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Ok, stop me if you’ve heard this (from me) before (this month)–on the road this week at (fill in name of military installation here), time isn’t my own, inconsistent posting possible, oh look, I was in several airports and had an opportunity to surf for a few. You have? Great– here’s what caught my eye since last we spoke:

And Jesus Said Unto Paul Ryan…

One way to fund kit testing

What you need to know about the anti-racism movement

Love this new entry into the doll market

This was satirical; the President missed that memo when he endorsed it as a must read

Best story about grammar ever.

This is me 🙁

I’m pretty interested in the impact of trauma on health, as so many of us are in this field. So when I saw that Krista Tippit (Do you tune in to the On Being podcast? You should.) had interviewed Dr. Bessel van der Kolk about the issue of trauma and its effects on the body, I bookmarked it to listen to during my travel. I haven’t finished listening to the whole program, but I thought what I had heard was interesting enough to post it here. It’s a bit woo-woo, and yet, the longer I do this work, the more comfortable I get with the whole idea of woo-woo, so…

Dr. van der Kolk is Medical Director of the Trauma Center at the Justice Resource Institute in Brookline, Massachusetts. He’s also a professor of psychiatry at Boston University Medical School. His books include Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on the Mind, Body and Society and The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.

Good morning from Ft. Bragg, NC. As is the case for weeks like this, my time is not my own, so we’ll see how regular posts are. I worked all weekend, but managed to peruse the interwebs during some down time last night. Here’s what’s caught my eye since last we spoke:

It never ends

There’s no time limit on the impact of a tragedy

You must have a life

Brainstorm like a Googler

Misogyny from the left is just as awful

The fight for transgender rights goes on

Death by PowerPoint

Telehealth may not be as cost effective as we hoped

I literally LOL’d

Headed to San Antonio this morning to teach–it was great to get home a day early last week, but that still gave me exactly 2 days before having to repack and head out. As it stands now, I’ll have another 2 days once I return before I head out again, so everything feels like a sprint, including my social media consumption. Confession: I’ve been really trying to limit perusing my twitter feed as an act of self-care. But sometimes a girl just can’t help herself–so here’s what’s caught my eye since last we spoke:

Mourning Norma McCorvey

Jane Fonda discusses the sexual violence in her life (among other things)

Ugh–how is this still going on?

Not a fan (at all) of this site, but I did find this piece about conflict fascinating

I’ll be working/traveling on a Day Without A Woman—here are some good tips for what to do if you are in the same boat

Maybe you could just ask your partner what’s working (and what’s not) instead?

What a great idea

See what’s happened in your lifetime

The unintended consequences of the rise in deportations

On my reading list

Yep, got it: predict your future

I was having some trouble with my site yesterday, apologies for the late post. It’s a trial week for me, so we’ll see how consistent I am this week anyway. Although this was a working weekend, it also included some travel; here’s what caught my eye (in planes, airport clubs and long rides to post) since last we spoke:

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Merriam-Webster is the twitter account to follow right now

Related: can you even tell what’s normal?

Also related: the Handmade’s Tale, revisited

What a cool opportunity to broaden your knowledge

This is appalling and all too familiar to us

The rise of these crimes: also appalling

Holding famous men accountable (or not): here, here and here

The casualties of women’s war on body hair

I debated the best way to approach this post, as I knew there were several points to include, but no clear path for laying it all out. Perhaps it begins with the occasions in which people have asked me why we should discuss historical trauma as a component of medical-forensic education. Or maybe it goes much farther back, to the early years of my career when one of the big dogs in our professional circles confronted me, without a trace of irony, about why we needed to tailor training to meet the needs of individual communities, since the body parts were all the same, regardless of the community in which we were training. Ultimately it didn’t matter–I just knew this was going to need to be the focus of a post when I clicked on the daily email I receive from TED yesterday, and watched the featured talk.

