 So I'd like to transition us to Tanir Kain Muldrow. She is a trauma survivor and an internationally recognized trauma-informed care expert. As president and CEO of Neen Cares, Inc., Tanir's work has focused on heightening awareness of the characteristics and effects of trauma and improving the performance of service providers, businesses, government agencies, and others who interact with trauma victims and survivors. Tanir is the founder and co-CEO of MetR, a global nonprofit providing services for trauma survivors worldwide. And she previously served as a team leader for the National Center for Trauma-Informed Care. In addition to this work, Tanir served as the executive producer for the documentary Walking Through Bullets and a board advisor for the film Like Any Other Kid. Her incredible story is told in her autobiography Healing Neen and in the 2010 documentary of the same name. Help me welcome Tanir Kain. Thank you. Yes. Good morning. Well, I can promise you I will not go over time because I have a flight. After this, I'm going on vacation. So if you see me, I'll be like Cinderella. The shoes will be falling off as I run over. Don't come after me with my shoes. I don't need them going to the Bahamas. OK? I am very pleased to be here. I spend my life. It is my life work. I'm very passionate about this work because I am a survivor. I'm going to tell you a little bit about my story. And then I'm going to talk about the work that I have been able to do on five continents around the world and how I continue to try to push the agenda for us to understand the impact of trauma-informed care. So people really can have an opportunity to heal and have healthier lives. I'm going to take you back in time with me. And my story is not an excuse for all the bad decisions I made as an adult. And you will find out how many bad decisions I made. And I still make. So it's not about excuses. What I'm trying to do is help you to understand what motivated those bad decisions. And it did. It all started at my childhood. At age nine, I had about seven and a half brothers and sisters. I was the oldest. My mother's an alcoholic. She's always been an alcoholic. And she was the type of mother that would leave us in the household two and three days at a time before coming home and checking on us and feeding us. So it would leave me in the household with my sisters and brothers. And believing that since I was the oldest, I had to take care of them. And I never really knew where babies came from. At that time, I just knew she kept bringing them home. You know, she would be like, I'm taking the trash out. And then two days later, she would come back with a baby in her arms. You may not want to take the trash out anytime soon, lady. Just saying. Really? That's a joke, really? There's a lot of doctors here today, isn't it? Yeah. As much as guys get paid, you should be laughing all the time. So I always try to take care of them. I couldn't protect them all the time. I did my very best. Malestation and sexual abuse started very early on in my life around age nine. And I never really could understand how a man who body was so big that I actually covered my child's body would find any pleasure out of hurting me. But I had developed a belief system that I am nothing. I'll never melt to anything. And this is just how it's going to be for me. And out of that belief system, there was a sub-belief system that was birthed. Bad things happen to bad people. And if this very, very bad thing is happening to me, that must mean I'm a very, very bad child. So I'm going to keep it tucked inside of me in a very dark place and not be able to talk about it. I'm able to go to school a lot because I have to stay home and take care of my sisters and brothers when my mother didn't return home at night at time. But you know what, after missing two or three days at a time, I will always go back to school, always giving my miss lessons, but nobody ever asks why. Why are you missing so many days, little girl, if there was any communication with my mother, there was no consequence because they just would really just pass me off to the next grade. I also started drinking alcohol very early on around age nine. I used to wander into the living room after the last night's party. And I will find these half-filled cups just sitting around. And what I realized was when I drank these half-filled cups, when my mother smacked me down and called me names, it just didn't feel as bad anymore. And when the men came, it didn't feel as shameful or as painful, so I will seek out these half-filled cups to help me to deal my reality as early as nine years old. This is a photograph of me around age nine. I remember getting ready for that photograph. I remember standing in the mirror, trying to get the straight part to make these two perfect ponytails. Washing out this red and white connected polyester shirt with a bar of ivory soap, trying to get it clean for picture data the next day. And brushing my teeth. I brushed my teeth a lot, not because my mother said brush it in morning, after every meal or at night, or because she took us to the dentist. She has never taken us to the dentist. I brushed my teeth a lot because I always thought in my child's mind, if only I could brush away the smell of the men. When they used to force themselves in my mouth, around my face, it's