Blog

by Kyra Wagner

Leaves around town are starting to show signs that fall is on its way. After the crazy busy summers that Alaskans tend to push through, there is always a bit of a collective sigh when fall comes. But Americans in general are known for moving too fast and we all know how life can pile up on you no matter what time of the year it is.

It is this constant stress that takes a toll on a person’s health. The human body was designed to have “fight or flight” responses in emergencies, but modern society tends to put us there on a regular basis. That kind of stimulation pumps out chemistry throughout the body that affects our health.

It also affects the way we think. The “fight or flight” portion of the brain is a totally different section than the “thinking” part of the brain. The interesting trick is that this protective warning center, the amygdala, reads information coming into your awareness before the thinking brain, the neocortex, has had a chance to edit it.

Sorry to geek out on brain science, but this is an important factor in health and relationships. A term I love is “amygdala hijack”, coined by Daniel Goleman in his 1996 book “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.” If the amygdala registers a memory of trauma associated with the stimulus you are experiencing, it will act on it without checking with the neocortex first.

This means logic is out of the picture, you are acting completely on emotion. Not only does this mean that you can be acting irrationally and destructively, it means that your body is awash with chemicals that meant to stimulate defensiveness.

Not only can this negatively affect your relationships (obviously), but it will affect your physical, mental and emotional health. If you are a child who has had a lot of stressful and traumatic experiences, your amygdala is more likely to have a negative memory to attach new experiences to. That means less time thinking about things and more time reacting.

Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, have been tied to all kinds of health risk behaviors including teen pregnancy, drug use and obesity. But ACEs have also been tied to health problems later in life ranging from heart disease to autoimmune diseases.

This is why MAPP of the Southern Kenai Peninsula has identified family wellbeing as a top priority for community health. Until we can create a caring and supportive community to lower stress, we will never overcome long term illnesses.

Luckily Homer was selected to work with a state-wide group working on making our community that supportive and caring place. Over the next year organizations around town will be focusing and learning about how to make their work more sensitive to people who have experienced trauma. (Contact Rachel Romberg of the local Resilience Coalition for more information at 235-1580)

But all organizations in the world working together can’t do as much for you as you can do for you. This is where mindfulness comes in. (Warning: more brain science coming up.)

Mindfulness is like brain exercise. All you are doing is practicing the art of being in your neocortex. By strengthening your own ability to bring stimulus and information to the “thinking brain,” you will find yourself less reactive and more thoughtful. Simple science. Less amygdala hijack.

Sitting quiet for a few minutes a day counting your breaths might seem self-indulgent in your busy schedule. But keep in mind that it is for your future health, for your ability to work and play well, for the sake of the relationships of your family, your coworkers and your neighbors.

It’s not just for you, it’s for your community.

Published on July 7, 2016 in the Homer News

I am a beekeeper. I love the dynamics of these tiny social creatures. Really they aren’t that different from humans in many ways. They like sweets and like to dance, for instance. What’s not to like?

The famous bee dance is the way they communicate in their society, the way a bee can let everyone know where the food resources are and how to get there. Homer is abuzz with activity as well, but it’s not always as easy to find out where the activity is and how to get there.

Communication is key to community. We are social creatures just like bees and we need each other to keep going. No family is completely self-sufficient.

Are you your own teacher, doctor, dentist, hair dresser, employer, counselor, entertainment and food provider? Of course not. So how do you connect to the resources you need?

Luckily the Homer area has several resources available to plug into. There are always Facebook pages that are quick to inform you of the activities happening around town, whether they are kid-friendly, whether or not they cost anything, or what they provide. All you have to do is “like” the pages of the organizations and groups you like and you will get perfectly timed updates.

But Facebook is not for everyone and not all services show up there. Dentists, for example, don’t have Facebook events, so how to you find out where to go for dental work? Or playgroups for toddlers? Or for disability services? Or for counseling? You can crowd source for opinions about what dentist to use from your friends, but you probably aren’t going to put it out there to the Facebook world that you are looking for a counselor.

This is where the Southern Kenai Peninsula Resource Directory comes in. Whether you are looking for a service or looking to post a service, skpresourcedirectory.net is the place to go. Specific to our area, it can be updated regularly by the person who provides the service. This way it can stay current and relevant. If you have a service for the community, you can create a page of details about it and provide search words that people looking for your service may use. (And it’s free.)

