Daily Archives: March 26, 2020

My eyes widen in fear every time I scroll on Twitter and read the newest coronavirus-related headlinesso I turn to Instagram. It's business as usual on the appan influencer's sponsored post nestled in between a dog meme and yet another event canceled tour or panel or movie due to the current global pandemic. Between the news cycle churning out information about the virus at light speedand all the misinformation being circulated simultaneouslyTwitter theorists and faux comedians' non-stop commentary on the state of the world and no definite expiration date on our current social distancing experiment, your girl is exhausted.

I've found it increasingly difficult to cope with the wave of emotions I'm experiencing right now, leaving no room for optimism. Now isn't the time to abandon my self-care routine, but here I am on Cheez-It binge refreshing Twitter for the umpteenth time. But during a period of physical isolation, what does self-care even look like?

Determined to practice a little extra self-care, I polled a few health and wellness experts to share their self-care routines and tips for those who could use some help.

"The essence of my self-care during this time is mindful awarenessbeing intentionally present with seemingly mundane tasks, savoring small moments of peace and connection, and responding compassionately to myself and others. It is so easy to be "on autopilot" and jump out of bed and rush into the day. In the morning, I take an intentional breath and feel the ground under my feet one step at a time. I drink a glass of water before my cup of coffee and visualize the water nourishing my body. I spend a few moments looking outside (or stepping outside if it is warm enough) to take in nature around my house and witness new signs of lifebuds on trees and blooms on flowers. I limit looking at the news to five minutes or less. I am intentional while getting ready by continuing to tend to personal hygiene and dressing in work clothes (at least on top) since I am working from home. Staying on top of my getting ready routines" sends messages to our mind and body that we are safe and worth taking care of. The opposite, self-neglect, send messages of unease and unworthiness. I also regularly post self-regulation skills on my Instagram and have found that creating community around self-care is very uplifting."

"Part of my self-care is checking in on my neighbors, running to the grocery store for them as needed, and gifting tinctures and teas to people in my communities who need them. I also love conscious breathing. Breathwork is a powerful practice for centering back into oneself. There is so much happening in this current crisis and its easy to get stuck in anxiety and trauma responses. When I engage my breath consciously, I have an opportunity to slow down, check-in with myself, and be present with all the emotion and fear while also bringing ease to my nervous system. A great breath to try when you are feeling anxious and overwhelmed, or when youre trying to fall asleep, is called box breath. Inhale through your nose for 4 counts, hold it for 4 counts, exhale through your mouth for 4 counts, hold it again for 4 counts. Repeat."

"Cooking has probably been the most essential part to me taking care of myself during this time. What we eat not only impacts how are body functions with regard to our immune systems but it also impacts how we feel and our bodies ability to manage stress. During the day, Im on the internet and bombarded by the news and latest developments the global corona crisis. It helps to keep a CBD joint within arms reach. If ever I feel overwhelmed, I just set everything aside and take a nap or a long bath with infused bath salts or an infused bath bomb. Listening to jazz music also allows me to relax and keep calm. The goal is to get 8 to 10 hours of sleep so Im well rested and ready to take on the day tomorrow."

We may not be able to see each other physically, but communicating with your friends and family by scheduling calls and Facetime, as well as checking in regularly via text or email, makes us feel a little closer. Also, allow yourself do nothing. There's a lot of pressure right now to be productive and while accomplishing things while we're stuck home is great, it's also okay to just let yourself be for a bit as we adapt to this new normal. Sometimes, self care looks like hanging on the couch and binging Netflix."

My self-care routine is the thing I look forward to and helps me feel a sense of calm during these uncertain times. Every morning I start my day with probiotics and vitamin C then I drink a large glass of water with apple cider vinegar. Then, I move into 30 minutes of movement, whether its a walk down the street or a Kira Stokes workout via her app. My night time beauty routine is my moment to really pamper my skin. I'm alternating masks every other day while sipping on turmeric tea or red wine.

"I've been finding a new daily rhythm using low cost, low technology tools that both release anxiety and boost immunity. I like meditating for 10 minutes twice per day or using ear seeds to help calm my nervous system or taking epsom salt baths each night before bed. I've also leaned into the proliferation of online yoga, meditation, and fitness classes; gratitude journaling to reduce stress and improve mood, and I can't think of a time when we've all needed that more than ever."