like I could just brush the smell. Maybe things wouldn't feel as bad because the smell never, ever seemed to go away. No matter how much I brushed my teeth, no matter how much I washed my face, the smell sometimes felt like it was suffocating me, and I could not get rid of that smell. So I would wake up in the morning, I would run into the, in the bathroom, and I would brush my teeth, and over and over again, I didn't know how to take care of myself otherwise, because I was never taught how to properly take care of myself. I just kind of wiped myself off, or put some water in a tub, and dump in and dump off. Just never really knew how to take care of myself. And I would run out of the house, jump on the school bus. When I arrived to the school house, the kids would circle me and call me name. They'd call me Pissy Neen, because I always smelled like urine. I had a bunch of babies sleeping on me every night. Somebody always would pee on me. But sometimes it was safer to lay in a bed and pee myself because on those party nights, because I never knew who I may encounter in the hallway going to the bathroom. So I learned very early on a way to protect myself, but as a result of that, I always smelled like urine. So the kids called me Pissy Neen. I would run into the school house in a bathroom. I would huddle down and cry. The teacher would come and get me, take me to class and start today's lesson. But again, never ask why. Why do you smell bad? Why aren't you being taken care of? Well, eventually there was a complaint against my mother to the Department of Social Services. Somebody reported my mother, and she kept getting evicted and she didn't take care, we kept moving from place to place. So when the social worker came out to follow up on this complaint, she walked into our apartment. When she seen the filthy conditions we were living in, she immediately moved us from the household. And as you good folks know, this morning there's not one family sitting around waiting to foster so many kids together. And we was separated and put into different foster care homes. And I was devastated. It was my sisters and brothers that gave me the only joy I had in my life was to be surrounded by them. And she came in and she told me that she had to take me away from my mother and she was gonna take me to somebody's house. She didn't tell me who, she didn't tell me anything. When I got in the car, I was in the back, I was crying because the unfamiliar was so much scarier than the familiar. I learned how to kind of protect myself. When I would hear the voice of that big man that was gonna come and hurt me later on, I knew how to push something up against the door. I knew how to protect myself. I learned that very early on. But now I'm going into an unfamiliar territory. How do I protect myself when I don't know anything about my new environment and my surrounding? And the only thing she was able to say to me in the car was, it's gonna be okay, don't cry. It's gonna be okay, don't cry. And I often think, why was it so difficult to treat me as if I was a part of this? I have to, we had to take you away from your mother and tell your mom, get better. I'm gonna take you to somebody's house that you don't know. We believe she's the best person to take care of you. And again, it's going to be very scary for you. When you go to court, I don't know what happened, but I'm right there, she can call me and I'll try to get your brothers and sisters on the call. But we're trying our best to make sure that your mom, get better and you can go back home with your family. We say that we set this system up. The system of child protective service, department social service, social, they're all trained to make sure that kids are safe physically, but they don't do a lot to make sure they're safe mentally and psychologically. The trauma that's inflicted on children when they snatch in place with no regard, the next day they sent me to school as if nothing ever happened and they start to get complaints, they start to get complaints. She's unable to focus. She doesn't keep up with the class. We think she may have some learning disabilities. No, I don't. You just turned the only world I had upside down and you did not help me to adjust to this new reality. We have to do a better job of taking care of children in these types of system that we have developed and call safe places. We really do. Wasn't in foster care for a long period of time and then I was taken to court and different family members chose each and every one of us. They just kind of came to court and they said, I'll take this one, I'll take that one, I'll take that one. We went off to all different family member homes and my older cousin chose me. She had three daughters around my age. For the first time in my life, I felt a little safe because nobody was touching me and nobody was teasing me. She showed me how to properly wash myself, clean myself. She fed me, she sent me to school on time every day and again, I felt a little safe. But around age 14, after being there for several years, I heard someone call me, Neen, that's what my family member called me and I see my mother calling my name and she was walking up to the house. When she walked through the door, she told me that she loved me and she wanted me to come back and live with her. I have, up until that point in my