By Lorna Collier
Twenty years ago, Hami Torres fled Mexico at age 13, her 11-year-old brother in tow. Terrified, they trekked for hours with a group of older strangers through desert scrub that slashed Hami’s bare legs bloody. Then the two children were folded into the spare-tire compartment of a car for the drive across the border.
The Torres children had left their home country to reunite with their mother and stepfather, who had entered the United States three months before. Yet once the children made it to this country, the ordeal wasn’t over. They lived in a crime-ravaged neighborhood where Hami was expected to join a gang for protection. She constantly feared being found by immigration authorities, always looking over her shoulder for officials who might find out she was undocumented.
Share This Post!
Should Childhood Trauma Be Treated As A Public Health Crisis?
By Erin Blakemore, NPR When public health officials get wind of an outbreak of Hepatitis A or influenza, they spring into action with public awareness campaigns, monitoring and outreach. But should they [...]
The Healing Power of Dance Movement Therapy
By Helaina Hovitz As I worked more furiously towards the deadline of finishing the edits on my memoir about growing up with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder while verbally telling my story over [...]
How to Rewire Your Traumatized Brain
By the Concepción de León I hear some people have trouble with therapy, that it can take years for them to open up to their doctors, let alone cry or break down. Not [...]
Developmental Trauma Disorder: The Effects of Child Abuse and Neglect
By Maureen V. Kilrain, MS, PA-C Child neglect and abuse are perhaps the most significant community health challenge in the United States. Mental health experts in trauma continue to investigate and apply a [...]
Why Don’t Child Sex Abuse Victims Tell?
By David M. Allen, M.D. One of the things that child abuse deniers like the False Memory Syndrome Foundation focus on, besides child abuse apologist Elizabeth Loftus's irrelevant arguments about the unreliability of [...]
Post-Traumatic Childhood
By Bessel A. van der Kolk Brookline, Mass. - As a young psychiatrist, I worked with Vietnam War combat veterans and confronted the astonishing lack of resources to help these men and women [...]