"I always like to let light into my home in the mornings. I always open my windows to let fresh air in as well as making my bed so Im less tempted to get back in. I always play Lo-fi beats as they relax me and the lyrics dont distract me from my own thoughts. Lighting a candle or burning incense is a great way to calm your space too. Set yourself a simple task whether its reading a new book, doing laundry, spending 15 minutes meditating, watching a series, journaling, doing 10 minutes worth of emails or just sitting down. Our minds find comfort in accomplishment but it doesnt have to be anything over the top. This is a great time to make peace with things you were too busy to. Have you forgiven lately? Or said an apology? And if you are still on your hustle, stay safe and avoid any contact with people; dont feel bad for creating boundaries or politely saying no if someone tries to hug you or shake your hand. You have to look out for yourself and your health."

"As a health professional, a mom, and someone who is currently six months pregnant, this time has been filled with some anxiety and stress. I like to think of self-care in 4 key areas: food, movement, mental, relationships."

Then, evaluate each item and practice the art of letting go by giving away the item, or the art of gratitude by thanking the item for its continued service. This active meditation of letting go and gratitude empowers the person with a sense of purpose and stability which quells fear and panic in a world that feels very unstable right now."

See the original post here:

Wellness Experts on Their Best Self-Care Tips for Feeling More in Control - ELLE.com

With a pandemic rampaging across the country and the world, the stock market falling and rising like a roller coaster at full throttle, Congress passing $2 trillion dollars in economic stimulus to avoid a depression, and the president openly defying the consensus of experts in public health, just keeping up with the news requires sharp focus on the biggest headlines. But that shouldn't prevent you from pausing for a few short minutes to read a remarkable essay recently published by the conservative religious magazine First Things.

Authored by the journal's editor R.R. Reno, "Say 'No' to Death's Dominion" manages to distill something important about the character of conservative American Christianity in the Trump era. For years now, commentators have tried to make sense of how so many people who profess devotion to the teachings of Jesus Christ can square that faith with fervent support for what the Republican Party has become in recent years. Usually the answer has to do with the president's embrace of the pro-life movement, along with his facility at antagonizing secular liberals.

But Reno aims to go further. In a recent book, he gave a modulated endorsement in classically Christian terms to Trumpian nationalism and populism. And now, in the form of a pithy opinion column, he offers readers a theologically inflected defense of the Fox News line on the coronavirus: Don't shut down the country because of a pesky little virus, even if it means a bunch of people die. For those looking for a primer on how conservative Christianity in the United States might look in the future, Reno's essay is the place to go.

On a first read, my initial reaction to Reno's piece was to be stunned that the editor of a magazine that has always been steadfastly pro-life had made an argument implying that Christians should respond to mass death with a collective "meh." (Full disclosure: I worked as an editor at First Things from 2001 to 2005 and quit after an ideological falling out with its late founder and editor in chief Richard John Neuhaus.) Whereas FT has long held that abortion is always wrong in every circumstance because human life has absolute intrinsic worth, Reno seems to argue something very different.

In Reno's view, "physical life" is merely one good among many. Indeed, to hold that life should take precedence over other goods, like "justice, beauty, and honor," is, he claims, a form of "sentimentalism," and nothing less than evidence of death's, and Satan's, expanding dominion over our culture and civilization. This would seem to clash rather violently with the premise of the pro-life position. After all, if physical life can be overridden by other considerations, then we're no longer thinking about morality in terms that justify absolute (unconditional) strictures against terminating a pregnancy. Put somewhat differently, if justice, beauty, and honor can trump the protection of physical life, then why not the personal autonomy of the pregnant woman? It would seem that Reno has fatally undermined the foundation of his own absolute opposition to abortion.

Yet Reno anticipates this objection and implicitly addresses it head on by making a crucial distinction early on in the essay. The anti-abortion fight, he asserts, is a "battle against killing." Imposing draconian public-health measures in order to protect our families, communities, and nation from a potentially fatal illness is, by contrast, "an ill-conceived crusade against human finitude and the dolorous reality of death."

