“Resilience has the capacity to win every single time.” (ACEs Action Alliance)

By Alaire de Salvo for ACEs Action Alliance, originally published on Oct 4, 2017

“What is your ACES score?” This question sometimes gets bandied around the internet along with other popular quiz questions like “What color is your aura?” or “Which Disney princess are you?” Indeed, the first time I heard about the ACES study, I was quick to look up the questions and get my number. I wanted to know how I ranked with other people. On some level, I think I even wanted the validation of a high score. Acknowledging trauma and adversity did not feel like acceptable patterns of communication in my family of origin; being assigned a number that would scientifically categorize my childhood distress seemed like a powerful tool by which I could claim ownership of my experiences.
What I was not prepared for was how difficult the questions would be to think about – the memories and feelings they would trigger simply in the asking. I wasn’t prepared for the psychological fallout of how different my number would make me from my current peers. Nor was I prepared for the flood of shame that washed over me in facing my apparent success at not having succumbed to addiction or suicide. My ACES score is 8… 9 if you don’t adhere too strictly to the age parameters on question #3. No one in my family ever went to prison. That is the one question on the ACES questionnaire I could comfortably say “no” to – my one claim to “normalcy.”

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