life, I could never, ever remember hearing my mother ever tell me that she loved me. I didn't hesitate. I ran upstairs, I pecked my things and off into the sunset I went with my mother. Well, by then she had had three more kids. Social service had given her even more benefits so another public housing apartment, within a week she beat me in the street when I was trying to go to school. So she didn't walk me back, I felt, because she loved me. She needed a babysitter. So how do I live without my mother? And I know I couldn't live with her and no matter what, kids love unconditionally. We do. And I don't remember who or when but I do remember somebody telling me if you take a bottle of pills, all you need is one bottle of pills, you'll die. Well, in hopes of dying at age 14 I took a whole bottle of pills and when I woke up in the emergency room with them trying to get the tube down my throat to get the charcoal on my stomach, they were talking to my mother off to the side who convinced them that I took an accidental overdose on my own prescribed medication and I was released right back into her care. She didn't know what to do with me at that point in her life. So she sent me to live with her sister, my Aunt Curl and she did the best she could but by age 15 I was an alcoholic. In order for me to go to school and maintain in school all day long I had to take a glass bottle of gin and juice to drink on all day long just so I can function in school. But it still gave my mother some control over me. So when this man thought I was cute and wouldn't mind making me his wife and he befriended my mother by giving her all the alcohol she could possibly drink. So when it came time for her to sign the marriage license on my behalf she signed it, I was her minor or I couldn't. She signed it, I married him. She moved in with my three little sister because she once again was evicted and didn't have any place to live. Okay, well maybe this older man can protect me from all the other bad men of the world. But this night in Shining Armor there were times when I would see his pickup truck pull in front of the apartment and his headlights were shining through a limber window. I was often frozen in fear because I didn't know if this was going to be the night that he decided to come and take his fingers, swipe it across his finger. If it was dust on his finger he was gonna beat me down until he seemed blood because what he needed to know was what was I doing all day long that I could not dust his house? So there was many beatings in that regard. So around age 19, when somebody came to me and said try this, it was crack cocaine. It was the answer to all of my problems. See I could just use this drug and numb out anything that's ever happened to me and that smell that never went away. When I used crack cocaine that smell went away. And not only did I have that smell but there was also a movie that had developed in my mind over time. You know the movie of the big man that covered my child's body he would take his elbow and stick it in my mouth so I wouldn't scream to the point where I have been beat and raped so many times I stopped counting them. So this drug helped me to deal with my reality. I would say whatever they gonna bring, let them bring, I can deal with this drug. But unfortunately for me in order to obtain this drug to help me to deal with my reality I had to do some things. So I end up over 19 years of homelessness cause he put me out with no place after he took my son as a former punishment. He set my son out of state. I end up in the streets for 19 years as a homeless crack addict racking up 83 arrests and 66 convictions. They told me I was gonna spend the rest of my life going in and out of prison or I was going to die in the streets. I still didn't understand what was wrong with me cause people kept calling me crazy and they kept telling me I need a medication cause I was very angry. And I would check myself into our voluntary mental health unit at our county hospital and it just depended upon what day of the week it was. I went on a wednesday, I was getting pregnant I went on Monday, I was bipolar went on a two-day borderline Tuesday and they would always give me a different diagnosis but it was always the same psychiatrists never got that. But I would always ask them, I'd say well how do you know? I would explain to them that I had been up for seven days straight smoking crack cocaine. Well see they never allowed the street narcotics to get out of my system before they truly gave me assessment or evaluation. But I guess you give what you pay for cause I ain't having no insurance. They didn't have open and roll. I know that's not a good joke right now. I'm sorry, that was funny in 2012 though. It's my very first mug shot. I compared this to a young lady I've been mentoring over the last few years. I have a great relationship with the police department now. As a matter of fact, very good friends with a detective just retired and he was just so amazed about the advocacy work I was doing in the streets. And what I did was I pretty much went back to the streets reaching down helping some women up and trying to mentor them off the streets. And he will always call me up. But I always compare when I would go down there trying to support them I would see how distressed they were always were when they'd get