Abortion is about killing. Public health is about dying. That difference is everything for Reno.

Ending a pregnancy is a great evil because it is the intentional taking of an innocent human life. But other forms of dying that happen by nature (a virus killing its victim is a natural process), like deaths that follow indirectly from social and economic structures that prevail in the United States, are matters of moral indifference. Yes, they're unfortunate. It is fitting to mourn them. They require "triage," as Reno repeatedly puts it. But that's life. People get sick. They die. Bad things happen. Get used to it.

Interestingly, Reno points to some of the greatest inequities in the U.S. medical system the fact that we "ration health care by price, waiting times, and physician discretion" and sees them as additional evidence in favor of his central claim. To treat these distinctively American norms and institutions as a given is to accept the way things are meant to be in a universe governed by God. To treat them as marked by problems or injustices that cry out to be fixed or reformed, on the other hand, is "demonic."

The implications of this outlook for public policy and self-government more broadly are quite astonishing. Imagine a busy suburban intersection where a car accidentally plows into and kills several children walking to a nearby school. Should the governing township respond by hiring a crossing guard or building a bridge over the thoroughfare to prevent the wrenching event from being repeated? By Reno's logic, the answer is no. Life is unfair. The world is unjust. Children sometimes die. That's why we have the Eucharist and the rosary to console us while we await the return of our Lord Jesus Christ and ward off the temptations of Lucifer.

Those who doubt that Reno's claims end in precisely such resignation and passivity in the face of suffering and death should pay close attention to the final third of the essay, where he compares our current efforts at halting the spread of the coronavirus very unfavorably to the way Americans responded to the Spanish flu a century ago. "Their reaction was vastly different from ours. They continued to worship, go to musical performances, clash on football fields, and gather with friends. Unlike us that generation did not want to live under Satan's rule, not even for a season."

They were models of Christian courage, while we "cower in fear."

What Reno neglects to say, perhaps out of unconcern, is that this insistence on going on with normal life in the face of a dangerous contagion a little over a hundred years ago resulted in the deaths of well over half a million Americans at a time when the population of the United States was less than a third of what it is now. Reno apparently believes it would be vastly better for a couple million people to die over the coming months than for us to shelter in place for a few weeks.

Reno calls this Christianity, but it is more accurately described as American libertarianism raised up into a theological first principle. Individuals are absolutely forbidden to take a human life at any stage of development following conception because to do so violates that person's rights. But any effort to think in communal terms, to use state power to mitigate mass suffering, or protect our fellow human beings from harm, is "specious moralism," an unacceptable, satanic imposition on the rightful order of things.

So much for love of neighbor. So much for the common good. So much for sacrificing a little individual liberty for something bigger and nobler than ourselves.

Just as our current president swept into office on talk of putting America first and ended up treating the nation's highest office as a vehicle to advance his own power and wealth, so R. R. Reno set out to defend Christian nationalism and finds himself instead justifying indifference to the suffering and death of his fellow Americans and calling it the will of God.

Which just might make Reno's divinization of pitiless, rugged individualism the perfect religious complement to a Republican Party that's been thoroughly remade in the image of Donald Trump.

See the original post here:

A pro-lifer shrugs in the face of mass death - The Week

Day after day, premiers have announcednew restrictionson Canadians' civil libertiesthattheysayare criticalto limiting the spread of COVID-19.

But it is thechief medical officers at their side who provide the science buttressingthe calls for sacrifice.Some havebecome stars in their own right, displaying a kind of televisual bedside manner that combines a reassuring, fact-based approach with occasional levity.

Quebec'schief doctor, Horacio Arruda,recently shared his weekend self-isolation planto bakePortuguese tarts, whileAlberta's Deena Hinshaw recently worea periodic-table-themed dress that lit up social media.

The scientists are pushing aside athletes and other entertainersfor thepublic's attentionascitizenstry to navigate through unprecedented times.

Behavioural scientist Samuel Veissiere, a McGill University professor of psychiatry, saidthat confronted witha vague sense of impending doom,peoplewant to reduce uncertainty.

"They want meaning, and they are looking to people they perceive as experts to give them answers in terms of what's going to happen," Veissiere said in an interview Friday. "People want stats, numbers. They want answers."