I’m a fan of Dr. Brittney Cooper‘s; I follow her on Twitter, enjoy her regular column at Salon. In watching her TED talk, The Racial Politics of Time, I was struck by how closely connected her premise was to the concept of historical trauma. Historical trauma is defined as “the cumulative, multigenerational, collective experience of emotional and psychological injury in communities and in descendants.” She wasn’t talking about historical trauma by name–she was calling out one of the clear underpinnings of historical trauma, racism, and how it impacts whole communities. But as I listened to her speak, I was struck [again] by how important it is for us to have these deeper conversations about oppression in all its forms, to visit (and re-visit) the concept of historical trauma as one type of trauma our patients may experience; and to incorporate these concepts into baseline and continuing education in our field. It’s a good idea simply at face value, but when you add to that the reality that a significant percentage of clinicians staffing forensic programs do not reflect the racial or cultural makeup of the patients they serve, well, this becomes an even more important conversation to have. Want to serve your patients more effectively? Take the time to watch talks like this and others (have you seen 13th yet?). Discuss them and dive deeper (here’s Dr. Cooper’s reading list, for instance)–on your own and with your team. Trying to decide what topics you want to cover at your advanced forensic education course this year, or your annual SART retreat? This is a good one to add into the mix. This point she makes early in her talk alone reinforces why we need to have these conversations in our professional circles:

“Now, when Barack Obama became President of the US in 2008, many Americans declared that we were post-racial. I’m from the academy where we’re enamored with being post-everything. We’re postmodern, we’re post-structural, we’re post-feminist. “Post” has become a simple academic appendage that we apply to a range of terms to mark the way we were. But prefixes alone don’t have the power to make race and racism a thing of the past. The US was never “pre-race.” So to claim that we’re post-race when we have yet to grapple with the impact of race on black people, Latinos or the indigenous is disingenuous. Just about the moment we were preparing to celebrate our post-racial future, our political conditions became the most racial they’ve been in the last 50 years.”

The Racial Politics of Time is twelve and a half minutes; there’s a lot of learning packed in there. Take the time to hear the lesson:
 

I have to tell you, it’s been a glorious weekend here in the 703. We took the pup down to Shenandoah for his 1st big hike and the car read 73 degrees when we were heading home. Unbelievable. Today is a holiday of sorts here in the US, so it’s only a kind-of work day. So I leave you with a kind-of list to peruse–a few things that have caught my eye since last we spoke:

A brilliant editorial in response to the attacks on the press

This is everything we need right now

Love the idea of this

The aftermath of an assault can take so many shapes

ICYMI:

Oh, hey, a last minute resolution to my trial this week means I’m unexpectedly at home. It’s like a snow day, but without the paycheck snow. Since I didn’t have to get on a plane on Saturday, it left me some time to goof off, and plenty of time to surf the interwebs. Here’s what’s caught my eye since last we spoke:

I feel like this should be helpful for Leadership/Lobby Days (in all seriousness, have you registered yet?)

Buzzfeed did a nice job profiling the ED of SurvJustice

#Truth

More and more, online exploitation

Confronting your rapist

Every time someone recognizes sexual assault as the public health issue it is, I do a little happy dance

I feel so sad for this family–I hope it was cathartic

A terrific mini-interview with Dr. Willie Parker about his particular journey. (Apropos of not much–we listen to the same podcasts.)

Related

Trump’s travel ban and its impact on human trafficking

Speaking of crap things happening with this administration…(also can we spend a second talking about how “women’s” mags like Cosmo and Teen Vogue are killing it in the political realm right now?)

Finally, this is so spectacularly NOT suitable for work (or people who don’t appreciate cussing); I laughed out loud reading it.

Time once again for Articles of Note, my (sort of) monthly walk through the peer reviewed literature. It’s an interesting overview this month, with a lot of domestic violence and mental health research. But it’s one of the first times I have also run across a completely new concept–in this case, body vandalism. Fascinating.

