Balancing ACES with HOPE – Please join our NEW community

I am 74 years old.  I have diabetes, mild emphysema, a mild heart condition, and terminal lung cancer.  I am observing an extended period of self isolation which I feel is due to the inability to confront covert 19 effectively at a national level. My chronic conditions in lung cancer are currently being effectively treated but we can’t say for how long.

Beginning at about 2 years ago I encountered ACEs as part of an Illinois Education Association training program.  The great majority of people there were educators in the K through 12 grades.  They were focusing upon the response to ACEs using a trauma informed approach.  The presentation impacted me differently at that time I was the president of my adjunct faculty union and teaching sociology at a community college.  What I saw was not just how ACEs could affect individuals but the impact of ACEs on society as a whole and on cultures as a whole. 

I began teaching ACEs to all of my classes until my forced retirement due to my cancer.  In my preparations for my materials I encountered the fact that ACEs was not represented in any sociological or anthropological textbooks. I felt this was wrong.  After my hospitalization for my cancer and subsequent effective treatment I again resumed my interest in ACEs. 

Through the good offices of a fellow adjunct faculty instructor in sociology I was able to present a module on ACEs to all of his sociology family and social problems classes.  I have since taken that module online.  I am teaching that module to classes now. 

My insight into ACEs as a cultural and social phenomena began on the 1^st day of my IEA class.  So I began to conceive a way of doing something about it.  I in conjunction with Craig McEwan and James Halm began the creation of a community on the ACEs connection.  The name of that new community is “ACEs and the social sciences”.

I have also re-conceptualized ACEs as ANTHRO-SOCIO-PSYCHO- PHYSIOLOGICAL phenomena reflecting my concern for the broader implications of ACEs in our culture other cultures and in various institutions of our society

Right now I am posting information to my site and using my site to reach out to other institutions and social scientists.  I do not know how my online teaching and working as the coordinator of “ACEs and the social sciences” will end up.

Positive aspects of this is that ACEs have given me hope of building the understanding of ACEs is a science and its implications and sharing that information and perspective.  That hope is sustaining me.  That hope is making my necessary self-isolation meaningful.