contributing to and coordinating the 2023 PACEs Connection Creating Resilient Communities Accelerator, Donielle has continued PACEs Connection’s mission to support the growth of both statewide and local community resilience initiatives. Donielle brings to this work over 20 years’ experience as a program evaluator, focused on education, community based youth programming, mental health, and its intersections. Donielle’s core expertise is in understanding those elements of programming and initiatives that present challenges, as well as those that yield the potential for change. Donielle’s signature evaluation projects included youth development studies, trauma informed training evaluations, and educational equity focused program and curriculum evaluations. Donielle’s experience has taught her that evaluation research is above all a communication tool- the ability to examine a program and then organize those findings, a process which helps to bring clarity to a program mission. A well crafted mission then becomes a platform from which to create and sustain tangible change. In the community, Donielle’s experience with research, policy and reform is reflected in her deep commitment to advocating for social justice. This work has included youth mentoring, including first-time offending juveniles and foster youth; as well as community based organizing against state violence, educational inequity, and lack of access to mental health supports, particularly for members of marginalized communities- similar to the community where she was raised, in East Palo Alto, CA, located in the “Silicon Valley”. Currently, Donielle resides in Sacramento, CA. Donielle has studied education, counseling psychology and human development, and race and racism, earning her B.A. at Wellesley College (1995), her MS. Ed. at the University of Pennsylvania (1996), and her Ph.D. at Stanford University (2006).

Each year millions of Americans face the reality of living with mental health struggles. The collective trauma of COVID-19 exasperated our country’s mental health crisis. May is Mental Health Awareness Month. In this encore episode, our co-hosts, Ingrid and Mathew, speak with Robert Sege, MD, Ph.D. Dr. Sege is a Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, where he directs the Center for Community-engaged Medicine and is a core faculty member of the Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute. Dr. Sege is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Social Policy in Washington, is part of the Leadership Action Team for Massachusetts Essentials for Childhood Team, and serves on the boards of the Massachusetts Children’s Trust and Prevent Child Abuse America. He received the 2019 Ray E. Helfer award from the Alliance of Children’s Trusts and the American Academy of Pediatrics. He has served on national committees for the American Academy of Pediatrics and has been lead author on several important AAP policies, and received several national awards for his work. Using an evidence-based approach, parent-centered interventions begin with recognizing the strengths and stamina that families bring to raising their children, and then developing practical approaches that improve the systems support them. He has led teams that developed a new model for primary care for infants in low-income communities (DULCE) and a new framework for working with children and families, (HOPE). His extensive speaking and publication list include contributions to the prevention and treatment of child maltreatment and youth violence. He is a graduate of Yale College, and received his PhD in Biology from MIT and his MD from Harvard Medical School. Bob lives in the Boston area, where he and his wife Karen have raised three young adult children.

Self-care has become a buzzword when discussing solutions to the mental health crisis in BIPOC communities. Is self-care enough to mitigate the impact of systemic racism, intergenerational poverty, and historical trauma? This week our guest is Candice Valenzuela. Candice will provide insight concerning the need for collective care to heal communities, especially communities struggling with systemic racism and historical trauma. Candice is a MFTI who has worked at the crossroads of education, justice and community healing for the past 16 years. Candice has extensive experience in mindfulness, trauma informed care, anti-oppressive practices, cultural competency, liberatory education and youth empowerment. https://www.candicerosevalenzuela.com/

In this episode, our hosts will interview PACEs Connection's newest team member, Kahshanna Evans. Kahshanna is the new director of PACEs Connection's Creating Resilient Communities Accelerator, also known as the CRC. Kahshanna Evans brings her passion for uniting people through stories and trauma-informed awareness to her role as the Director of Creating Resilient Communities at PACEs Connection. Kahshanna has been a leading strategic thinker in various industries, including communications, tech, professional services, and wellness. Join us as we learn about the future of the CRC and how everyone can be a part of the worldwide PACEs movement.

Due to the recent mass shooting at a Sweet 16 Birthday party in Dadeville, Alabama, PACEs Connection will air an encore of the 2022 interview of Rev. Deanna Hollas. Rev. Hollas is the Gun Violence Prevention Ministry Coordinator with the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, a founding member of the Everytown for Gun Safety Interfaith Advisory Council, and the co-founder of Retreat House Spirituality Center. In her role with the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, Rev. Hollas empowers and equips individuals and congregations across the Presbyterian Church (USA) denomination to embody Jesus's call to love God and love neighbor by being informed active in the prevention of gun violence. She holds a Master of Divinity from Perkins School of Theology and a Diploma in the Art of Spiritual Direction from San Francisco Theological Seminary.