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I listened to this TEDMED talk last week, and I will tell you right now, it’s not an easy or comfortable listen, for so many reasons. But it’s an important one, and the issues she discusses, like trauma, mental illness and the connection between suicide and homicide, touch upon the work that we do on several fronts. So while I’m traveling cross country today, I leave you with this:

This week open up my hard core travel season, with travel scheduled 8 out of the next 11 weeks. I’m thoroughly pleased to be heading to Monterey, CA to join my favorite military law nerds for a course we’re teaching there, and then we head into court martial season. So as always, I promise to try and keep posts as regular as possible, but you know this story, so please bear with me.

I had the kiddo with me this weekend, so I spent way more time playing offline than on. But here’s what did catch my eye since last we spoke:

February is Black History month; here’s a lesson for our president

Also, apropos

Fascinating

A long, difficult, but excellent read about the Roof trial

Nice to see us talk about the neurobiology of trauma in broader circles

How the president’s ban may make it harder to find providers

Hey, this is me!

Here’s something you probably don’t know about me: I get the NY Times delivered on Sundays, and the 1st section I read is the Wedding section. I have been reading Sasha the gay and military weddings since we got together, every Sunday, no matter where one of us is in the world. And then we read the main wedding story. I can’t explain it (perhaps it’s just a nice escape from the realities of our world–I’m going to chalk it up to self-care anyway), but this tradition is why we chose to put our own wedding announcement there, too. So I was delighted to read the story of the 1st African-American couple to be featured in the Times Wedding section, back in 1956. They’re actually doing a retrospective of their 165 years of weddings, so it’s been a fun read every weekend (after the gay, military, and main weddings, naturally).

Did you watch the Superbowl? We didn’t, but I did catch the half-time show online, and of course, the many commercials. This was one of my faves:

But, this–oh man (and Sisterhood!)

I don’t typically post live events on my site, but I will certainly promote the 2017 Leadership and Lobby Days, what with the current political climate and all (and also, full disclosure, I helped plan this event). I’m particularly excited about it because it is an opportunity for forensic nurses to develop their own voice, whether for lobbying (which we’ll do on the 2nd day), seeking support for programs from funders or hospital administrators, or letting community members and organizations know about existing or expanding services. While IAFN has had an annual Lobby Day for several years, this is the first time we are adding an education component (complete with 6 CEs), focused on topics we don’t usually cover at the annual conference.

The Leadership Training has a fantastic agenda (DOC)–we’ll be working with communications professionals to build our capacity around messaging and storytelling, a skill that’s critical in a variety of professional settings. It will be interactive, relevant and besides the obvious educational benefits, provide a terrific opportunity to network with colleagues from all over the country (and ideally, the globe–more on that in a minute).

The goal is to have 100 forensic nurses here in DC for the training day, and on the Hill on day 2 (hence the hashtag #100ForensicRNs), speaking to legislators and their staff about the issues important to us and our patients. To that end, a couple things to note:

• If you don’t know how to go about setting up appointments with your legislators (or even who they are), it’s covered.
• Don’t feel comfortable lobbying on your own? We’ll be pairing people up with mentors if they so choose (I’ve mentored folks the last couple years and it’s a blast to watch folks discover their own voice in this process).
• Not living in the US? This is still a great opportunity to learn with your peers and visit your embassy to discuss the issues front and center in your country.
• Not sure about schlepping to DC for this? I have 3 words for you: Cherry Blossom Festival. This is taking place in the heart of cherry blossom season, and with the training on a Monday and Tuesday, it’s a perfect excuse to come in the weekend before and enjoy the city at its best.
• And last, but certainly not least, I’ll be hosting a casual get together Tuesday evening after Lobby Day for folks who are sticking around, to debrief, enjoy each other’s company, and give everyone a chance to see Sasha 🙂

Registration

Hotel and travel info 

Hope to see you this spring!

