When you've lived through trauma, who are you can be very hard to answer. Sometimes it can even feel impossible. I used to tell myself maybe if I hadn't gone through the things I went to as a child, I would be somebody different, somebody normal.But what does normal even mean when your first memory is hunger and your second is fear. I was born in Nigeria. I never knew my biological parents.They moved to another country and left me behind. I grew up in extreme poverty. I slept on concrete floors since the ag ...

[applause] [applause] I jolted awake, lifting my head off the crunchy plastic pillow covered by a pillowcase. Black and tan smudges of my makeup smearing the white fabric. My tears making a mess of someone who was supposed to have it all together.the room. It smelled of rubbing alcohol and vomit, and I tried to shield myself from the cold with just a small sheet. As the events from the night before seeped back into my memory, the most overwhelming sense of dread filled my being.What had I done. I froze with ...

Trauma, rebellion and emigration surge alongside military ascendency https://t.co/xvLQih1bgy ...

I want us to begin with a moment of reflection. Think back. Can you remember a time when you ignore the signals from your body? Maybe your head hurt, but you pushed through anyway. Maybe your stomach turned, but you smiled and you said, "I'm okay. Maybe your back was screaming, but you remained silent. We've all been there, ignoring the signals, powering through.But imagine this. You trip and your brain ignores the signal from your foot that you're falling. There's no coordinated response.You fall hard, unp ...

[Music] [Applause] All right. Good evening, everyone. >> I remember the night my parents got all dressed up for Charlie's Bar and Grill. They left laughing and pretending that everything was fine. But by the end of that night, my mother lay bleeding on the floor of that bar. Humiliated, alone, and abandoned by every single witness. She came home bruised, swollen, and wrapped in silence. And then she sat before her Buddhist altar and she began chanting namo heno so powerful as if her voice could carve a door ...

More first responders die by suicide than are killed in the line of duty every year. Not from fire or gunshots or buildings falling down. Out of the myriad ways that we could die on the job, suicide outranks them all combined. Now, I was a first responder for over two decades. But before that, I was an actor and I was best known for a role that I played in a daytime soap opera. And the name of the character was Dylan Lewis. And the fans of that show were dieh hard, watch it every day, tape it if they couldn ...

When I sit alone and start to think, my stomach starts to hurt. This is when I understand the situation I'm in. When I really think about it, says Tariq from Syria. Now, imagine you are him. You are 15 years old, walking home from school one day. For a moment, you stop and you hear your family in your small but lively house. But all of a sudden, a loud explosion occurs. Dust and smoke being the only visible thing for miles. In a split second, the happiness that once existed is now gone. This is what I imagi ...

You've bought a present for me in this box and I feel nervous and excited. >> So, this is a human brain with a spinal cord. Such a masterpiece.But what people don't know is that we have four different structured parts of our brain that automatically shape how we think, feel, and behave. But what if it's not unconscious. What if we could pick and choose who and how we want to be in any moment on purpose.Like we can manifest our own mental health. >> And by the end of this conversation today, you're going to ...

were when two planes crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. About probably 90% of you, you may lower your hands. Thank you.You may notice that I did not raise my hand. And no, not because I'm up here speaking, but because I was still in diapers. Yet that event which created so much loss and changed the fabric of our society forever also marks the first major tragedy of my lifetime.Now please raise your hand if you remember where you were when you discovered a gunman had killed 20 child ...

[Music] Good morning everyone. Uh to get us started, I'd like to do a little bit of crowd work. So raise your hand if you have green eyes.You can put your hands down now. Now raise your hand if you write with your left hand. Now of those people with their hands raised, keep them up if you write with your left hand and have green eyes.Take a look around the room. What I just created is a visual representation of the likelihood of a former foster child to go on to graduate college. My name is Laura Singer.I h ...