Note: PACEs Connection is in dire financial straits. A funder who’d promised $500,000 reversed course and we are asking for help, from you, our 57,400+ members, to help cover the loss. Pay and hours have been cut for our staff – most of us will be laid-off for the month of December. Since sounding the alarm this summer, we’ve raised about $22,000. To get a sense of who your fellow members are, who is donating, and why, please enjoy our first in a series of donor profiles, and be like Lois: Now that you know we need your help, please make a generous donationto PACEs Connection!
“I love PACEs Connection—and the thought that it might go away was not only frightening—but sad. Where else would I find the things I get from PACES Connection, all in one place?”—Lois Hall, grief recovery specialist
When Lois Hall first learned about the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in 1998, it made complete sense. “That study, and all the ensuing research and analysis proves that grief/change/loss—in the broadest terms—is indeed the root of almost all (if not all) of our ills as individuals, communities and... our world,” she says.
She would know as well as anyone. Hall, past executive director of the Ohio Public Health Association, has been doing Grief Recovery Method programs and training for more than two decades. She’s been in the field of public health for more than 40 years.
“I took my Grief Recovery Method (GRM) training in 1998 and saw the important role of grief/loss/change in the basics of all we do in public health. I remember in my training thinking, ‘We have a program and brochure for all of these topics—but they're not working.’ In public health we weren't getting to ‘the heart’ of those topics—obesity, smoking, alcoholism, abuse, drug use, suicide, violence, etc.,” she says. 
The week after her GRM training, a colleague gave a presentation at a staff meeting on the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study.
“Bingo! All the pieces came together,” she recalls. “I literally sat in that staff meeting and cried, because it is indeed those things that happen to us in childhood that impact us throughout our lives—till death.”
As an “early adopter,” Hall began referencing the ACE Study into her work as national trainer and technical assistance consultant at the Grief Recovery Institute.
“I look to PACES Connection for proof of where hope is brought in communities…”
“When I do Grief Recovery Method training for the Grief Recovery Institute,” she explains, I always conclude by telling the new trainees that while they came to become Grief Recovery Method specialists, I'm sending them out as that AND as ‘hope-bringers’ to a pretty hopeless-seeming world.
She gives PACEs Connection much credit for the hope she has.
“I look to PACES Connection for proof of where hope is brought in communities, data that proves the impact of PACEs and interventions that can help bring that hope, in addition to our programs, of course.
“I love PACEs Connection—and the thought that it might go away was not only frightening—but sad. Where else would I find the things I get from PACES Connection, all in one place? I just didn't want to imagine not having it,” she says.
Hall counts on PACEs Connection for what’s in the name of the organization: Connection. “Working for a small company there’s no ‘chatting around the water fountain’ about what we've heard or seen in journals or other articles,” she explains. “I count on PACES Connection for that.”
Hall relies on the resources, information, and the Weekly Roundup as among her primary sources of continued learning and staying current on PACE research and practice. “For me to stay informed and current, PACEs Connection is my ‘community of like-minded professionals and advocates,” she says.
“And ‘being involved’ also means I have chosen to make a financial donation,” Hall points out, adding, “Why should other members of PACES Connection provide financial support? If not us, then who?”
Resources:
Lois Hall bio on Grief Recovery Institute website
The Free Grief Recovery Method Guide For Loss Ebook
The Grief Recovery Handbook - for a limited time, free for the price of shipping.
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