This was such a fun episode to record.

About Janyne

(Pronounce as Janine)

Janyne McConnaughey, Ph.D., award winning author and trauma-informed advocate, lived with the effects of childhood sexual abuse from the time she was three years old until she entered therapy and began her healing journey at the age of sixty-one. Realizing healing was possible for survivors, she first authored three memoirs describing the effects of childhood trauma and the paths to healing. Her most recent publication is Trauma in the Pews: The Impact of Trauma on Faith and Spiritual Practices.Janyne’s passion is encouraging other survivors of childhood trauma to seek healing. She is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tabor College (Masters in Education: Neuroscience & Trauma) and has served for four years as Board Member for the Attachment & Trauma Network (ATN), two as Board President. Janyne builds on her forty-year career in teaching, teacher education, and an expertise in early childhood development to help educators, caregivers, and church ministry workers understand and apply trauma-informed practices.   Learn more . . .

Dr. Lori Desautels is an Assistant Professor at Butler University in Indianapolis, where she teaches both undergraduate and graduate programs in the College of Education. She founded the Applied Educational Neuroscience certification program in 2016 — now reaching educators around the world. She founded the Educational Neuroscience Symposium, now in its fifteenth year. She has presented to more than 150,000 educators across the United States, Canada, Costa Rica, Australia, Scotland, England, and Dubai. And she is the author of five books, including Connections over Compliance, Intentional Neuroplasticity, and her newest, Body and Brain Brilliance.

Her website: https://revelationsineducation.com

This special live episode, which aired on May 26th, features Julie Beem as she steps down from her position as executive director of the Attachment and Trauma Network. We talk about her journey from volunteer to leader, the creation of the Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools Conference and the virtual Learning Brain Exchange Conference, and her life as a mom to an adopted daughter.

This episode is a celebration of 20+ years of service to children, parents, educators, and anyone supporting children who have been exposed to trauma.

The Attachment and Trauma Network

Register for the Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools Conference

Some guests you invite onto your show. Some guests helped shape who you are.

Margaret Thorsborne is one of the world's foremost experts on restorative practice. For decades she has helped schools, workplaces, and communities across Australia, New Zealand, Asia, the UK, the US, and beyond transform the way they respond to wrongdoing, conflict, and harm. She is a founding director of Restorative Practices International, a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management, and the recipient of the Order of Australia Medal for her services to education.

She is also Joe's co-author on Becoming a Trauma-Informed Restorative Educator.

In this episode, Joe and Margaret explore:

• What restorative practice actually is — and why it works where punishment doesn't
• How neuroscience and biology inform a restorative approach
• What schools and workplaces around the world have in common when it comes to harm and healing
• What brought a practitioner from Queensland and an educator from the US together to write a book

This is a conversation between collaborators, colleagues, and friends — about the work they both love and the world they are both trying to help build.

Her Website: https://www.thorsborne.com.au

This week's guest, Latoya Fernandez, is a restorative justice leader. Her work in Sankofa Circles, teaching RJ, and youth diversion is groundbreaking. In this Episode, we'll talk about restorative justice in a variety of different contexts, including Connecticut's new Diversion First Model. We'll talk about Ghana and the lessons she brought back to her daily life. She also shares her roots as a struggling kid on probation and how peer mediation taught her the skills to be who she wanted to be.

Her Website: https://www.latoyafernandez.com

Every year, children are restrained and secluded in schools across America. Many of them are neurodivergent. Many of them are already carrying trauma. And most people have no idea it's happening.

Guy Stephens did. And he couldn't look away.

What started as a father advocating for his own neurodivergent son became one of the most powerful advocacy movements in education today. In 2019, Guy founded the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint — a national nonprofit now 30,000 members strong — dedicated to ending punitive and exclusionary discipline and the school-to-prison pipeline.

He has testified before state legislatures across the country. He spoke to the House Committee on Education and Labor of Congress. He helped develop the Reframing Behavior training program with the Crisis Prevention Institute. And he hosts the AASR Live podcast.

