The Ethics Project

10/07/2026

From The Daily Om

So many of us are feeling dysregulated right now — especially as we experience the financial pinch, navigate emotional struggles, and witness unprecedented collective events unfolding around us. It’s only natural that anxiety would find its way in. But what might happen if, alongside everything that feels difficult, we intentionally turned our attention toward the small things that help bring us back to center?

Take a moment to reflect. Have there been pockets of goodness in your life? Maybe you’ve gotten some much-needed time away from work. Perhaps you’ve tried a new recipe, enjoyed a meal around the table with people you love, or eaten at your favorite restaurant. Maybe you’ve begun taking care of yourself in new ways and adopted some helpful wellness practices.

Life can be hard and beautiful at the same time, and part of caring for ourselves is learning to notice both. We may not always have control over what is happening around us. But we can choose how we meet this moment. And sometimes, tending to our mental health begins with something very small: seeing what nourishes us, appreciating what is here, and taking one small step toward greater groundedness, harmony, and well-being.

10/01/2026

New Report from The Sentencing Project: Over 760K Women Barred From Voting Due to Felony Conviction

Seven-hundred-sixty thousand lost votes is a staggering number. But, more importantly, approximately 380,000 of those women are mothers.

Several years ago, I spoke at a church in St. Louis County about the many ways that mass incarceration impacts the lives of children, separates families, and devastates entire communities. Afterwards, a young woman walked up to me, her seven year-old daughter by herside. She leaned in and shared with me, that she was leaving the following week to begin a multi-year sentence in prison. Her crime, possession of a small amount of ma*****na for personal use, an act no longer illegal in Missouri.

A few years before I spoke to a large group of community organization heads in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. It was a time when Oklahoma led the country in incarcerating women, mothers included. Within weeks, I learned of yet another one mother being sent to prison for years, again, for possession a less than an ounce of ma*****na for personal use. Her child was an infant.

There was a time when teachers could not return to the classroom less than six months after their child's birth. It was a standard belief that bonding between mother and child during the early months was critical to the child's physical, emotional, and psychological health.

And still, states choose to spend more than $23,000 a year to separate a mother and child, punishing the child even more, rather than augment an income that continues to trail behind that of men, and provide parenting skills that have been lost to many as a result of a long history of family separation.

As we watch immigrant families separate, mothers removed from the lives of children, this disturbing practice wields a heavy hammer. The destruction of these lives can be seen by the level of crime that is far above that prior to the emergence of prisons for profit.

09/29/2026

What happens when childhood trauma goes untreated?

The case of Christa Pike is heartbreaking on every side. Nothing about the trauma she endured diminishes the devastating loss suffered by Colleen’s family. Nothing excuses that we do so little for families so deeply wounded that it raises a child who takes another's life.

But understanding trauma is not the same as excusing harm.

Pike’s long history of childhood sexual abuse, r**e, neglect and repeated exposure to violence, raises a question at the very heart of our work: What might have been different if adults and systems had intervened while she was still a child?
By the time we are asking courts and prisons what to do with an adult who has caused terrible harm, many opportunities for prevention may already have been lost.

At the Center for Relational Healing, we believe in looking earlier and looking deeper: recognizing trauma, building safe relationships, strengthening self-regulation, and intervening before wounded children become wounded adults.

We cannot change childhood trauma after it has happened. We can change what happens while a child is still living it. That's why CRH was built.

Look deeper. Ask why.

09/26/2026

In the movie The Pursuit of Happyness, actor Will Smith tells his real life son and co-star to imagine seeing dinasaurs walking in the empty subway station where they sat. After a little encouragement his son excitely declares he can see them.

If little Christopher Gardner could imagine seeing dinosaurs with a little encouragement from his dad, how much more our children can see their inner talents with a little encouragement from us?

If they see it, in themselves, they can be it.

08/17/2026

Every child has a dream. As adults, it's our job to help them realize them.