Before the pandemic, academics often lamented the public's loss of trust in institutions and inexpert knowledge, Veissiere said. But that might be changing.

"People are becoming a little more humble," he said. "I think they are becoming aware of just, perhaps, the limitations of individualism and how important it is to work together as a community, including in identifying reliable sources of information."

These are some of the key figures helping Canadians comprehendan unfamiliar, invisible enemy.

Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada

The country's chief public health officer knows pandemics, and what it takes to fight them.

Each day, Tam's steely, distinctive voice reminds Canadians that there's little public health officials can do on their own,and everyone has a role to playin protecting the community from COVID-19.

Her mainjob is to provide advice to the federal minister of health,and she is responsible for heading the Public Health Agency of Canada.

She is also the main co-ordinatoramong public health agencies across the country. In a system where each province manages its own health system, perhaps her most important job is to be Canada's unifying and rallying voice in the fight against COVID-19.

Internationally, she has advised the World Health Organization on infectious diseases like Ebola, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and poliovirus.

Born in Hong Kong, Tam got her medical degree in the United Kingdom before completing her pediatric residence at the University of Alberta and a fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases at the University of British Columbia.

Dr. Bonnie Henry, British Columbia

When Henry, B.C.'s provincial health officer, cried during a press conferenceat which she confirmed two elderly peoplehad contractedCOVID-19in a long-term care home, her compassion and resolve was described by colleagues and friends as a galvanizing moment in Canada's fight against the global virus.

Henry paused to compose herself before warning that Canada's elderlyare most at risk from COVID-19, and she urged everybody to do what they can to protect the vulnerable.

Thosewho know Henry say she is both knowledgeable and battle-tested. Appointed to the position in 2018,she is an experienced virus hunter who has battled SARS, Ebola, H1N1 and polio during her career.

Henry headed the B.C. Centre for Disease Control on an acting basis during H1N1 and is the author of "Soap and Water and Common Sense," a guide to staying healthy in a microbe-filled world.

Former B.C. health minister Terry Lake calledher "the voice of reason and calm."

Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta

Hinshaw, Alberta's chief medical officer of health, has become the reassuring face of the response to COVID-19, delivering daily web updates to thousands in a Spockian tone, urging calm while not shying away from the fatal consequences of ignorance and indolence.

In doing so, Hinshaw has become a pseudo-celebrity in her own right. Twitter blew up with concern last week when Hinshaw announced she was self-isolating after waking up with cold symptoms. She delivered her update from home that day and was back at the podium the next day after testing negative for novel coronavirus.

When she wore a dress patterned on chemistry's periodic table, the garment's Victoria manufacturer received a slew of orders for it.

Some on social media are calling for her to be the next parade marshal for the Calgary Stampede.

Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia

Strang was no stranger to Nova Scotians before the COVID-19 pandemic, having frequently spoken out on prominent health issues.

The province's chief medical officer since 2007, Strang has been a passionate anti-smoking advocate, and last May he lent his voice toa successful campaign to have rugby reinstated in the province's high schools.

In recentdays, he's used his authority to monitor social media and admonish thosespreading rumours and false information aboutthe novel coronavirus. He also took people to task for attempting to "out" others who weren't self-isolating upon their return from vacation, urging the public to leave the detective work to health officials.

Strangcompleted his community medicine residency in 1997 in British Columbia. He worked in that province as an associate medical officer of health until 1999, when he moved to Halifax.

Dr. Horacio Arruda, Quebec

When Arruda recently told Quebecers that he would spend part of the weekendbaking to take his mind off the COVID-19 pandemic, it was his way of lightening the daily barrage of bad news about the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Arruda's colourful language and his stern but fact-based approach to the province's pandemic response has endeared him to many Quebecers.

Photos and videos of him are circulating widely on social media, including an imageof his face edited onto a photo of actor Will Smith, whose character in the 2007 movie, "I am Legend," fights a viral outbreak in a post-apocalyptic dystopia.

"I don't want to distress people. I don't want to make people anxious," Arruda recently said. "Don't be anxious. If you're anxious, call somebody, try to have an activity that you love. Everybody is different. It could be yoga, it could be music, it could be dancing .... Just be innovative."