arrested cause he would call me say, hey, we got set to such. I know you've been working with her. She needs you. We just arrested her for a major charge. Come and support her. And I will watch how distressed they were. And in my very first mug shot even at a very young age I wasn't distressed at all. I said maybe I thought somebody would finally ask me what happened to you instead of what is wrong with you? Why can't you get it together? Now I'm gonna talk to you a little bit of being retraumatized in the multiple systems I've been and I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this cause I really want to get to some Q and A and in my vacation. I'm from Annapolis, you know. I'm always on the flight. I love the fact that I was able to get on a mock train and come here today. Even though they said walk from, it was a short I don't know who said it was a short walk from Union Station. What fitness person sent that email to my office I want to know because it was not. Not in this heat, it was not. From Annapolis and because people always see me as the homeless crack kid prostitute. You know, they never could see past that. So I had a lot of issues with police officers just not being able to listen to me after I'd been beaten and raped. I would try to tell them and I was always disregarded because they were always just too busy trying to lock me up for something. Something that I did. Ending up in correctional facilities all the time this one particular time, I went into the correctional facility, the Tenton Center and around the county. I went in and I told them I was pregnant. They said, yeah, I came, whatever. And they put me in a holding cell with two ladies when the nurse came down to do the medical intake. She took my urine sample, took the two women that was in a cell with me. I don't know why she did, but she did. Well, they mixed up the urine somehow. And two days later she told me I was not pregnant but I had a urinary tract infection. And they medicated me by giving me an antibiotic and an americotic pain reliever. And at this time, if you didn't take prescribed medication by the doctor, if you refuse your medication, they put you in what they call isolation until you stabilize. We call it the whole, so I ain't one going the whole. So I took all the medicine they told me I needed for this infection that they insist I had. I had to go to a bathroom one morning. I went to use the bathroom and my baby head came out. I was five months pregnant. They shackled me down to the gurney and threw a sheet on the bottom half of my body with my deceased baby stuck between my legs while they figure out who would escort me to the hospital. I tell you this horrible story for one reason. So often people go back and forth into the same systems of care. And we so easily and readily make up our mind that everything they we say, they always say we're liars. Remember, not for one minute that somebody say, wait a minute, maybe this woman know more about her body than we're allowing her. Maybe we should retest her just to make sure we're not wrong. Another thing that could have been prevented. Always, always put into seclusion and restraint. I was a very angry out of control inmate and shoot up with more medicine, mental patient. That was me. One of the worst things you can do to somebody that is a victim of neglect and abandonment. As a child, I was a victim of neglect and abandonment. One of the worst things you can do to them is put them in a room, shut the door and walk away. See because my issues with my mother was always triggered and nobody was helping me to identify, address or treat my trauma. So I did the only thing I know to do and what I knew to do was to tap into my survival mode and my survival mode has always told me to fight because I didn't know there was any other way. So when they came with that trade food, trade medication, I smack it out of my face. Now I'm there on a walkie talkie called Nicole. People running towards me usually meant to restrain me. Do you truly understand what I'm saying? They were restraining a rape victim. Somebody that has been held down in rape multiple times causing more traumas, layers and layers of it. Take me even further away from the possibility of healing or recovery. Not intentionally, I know, but because we don't understand the impact of trauma, sometimes we cause more harm. Making it impossible for people to heal. Always over medicate. And truthfully, I'm gonna keep it real. I appreciate it to free high. I wasn't one of the people, like I don't want your medicine, like we're the nurse, she's late, she's late. But unfortunately for me, for bipolar disorder, they would give me Thorazine, Adavan, and lithium at the same time. Somebody please help me hold my head upside, like the drool of the corner of my mouth. Again, making it impossible for me to heal. As a result of rapes and prostitution, I never knew how my children were conceived when I was homeless because every day somebody was raping me and I was prostituting every day. But one of the things that I could not deal with was have somebody take my baby out my arms and walk away. But rightfully so, they were removed from my care. And the last time I was able to see two of my kids, they put me in a one-way mirror and let me watch them with their new mom. And when I walked out, they gave me this picture