Carey Sipp 1/23/265:52 AM

A personal note:

Thank you, leaders and members of resiliency task forces, PACEs communities, and people just discovering the connection between childhood trauma and positive experiences and life outcomes, for helping raise awareness of the vital and undeniable connection between positive and adverse childhood experiences and lifelong health consequences of both.

Thank you to all who keep sharing ACEs science, who keep sharing the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences (PACEs). Who keep reminding people that what is predicable is preventable. And that child flourishing, too, is possible.

We know those positive experiences of belonging, feeling safe, being in a safe, stable, nurturing environment, feeling as if someone in your family has your back, having friends, experiencing community traditions, having two people other than one’s parents — that these are among the positive childhood experiences that help counter the adversity. And can help prevent adult mental illness.

Thank you to all the PACEs Connection members and community leaders who keep speaking truth to power about the science. The 1998 Adverse Childhood Experiences Study and the 2019 study on the impact of positive childhood experiences on adult mental health. And for those also promoting the 2018 study Bruce Perry, MD, PhD, MPA, did on the TIMING of ACEs, and how important consistent nurture is, especially the first two months of life, to infant brain development and laying a foundation for optimal brain development. Truly, early relational health is foundational to lifelong health and wellbeing.

Times are terrifying, sad, outrageous, exasperating, and more, to say the least. And yet I know so many leaders of resilient communities who are keeping their meetings going. Adding members to their task forces, taking on new projects to go way the heck upstream to prevent and hopefully heal trauma; to bring positive experiences to their communities by supporting pregnant and newly delivered women, families, schools, people across the lifespan.

This is a personal thank you. We see you. We love seeing you post in your communities and share about your meetings, plans, programs.

Thank you. Your sharing these lights inspires others. And may well be the single act of kindness that prevents or helps begin healing, or helps set someone toward nurturing a child or family. Or community.  

Thank you. It has been a hard, hard couple of years, for myriad reasons including the loss of dear friends, mentors, leaders.

Thank you for keeping the work going. Thank you. Thank you to fellow volunteer co-director of PACEs Connection Dana Brown, and our fiscal sponsor and partners at National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives, Diana Fishbein, PhD, and Jess Bair. Thank you to Alliance Practice Partners who continue to advise and help guide the work, and beloved donors, who we will name in full soon and who include Dr. Jamie Huysman of STAR Network Foundation; Harriet Stein, MD; The Parallel Foundation; Jeoffry Gordon, MD; The Langeloth Foundation and many more, who, again, will be named soon in a formal thank you.

Carey Sipp

Volunteer Co-Director

PACEs Connection