“We are grateful for your support,” said members of the ACEs Connection staff on a recent “all staff Zoom call”. L-R (top row) Laurie Udesky, Carey Sipp, Gail Kennedy, Lara Kain (second row) Cissy White, Rafael Maravilla, Donielle Prince, Jenna Quinn (third row) Ingrid Cockhren, (off camera) Alison Cebulla, Jane Stevens. Out that day, and grateful all the same, were Karen Clemmer, Dana Brown, Elizabeth Prewitt, Marianne Avari, and Samantha Sangenito
‘Tis the giving season, and as of mid-December ACEs Connection is at the halfway mark — $25,000 — toward our goal of raising $50,000 in donations to match the contribution of a generous funder. “We are thrilled that our community has responded so generously to our requests for donations,” said Jane Stevens, founder and publisher of ACEs Connection. “Your gift is important because If we raise $50,000 in member donations, a generous anonymous donor will match the amount, dollar for dollar, so your gift will be doubled.”
More than 110 members of ACEs Connection have used the online giving option to make their donation. Gifts have ranged in size from $1000 to $5. As Stevens says, “No gift is too small. Our matching gift donor is looking at this as another way to build community, in addition to our ability to raise the $50,000, so I want members to know that a gift in any amount is appreciated.”
While ACEs Connection staff will be taking a break during the holiday season — our Daily Digest and Weekly Roundup will go on hiatus until Jan. 4, 2021 — our online donation option remains active.
“We want to model what a trauma-informed organization looks like by truly taking some well-deserved time off during the holiday season,” said Stevens,
“This year proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) is at the nexus of the loss of life during the pandemic, the racism driving civil unrest, and the wrenching fear, poverty and despair experienced by millions due to the economic downturn,” said Stevens.
“We have been out front during this time. Our staff has been posting reports on the ACEs, resilience, the pandemic, racism, and poverty from every corner of our nation and the world. We’ve been gathering the stories from your communities; researching and reporting the data that show how being a person of color and living in poverty — both environmental ACEs — has disproportionately affected Black, Latinx and Indigenous people,” Stevens added.
In March, ACEs Connection responded to the popular question of “When will things get back to normal?” by saying “We need a better normal.” “The normal we had wasn’t working for most people in the U.S. So, we created ‘A Better Normal’ webinar series to shine a light on the problems being surfaced by the pandemic and the death of George Floyd so that we could share solutions, expertise from our vast community of members, and hope,” said Stevens.
“We hosted more than 65 webinars over the last nine months, in addition to several more on starting and growing ACEs initiatives, the Community Resiliency Model. Of those, 27 ‘Better Normals’ focused on re-imagining education in our ‘Education Upended’ series,” said Stevens.
In addition, the ACEs Connection “community of communities” has grown during the pandemic, now totaling 348 geographic communities and some 40 interest-based communities.
“In short, it has been a demanding year. We’ve grown our membership base to almost 49,000 members, and added to our followers on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook and Instagram.
We’ve worked hard on reporting about policy and advocacy, science and community successes. It’s time for us to practice what we preach and take a rest, and we encourage members to take time to rest and recover from the challenges this year brought, too, if possible.” said Stevens.
ACEs Connection will share its last Weekly Update for the year Wednesday, December 16, and its last Daily Digest on Friday, December 18.
“The website will be up and monitored. It is likely that members will continue to post, and that despite time off, some staff will be compelled to post updates as well,” said Stevens. Further, “The matching grant campaign will be extended to January 31, 2021, so we will start the new year with new videos and stories on why our supporters support us.”
For those of you who would like to mail a check, here is that information:
Please make the check out to TSNE (For Third Sector New England, our fiscal partner) and on the “for line” please note “for ACEs Connection.” The address to send the check is
Christine Carreiro ATTN: ACEs Connection TSNE MissionWorks 89 South Street Suite 700 Boston, MA, 02111
If you would like to post a two-to-three minute video about “Why I support ACEs Connection,” you are invited to do so. If you’d like to make a video, please use Zoom to record it, and email it to Carey Sipp at csipp@acesconnection.com, for review and posting after January 4, 2021. Please put “Why I Support” video in the subject line of the email.