08/16/2026

A high school tradition that should blanket the country.

https://youtu.be/jzRPUeEHb8I?is=97NX1ftoID7JeaZF

The moment my mother pulled up to the corner store is still etched in my mind. A group of upper classmen, all girls, were gathered a few feet away. Kissing my mother good-bye was going to be torturous.

By 12, my best friend had lost her mother -and still, it was hard to recognize the importance of having a mother in my life, and a mother I loved and admired.

By the age of 14, one in every four Black children have at least one parent in prison. More have lost theirs to drug addiction, illness or guns. The impact of that loss is staggering, yet we have the power to substantially reduce that harm, to eliminate the cause of those losses, and to reduce the trauma that follows.

Silence isn't option. The price is far too high.

Steve Hartman goes on the road to uncover an embarrassing initiatio...

08/15/2026

Maxwell sat front and center in the 4th grade classroom. His long, stringy hair suggested it hadn't been washed or even combed for days. The splotches in his swarthy skin reflected an unhealthy diet.

The over-sized knit sweater ber wore daily exceeded the size of a typical hand-me-down. The shoulders dr**ed off of his, the arms covered his hands, but Maxwell wore that sweater everyday, like a comfortable pair of old shoes that had out lived their appearance - or, out of necessity.

Yet, there he sat, just feet from the teachers desk, eyes brighter than his apparent struggles would suggest. When a question was posed, his hand waved with the typical energy of a ten-year-old and the enthusiasm of one who knew the answer.

Maxwell always knew the answer. His hand often waved with an answer before I posed a question. He needed both the attention and the stimulus of learning. He needed a space where his intelligence could shine.

Maxwell, never caused a problem. He never broke the rules, never used his laptop other than for his work. Maxwell's only shortcoming was dominating the class, he dominated it with enthusiasm, his smile and bright eyes, and a willingness to engage and answer questions.

I met Maxwell at a school where a bevy of little first grade girls surrounded me during yard duty; each little girl was desperate for attention. One little girl planted a Post-It Note on my top. She had drawn a heart and the word Bestie. Her note has a permanent place on my prayer wall where I often pray that she, Maxwell, their classmates and families are doing well.

I specifically requested a 4th grade classroom. I wanted to see if I could turn a classroom around in the 2000s the way I was able to do in the 1980s. Times had changed. Mass incarceration had upended the lives of millions of children leaving dysfunction that has impacted classrooms across the country. The principal warned me that "These children are traumatizing my teachers." I noted her choice of words.

Within days I knew the answer to my question was yes. The same techniques I used in the 1980s when the first for-profit detention facility was being built, were showing their effectiveness by day two in 2023. By day three, however, it was obvious throughout the school that remedial efforts were needed not just in my classroom but in classrooms I'd never see.

From that experience the Center for Relational Healing emerged. A place where teachers, administrators, law enforement, judges and others can learn about the impact of trauma on childfen, on learning, on disruptive and violent behavior.

We can lobby for more money for schools and higher pay for teachers, but until we start addressing the trauma that has blanketed entire communities, we will never see our children, schools, and neighborhoods thrive.

08/09/2026

There are consequences of unaddressed trauma, consequences we see daily in reckless driving, disrupted classrooms, rampant gun violence, and physical altercations between students and teachers.

We've struggled for decades to curtail violence, yet fail to fully understand how trauma impacts the brain and thus decisions.

The Center for Relational healing recognizes the outcomes of unaddressed trauma and we're here to help educators and other professionals who work with traumatized children and youth.

While systems continue to generate trauma, we can cultivate awareness of the behavior trauma generates, help navigate emotional triggers, and redirect disruptive actions to positive self regulation.

08/08/2026

To do anything with such excellence.

08/04/2026

Classroom management, safer streets, children being children.

The Center for Relational Healing has tools for every professional who works with children exposed to Adverse Childhood Experiences and those who make laws or policies that impact the childrens' lives.