Can empathetic, healing centered workplaces change the entire culture of a community? A nation? What would a healing centered workplace look like, offer, and change? Following the Pandemic, there was a ‘Great Resignation’ of people leaving the workplace, in large part, because many of our people don’t make a living wage. Many of our workplaces, unlike those in most other industrialized nations, don’t offer paid family leave and other family-supporting benefits. Katherine Manning, author of “The Empathetic Workplace - FIve Steps to a Compassionate, Calm, and Confident Response to Trauma on the Job” joins PACEs Connection CEO Ingrid Cockhren and Mathew Portell, PACEs Connection director of education and outreach to discuss what it would take to create empathetic, healing-centered workplaces. Discussions will also focus on how individuals can take Manning’s five steps to address workplace trauma.

On March 27th, 2023, a shooter entered The Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school located in Nashville, TN, and killed 3 students and 3 school personnel. Our hosts, Ingrid Cockhren and Mathew Portell, are both parents of school aged children in Nashville. Please join them as they process the tragic events of last week and how this collectively traumatic event has impacted them and the city of Nashville. Our hosts will also explore how PACEs science can be utilized to address the uniquely American trauma of school shootings. Cockhren and Portell will tackle the right questions. Why is this phenomenon so pervasive in America? How can we prevent these tragedies? What is the real impact of school shootings in communities? How can communities respond and facilitate collective healing? Please join us!

Should we teach children skills to prevent abuse and victimization? Janet Pozmantier, M.S., LPC, LMFT, RPT, an award-winning author, curriculum developer, trainer, and child advocate specializing in primary prevention programming, believes we should. In this last episode honoring Women's History Month, we will explore the importance of teaching children about their own development and positive discipline techniques that might prepare them to be mentally healthy future parents, and in many cases, not passing on the dysfunctional and/or abusive parenting techniques utilized on them.

In consideration of Women's History month, the entire month of March will be dedicated to the women creating a legacy in the worldwide PACEs movement. In this episode, we will talk with Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW is an author, lecturer, consultant, radio show host, internationally recognized trauma therapist and social entrepreneur. She is the co-founder and the Director of Innovation of the Trauma Resource Institute and founding member of the International Transformational Resilience Coalition. She is the author of Building Resiliency to Trauma, the Trauma and Community Resiliency Models® (2015). She is committed to bringing accessible and affordable interventions, cultivating individual and community well-being, based on neuroscience and the biology of the human nervous system to our world's community. Her models have been introduced to over 75 countries. She has presented at the Skoll World Forum, Resiliency 2020 and 2021 and the United Nations. Elaine’s book was selected by the United Nations and Taylor and Francis’ curated on-line library as one of the innovations helping meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/sdgo. She is a Senior Consultant to Emory University’s SEE Learning program, inspired and launched by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and she is consulting with the and Medgar and Myrlie Evers Foundation to help create a virtual curriculum of the US Civil Rights Movement. Her radio talk show Resiliency Within, Building Resiliency during unprecedented times is on VoiceAmerica. https://www.voiceamerica.com/show/3997/resiliency-within

In consideration of Women's History month, the entire month of March will be dedicated to the women creating a legacy in the worldwide PACEs movement. In this episode, we will talk with Agnes Woodward. Agnes is using her knowledge of historical trauma and the healing power of the arts to raise awareness of the adversity indigenous women face and how they can also heal themselves, their families and future generations. https://bust.com/style/198432-indigenous-designer-agnes-woodward.html

In honor of Women's History Month, we will air an encore of our interview with Melissa Merrick, Ph.D. Dr. Merrick is president and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse America (PCA America), the nation’s oldest and largest nonprofit organization dedicated to the primary prevention of child abuse and neglect. She has more than 20 years of clinical, research, and leadership experience related to the etiology, course, and prevention of child abuse and neglect. Previously, Dr. Merrick was a senior epidemiologist at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. She is recognized as one of the country’s foremost experts on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). In partnership with the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Child Abuse and Neglect, she served for eight years as the lead scientist for the ACEs study at CDC and is the lead author of CDC’s Vital Signs: ACEs, the most nationally representative report on the topic. Dr. Merrick successfully leverages her significant clinical and research experiences to communicate and disseminate the critical public health importance of preventing early adversity to key stakeholders with diverse priorities, backgrounds, and knowledge, including legislators, business and civic leaders, and members of the academic and medical communities. She is one of the principal architects of Thriving Families, Safer Children: A National Commitment to Well-being, which aims to reshape child welfare in the United States by focusing explicitly on equity and prevention. Thriving Families unites PCA America, the Children’s Bureau, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Casey Family Programs, among numerous other local partners, to proactively create the conditions and contexts for strong families and communities across the country.

