All posts tagged: childhood abuse

Abuse has many faces…

Published by

I hated tickling.  As a kid both my sister and I were tickled by my father whenever he wanted to do it.  And as small children, we realized we HAD NO CONTROL.  At first, for maybe 10 seconds, it was funny, then it became either terrifying or painful. And we had no say.  And here’s the important thing:  Our father, ANY father or grandfather can read our signals.  He could clearly see we were uncomfortable, but he ignored that. Intentionally. And we forget that these fathers and grandfathers need to understand (and be called out) that this is ABUSIVE. And like this young mother, we need to get strong in the face of family “oh it’s no big deal” and stand our ground. Doing something to another person’s body against their will is NOT OKAY.  This young mother and writer does an amazing job here of articulating this boundary.  I only wish I had had a mother who would have stood up for me this way.  Sadly, my mother was much like hers.  Complicit in …

Wisconsin aims to be first trauma-informed state; seven state agencies lead the way

Published by

Some of you know that I live in Wisconsin, and I don’t always agree with my governor, but here is a story that shows what can be done when people work together setting partisan politics aside and focusing on wellness and health for children who come from adverse childhood experiences. That’s what ACEs stands for. It is my fervent belief that unless we address this, many of the problems with kids we see have will continue to spiral like a snowball down a hill, culminating in major adult problems that run the gamut from sexual abuse to violence. What Governor Walker’s wife Tonette is doing is nothing short of a miracle. And I applaud her for it. And everyone that works within this incredible system. Every state needs to look to Wisconsin and try and duplicate what they are doing.

Illness and Childhood Trauma

Published by

Make sure you tell your physician if you’ve had childhood trauma. Ongoing adversity in childhood leads to a chronic state of “fight, flight or freeze.” Researchers at Yale recently demonstrated that when inflammatory stress hormones flood a child’s body and brain, they alter the genes that oversee our stress reactivity, re-setting the stress response to “high” for life. This increases the risk of inflammation, which manifests later in cancer, heart disease, and other autoimmune diseases, and often death decades earlier than our non-traumatized counterparts. Donna Jackson Nakazawa has studied autoimmune illness and chronic illness extensively, partly because of her own history.  She also wrote the book “The Auto-Immune Epidemic” which helped me understand my mercury toxicity much better. This new study on traumatic childhood experiences is groundbreaking and every doctor should add the questions about childhood trauma to their initial intake/history. This blog post I’m linking to below shows the power of functional medicine and intelligent questioning.  Instead of writing more of a post, I am choosing to share it in it’s entirety.  Please take …