Thanks to everyone who weighed in on the advanced topics for testimony–I received a lot of interesting suggestions and general feedback, so I think I have a good idea of where I’m headed with it. Also, does anyone else feel like this past week was a month long? Much unrest here in the capital and elsewhere (it’s amazing and I feel incredibly proud, but oh, Quebec City, my heart is breaking with last night’s news). I’m treading water trying to keep up, stay on top of what impacts me personally and professionally, and sift through the innuendo and untruths for what is actual factual information (not that that necessarily counts for much right now). So here’s what has caught my eye since last we spoke:

I hope folks caught the announcement of this amazing opportunity (more tomorrow, btw)

President Trump, meet my family

NYT is not equivocating

One thing I can do as a citizen is allocate my dollars ethically, like so

Also here and here

A practical guide for taking action, from former congressional staffers

Nice girls vs kind women

The voice in your child’s head

You cannot turn patients away

Baylor.

Mansplaining is the funniest thing in my life right now

This was the best thing I saw/heard last week:

ICYMI, here's your resistance anthem by @MILCKMUSIC @GWSirens and @CapitalBlend. Music and pink yarn are mightier than the sword. pic.twitter.com/IxRBdNpAGx

— Full Frontal (@FullFrontalSamB) January 27, 2017

I have to tell you, Saturday was really something else. I attended the March here in DC with my wife, my stepmom, my wife’s aunt and a few additional friends, and it was an experience I will never forget. As I’m sure you’ve read by now, turnout far exceeded estimates, so just getting down there from our house took a long time. If you’ve ever been stuck on the Metro at rush hour you probably know how surly people can be. Not so on Saturday. In the closest of quarters, people were laughing and sharing stories of where they came from and their delight in being present for history. In my immediate vicinity, besides the Cleveland crew that was traveling with us, we had folks from Austin, TX, Youngstown, OH, NYC, and several locals originally from Poland. There was the wife of an Army colonel heading down with a group of military spouses and a couple who had last marched in DC in the 60’s. It was as much of a celebration as people could have without being able to even move their arms or turn around.

Once we reached L’Enfant Plaza it was wall to wall humanity and movement was pretty restricted. We were finally able to stake out a spot to listen to the speakers (we were far back so all we could do was hear them), and ultimately it was more rally than march, since the whole route was clogged with people. As I looked around us we saw such diversity of race, age, gender expression, and signage representing why people were marching.

{My favorite sign–I don’t know who snapped this pic, but I saw a similar sign near us. Find more of my pics from the March on Instagram}

It was inspiring. And exhausting. I couldn’t hear everything, but in many ways that was beside the point. There was a feeling of solidarity in that moment, and I’m so glad I could participate (see what’s next on the official March site).

[Did you go to one of the Marches held around the globe? I’d love to hear about it–feel free to share in the Comments.]

Most of the reading I did this weekend was about the Marches and their aftermath; here’s what caught my eye since last we spoke:

Why they marched

She was really something else.

Front pages the next day

I cannot roll my eyes hard enough. C’mon, NYT…

Young women represented

Many male allies this weekend, but some decidedly weren’t

Just because my experience was positive doesn’t mean there weren’t still issues

And in other news:

Such a fascinating read

Beautiful passports

Calm under pressure

I firmly believe this is also true for the work we do (and why the “patient as crime scene” approach is such BS)

Tomorrow is Inauguration Day.

But today–well, today was a day spent with a diverse group of professionals committed to being better. Serving our patients better, responding better. It was the very first meeting in what undoubtedly will be quite a journey and I was really pleased to be at the table. And then I got home and looked at the enormous number of emails and messages waiting for me, many of which told some version of this story.

Whether it happens, I do know that things I have loved and admired about President Obama are going to be absent from the next administration. Has he been a perfect president? Nope. But he’s been a very good one in so many ways, and the life I have now is maybe not the life I would have had if someone else had been in the White House these past 8 years. Personally or professionally.