Arruda, 59, the province's director of public health since 2012, played a central role after the Lac-Megantic rail disaster that claimed 47 lives. A medical specialist in community health,he has focused on epidemiology and the prevention and control of infectious diseases.

Dr. Jennifer Russell, New Brunswick

Russell has been put under the spotlight as her province navigates through a state of emergencyimposed Thursday by Premier Blaine Higgs on her recommendation. The province's chief medical officer of health since 2015, Russell has a background working for the Canadian Forces and Veterans Affairs.

She weaves directives to citizens about avoiding mass gatherings and implementing social distancing with calls for people to stay connected with one another by phone or through social media, to eat well, exercise and take deep breaths.

"It is up to us to take actions that will slow the spread of the virus, and give our doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals the best chance to cope with its impact," Russell saidlast week.

Dr. Brent Roussin, Manitoba

Roussin, Manitoba's chief public health officer, recently told reporters he would work every day until the COVID-19 pandemic is under control.

Roussin and Lanette Siragusa, chief nursing officer, have drawn praise for providingup-to-date information about the spread of the virus in the province.

Roussin's calm demeanour and straightforward answers in the province's daily online briefings have been noted. He takes time to discuss the unique challenges COVID-19 poses for Manitoba's Indigenous population and has held a specific news conference to discuss how northern First Nations communities can stay safe during the pandemic.

A specialist in public health and preventive medicine, Roussin worked with the federal First Nations and Inuit Health Branch and was a medical officer of health for northern Manitoba before taking up his current position.

Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto

Toronto's top public health doctor is usedto making headlines.

De Villa has previously commanded coverage for criticizing Ontario's loosened alcohol regulations and calling for the decriminalization of all personal-use drugs in Canada, saying drug use should be treated as a public health issue rather than a criminal one.

Shealso called gun violence a growing public health concern, prompting the Toronto Board of Health to ask the prime minister to ban the sale of handguns.

Since COVID-19 was first reported in Canada in late January in a Toronto-based patient who had recently returned from China, de Villa has urged calm and vigilance instead of panic and apathy.

A recent video clip of her laying outthe dos and don'tsof social distancing do stay home, don'thang out with friends or go shopping attracted much attention online, and a Twitter account has been created celebrating her stylish scarves.

Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, Newfoundland and Labrador

Fitzgerald has urged residents to practise social distancing to protect others in the community while reminding them to exercise, tend to their mental health and check in onfamily and friends.

On Friday, she told people it's normal to be afraid and assured them health officials are working to protect them.

Newfoundland and Labrador's interim chief medical officer of health hasattracted praise from politicians for leadingher small staff through theprovince's pandemic response, and she has become popular on social media.

"We removed the title 'interim,' but she hasn't signed a contract yet, and I don't know whether that's intentional or not," Health Minister John Haggie joked Friday. Premier Dwight Ball suggested there would be widespread support for keeping her in the job.

Dr. Brendan Hanley, Yukon

Hanley studied medicine at the University of Alberta, the University of Liverpool and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

He came to the chief medical officer job in Yukon from being chief of emergency at the Whitehorse General Hospital, where he still practises part-time.

His experience includes practices in rural and inner-city locations around Canada and internationally. He has spent many years working in the Canadian Arctic. He hasalso seenregular service withDoctors Without Bordersand other relief organizations.

During his time in Yukon, Hanley has worked to create partnerships in the territory's small and far-flung communities to strengthen its overall public health system.

Dr. Saqib Shahab, Saskatchewan

Shahab, Saskatchewan's chief medical health officer since 2012, has been the calm face at the front of Saskatchewan's response to COVID-19.

He's been on the front lines of Saskatchewan's public health since 2009, when he was named deputy chief medical health officer.

Prior to that he worked internationally as an internist. He has also worked as a public health expert with multilateral health and donor agencies.

Read the original here:

A new breed of celebrity in the age of COVID-19: the chief medical officer - Kamloops Matters

Crystal Miller can still recall distinct details of themass shooting at Columbine High School. How she woke up with an instinct that therewas something different about the day. When she asked her friends Seth and Sarato come with her to the library during lunch so she could study for a test, inlieu of their usual plans to go off campus. She remembers hearing the cracklingsounds of gunfire and explosives nearing the library, she and her two friends takingcover under a table and immediately starting to pray. She remembers wonderingwhat death would feel like as she heard the shooters footsteps coming closer. Andwhen the perpetrators retreated to the hallway, she can still see thehorrifying scene in her mind as she and her friends ran for their lives.