and said, this is your last communication we'll be able to give you. So 19 years, I went deeper and deeper into the streets, eating out of a trash can. I wasn't allowed to go in anybody's house. Being a dirty, daily Peter friend, the Rev was correction, mental health or substance abuse. People telling me that there was no hope for me. I put this one in for two reasons. For 19 years living on street, I had really nice teeth. You can't smoke crack for 19 years and have teeth like that unless you take care of it. I always had to brush my teeth, no matter what. And I would get pat down by the police officer and say, is that a weapon? I was like, no, that's my toothbrush. I always had to add a toothbrush. When we was getting the footage of the film about my life, I had a camera crew for 20 months following me wherever I went. So of course, when I need the bridge, my toothbrush and toothpaste was still there. And out of all my mug shots, it's the only one I was distressed. I said it was a perfect time for intervention. 14 years ago, I'm in prison again. I'm pregnant again. And I'm terrified I'm about to lose another baby. And I don't know how I'm gonna live yet again having another baby snatched from my arms. I got used to the beatings and the rape. I would tell them, put your gun away, just hurry up. And then I will just wipe myself off and just go back to the streets. But I couldn't get used to my children being taken away from me. Here I was in prison, ready to lose another child. And something dropped in my spirit. So I laid on the concrete floor in my prison cell. I said, God, I don't know if you listen to people like me. But if you do, please help me. Please don't let them take this baby. Not long after that desperate cry to God, I found out about a program called Tamar's Children. They say it works on your trauma. Really didn't understand what trauma was. Oh, I thought trauma was when you get hit by a car or when you come back from war. That's what I thought trauma was. But they went on to tell me, no, Tony, trauma is when you would neglect the abandonment, the sexual abuse as a child, adolescent, even as an adult watching your mother being beaten. All the things that you experience in your life, those things aren't supposed to happen to you. And I'm like, really? Because where I come from, that's not trauma. That's the norm. It happens to everybody. And so they told me that they would be able to help me with my trauma, my addiction, my mental health. And they said I'll be able to recover. Did I really think that these people could help me at this time? I had 31 failed treatments. No, I did not. But they said one thing made me wanted to go to this program. They said you get to keep your baby with you. And I said maybe if I can keep this one for more than three hours this time, things will be different. So I went to a program that started to ask the questions that I always needed asked, what happened to you? Why would a nine-year-old drink? Why would a 15-year-old become an alcoholic? How did you live in the streets for 19 years without not even wanting to come off the streets? What happened to you? So they started to work with me with the first trauma that impacted my life. My mother, her lack of love, lack of protection. I went from that and learning how to heal from that to all the times I was sexually, mentally, physically abused, everything I could remember. And now I was in a safe environment. These things were no longer happening to me. And I was believed and I was able to heal. And then she said, we're gonna start to talk about your children. I said, no, ma'am. I said, how do you heal from something that continues to give me pain? Every day that I wake up, I realize I had four kids walking this earth. If I passed them in the streets, I wouldn't even know it. How do you heal from that? She said, you do. You just don't do it by yourself. And I become so distressed when I talk to my kids. I would cry and I would rock. When I rocked, she rocked. She would mask my emotions since she followed my lead and she took me through a grieving process for four kids at the same time. So I was able to begin healing in that area. See, a lot of systems try to help me over the 19 years. They try to give me bits and pieces of information. But I had so much trauma packed so tightly inside of me. Bits and pieces of information couldn't penetrate any of that to get it rooters. I can build the foundation so my belief system can change from I am nothing to I am somebody and I can be anything I want in this world. See when my belief system changed, my thought process changed. And I started to make the best decision. And the best decision I ever made was to go through a one year course and guess what? How to be a mother. Yeah, because if you don't know, you don't know. My learned experience from my mother. So I had to learn how to be loving and nurtured and protected. And do you know, my last pregnancy was the first time I ever heard the word secure attachment. How sad is that? I had four other babies. And not until my last baby, somebody suggested that for me to form a secure attachment helped me to form a secure attachment with my daughter. And I went through a one year course how to do that. And I can tell you, my daughter had a secure attachment. She's 13 now. So that's a whole different traumatic experience. All