Hi Laura:
This is such an important conversation and something I too have been thinking about a ton.
I think the information about ACEs is powerful and empowering, for kids and parents. I know it has actually helped me move away from blame (of my own parents and my struggles with symptoms) to understanding a much wider social context. It has helped me in my parenting as well to prioritize self-care (so I'm alive longer despite a high ACE score) but also helped me prioritize ways of parenting, that are in essence, the opposite of ACEs. That's been life-changing, for me and has helped me find a lot more compassion for myself and my family. For me, sharing about ACEs parent to parent, person to person, is most helpful and the focus of my life work. It's helped me be far more broad in my understanding of humans, as well.
I used to be an activist focused mostly on ending sexual violence and violence against women, which is still important to me, but I appreciate understand childhood adversity with a much wider understanding getting how much neglect and dysfunction as well as abuse can and do impact people. So my life has been changed by learning about ACEs, personally and professionally.
However, I've also got concerns. My fears are that the info. , say an ACE score, turns into another way to screen, identify, label and target some people so when and how info. is collected, gathered and used, relating to ACEs matters.
Who is collecting ACE scores and for what reason?
Is info. being shared with and worked with by people most impacted by ACEs or targeted at communities in another way that's not empowering or respectful or that fails to address power imbalances in systems, starting with the family system, but also in schools, neighborhoods, criminal justice, etc.?
Are those of us with the most ACEs leading conversations and most represented in conversations about what people with a lot of ACEs need? I still don't see that happening as regularly and systematically as I'd like. There's still too much token representation if any representation at all.
If trauma-informed approaches are not informed by trauma survivors, it will be another mostly words movement that doesn't touch, connect and work with people in ways that make change. That's why all people at all levels within a sector have to be engaged, those that provide services and those who are the ones who receive them (sometimes by force, as in the mental health and criminal justice and family protective services). That's not going to happen if only mid and high level professionals within these different organizations talk to each other. If cross sector is only mid and high level professionals talking to other mid and high level professionals, that's not going to make much difference.
We need all a sector to be represented and beyond token representation so that it matters and so that changes can be systematized.
The shift of question from "What is wrong with you?" to "What happened to you?" still implies us and them . It is still a question mostly by a professional targeted at someone with ACEs. What's the leading question someone with ACEs most asks? Do we understand that "What is wrong with you?: or "What happened to you?" can be asked by someone with ACEs towards professionals as well?
Do we assume conversations are had between equals who both have power? Too often, the conversation about ACEs lacks this. The what's wrong with you to what happened to you shift is still a leading question by and at someone with ACEs, right? The first question focuses on a person's symptoms and blames. But thought the second question also is still too narrow in focusing on personal context of what happened, usually in one generation of family rather than historically, socially and for generations.
This is about all of us. Always. where and when that doesn't seem central is where and when I get nervous.
Because it's what is wrong with us and what happened to us? Because it's what do we need most now that is being missed?
We are all impacted by ACEs, the presence or absence of them. Every single one of us. I think that's what the unified sciences stuff is all about though I admit that I don't have all that neurobiology-epigenetics-epidemiology language down. I do know our health is tied to our lack of ACEs just as our health risks are tied to the presence of them.
Asking "What's wrong with you?" or "What happened to you?" is still all about us/them?
Conversations about ACEs often seem to be being focused at people with high ACEs and often by those without high ACEs (or at least by people who don't acknowledge being personally impacted even when we know how often that is the case). I'm not sure how helpful that is.
This is a really important question you have asked Laura. Thank you! Sorry for the LOOONNNNGGGG response. It's helped me figure out when I focus on speaking for and about my own experiences most, and coming from that place even when speaking with professionals or in my writing. You have helped me realized I don't actually trust the systems that have let so many people down for so long and not just because I have trust issues but because of the real ways power has been misused in the past.
We don't reckon enough with how often the systems, even ones well-intention and meaning to help people, have done just the opposite. That has to be part of the conversation as well and is why we can't isolate ACEs from childhood from ACEs in community because the way they intersect has everything to do with how ACEs science will be used and by whom.
I'm so grateful for this thousands of people large community having these important conversations and in a setting where all opinions and perspectives get to be shared. Cissy