The Beyond ACES Summit: The Impact of Race, Culture, and Poverty registration is LIVE! The summit theme is #MovingBeyondACES (adverse childhood experiences). This year is historically significant because it marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans to Virginia. It was also a time that marked significant trauma. The summit touches on many different aspects of life and history. It was showcase the heartfelt talent of youth through dance and movement, music, theatre and...

Our Buncombe County/Asheville ACEs Speakers’ Bureau has partnered up with United Way, Green Opportunities, and Asheville City Schools to present community sessions co-occurring with the Homework Diners. The community sessions are open to everyone, regardless of whether you have children or not. By joining with the Homework Diners, a community meal and child enrichment become available to those attending the community sessions. Please invite anyone and everyone you know. The more we connect,...

Room erupts in applause for the grandmother of witness William Kellibrew during July 11 House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing. The power of personal stories from witnesses and committee members fueled the July 11 hearing on childhood trauma in the House Oversight and Reform Committee* throughout the nearly four hours of often emotional and searing testimony and member questions and statements (Click here for 3:47 hour video). The hearing was organized into a two panels—testimony from...

More than a decade ago, I was diagnosed with several autoimmune diseases, one after another, including Guillain-Barré syndrome , which left me paralyzed twice while raising two young children. All told I spent six years in and out of bed and hospitals, learning, between crises, to use a cane or walker to navigate life as a working-mother-with-chronic-illness. My immune system was repeatedly and mistakenly attacking my body, causing the nerves in my arms, legs, and those I needed to swallow...

first published by The Meadows 4/15/20 Our sense of loss during the current COVID-19 crisis can trigger hidden emotions from when we experienced a sense of loss before. Whatever early losses you have had in your life — whether they be your own divorce, your parents, or both, or the abandonment of one parent, a childhood or parental illness or death, financial upheaval, constant moving around, or growing up with parental addiction or adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) — they are likely to...

by Rachel Miller , VICE.com, May 28 2020, 7:25pm. Friends, I don’t need to tell you that it’s been an especially hard few weeks for Black people in the United States. Breonna Taylor . Ahmaud Arbery . Chris Cooper . George Floyd . Tear-gassing the protesters who had the gall to be upset about a racist murder . All of this, during a time when Black people are disproportionately dying from the COVID-19 pandemic . It’s exhausting. Amid all this suffering, it can be hard to believe Audre Lorde...

Southeastern ACEs Connection and national CTIPP leaders on the quarterly leader call welcomed guest speaker Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz (top left) for their quarterly call. Also among those present were (top row l-r) Carey Sipp, Jesse Kohler, Jesse Hardin, (second row, l-r) Patti Tiberi, Mebane Boyd, Jen Drake-Croft, Dan Press, (third row, l-r) Mimi Graham, Christopher Freeze, Margaret Stagmeier, (fourth row, l-r) Emily Marsh, Liz Peterson, Alyssa Koziarski and Janet Pozmantier. Also present was...

Widespread reporting has revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic has devastated many poor communities of color. Less widely known is how the pandemic has affected young people in those communities. “COVID-19 has had a particularly harsh impact on youth of color,” further traumatizing [juvenile-justice] system-impacted youth and their families already struggling with disproportionately high rates of disease, death, job loss and housing insecurity,” said Jim Keddy of Youth Forward . Keddy was...

Dr. Chan Hellman, leading researcher in the power of hope to improve lives of impoverished children and families who have experienced abuse and neglect, Justice Dawn Beam, and Christopher Freeze, co-chair of Mississippi ACEs Connection , on day three of presentations by Hellman to judges and staff members of Mississippi's Youth Courts. “Hope is a better predictor of college success than the ACT or the SAT score” was one of the startling comments made by Chan Hellman, Ph.D., in the first of...