the beatings, all the rapes, all everything that ever happened did not prepare me to raise a teenager. It's crazy. But my she used to travel with me everywhere as I go. But now I have a nanny so when she got to go school, she's back home going to school. But what a difference it made for my daughter. My daughter has tested in highest percentile ever nation for several years for the National Standardized Test. She's been taking, thank you. She's been taking French four times a week since first grade learning Swahili. And she's very smart. She corrects my grammar all the time. She's so much smarter than me. She just won an award, a cash award as a humanity awards that she won as a national contest, which is called Letters About Literature. And all the grades write about books that impacted them. And she wrote about the book The Hate You Give. And she got a cash award for that. She came second place in the state of Maryland. So I get awards all the time. Don't nobody give me cash with mines though. But what a difference it made. She doesn't know what it's like not to have a mother that says, do you have homework? Listen, I wanna see your homework. Let's talk about your homework. I have never missed a parent-teacher conference. Every year on the first day, my team know to leave that first day of school open so I can walk my daughter into class and let her homeroom teacher know what you do here. I will be forcing it back home. I'm your partner at this. She doesn't know not to have somebody to love and support her. What a difference it made in her life. 14 years ago, it's when I cried out to God and when I found this trauma program and I never had another desire to use drugs, alcohol or even smoke a cigarette. It's been 14 years since my healing process since I did any drugs, any alcohol or smoke a cigarette and I have no desire, okay? That's the difference I'm talking about. 14 years ago, I go into prison with my daughter. 13 and a half years ago, I went into the community program, the trauma-based program. 13 years ago, I went into community to take care of my daughter. I got an apartment. 12 years ago, I purchased my first home. You see where I'm going with this. They treated my trauma with the hopes they stay out, I stay out their system, but it worked. But I often wonder, did they realize that treating my trauma was gonna break that generational cycle in my family? See, my daughter doesn't know what it's like to be hungry, what it's like to live in a dangerous area. She doesn't know what it's like not to have a mom say, I love you, you're smart, you're beautiful every single day. So in other words, the cycle has been broken because she'll be able to give her kids what she was given and so on and so forth. That's the big picture in all of this. She goes to the key school in Maryland with the best private schools, rated the best and the most expensive in Maryland. So yes, I'm living the American dream. I'm in debt, there you have it. Come from underneath the bridge, you're going debt with the rest of us, Miss Kane. The more debt you have, the more American you are. Well, guess what? I am a super American, okay? But I can tell you all the wonderful things that I was able to accomplish. I give God the credit for it because nothing, it's nothing humanly possible. I could've done to accomplish everything that I accomplished. But the work I have been doing is internationally and nationally, I train systems of care to do better. We had to get better results for the people and understand the impact of trauma. I've now been working with, I do a lot of work with the state of Florida because anybody from the state of Florida, y'all know they need a lot of hands on work, okay? I just spent three days in St. John's County, St. Augustine area, and I went on a shadow business with them when they went out, the child protective service workers went out to the home. I just kind of shadowed to see how they were working it out and working and engaging, and then I do a six-hour strengthening relationship with families, training, and then I start working with the birth moms so they can start working towards getting their children back. So I do all this work, every system of care. All of my films are regarded to trauma. All the films that I produced, I'm producing TV now, but everything is kind of grouped into my, it's like my life, everything is I'm passionate about because it's all go back to my life story and the hope that came out of me being given trauma treatment. So my books, everything that I do is, my nonprofit is to help people, so I'm very fortunate that I get to do the work that I do. We really have to understand trauma if we really want children to grow up in healthier environments. This is not just about going into the school systems and making a difference. This is changing the outcome for the family. You know, you cannot treat the child without treating the family. And I encourage, when I encourage everybody, I'm also working with DOE and the state of Florida as well and some other states, but I really encourage people to understand what it takes to start working with children, with trauma in schools. First of all, we need to get away from thinking teachers gonna be able to do it. What we need to do is make sure teachers don't do more harm. But we have to put into place something on grounds in