Speaking on behalf of the ACEs Connection staff, Stevens said: “We wish all of you health, peace and happiness as 2020 draws to a close. We know that 2021 will be a better year.”
Southeastern ACEs Connection and national CTIPP leaders on the quarterly leader call welcomed guest speaker Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz (top left) for their quarterly call. Also among those present were (top row l-r) Carey Sipp, Jesse Kohler, Jesse Hardin, (second row, l-r) Patti Tiberi, Mebane Boyd, Jen Drake-Croft, Dan Press, (third row, l-r) Mimi Graham, Christopher Freeze, Margaret Stagmeier, (fourth row, l-r) Emily Marsh, Liz Peterson, Alyssa Koziarski and Janet Pozmantier. Also present was Caitlin LaVine. Dorothy Oppenheiser was among those calling in for the meeting.
Learning ways to help people walk out of the trauma of multi-generational poverty and abuse to create their own destinies and build new lives, representatives from 10 Southeastern states met last week to hear inspiring remarks from a formerly impoverished mom of three sons.
Participants on the ACEs Connection/CTIPP Southeastern Leaders call also updated the group about work being done in their states.
Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz, who transformed her own life and is now an educational and poverty consultant, was the educational speaker. Dan Press, general counsel for CTIPP (the Campaign for Trauma Informed Policy and Practice), said his “mind was blown” by Lewis-Pankratz’s story and methodology for helping people leave behind generational poverty and trauma.
“What you are saying is revolutionary,” he said. “All lobbyists in (Washington) D.C. will grit their teeth when they hear this. They say people whose brains are disabled by poverty aren’t going to be able to get out of poverty.”
Walking families out of poverty
Lewis-Pankratz’s story mesmerized those on the call, as they heard her explain the impact of trusting, stable relationships on her growth. She talked about living with three little boys in a $1,000 mobile home “that should have been condemned” as she struggled to complete a four-year degree and keep her kids in diapers.
“That trailer was what stood between me and homelessness. I’d been working nights as a bartender and had been in college almost a decade to get a degree and become a high school art teacher. I’d been clean and sober for about seven months, but bone-crushing poverty kept spinning me back,” she said.
Things started shifting when Lewis-Pankratz went to a church for some free diapers.
“A lady there took a shine to me. I told her I wanted to give back so other moms could get the same help. She pointed to a flyer about a class on getting out of poverty and I asked her what they could teach me that I was not already doing. But I figured this lady had been giving me free diapers so I had better sign up.
“When I bumped up against people working to get people out of generational poverty, my world changed. I got a position at that nonprofit,” she said. Later, she left to start a ministry of her own.
“In college I learned about the science of brain architecture – that by five your brain is set. Zero to five years was not good for me. And I had a strong history of using alcohol and drugs. But I got involved in this nonprofit that was really intentional about building relationships between people in poverty and middle-class people as a way of helping poor people get out of poverty.
“So I was surrounded by middle-class women supporting me. And I began to see a way forward, to feel less reactive, to be able to walk into large groups of people. I realized something was happening to my brain,” Lewis-Pankratz said.
She explained that in looking at the brain science of poverty and the brain science of trauma, “the pictures of the brains are the same. The brain doesn’t know whether it is in war or abuse, the brain is just stressed.”
Families in poverty “are always in toxic stress, always spending more time in survival,” she said.
“I have eight ACEs and my mom has nine,” Lewis-Pankratz said. “I was working with 35 families and all but one had high ACEs scores. When I fell into the science of resilience, I found my brain healing at the age of 37, and it was because of relationships people had created for me before they knew me. The science of resilience became my hope, as I learned it was all about relationships,” she said.
