Yolanda Harden grew up a ward of the state in Lawton, Okla. Chaos marked her childhood, the details of which she chooses to keep private, even at age 34.

She drank alcohol and smoked marijuana before she was a teenager. She got pregnant when she was 14 and had a son at 15.

For most of her life, Yolanda, who now lives in Rockford, Ia., felt like a clenched fist gripped her heart, she told me in a recent telephone conversation. She believed the root of her struggles was that she was simply “broken.”

About a year ago, someone told Yolanda about ACEs, an acronym for adverse childhood experiences. ACEs describe various forms of child abuse, trauma and household dysfunction....

...Despite the research being more than a quarter-century old, Yolanda had never heard of the science. When a therapist finally explained it to her, she exhaled.

“It was like, ‘Oh, of course,’” she said. “It all makes sense now.”

More than that, Yolanda started to look at the struggles in her life from a different perspective. Many of the critical mistakes she made in her life weren’t because she was a bad person.

They were rooted in disrupted neurodevelopment that affected her social, emotional and cognitive behaviors.

“It wasn’t all my fault,” Yolanda said. “There was an actual scientific explanation for why I did what I did.”

To continue reading this article by Daniel P. Finney, go to: http://www.desmoinesregister.c...ences-aces/85535900/