schools because sometimes that's the safest place for them. So we need to utilize the fact that they feel safe there and put in some kind of counseling or something in the schools. And when something is recognized as being, okay, a little different, something's wrong there, you know what I mean? We need to help kids feel safe and regard them not only physically, but mentally as well. I'm so glad that everybody's talking about trauma for them, okay. I don't know, I think Oprah just said, I've been doing this work, I was the team leader, I've been doing this for a long time now, but Oprah said, so everybody said, trauma in front of care, trauma in front of care, did you see Oprah? Oprah's talking about trauma in front of care. Like, oh really? So we definitely, it works, because here I am, it works. You know, I employed people, I changed the game. So people can, and I go into communities and we provide services, free services for communities to heal and certainly to protect and get the children within it. Thank you so much for sharing your story. What an honor to hear your story and I'm really glad you made it from the train station here. As the mother of a 15 year old girl, I can empathize about the trauma of raising a teenage girl. So I do wanna kick us off with some questions though. If folks have questions, please approach the microphones. We'd love to be able to entertain your questions while we still have to near with us. But to get us started, you know, you're working with systems now internationally, domestically, and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you think makes those systems ready to hear this message versus systems that may not be ready to act. Well, the fact is, I think that what's happening is trauma-informed care is just not the flavor of the week. Like we had some other models or something. I mean, if you look go to SAMHSA website, the substance abuse and mental health services minister, you can't even find any kind of grant funding without that trauma-informed care language. So pretty much the government is saying that systems should be trauma-informed. And so I think what's happening is people, it's not so much people thinking that, oh, well, we gotta get this and I mean, we do have some systems that say, hey, come help us. But I think that because the way funding is dropping now and you see that language and you have to be trained, you have to have some kind of component of trauma-informed care, you know, people are like, okay, let's get this because they wanna obtain and maintain funding. And which is, it doesn't matter how they get it, but I think that we can't just use the language, because I go to a lot of places that they show my film and they think they trauma-informed. I'm like, no, that's just to get some awareness to it. Now you need to really put yourself in a position. And you know, I always tell people, you cannot be trauma-informed without making sure that you understand the people that work for you. Because how often do we have people in our system of care that has unidentified, unaddressed and untreated trauma that then sometimes spill out into the people that we serve unintentionally. So the first thing is for the, due to healer-healer, so any kind of thing around that to make sure that their staff is taken care of and supported. Lull? Hi, Lull Solomon with Kaiser Permanente. And firstly, thank you for an incredibly compelling, grounding and funny talk. Oh, I'm so glad you like it. But you're just tremendous. I was really appreciating everything that you said. So if you were a mayor of a city or a supervisor for a county, what would the policies be that as a person who encounters the police department or the child welfare system or all the other systems that cities and counties have, what would the policies be that you would wanna see on their agenda to make sure that they're trauma-informed and not just training of city and county staff but other actions? I think that if I was a mayor, God help the city, but if I was a mayor, if I was a mayor, the one thing I would do is help the city to understand that there's a saying that it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community, it takes a whole city, a community to heal a trauma survivor. So I think that my first thing was we no longer gonna be territorial but our departments. We're coming together, we're gonna come together, I will put together a task force for trauma-informed care. I will make sure that we will have CIT officers to understand trauma when we go out into the community, especially when they're dealing with children. I will make sure that the money that does come down, you know, well, we're city's obviously where we're broke, that there are something when we start to talk about what's gonna be given to this school and what's it that we're gonna have to really consider making sure that some more psychological things are put into place for children in school. And, you know, the guidance counselor, maybe we can put a guidance counselor that's also moonlight as a therapist, I don't know. But I think that the whole city will have to come together, but I think putting together a task force so everybody can go out and kind of monitor what was going on in the city to see where change needs to take place. And that's what I do, I will bring everybody together and so help