Great points Tina Marie.

I will check out the workbook, but this discussion helps validate why I've been struggling to find a resilience measure that I like to compliment the ACE screen.  All the measures are either over clients heads (too clinical) or somehow invalidating or not trauma-informed to some degree.

I love the concept of empowering ourselves with an awareness of our own protective factors and strengths, but I think the struggle in finding universal screens and tools is that our strengths and protective factors are as unique as each individual...many of us have also agreed that the original 10 ACE's are lump categories that do not capture the full spectrum of trauma, so perhaps that's a piece of the unrest in finding the right resilience tools. 

So, workbooks like this are one step in the right direction. It might be the perfect tool for one person out there, and for that it's priceless. Yes?

So Jane, have you read it?  I'm thinking it'd be good to rate books, in terms of how effective you think they are in helping people with ACEs etc.  The backdrop is always ACEs now, once you know about them, I believe, so that adds an extra demand to how 'good' one thinks the material is.

I haven't read it, Mem. I mostly agree with Tina, though, in that we're not born resilient, but are given resilience, or not, as the case may be. Having said that, though, epigenetics does play a part, and some kids are born with a higher threshold of tolerance to stress than other kids. But that's given to them by their parents, so, we're back to resilience being given to you.

I think one way to rate books is to indicate whether they're informed by ACEs science or not. This one doesn't look to be, but it may have some useful info in the protective factors chapter.

I have used and frequently recommend this book and find it to be a useful resource in combination with other training related to ACES and trauma-responsive strategies

As author of this book, I relied on the research findings of Dr. Emmy Werner, called "the grandmother of resiliency."  She is the co-researcher on the Kauai study, the seminal resiliency research conducted for several decades on the island of Kauai.  Her best book about this research is "Overcoming the Odds: High Risk Children from Birth to Adulthood."  Dr. Werner states that everyone is born with "an innate self-righting tendency."  That is what I meant when I said in this book, "You were born resilient."  Every person alive *has overcome something.*  Certainly, this capacity can get overwhelmed by heaps of adversity, and we know the stronger the protective factors, the stronger the resiliency, but the capacity is in everyone.  If, as one person above argues, resiliency is like a muscle, then it exists and gets stronger depending on many factors.

I certainly understand the concern that glibly stating "everyone is resilient" can be used as an excuse to ignore or underestimate ACEs, or to underfund protective factor rich programs.  The metaphor I use in my training is that resiliency is in all a small pilot light, that can burn brightly (depending on the protective/resiliency building factors in someone's life) or can dim to near extinction.  But the flicker of the capacity is in all.

(I write this as someone with an ACEs score of 9 in my personal life.)

Thank all of the above for your interest in my book.