Over the last nine years, Lewis-Pankratz has helped teachers and administrators in hundreds of schools learn about ACEs and brain science. She has personally nurtured trusting relationships to help 90 families walk out of poverty.
Carey Sipp, Southeastern Community Facilitator for ACEs Connection, noted that there were two people on the call whose work is about stabilizing families by building trust and relationships. She connected Lewis-Pankratz in Kansas to Margaret Stagmeier, who started a revolutionary “edu-housing” program in Georgia, saying she looked forward to seeing what these two innovative thinkers can do together to provide traumatized people with opportunities to become stable, and improve the lives of their children and themselves.
“When people know stability and safety, when they are in relationship with people who have middle-class lives, who will help them gain confidence in themselves, we are preventing trauma, healing trauma, building resilience,” Sipp said. “I look forward to the day all communities are consciously doing this kind of work.”
State updates
Others on the call shared these updates from their states:
Alabama:
Emily Marsh, public and governmental affairs manager at the Alabama Department of Child Abuse and Neglect, reported that the state’s mental health grant in Alabama has been extended through 2021.
The Department of Mental Health funded training on trauma-informed care, ACEs science, strengthening families, and protective factors at home. she said. Her group did 22 trainings from June-September, and next year will target workers in mental health as well as teachers, law enforcement and counselors.
Marsh said the Department of Mental Health had been complimentary of the work done. “We will continue to partner with the Alabama Network of Family Resources, so this is good news.”
Florida:
Mimi Graham, Ph. D., director of The Center for Prevention and Early Intervention Policy at Florida State University, said that she and Andy Blanch, Ph.D, president and director of the Center for Religious Tolerance, will speak next May on CTIPP’s national call about a new tool, created in Florida, for trauma assessments.
“There are agencies that say they are trauma informed, but they are separating breastfeeding moms from babies, or children from parents. This new tool for trauma assessment of agencies (reviewing agencies in person in addition to other assessments) will help agencies become more trauma informed,” Graham said.
Georgia:
Resilient Georgia’s executive director Emily Anne Vall, Ph.D. was not on the call but she sent a report outlining highlights of work going on in the state. She said the eight Resilient Georgia regional grantees are doing fantastic work in their communities.
They are currently meeting with stakeholders from across the state to identify partners that can work together to create action plans for their next two rounds of grantees.
“The Resilient Georgia Trauma Informed Training Road Map is up and running, and available for all states to peruse. A copy of the survey they sent out that informed this work is on this webpage, too,” Vall wrote.
Margaret Stagmeier, founder and board chair of Star-C, a nonprofit working to stabilize rents and transiency in workforce housing communities, spoke briefly about her work with the residents at two of the blighted properties she bought, repaired and cleaned up. “When we started, we didn’t realize how traumatized these families are,” she said. “Since we began putting the lens of ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) over the community, I now understand what better to do. First get rid of crime. Then get an after-school program with social emotional learning,” she listed as a couple of the steps along the path of helping families, apartment complexes, and nearby schools become more stable.
Kentucky:
Carey Sipp, Southeastern Community Facilitator for ACEs Connection, shared that work to build a statewide structure in Kentucky is underway. Meetings with leaders from Kentucky Youth Advocates and other organizations are scheduled for the second week of January.
Mississippi:
Chris Freeze, a trauma-informed business consultant, will soon be working with statewide community manager Jackie Chatmon, System of Care project director at the Mississippi Department of Mental Health, to further activate the state.
North Carolina:
Mebane Boyd, executive director of the New Hanover Resiliency Task Force, said the Resilient North Carolina Collaborative is meeting with trauma-informed leaders throughout the state to coordinate advocacy efforts, to “find a way to align our advocacy and prioritize what might be best, so we are all asking for the same thing.” She said the group will be doing a training in early 2021 on how to do advocacy, who to contact, when and how to organize.
