Trauma in First Two Years of Life

I love that you are making something good out of your suffering, Jo! Keep up the good work. 

Hi Jo! 

I am very interested in your work and the non-profit it sounds like you are trying to restart. I am an independent coach and founded my company www.143coaching.com for a similar reason - to help myself and others heal their childhood wounds, some of which happened when I was pre-verbal. That sure does make talk therapy a very difficult option! 

If you go to my website, www.143coaching.com below my picture you'll see the option to schedule a free affinity call. I'd love to talk about what you're looking for from a board member perspective and potentially collaborate together. 

I have a short story that I wrote about how I healed my pre-verbal wounds. I wrote it this summer, but your post prompted me to share it on my blog...Trigger Warning - This may be triggering for you. 

https://143coaching.com/blog/2...raumatic-experiences

Nikky

Dear Jo:

First, thanks for writing AND sharing. I'm so sorry for your early life experiences and the way trauma shaped your life, your Dad's life, and death. My father was a veteran (Vietnam) and alcoholic who was violent to himself, my mom, and with his children which meant he had to have supervised visits to see me and my sister, and did that only a few times before disappearing from our lives.

One of the things I love about this site, and part of what brought me here, is that ACEs Science doesn't focus only on abuse that happens to us kids, but also the neglect, and how we've been impacted by addiction, loss, the trauma and abuse our parents were acting out or we witnessed. And also, because we can share how we find healing as individuals, families, and communities and how complicated it can be and what we are doing in our own families, healing, work, writing, organizations, etc.

So thanks for sharing about your organization and book. As for who is seeing your post, we have over 40,000 members of ACEs Connection. That said, we all can't read everything that's posted so it's not clear how many are going to see this post. To find board members, I suggest going to ACEs Connection Sonoma County if you are looking for people who are local. And I'm going to tag my colleague @Karen Clemmer as well who might have other suggestions.

And we have lots of interest-based communities you may be interested in here and where you may wish to share your writing and about your organization. I'm the Community Manager of Parenting with ACEs but there are many others!  A few are as follows:

ACES in Education We share ideas, information, and stories about mitigating the effects of adverse childhood experiences in the K-12 environment.

Parenting with ACEs How do we honor both lived & learned expertise to break down barriers between parents & professionals? How do ACE-impacted families best access healing, hope & health? How might parent education, training, & support services if co-created with families & in the community?

Practicing Resilience for Self-Care & Healing “We have the capacity, within ourselves, to create better health," writes Donna Jackson Nakazawa. We can improve our health no matter what our ACE score. Learn resilience practices that reduce stress hormones in our bodies & brains. Understand how pain, shame & trauma make self-healing harder. Explore research & resources. Share stories, struggles & successes. Practice resilience.

Books! Educational Videos! Documentaries! Here's a place where you can review books, educational dvds and documentaries that relate to ACE concepts or trauma-informed practices. "Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world." ~ Nelson Mandela

Also, we do have staff here who can help if you have questions about the site and how/where to post, etc. Thanks for the work you are doing!

Warmly,

Cissy

Jo, I hear you.

Developmental Trauma is something I didn’t really know about until the last few years. It was devastating to me to put the 2+2 together on how it has affected me. My dad, too, was a veteran who experienced horrific traumas in WWII and had extreme challenges with addiction and violent behavior as the result. It made for a lot of chaos in my life. 

And I am grateful to know there is healing. I have found some help with neurofeedback, EMDR, a lot of time in nature, building community, rhythmic exercise and yoga. Connecting with people through ACEs Connection has been healing, inspiring, and compelling. I am glad you are on the site!

Karen Clemmer, who is a staffer in your area (and time zone) or any one of us could take you on a tour of the website. I will forward this to Karen.  As Cissy said, we do have more that 40k members and some 400+ communities (some are “hidden” as they are in preparation  of going public). There are also many resources that we are updating, so we do miss some posts. Sorry to just now be reading yours.  I hope you are feeling more regulated, safer, better.

Peace,

Carey