Last June, #Wemby studied at a #Shaolin#Buddhist temple in the mountains of Henan, China to learn #Chan#MartialArts, flexibility, and meditation to sharpen his #basketball game.
My name is tree. I am the Executive Director of Wisdom Projects. For 8 years off and on I studied Theravada #Buddhist #meditation, #mindfulness, #mindful movement, and martial arts at a temple in #Thailand where I ordained as a nun.
I understand intimately the rigors of Wemby's training because, while he studied for a few weeks, I studied similarly for almost 10 years.
When we humble ourselves and study these ancient ways, and endure the particular challenges of being foriegners in these Buddhist environments, we learn that #peaceful, calm, intensely focused, flexible, and aware practices can permeate all aspects of our lives and help us become more loving, kind, and enlightened people.
Last week a 14-year-old boy was #shot multiple times non-fatally in Southeast #Baltimore. They just discovered that his assailant is a family member. That's why we believe that truly achieving #peace necessitates transforming not just individual #youth, but also their #families.
#Journalism and #research were supposed to #fair, #factual, and non-biased. America has never been a true democracy for non-white, non-male, non-wealthy, non-queer people. But, now, more than ever, it's not a democracy for non-marginalized people too. (💙 #ScottPelley)
This is America now. A man in Dixon, #IL organized a #protest against an #AI#DataCenter that only benefit the wealthy and politicians. But he was ARRESTED even though we have a #FirstAmendment, #constitutional right to protest, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression.
True #PEACE fights #poverty. Our #Caring Funds help youth and families with toiletries, phones, energy, rent, haircuts, and more. Please #DONATE a few dollars by PayPal or Patreon at https://t.co/sXZxuk0rnE. $5 helps towards school clothes or deodorant. Thank you for following.
This video shows some of the 450 workers laid off and told to leave immediately at a Kellogg's factory in Omaha. Like the Tyson #layoffs, #manufacturing in Nebraska lost 5,000+ jobs since 2025. Same across red states. Can you guess which president many of these workers support?
More fallout from Saturday's fatal stabbing near the Charles Center Metro Station at the corner of West Baltimore and North Hanover streets here in #Baltimore. #WBAL spoke with a diversity of residents who shared genuine #safety concerns.
I just got off the phone with an underage youth who is incarcerated.
At Wisdom Projects, we have found that when a youth allegedly commits crimes, the youth's purported actions often stem from constellated and cascading problems--not just one cause, but many compounding issues that seem to come crashing down around the youth all at once.
Constellated and cascading problems demand holistic, immersive, multi-modal, integrative, and super-hands-on engagement with the youth.
I am talking about the kind of engagement whereby a healer like me answers the phone on a Sunday and burns the food I am making on the stove because I need to talk to the youth right away.
We must stay close to them even when they lash out at us--or even when they are in "fight mode" emotionally.
In our peer counseling, we must delve deeply into what might be occurring in all of the areas of their lives: at home, at school, and in the youth's relationships.
I have found that the youth most impacted by the criminal justice system weave in and out of trust. They keep some of their desires and behaviors secret and disclose others.
Sometimes we are surprised when they come into contact with the criminal justice system because shame and a lack of trust made them hide their desires and behaviors.
We have to know where youth are at all the times, especially when parental absence or neglect denies them the closeness of a parent.
I had been so worried about the youth that called today. I did not know where they youth was. Now that the youth trusted me enough to call me, I can be a resource, albeit a limited one. I know where the youth is and I know a little more about what is going on.
Building trust means that a youth is more likely to tell you what they are doing, where, how, and why.
Trust comes best when we are also truthful about consequences for misbehavior, and the harm they may be causing, while never shaming youth for chronic mistakes. We cannot just "be nice." We must never shrink from giving tough, sobering advice about how horrible harmful misconduct and mindsets are.
The mental and behavioral loops of traumatic exposure are pernicious. It takes time for an underage person who is already developing mentally and physically to sort through competing impulses within their minds and bodies. They become so confused.
In those moments of confusion and psychic pain, they just want quick fixes for emotional turmoil, and acting out--especially with "friends" who are also getting into "trouble"--feels like the best route to gain a quick emotional high.
Almost all of the youth impacted by the criminal justice system that we mentor at Wisdom Projects are actively experiencing severe trauma--multiple, overlapping hardships like the violent death of relatives, attacks towards themselves, school bullying, displacement from homes, disease, sex trafficking, familial abuse, and more.
These traumatic hardships hurl them into loops of self-destructive behavior--what we call the 7 F's: fight, freeze, flop, fawn, flee, finagle, and flashback.
Untreated mental health conditions are a grave problem.
Add to this a youth's refusal or lack of understanding about the need to get bona fide psychiatric help and we have a recipe for destructive behavior.
So much of the time, these youth's look for attention and clout from other destructive people in their lives.
Moreover, our municipal leaders, police, prosecutors, and social service providers often just want to find one or two sources for youth's misbehavior--shallowly blaming parents or youth themselves.
Or, municipal leaders, police, prosecutors, and social service providers give in to public pressure from people who do not care about a youth's every day challenges and traumatic histories. They just want to lock the youth up and usually incarcerate them as adults.
It takes genuine heavy-lifting--around-the-clock engagement even on a Sunday--to change a youth's mindset, to give them care even when it seems they don't deserve it, to offer aid even when our resources are limited, and to keep the light on for youth who are experiencing these constellated and cascading challenges.
Miss tree turtle (Cleis Abeni)
Executive Director
Wisdom Projects
🚨 BREAKING: ProPublica reporter Robert Faturechi confirms the White House directly intervened to force the Pentagon to give a record-breaking loan to a startup just 3 months after Don Jr. invested in it.
The Trump administration is looting the country!
Not all #homicides in #Baltimore are #GunViolence. A 20-year-old man was #stabbed to death last night. The violence has not stopped. Constant congratulatory publicity and self-serving studies obscure the need for truly effective, immersive, holistic #PublicHealth solutions.