CTIPP general counsel Press said North Carolina’s Sen. Richard Burr will be either the chair of the Senate Health, Education, and Labor Committee or the ranking minority leader of that committee, depending on what happens in the upcoming Senate runoffs in Georgia. “Either way, he will be influential, and we need trauma-informed programs to educate him and his staffers,” Press said. There will be a call with North Carolina leaders the first week in January to put together a strategy to reach out to Burr.
South Carolina:
Alyssa Koziarsky, research and evaluation assistant at the Children’s Trust of South Carolina, said the Children’s Trust, which leads the South Carolina ACE initiative, is sharing its COVID-19 Impact on Children’s Well-Being Data Snapshot.
The report discusses disparities in housing, health care, and economic opportunities, and sheds light on the importance of protective factors. “We have been working on this for months,” she said. “Now we are providing advocacy steps for how to provide local supports. We are excited about this and will be sharing it out with legislators in January.’’
Tennessee:
Jennifer Drake Croft, director of child well-being at the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth, said there is a new phase of strategic planning for the state’s signature Building Strong Brains Tennessee program. The goal is to establish Tennessee as a national model for how a state can promote culture change in early childhood, based on a philosophy that preventing and mitigating adverse childhood experiences, and their impact, is the most promising approach to helping Tennessee children lead productive, healthy lives and ensuring the future prosperity of the state.
The group is bracing for the possibility of major funding cuts. There are now some 1,252 diverse sector trainers for the Building Strong Brains program, representing all 95 counties in the state. The Department of Education has received approval for a second cohort of schools to become trauma-informed, the Department of Health has been through strategic planning and named ACEs as a priority, and the Building Strong Brains program will now be shared as part of training for foster parents.
Croft said Tennessee has been invited to the National Governors Association meeting to share a presentation on their work in adverse childhood experiences. She also said that East Tennessee State University has founded the Strong BRAIN (Building Resilience through ACEs Informed Networking) Institute, which is an ACEs Center of Excellence working with organizations to transform policies, procedures, and philosophies to promote resilience and mitigate the effects of ACEs.
The Commission on Children and Youth is executing a social media campaign following the success of last year’s campaign, which reached 500,000 people. The new campaign will raise awareness of the importance of brain development and preventing toxic stress. “We will be publishing a toolkit that people from other states can adopt for their use – this is coming,” Croft said.
Among updates from Nashville, Croft said that Ingrid Cockhren, ACEs Connection Community Facilitator for the Midwest and Tennessee, has been doing a community education series for parents, and that the ACE Nashville team, with some 400 members, is focusing on equity within the membership and the leadership team.
Texas:
Janet Pozmantier, nonprofit consultant and trainer, and Jullian Gaut, social worker, have been working with Sipp to create a survey that will live on the Texas ACEs Connection site. A link to the survey will be emailed to the more than 1,000 Texas members of ACEs Connection, to help leaders identify and connect with ACEs initiatives throughout the state.
Kohler said that there is a social media campaign to help CTIPP add to the number of people signing versions of the letter. “If you still want to sign on, just email me to be added,” he said. His email address is jesse@traumacampaign.org.
Press encouraged attendees to alert him if they know of any state legislators who are trauma informed, as he would like to invite them to join the CTIPP Community Action Network.
Federal funding update
Press urged the group to try to secure some of the money that states and communities soon will be getting through the resolution of opioid lawsuits.
“You should start looking into this,” he said. “Right now, most of the money will be spent on people who have already suffered. Some of this funding needs to be spent on preventing trauma, and on building resilience. You are encouraged to find out where the money is going and get in there and advocate for a portion to be used for prevention and for resilience building.”
Press also shared that CTIPP is exploring ways to finance trauma-informed programs that don’t rely on government funding, because governments are running out of money. “One of the things we need is evidence that trauma-informed programs save money,” he said. “We know schools implementing trauma-informed programs have fewer discipline issues and less teacher turnover, fewer security guards, and more kids in seats, so they receive more money because attendance is better.