understand. And then I will bring in Tanir Khan to pay to, okay, that's not, I will bring me in and pay me to speak so everybody can get excited about helping people. Yes, next question. Hello, my name is Damian Perkins. I also work for Kaiser Permanente. I do arts integration. So right now we are in development of using the arts, collaborating with other educational theaters to build curriculum, trauma-informed curriculum for teachers. And first I wanted to ask, do you think that's a good idea? I think it's a great idea, but I think that when you're doing it, you're just making sure that you're doing it in a way that they won't cause more harm. You know, teachers are underpaid and teachers are, got way too many kids in most classes. And, you know, they see what's going on, but they can't focus on that. I think that we cannot think that we can put that on teachers, but I think that she just needs to be trained so they won't do more harm. You know, and be able to do some kind of model, train them in a model where they will make sure that they're tapping into kids' strengths and not their weaknesses. Because what we see in the schools are, the teachers are always looking at what's wrong with a child instead of what's right with a child. And we need to make sure our teachers are tapping into their strengths and building on their strengths. Their strengths and getting away from what's wrong. You know what I mean? And because it is in the kid that's going to heal. So we really need to let them know by encouraging and uplifting them, you know, I go to some schools and I'm modified. Like, oh my God, did she just send it to a child? You know what I mean? And they just go sit down and you just, you're too mouthy and you do this. Well, maybe he's mouthy because he can't say anything at home because something's going on, you know, and things like that. We just can't take that for granted. And I think that it's a way to go with, I think it's great that you want to do that. We just got, you have to be sensitive with it though, because you don't want to lose your teachers, you know what I mean? Because they are ready. A lot of them are already out there protesting, you know. Dan, you want to give them one more thing? You're going to run from you ladies, so. One of the things that we were concerned about was the follow-up after we do the workshop, the follow-up and the resources. So I just wanted to ask, did you have any ideas or suggestions about what that could be? Because we don't really want it to be this one-time thing where we come in and do that. Absolutely, and you just have to find a way where it will work for that system, you know what I mean? When I do follow-up, I go back because I sit there and I, if I spend some time with a system or agency, before I leave there, I'll sit with them to help plan out some goals to become more trauma-informed. And then every 90 days or every six months, I'm back on a call with them or if they need me to, I'll go back out because you know, some turnover because of turnovers and help them to be grouped to see why they weren't able to get to this certain goal and we have to rethink this. And because I spend so much time with so many different systems, I see like in Iowa was working, that hasn't worked in Texas, you know? So we just gotta keep playing with that puzzle piece that just won't fit, you know what I mean? And find the right fit for them. Thank you. Last question. Hi, I'm Debbie Plotnick, Mental Health America and we met many years ago through our very dear, close friend, Ms. Jackie McKinney. I just wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about one of Jackie's passions in addition to trauma and trauma-informed healing, peers and the role of peers. And how do you see peers in schools maybe being part of this solution? Absolutely. So peers are invaluable. They are in, absolutely invaluable. You know, to put a peer in a school would be a wonderful thing, you know what I mean? Because what happens is you have that identification and if I'm going, I'm working with my peers automatically, I identify myself, I'm not here, I won't wear my suit, I put on my jeans and my shirt and I'm like here, I tell them why I'm there and the only difference between me and you right now is that somebody finally gave me an opportunity to heal. But they instantly, there's that identification and they feel safe. Peers are the bridges, they are bridges and I'm telling you, they will get so much further than any kind of staff or, you know, licensed counselor because they're in it and I always say peers, you know, people think that peers come in waving their back. No, when it's done right, they don't come in, they don't come in just telling you everything that you're doing wrong. They come in to be a voice for those that can't voice for themselves and to represent their peers. So yeah, of course, absolutely. The peer work, the trauma peer work has been tremendous, tremendous and it has, again, SAMHSA is all about peers, you know, and it's a lot of funding in that, you know, where you can get funded to put peers in schools. You know, I definitely suggest, I'm a little too old, don't call me because I'm not, I can't go back into the schools. Well, thank you so much, Tanir, for sharing your story with us today. Please help me, thank you, Tanir. Please enjoy your vacation as well.