I have no idea what next looks like–I have read plenty on Twitter and Facebook that we shouldn’t despair since we haven’t yet experienced the new administration in action. But as was also pointed out in my feeds, you don’t need to experience the plague, or a natural disaster or being trapped on an elevator with a full bladder to innately understand it’s not going to be a positive experience.

Tomorrow night I’m going to a Resistance party, and Saturday I will march with thousands of people from all over the country. And come Monday I will step up, continue to speak my mind, advocate for my patients and work at being better.

Fitting then, this. Thank you, Mr. President.

Fired Up from Dan Fipphen on Vimeo.

It’s a bit surreal in DC this week, so in the name of self-care, Sasha and I played hooky for a bit today. We hit the National Geographic museum to check out their Instagram exhibit (it was amazing), ran into one of our faves, Sen. Cory Booker, randomly walking down the street (also amazing), grabbed an over the top lunch in Adams Morgan, and then hit the Women’s March pop-up shop on the same block for some swag (oh, we’ve got swag). Not surprisingly, we’ll be in attendance on Saturday–if you’re coming to town for the March let me know (especially if you’re staying the weekend). Would be fun to convene for coffee and donuts Sunday morning before folks head back. And if you’re looking for suggestions of [other] cool things to do when in town, drop me a line.

It’s hard for me to look away from my Twitter feed these days (and probably for the next 4 years), so there was plenty to capture my attention since last we spoke. Here’s just some of it:

In honor of the day

Some of these would actually be great for Saturday

In all seriousness, if you’re looking for signage (or just cool art)

If you’re looking for a Sister March

Multitasking is a myth

What is their pain worth? [Shudder]

I love this concept and its attendant lyricism–heroism of incremental care

Making the most of a mentor

I’m really going to miss this man

An interesting exploration of “normal America”

Of course, we already knew language matters

These memes NEVER get old:

Biden:<whispers> not Slytherin … not Slytherin

Obama: Joe, this isn't–

Biden: … not Slytherin …

Obama: you know what, Gryffindor pic.twitter.com/Dfeqvlkohe

— Caleb Gardner (@calebgardner) January 13, 2017

Social media use is always one of my favorite topics, so I love that there is an upcoming webinar on the topic: Social Media and Privacy Issues for Multidisciplinary Team Members. The session is being held on January 18th at 2pm ET, and is hosted by the National Criminal Justice Training Center. The description sounds a tad unfocused, but my guess is there will be some good discussion along the way, so probably worth attending, especially if you are a program manager:

With the ever increasing use of social media, it is important to understand the issues related to disclosures of online postings during criminal proceedings and how it relates to employment. Learn about the dangers involving blurred lines between personal and professional use of social media, how to avoid professional embarrassment, discipline issues, and personal or family dangers because of online posts. Gather resources to assist in the development of agency policies for private and professional use, along with social media privacy tips.

Register here.

Friday was FHO’s 8th anniversary–hard to believe it, but here we are. Want to know what was of most interest to readers in the past year (exempting the About page, the Clinical Guide landing page, and Conference Handouts, which always get a lot of traffic)? No surprise–a lot of it was geared toward testimony. In order of page views:

Creating a fee schedule for expert consultation and testimony

Clinical guide: Determining the age of bruises

Clinical guide: Court testimony

Clinical guide: Toluidine blue dye

Testifying for the first time

So what’s ahead for FHO as we enter our 9th year? Well for starters, a monograph on court testimony that will be coming soon. More reader-focused posts that address the realities of practice. Updates to several of the clinical guides, and a couple of new ones (I am always happy to create one if there are any requests). And of course, a continued commitment to publicizing current educational opportunities, peer-reviewed literature and other resources that make us all better at what we do. Thanks to all of you who visit FHO, especially the more than 1,000 subscribers who read us every day from the comfort of their inboxes. I look forward to seeing what this new year brings.