Peace Ranch's 2023 Third Quarter Newsletter
Restoring Hope, Transforming Lives
By Jackie Kaschel
The Body Keeps the Score, (2014) by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, is a New York Times best seller. This college level textbook, based on Van der Kolk’s 30 years of trauma research, states “the urgent work of the brain after a traumatic event is to suppress it through forgetting or self-blame to avoid being ostracized. But the body does not forget” which causes all kinds of issues. “This has profound ramifications for talking therapies and their limits because the rational mind cannot do the repair work on its own since that part of you is pretending it has already been repaired.”
A big idea from his research is that “Safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.”
This may sound simple and even obvious but look at the statistics from recent reports (April 2023) published by The Center for Disease Control. In 2021, Suicide was among the top nine leading causes of death for people ages 10-64 and the second leading cause of death for people ages 10-14 and 20-34. Over 48,000 people died by suicide in 2021. That is one death, every 11 minutes. In an effort to help more in need build safe connections, Peace Ranch is expanding its services to add intensive retreats and extended therapy for both children and adults. Our new programming will focus on helping individuals and families feel safe in their bodies and learn how to develop and maintain safe connections.