No Get Out of Jail Free Card for You

Until I had to bail someone out of jail, my foggy notions of the hows and whys of this system were based on TV cop shows, noir films and Raymond Chandler detective stories. I’d assumed (wrongly, it turns out) that the bail set was an indicator of the seriousness of the crime,

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A crash course in healing from trauma

By Diana Somerville

When my daughter stopped for a pedestrian at a crosswalk, someone rear-ended her car. An everyday occurrence — statistically, there’s an accident every 15 seconds — and, in terms of damage to her car, Kelmie’s accident was minor. Yet her journey toward recovery has brought us a new understanding of how trauma impacts our bodies — and our lives.

A massage therapist for more than 10 years, Kelmie had worked at a center specializing in accident rehabilitation; she knew about whiplash and crash injuries. But after months of treatment with medical and body work specialists, nothing helped for long. Intense pain in her neck, arms, shoulders and lower back forced her to give up the work she loved. Plagued with nausea, blinding migraines and startling outbursts of anger, “I feel like a complete wreck,” she sobbed.