Miller spent the following days longing for solitude and to process her trauma in isolation. But she felt even more compelled to attend the memorial services and funerals of her peers, honoring their memories while grieving alongside her community. It is this sense of fellowship thats at the heart of The Onsite Foundations new program, Triumph Over Tragedy, a week-long workshop designed to provide survivors of mass shootings with hope and tools for healing.

The inaugural event took place in March 2020, drawing 50 survivors from more than 20 mass shootings to the secluded Onsite campus an hour outside of Nashville, Tenn. The program is inspired by Austin Eubanks, another Columbine survivor. Eubanks passed away in 2019 after years of living with addiction to prescription opioids as a result of his trauma. Prior to his passing, he spent his life working as a national speaker on the topics of trauma and addiction, working to help other survivors lead fulfilling lives. Eubanks significant other, Laura Hutfless, co-founder of entertainment marketing agency FlyteVu and board member of the Onsite Foundation, was inspired to take action in the wake of his passing, as well as bearing witness to the longterm effects the mass shooting at Route 91 Harvest Festival had on her co-workers who were at the festival where 58 people were killed and hundreds more injured, sending a wave of devastation throughout the country music community.

In search of tools to help survivors and those closest to them, Hutfless couldnt find an accredited resource. But like Miller, she saw a dire need and was motivated to help, approaching The Onsite Foundation with the idea of creating a program specifically for survivors of mass shootings. I knew that there are people out there that are hurting, Hutfless shares with Sounds Like Nashville from her FlyteVu office. The numbers continue to rise and the ripple effect of that doesnt just affect the wounded, but those who witnessed it, their families, their communities. So this type of trauma has a devastating effect on a large number of people.

A team of expert clinicians and therapists curated theTriumph Over Tragedy program that not only helps survivors process theirtrauma, but gives them tools to cope in daily life. Additionally, Hutflesshelped establish a council of survivors to offer guidance on the program. Afterconnecting with Miller in the wake of Eubanks passing, Hutfless appointed heras chair of the Onsite Survivor Advisory Council, comprised of sevenindividuals who represent the mass shootings at Columbine, Route 91 HarvestFestival, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Thurston High School, Auroramovie theatre, Charleston Emanuel AME Church and Antioch Waffle House. SinceColumbine occurred in 1999, there have been more than 90 mass shootings in theU.S., with Statistareporting that the U.S. has more school shootings than any other nation. GiffordsLaw Center reports that on average, one mass shooting will occur per day inthe U.S., while six of the 10 deadliest mass shootings have taken place in thepast decade. Miller has been on the scene after many of these tragediesincluding Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Virginia Tech and Sandy HookElementary School. When she walks into these grief-stricken communities, shecomes equipped with an important gift: hope.

For so long, Ive gone and Ive shared a message of hope, and I believe thats important, she tells Sounds Like Nashville over the phone from her home in Littleton, CO. But that only goes so far. In the aftermath of Columbine, Miller says she was met with an abundance of resources, but she knows many people dont have access to those same opportunities. Thats why Onsite was intentional about making Triumph Over Tragedy a scholarship-run program, with private donors covering the cost for all attendees. There was never anything out there that was a tangible resource, tools that could be put into the hands of survivors so that they could not just survive, but thrive, Miller explains. I think what we know about trauma to be true is that we can understand trauma and its effects on our brains, on our bodies, and therefore we know that trauma can be healed. Triumph Over Tragedy is just another step in either beginning the process of healing or that continuation of healing that some have begun in their own process.

Trust the process

Trust the process is a mantra that echoes through the hallsof Onsite, serving as a message of encouragement to those in the program thatthey are on the path to healing. Part of that process exists within theproperty itself. Situated on 250 acres in the rural town of Cumberland Furnace,Tenn., the sprawling landscape boasts sweeping hills, peaceful streams, hikingtrails and horses used for equine therapy, among many other natural amenities. Acharming yellow farmhouse with a red tin roof immediately greets you as youcome up the drive, acting as a meeting place for workshop patrons to engage infamily-style dinners or soak in the sunset on the front porch. The campus isvoid of TVs, phones and other electronics, allowing guests to be fully immersedin the therapeutic process, while words like grateful and empowered adorn thewalls.

