The ACEs Connection Cooperative of Communities launches today. We want to continue to contribute to the ACEs movement for as long as it takes to create a worldwide healing-centered culture based on ACEs science. We want that to take hold in this world in the same way electricity has — we only notice it if it isn’t there. First, a clarification: Nothing on ACEsConnection.com changes! Membership remains free! Everything our current 300+ communities use stays free, and remains free for new ones.

Friday, April 12, 2019 marked an exciting, auspicious, and perhaps pivotal day in the history of Monroe County, Indiana. That’s a lot of adjectives—and pressure—to pile onto just another glorious spring day in Bloomington. But I think many folks who virtually congregate on a site that supports communities implementing trauma-informed and resilience-building practices grounded in ACEs science would agree that a county’s first-ever ACEs conference deserves a little ballyhoo. But this ACEs...

Volunteers, businesses and organizations in the community are coming together to provide food for families during spring break and while Monroe County Community School Corp. schools are closed following the break. The Monroe County Community Food Train will be delivering prepackaged or prepared meals, provided by City Church For All Nations, the Office of Diversity Initiatives in the Kelley School of Business, and local restaurants, to locations in the county beginning 12:30-2 p.m. Tuesday...

Where to begin... My heart is full of hope and joy as I watch the trauma-informed schools movement swell across our nation and planet. The science of ACEs is mind-bending to say the least and we are now able to open up a much deeper dialogue about human behavior and health. Ultimately this work is about healing… All. Of. Us. A new consciousness is taking root around ending the “us vs them” construct. The idea is growing that we’re all on this journey together and that no matter where our...

Laura's Note: This post is old news -- the United Way of Monroe County Breakfast Panel it recounts happened in July 2019. It may not be news at all to any of you who happened to attend. But I wanted to share it because when I happened across it well after the fact, it gave me a lilt of hope--someone else out there is paying attention! We KNOW other ACEs-aware folks are among us, we just haven't necessarily made all of their acquaintances yet. To me, it's exciting to know that the topic is...

Karen Clemmer, the Northwest community facilitator with ACEs Connection, was already deeply interested in the CDC/Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study when she and a colleague from the Child Parent Institute were invited to lunch by ACEs Connection founder and publisher Jane Stevens in 2012. But that lunch meeting changed everything. Karen Clemmer “Jane helped us see a bigger world,” says Clemmer. “She came with a much wider lens. She didn’t look only at Sonoma County, she...