(A written version of a presentation given at the February Sonoma County ACEs Connection meeting.) Sonoma County ACEs Connection is trying out a few new meeting topics to focus on trauma, recovery, and lessons learned. We’re calling this one Personal Stories. Let me tell you quickly what we hope it will do, and then I’ll tell you a personal story to show how this feature might work. There are three reasons why personal stories are useful and powerful. The first is that people like and learn...

(This is a written version of a presentation I gave at our January Meeting.) For the past year, Sonoma County ACEs Connection worked to make more people aware of Adverse Childhood Experiences. But especially after the big fires, it feels important to also talk about resilience. I want to start a discussion about simple resilience techniques that anyone could apply in their work, social and/or personal life. This is not new information, because the best resilience methods have been used by...

President Trump just fired the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. Dr. Murthy later posted some of his final thoughts on his Facebook page. These are words to live by, for anyone interested in ACEs and trauma. Kindness is more than a virtue. It is a source of strength. If we teach our children to be kind and remind each other of the same, we can live from a place of strength, not fear. I have seen this strength manifest every day in the words and actions of people all across our great nation. It...

This story occurred in the early part of the AIDS epidemic. In 1991, I was part of a coalition working to develop local home care options for AIDS patients. This was before the first AIDS treatment drugs became available, so the prognosis for someone with AIDS was not good. They got sick. If they recovered, they were likely to get sick again soon. Back then, HIV disease was still an unfamiliar and frightening illness, even for medical personnel. The general public was concerned about...

Making do with what you’ve got There are a lot of stories about refugees in the news. Some years ago, I helped resettle refugees from the Vietnam War. Trauma and resilience define what it means to be a refugee. All of them had lived through years of warfare. They had seen friends and family members killed. They had to flee the familiar towns and villages they had lived in all their lives. They arrived in a new country with hardly any resources, in a land where nobody spoke their language or...

Here’s the problem. Since you are reading this on ACES Connections, you are likely not the type of person who questions ACES. Like me, when you first heard about ACES, you shouted “Eureka!” or felt the heavens open up or maybe simply thought “Well, that makes sense.” Writing this blog, I’m preaching to the choir.  After all, there is so much scientific evidence to support ACES, doesn’t everyone believe it? Well, working in Public Health...

If you work with clients in health or human services, you will at some point work with an interpreter. Have you thought about the awkward position they occupy? Language is only part of the problem. They must be “white” enough to understand and navigate the bureaucratic culture, while being black/brown/yellow/red enough to understand the client’s worldview and concerns and to be able to gain the trust of the communities they serve. When I worked with refugees, I often served...

My ancestry is 100% Japanese, but I probably could pass as Native American. I’m straight, but having worked some 20 years in HIV services, there were many times people assumed I was gay. My ACE score is zero, but I could pretend it was five or six. How would you know what is true? How will all our newly recruited “trauma informed’ workers (all those coaches, teachers and dentists we want to be on the lookout for ACES) know what is true? One of the great American legends is...

There is a game in which you tell people two truths and a lie and folks must guess which one is the lie. Want to play? One: I lived and worked on a seaplane for several months. Two: for a time, I built musical instruments for a living. Three: I helped several women escape domestic violence. To help you figure out which one is the lie, let me tell you a story. Shortly after graduating from college, I started working as a Personnel Specialist for the Department of the Navy in Washington D.C. I...

Do many health and human service workers have adverse childhood experiences (ACEs ) in their background? How does that affect their work? Those questions arose after the Sonoma County (CA) Department of Health Services hosted several presentations...