Throughout the program, each person works with a primary therapist and an adjunct therapist and receives an individualized treatment plan, in addition to group therapy. The group therapy rooms emit an inviting energy, as desks and chairs are replaced with cushions, pillows and blankets that transform the room into a safe space. Miller experienced the Triumph Over Tragedy pilot program with her fellow Survivor Advisory Council members and was inspired by the work that not only helped them process their individual trauma, but gave them valuable tools to walk through life with. It was moving through the trauma so that we could move it from one part of the brain to where it needs to be stored so that we can live healthy both emotionally, mentally, as well as physically, she says. But another key factor of the program is that she and her fellow survivors were given the freedom to share their stories without judgment. There is something so unique that happens when survivors are together. Theres so many unspoken things that we all understand, and we dont have to unpack those for one another, Miller describes. I believe that our stories can help heal one another, that we find strength and we find courage through one anothers stories. Courage to me, its not the absence of fear, because for all of us, weve experienced the most fearful thing that a human can experience in facing death. But courage is showing up and its doing the hard work and then its choosing to live and its choosing hope on the other side of that.

Hutfless is determined to take this mindset beyond the workshop, hoping that survivors take the lessons they learned through Triumph Over Tragedy into their communities, ultimately creating a ripple effect across the world. My hope is that this would start the healing of individuals, of emotional wounds that are still bleeding that last longer than physical wounds, but yet you cant see. Hurt people hurt people, and we have to stop the cycle somehow. There are hurt people, innocent people, who are walking with wounds and we have the ability to heal them. Its much harder to see, but if we all are aware and we can be educated and informed and we have the tools and the ability to offer somebody hope and healing, I think its our responsibility to do that, she professes. Weve seen the ripple effect of hate, and now we can see the ripple effect of hope.

Choosing hope is an action that Miller has taken each moment since that harrowing day in 1999. Through her experience with Triumph Over Tragedy, Millers passion to tell her story continues to grow, vowing to share the gift of hope with the world around her. Never before in history has this been more important because the amount of people affected, and so my job really has become now to be a voice of hope in the midst of their suffering, in the midst of their pain, to stand up there as a physical representation to say I am living proof that this is not the end. That this trauma, this tragedy doesnt have the final say that hope does, Miller proclaims. And where there is hope, there is life.

Excerpt from:

Country Causes: Triumph Over Tragedy Provides Survivors of Mass Shootings With Tangible Tools of Hope - Sounds Like Nashville

Romani people living in social exclusion are becoming the scapegoats of the COVID-19 pandemic in different countries around Europe. (PHOTO: Barbora Haviarov, Spolenost pro kulturu, vzdln a komunikaci, Slovakia)

News server EUobserver has published an analysis by Bernard Rorke, an editor with the Brussels-based European Roma Rights Centre, of how anti-Roma and anti-Travellerracism is motivating the responses of officials and politicians around Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the conditions in which the least fortunate members of these communities live make it difficult for them to follow what are, at this point in time, life-saving recommendations on personal hygiene and social distancing.

Hundreds of thousands of Roma throughout Europe livein overcrowded settlements without access to water, which is also an issue forTravellers livingon overcrowdedsites. Activists in Ireland have been raising the alarm about the danger this represents.

EUobserver reports that for years, local authorities in Ireland have failed to address the accommodation crisis for Travellers, refusing to use the state financing available for this purposeand frequently evictingfamilies, who end up living out of vehicleson the roadside. DrSindy Joyceinformed the paperthat the neglect is intentional: "The racial divide is deeply ingrained into Irish society where hostility and violence towards my people is seen to be justified because of our 'difference' to the mainstream settled population."

The article also touches onthe situation in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, referencing research from the Roma Civil Monitor project. See the full version here.

More here:

EUobserver on how anti-Roma racism is being exploited during the COVID-19 pandemic - Romea.cz