We have so many wonderfu https://www.acesconnection.com/fileSendAction/fcType/0/fcOid/508261416693856202/filePointer/508261416693856263/fodoid/507698389112989542/Coping%20With%20Stress%20During%20the%20COVID-19%20Pandemic%20One-Pager_Accesible_English.pdf l resources shared by members. However, a few of you have asked me for help in retrieving them. Here's several of the most commonly shared ACEs handouts, info graphics and one pagers, with links to download. PLEASE share yours! I'm working...

We are just a few days away from broadcasting our all-new 7-day event October 4‒10 , which includes the Talks on Trauma Series Part 2 , a showing of the Wisdom of Trauma Movie, daily meditations, integration sessions, and artistic performances. Dr. Gabor Maté will be in conversation with 33+ trauma experts, physicians, authors, visionaries and artists. The talks will be exploring how trauma relates to parenting, chronic pain, the medical paradigm, the climate crisis, politics, spirituality,...

Monday, November 15 th , 2021 marks the launch of Charlotte County’s ACEs awareness week to raise awareness about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and to highlight the importance of fostering Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) in the lives of our children and youth. Last year, the Charlotte County Board of County Commissioners granted an ACEs awareness county proclamation; however, still in the throws of COVID-19 precautions and response, our community was unable to celebrate the...

Chart is sample page from county-by-county funding allocated as part of ARPA. Information is available by clicking here. This is the first of several articles on the importance of any resilience-focused entity, including your PACEs Connection community, seeking out the people in your area allocating ARPA funding and asking for money. Organizations do not necessarily have to be 501 C-3 nonprofits to receive funding. Thanks to federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to states in April...

Lee Johnson III PhD and Sandra Bloom MD to lead discussion on emerging trauma-informed policies and practices in the education and health care fields. What are ways that these fields are taking PACEs, Prevention, and Trauma science into consideration, and what can advocates do to help further advance these and other promising practices? It's free to join, so sign up at this link today! You’re invited to participate in Building the Movement in Education and Health Care , the second of eight...

This is the third of three stunning illustrations showing how PACEs (positive and adverse childhood experiences) affected the family of Cendie Stanford, graphic artist and founder of the nonprofit ACEs Matter. This one looks at her positive childhood experiences. The day before her 16th birthday, Cendie Stanford’s older brother was shot and killed by a young man who, just two years earlier, had been her boyfriend. “I was heartbroken that two people I loved were out of my life forever,” says...

Please join us on June 28 from 1:30-3:00 p.m. ET for a virtual conversation with best-selling author Bruce Perry. Ingrid Cockhren , CEO of PACEs Connection; Mathew Portell , PACEs Connections’ director of communities, and Perry, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, will engage in a conversation concerning historical trauma and Perry’s best-selling book " What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing, " which he co-authored with Oprah Winfrey. Please share this blog...

Ingrid Cockhren, PACEs Connection CEO, welcomes Rev. Deanna Hollas , the nation’s first known “minister of gun violence prevention,” for this week’s episode of "History. Culture. Trauma." on Thursday, June 2, at 1 p.m. PT; 4 p.m. ET. They will discuss the more than 60 mass shootings in the United States during the month of May 2022 — including the shooting of 10 Black adults and one White adult in Buffalo, New York, and last week’s killing of 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas.

Christina Bethell, Ph.D, MBA, MPH, founder of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative (CAHMI), principal author of the groundbreaking study on positive childhood experiences, and creator of the free Well Visit Planner, among other innovations. Two internationally-respected leaders and innovators in complementary aspects of early relational health and childhood and maternal health equity recently launched a partnership they believe will benefit everyone from newborn babies and...

Former PACEs Connection employees Dana Brown (L) with Vincent Felitti, MD, co-author of the 1998 Adverse Childhood Experiences study, and Carey Sipp (R) in San Diego in January, 2024. The last few months have been quite challenging, but we pushed, persevered, and didn’t give up hope. The “we” is Carey Sipp and Dana Brown. We were long-time staff members of PACEs Connection determined to reinstate the website and the resources and information we provide to communities after the platform went...