ATN Joins the National PTA’s Legislative Conference (LegCon)

The Attachment & Trauma Network was invited to join the National PTA’s Legislative Conference (LegCon) to help educate and support the conference’s delegate on the plank in their platform to “promote youth mental health, address childhood trauma and assist families struggling with addiction. Julie Beem, ATN’s Executive Director along with Board Vice President, Kimberly Smathers […]

Lessons Learned During the Pandemic that can Help This Year’s Holiday Season

Plate of sugar cookies in the shape of stars and candy canes

Here we are again, full-swing in the 2023 Holiday Season!  In a post-covid world, where everything already feels more overwhelming than ever before, how can we not only survive, but thrive during the holidays? Well, I learned a great deal during the 2020 Holiday Season.  So as the anxiety builds this year, I need to […]

Keynotes 2024 Conference

ATN Announces 2024 Keynotes The Attachment & Trauma Network is excited to announce the Keynotes for our 7th annual Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools Conference to be held February 19-23, 2024. The in-person portion of the conference will be held Monday & Tuesday, Feb 19 & 20, at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, TX.  The virtual portion […]

My Why: A Tribute

Mom and me

When my mom died in 2021, I was catapulted into a foreign land of grief and hurt. Those who have lost close loved ones will recall the intensity of those first few days of grieving, when it is hard to eat or even breathe or to complete simple tasks – let alone the complicated logistics […]

My Why: Healing from Trauma

My introduction to ATN was not as an educator, but as a survivor of childhood trauma. I had recently retired from a 40-year career in education and was searching for answers. The previous year, I had found myself on a therapist’s couch where a tsunami of repressed memories buried under layers of dissociative coping skills […]

Business as Usual…Except more Sorrow and Resolve

For nearly 30 years ATN has been in the trenches with children significantly impacted by early childhood trauma…now understood as developmental trauma, attachment trauma, relationship trauma.  Our roots are working with children who struggled due to very early abuse, neglect, maltreatment – including abandonment, witnessing violence and horrific mistreatment.  But the truth is, many children […]

ATN’s COVID-19 Response

Making a Difference in a Time of Dis-Ease

TOUCHING TRAUMA AT ITS HEART EMPOWERING TRAUMA-INFORMED FAMILIES, SCHOOLS, AND COMMUNITIES You are not alone ATN knows that the social distancing going on now can be VERY unsettling for our children impacted by trauma.  Their early adversities cause them heightened anxiety when there are changes and when the adults in their world seem tense.  Yet, […]

Focusing on Attachment: What Else I Didn’t Know

Focusing on Attachment: What Else I Didn’t Know

What happens once you know? What comes after “you don’t know what you don’t know,” anyway? Well, now, I think it’s “when you know better, you do better,” but that is now, not then. Back then, it took several steps. First, I had to grasp that I had more to figure out about my amazingly […]

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

pile of gray question marks with one lighted up in orangish yellow and another in blue

“You don’t know what you don’t know” In my parent group for those whose children think differently, a favorite phrase is “you don’t know what you don’t know.” This phrase has come to reassure me as I look back over the years. I carried guilt that I could never do enough and worried that I […]

ATN Member Book Study: What Happened to You?

What Happened to You

THIS BOOK STUDY HAS ENDED. Calling all ATN Members to join in the discussion of What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing by Dr. Bruce Perry & Oprah Winfrey. This 5-session book discussion will be led by ATN staff over Zoom – so grab your book and computer or tablet and join […]