In this episode, Joe and Guy explore:

• What restraint and seclusion actually are — and how widespread they remain in American schools
• What the research tells us about what these practices do to children
• What trauma-informed, neurodiversity-affirming alternatives actually look like
• How one father's love for his son became a national movement

This is a conversation about children, about systems, and about what it means to refuse to accept that this is just how things are.

Alliance Against Seclusion & Restraint

Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools Conference

What happens when the very system meant to save you becomes the source of your deepest wound? What does it take to dismantle a lie you've lived for decades — especially when that lie was built in the name of faith? And what does it really mean to thrive when you've spent years simply surviving?

Randy Scobey is a survivor, author, and advocate whose story sits at the intersection of religious trauma, identity, and healing. As the former Executive Vice President of Exodus International — the largest ex-gay ministry in the world — Randy spent years as a public face of conversion therapy before helping to shut the organization down in 2013. His journey from abuse survivor to unwilling spokesperson to free and authentic man has been featured in the award-winning documentaries Pray Away and For They Know Not What They Do. His memoir, WHY, chronicles what it means to survive abuse, live a lie, and finally learn to thrive as your true self.

In this episode, Joe and Randy talk about being diagnosed with PTSD, healing through therapy, and EMDR. The signs you're on the right path to being authentically yourself. This episode is brave, courageous, and radically honest.

Randy's Blog

In this episode, we sit down with Jesse Kohler, founder and president of The Change Campaign, a national nonprofit based in Washington DC. Jesse shares the remarkable journey of building an organization that began as a college senior project at Oberlin and grew into a meaningful force for change. He reflects on his years working in the nonprofit sector in Philadelphia, his experience serving as the founding executive director of CTIPP, and what it took to incorporate it as a standalone nonprofit to sustain that work long term. Jesse also opens up about balancing his personal and professional lives, pursuing two master's degrees while leading mission-driven organizations, and what fuels his commitment to environmental sustainability and a more equitable future. Whether you're a nonprofit professional, an aspiring changemaker, or simply someone who believes the world can be better — this conversation is for you.

www.changecampaign.org

Joe Brummer's Website: www.joebrummer.com

Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools Conference (LINK)

What does it actually take to help a child heal? Not in theory — in real life, in real classrooms, in real homes.

Ginger Healy, LCSW has spent over 25 years answering that question. She began her career as a child abuse investigator and hospital social worker, spent 15 years supervising an international adoption agency, and today serves as Director of Programs at the Attachment & Trauma Network. She is a nationally recognized speaker, trainer, and author of several books, including Regulation and Co-Regulation and Managing Big Emotions.

But Ginger doesn't just study trauma — she lives alongside it. As a mother of four, her family's journey through adoption, developmental trauma, and autism has deepened her empathy and sharpened her understanding of what healing through connection really means.

In this episode, Joe and Ginger explore:

• What co-regulation is and why it changes everything
• What most educators still get wrong about behavior
• How healing-centered classrooms are built — on an ordinary Tuesday
• What her family has taught her that her career couldn't

If you work with kids, love a kid, or were once a kid who needed more than you got — this one is for you.

Ginger's Website

The Creating Trauma Sensitive Schools Conference

Joe's website

For this very first episode, I invited someone who knows my story better than almost anyone on the planet — because she lived it too. Chris Thomas is my sister. We grew up in the same house and experienced the same Events. But trauma isn't just about what happened — it's about how we each experienced it, and the Effects it left behind. Because we are different people, Chris and I experienced the same childhood differently — and the effects it had on each of us tell two distinct and powerful stories. Today, we sit down together to talk honestly about all three — the chaos, the confusion, and the unpredictability that shaped us both, and the very different paths we each took to find our way through it.

In this episode, Joe and Chris explore:

• What it was like to grow up in a home shaped by abuse and parental unpredictability
• How shame silences survivors — and what it takes to finally speak
• The specific tools that helped them heal — timelines, therapy, and creating your own family, and learning self-talk
• Why healing looks different for every survivor, even those who share the same story

Warning: This episode contains conversations about childhood abuse and trauma.

Learn more about Joe and his work: WEBSITE