Embrace: to hold, accept or support, the act of holding closely
Embrace adverse childhood experiences? Hold trauma, hurts, rejection, neglect, abuse close to me? That sounds ridiculous, dangerous even! Can’t I just take a pill and make it better? Ignoring it would be even easier. I can certainly just pretend, I’ve been doing that most of my life. I’ve already forgotten most of the details so why does it matter?
Because even though “(we) may not remember…the body remembers” which can cause a lot of health and disease problems, not to mention the behavioral and relational difficulties (Resilience: The biology of stress and the science of hope, KPJR Films, 2016).
It’s almost too much to wrap our brains around, yet it’s true. Advances in science show us just how true it is. There’s no putting adverse childhood experiences back in the box, pretending that they don’t affect us or our children. Maybe that’s enough to change your perspective? Your experiences, even the experiences of your parents and grand-parents affect your children because of epigenetics (simple definition: the role our experiences play in how our genes are expressed).
So, there’s no running away from ACEs, you’ve either got to hold ‘em or fold ‘em, and many of us have tried so hard to fold them that they’ve become incessant struggles in our lives that are spiraling out of our control. Yet if we accept them, hold them, and even, dare I say, embrace them, our ACEs can make us stronger, more resilient, and better able to help others around us.
It isn’t easy, but things in life that add value and joy seldom are. As Nadine Burk-Harris states in her Ted Talk, “This is treatable. This is beatable. The single most important thing that we need today is the courage to look this thing in the face and say, this is real, and this is all of us. I believe that we are the movement.”
It won’t happen if we don’t begin asking “what happened to you?” rather than “what’s wrong with you?” By embracing ACEs and learning how to build resilience in ourselves and others we can literally change the world and all that ails us. Let the movement begin with me. Are you ready?
Comments (1)