In my first "My ACES and Me" blog post published one month ago, [Feb 18, 2015] I invited you all along with me on a brief tour of the 7 (or 6, or 8?) adverse childhood experience categories that make up my ACES score. At the time of that writing, I had fully expected to continue that story line in chronological fashion, sharing the first, initial consequences in my life as I crossed the ACES time boundary of 21 years old and beyond. Perhaps I believed that further disclosure regarding the jagged line of a life's course charted by my ACES GPS would be cathartic in some way, and I would be able to face the subsequent years of my life healthy in mind and spirit.
Needless to say, that did not turn out to be the case, and like some cruel turn in a Stephen King novel, I found the revisiting of those early post-teen years only serving to reveal a rapid descent from the heights of youthful promise and possibility into the proverbial hell of poor behavioral and life choices. The theme of my follow up blog posting, therefore, was suddenly unclear.
To my rescue came coincidence, which the Ghanan writer, Ernest Agyemang Yeboah calls, "not just only a road to facts but also a call to ponder.” So the following closely occurring visitors to my consciousness have left me to ponder the sometimes insidious nature of ACES's impacts in my and others' adult lives:
- a Huffington post article, "This is What Teen Depression Looks Like" written by a young woman who looks like the stereotype of the perky and popular blonde-haired and blue-eyed cheerleader,
- the blog article, "Childhood Trauma: 8 Misconceptions About Traumatic Experience" by TamaraHill, MS, reposted on the ACES Connection site, and most significantly,
- the seemingly kind Facebook message, "I remember your father; he was such a nice man," this from a recently discovered old friend and neighbor who had lived in the Brooklyn tenement apartment across from me and my family....yes, that's right...The nice man who was the infamous star of My ACES and Me, Part 1. I guess my old neighbor had been out the evening of the nice man's use of a Japanese bayonet to restore order and propriety in our household when I had dared to try to protect my mother from him.
Yes, ACES and their impacts can very often hide in plain sight. On the one hand, it can be painfully obvious, as on the expressions of the children and families displaced by Hurricane Katrina. On the other, it can lie dormant, and even take on the guise of the "nice man" next door or in the next cubicle. It can escape detection even under the scrutiny afforded by the day-to-day interactions among acquaintances, friends, neighbors, and co-workers; yet be unmasked by a simple 10 question screening tool.
Ms. Hill writes in her blog post that, "...Trauma is a complex phenomenon that is intermixed with biology/genes, environmental influence, and physiology." And as such, it also defies any one-size-fits-all approach to addressing. This may be an unfortunate challenge for some. But as the discussions within these pages attest, there are many, many options of trauma-informed care that can and are making a difference for many, many people, and those close to them.
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