If you are searching for services, you can look at the directory for the category of service. The list of categories spans business, housing, children, legal, church, senior, pregnancy, transportation, training and many other services. It’s the go-to resource like a phone book but more up-to-date, detailed with specific information about each service, and at your fingertips.

Why stop there?

There are two other resources that join our community bee dance to keep you informed as to where the services are. One is focused on family. The Family Resource Booklet put out by Sprout Family Services can be downloaded at mappofskp.net/projects/homer-early-childhood-coalition. This handy reference is a must for all parents listing resources ranging from faith-based support to play spaces to crisis contacts to medical care.

It’s nice to know there is support in our community for parents, but we also have resources for youth. The Homer Youth Resource Guide is online at homeryrg.org and full of activities and opportunities for youth in town. There are links titled “Arts and Culture,” “Community Calendar,” “Shopping,” “Places to Chill,” “Education,” “I Need Help Now,” “Rides and Car Care,” and more, all with the focus for youth. Also an active page easily updated, this stays relevant as well.

The key to a healthy community is not that it has tons of services, but that people know how to access those services. So if your life is abuzz, check out what our community has to offer through these resources and get plugged in.

Kyra Wagner is the coordinator of Sustainable Homer and a member of the MAPP steering committee.

Published on June 2, 2016 in the Homer News

So another round of collecting data on our community is coming to an end for MAPP.  What were the findings? What are those interesting tidbits that surprise, maybe shock us? What were the areas where community perception didn’t match statistical fact?

It may seem like I’m trying desperately here to make data collection sound interesting.  The fact is, when looking at community-wide data, changes over time aren’t usually all that startling.  It may teach us something we didn’t know before, but statistics usually don’t change all that dramatically.

But when we get information consistently, we can start seeing trends.  A statistic going up or down.  Now that can start getting interesting.

Especially when we pledge to change that trend.

That is what happened back in 2014. After the last round of data collection, the community sat down with the MAPP process and identified the most important issue to address for our community health. At the root of almost any problem, the strength of the family can be the cure. So as Family Well-being became a community health goal, certain pieces of data were singled out to show how well we were doing as a community.

That is the trend we need to be watching.

It isn’t easy to track family well-being, but there are indicators that work like a thermometer for when you are sick. A thermometer may not tell you why you are sick, how you got sick or what to do about it, but it is one indicator of whether or not you are getting better.

One of those indicators of family well-being is seen in how our children grow up. Are they confident and emotionally stable? Are they living in an environment of toxic stress? Do they have people they can confide in or run to when life is too much?

You can imagine how these questions lead to adults who are healthy and resilient. And you need healthy adults to raise healthy children to create a healthy community. It’s all connected.

That is why one of the indicators of our community health that we as a community decided to monitor was percent of students who feel comfortable seeking help from at least one adult besides their parents if they had an important question affecting their lives.

So what is the trend in this data point?

2011:  86.9 percent

2013:  84.9 percent

2015:  82.8 percent

If this was a thermometer, it would be saying that our temperature is rising. So what can we do about this as a community?

This is one of the frustrating aspects of data. It is just an indicator. It doesn’t tell us if the cause is because parents are pressured to raise kids independently and don’t reach out for social connection for their kids (or themselves?).  Maybe it is a side-effect of the digital divide where kids communicate so much more through social media than adults.  Maybe it’s the fact that people move here and leave behind traditional family connections that could function as that support network.

This indicator also doesn’t tell us how to solve it.  Is it after school activities that we are lacking?  Is it opportunities for intergenerational mixing that we are lacking? Is it a cultural issue?  Is it economic? Is it all of the above?

It is only clear that we need to do something. How can we get our kids more connected to more adults in their lives? How can we support families so they aren’t isolated? The data makes us aware, but it won’t solve the issue for us.

No one organization can solve this downward trend.  No grant will fix it.  This is a community issue and only the community as a whole working collectively can have an impact.

What part can you play in turning this trend around?

Kyra Wagner is the coordinator of Sustainable Homer and a member of the MAPP steering committee.