In honor of Women's History Month, join us as we discuss the trauma and resilience of girls of color. Recent research findings have outlined that adolescent girls are experiencing extreme levels of trauma and adversity. This is especially true for African American, Hispanic/Latina and Indigenous girls. These findings are aligned with the recently released book Girls on the Brink written by PACEs Connection member, Donna Jackson Nakazawa. In this episode, we will be joined by Vernisha Crawford to discuss the lives of girls of color and the intersectionality of racism and sexism. Vernisha is the CEO of Trauma Informed Institute. By educating 15,000+ working professionals, helping secure and manage over $12 million, and directly serving hundreds of families, her work has increased in need across many sectors and countries worldwide. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from UNC Charlotte and a Master’s Degree in Leadership from Grand Canyon University. She is a Certified Trauma Informed Executive Coach, Certified Health & Wellness Coach, a Master Level Certified Professional Life Coach, a Business Coach, and Scrum Master. She is pursuing her Ph.D. in General Psychology with a specialization in Trauma & Disaster Relief, yet her most significant learning is motherhood. Vernisha is also the Founder of the BYE Foundation. This 501c3 organization offers a unique approach to systems change work by addressing equity gaps in funding, data, research, capacity building, and wellness. Vernisha has been a guest facilitator at Davidson College, Belmont, Vanderbilt, and Fisk Universities. She has served as a member of the Early Childhood Executive Committee for Mecklenburg County, the NC ACES Task Force Advisory Board, NC Juvenile Justice Behavioral Health Committee, Charlotte Lab School Board, and Charlotte Community Board for The Gathering Spot. In her free time, she is full-filled, working with her passion project @DanceHerSize, a wellness program that teaches women and girls about the eight dimensions of wellness through dance and exercise.

This week, co-hosts Ingrid Cockhren & Mathew Portell will speak with author Mary Giuliani. We will discuss her new book It's Not About Food, Drugs, or Alcohol: It's About Healing Complex PTSD. The book launches on February 21st, 2023. Even though Mary was in long-term recovery with food, severe obesity, drugs, and alcohol and had what most people would consider a successful life— behind closed doors, she still struggled and wondered… Why she had so few close friends and had difficulty finding a fulfilling, romantic relationship? Why she still struggled with food, sleep, and caffeine? Why she couldn't find the flow and passion she longed for in her career? Why, even though she was in long-term recovery with food and substances and had maintained a healthy weight for several decades, she felt the need to hide these parts of her past from others? Finally, in mid-life, she discovered the root cause driving these, and her past struggles with food, obesity, and substances was a condition known as Complex PTSD (C-PTSD)—a more severe form of PTSD that developed from her being raised in a chaotic alcoholic home. This discovery sent Mary on a five-year journey where she researched leading experts in the fields of C-PTSD, neuroscience, developmental psychology, adverse childhood experiences, and addiction medicine to find the most effective treatments for optimal healing.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial reckoning of 2020 pushed America's already strained workforce to the brink. The subsequent mass exodus of American workers looking to escape job dissatisfaction, constant microaggressions, unsafe work conditions and low wages was coined the Great Resignation by Anthony Klotz. Join co-hosts Ingrid Cockhren & Mathew Portell as we discuss the role of toxic stress in the Great Resignation and how trauma-informed, healing-centered workplaces are the future of work in America. This week our co-hosts will be joined by Marnie Dobson & Mark Van Landuyt of Healthywork.org. Dr. Marnie Dobson is the director of the Healthy Work Campaign & the Associate Director of the Center for Social Epidemiology. Mark Van Landuyt is the Outreach Director for the Healthy Work Campaign and is the co-founder of the California Bay Area Green New Deal Alliance. The Healthy Work Campaign (HWC) is a public health campaign focused on raising awareness in the U.S. about the health impacts of work stress on working people. The campaign also focuses on the positive actions individuals and organizations throughout the U.S. can take to advance #healthywork. The Healthy Work Campaign is a project of the Center for Social Epidemiology (CSE). The CSE, founded in 1988, is a non-profit organization that has been conducting epidemiological research on the effects of work-related stress on mental health and cardiovascular disease in the U.S. and promoting public health efforts to prevent work stress-related health consequences.

This week's episode is an excerpt from a recorded interview of Dr. Bruce Perry conducted by our hosts, Ingrid Cockhren & Mathew Portell. The interview occurred on June 28th, 2022 and launched PACEs Connection's Connecting Communities One Book at a Time initiative. In this interview, Dr. Bruce Perry discusses his #1 New York Times Bestseller What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing (2021), which he co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, within the context of historical trauma.

January 27th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. To honor those lost, our hosts will continue their discussion concerning intergenerational transmission of trauma and historical trauma. The earliest known study of intergenerational transmission of trauma was conducted by Canadian psychiatrist, Vivian Rakoff, MD. He studied the descendants of Holocaust survivors and found that they displayed symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder despite not having experienced the Holocaust themselves. Rakoff's research findings on Holocaust survivors and their descendants led to a greater understanding of the impact of extremely traumatic events on families and across generations. Please join us for this important conversation.

Last week the hosts examined how trauma can be passed on through generations. In light of the celebration of civil rights leader, Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. this week, co-hosts Ingrid Cockhren & Mathew Portell will move this conversation further as we discuss the historical trauma of the Civil Rights movement. This conversation will examine the collective trauma the United States experienced during the civil rights era and the end of racial segregation. This conversation will also highlight the importance of using PACEs science to prevent, mitigate and heal historical trauma. Please join us!