“We are having trouble finding good hard data. If any of you have actual hard data, we think we have people ready to invest in trauma-informed programs that can be paid back over time.”
Monthly call schedule
Here are the upcoming calls, with educational topics, for the CTIPP Community Action Network (CAN). Calls are the third Wednesday of each month from 2-3:30 p.m. EST, except for January 2021, as that’s the day Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be inaugurated.
Jan. 27 – East Tennessee State University and Southern Oregon University are becoming trauma informed; representatives from the two schools will share what they are doing to facilitate the transitions.
Feb. 17 – Delaware First Lady Tracey Quillen Carney will talk about Delaware’s becoming the first trauma-informed state in the U.S.
March 17 – A representative from England’s WAVE Trust will discuss the initiative working to reduce child abuse by 70 percent in 10 years, and how Great Britain and the U.S. can work together.
April 21 – Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz will elaborate on how she and her organization are helping some 235 families break out of the multi-generational cycle of poverty and trauma.
May 19 – Mimi Graham and Andy Blanch will share information about a new program involving in-person trauma assessments of agencies to help them become more trauma-informed.
Upcoming SE leader calls
The next ACEs Connection SE Leader quarterly call is scheduled for Tuesday, March 2. Subsequent calls will be on for June 15, September 21, and December 21. All calls are from 2:30-4 p.m. EST.
To learn more about CTIPP, Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz, or Margaret Stagmeier:
By Gene Nichol, The Charlotte Observer, December 28, 2020
It doesn’t happen as often as one might wish. But, on occasion, you can still be surprised by what someone says. For example, earlier this month, the Donald Trump-appointed Chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, explained to the Senate Banking Committee:
“Disparate economic outcomes on the basis of race, have been with us for a very long time, they are a long-standing aspect of our economy, and there is a great risk that the pandemic is making them worse. Because the people who are most affected by the job losses are people in relatively low-paying parts of the service industries that happen to skew more to minorities and women, there is a real concern that if we don’t act as quickly as possible to support these people then we’ll leave behind an even more unequal situation. We need to do as much as we can to avoid exacerbating inequality.”
Seriously, the guy Bloomberg News calls “Wall Street’s Head of State” lectured the country on the challenges of economic justice. Man.
The traditional patterns of racial economic subordination Powell referenced have long dominated every component of life in North Carolina. Today, for example, twice as many African-American Tar Heels live in poverty as whites. The numbers are even worse for Black kids – nearly three times as many are poor as whites.
Racial income disparity is huge. But racial wealth disparity astonishes. Black households, on average, claim less than a tenth of the economic assets of white Tar Heel families. Racial minorities are dramatically more likely, in North Carolina, to be unemployed, uninsured, food insecure, housing insecure, and trapped in low wage work. Such defining disparities have existed throughout the entirety of our state’s history. Radical, systemic, disproportional racial economic impact, as Chairman Powell put it, has “been with us for a very long time.”
Thanks to the generous support of the more than 130 people who donated, we are more than half-way to our goal to raise $50,000. And we have no doubt that we’ll get there!
To recap, we began this campaign in November with a challenge from an anonymous donor, who told us that if we could raise $50,000, there would be another $50,000 coming. Our original deadline was December 31, but we closed our doors during the last part of December and the beginning of January to give our very tired staff a well deserved break. So our donor graciously extended — through January 31, 2021 -— the deadline for ACEs Connection to raise the match through member donations.
“We are grateful beyond measure for the gifts we’ve received since the campaign started the second week of November 2020,” said Jane Stevens, ACEs Connection founder and publisher.
“More than 130 people have made donations ranging in size from $5 a month (monthly donations are an option) to $6,000,” said Stevens.
Donations now total about $30,000, leaving just $20,000 to be raised from members between now and January 31.
“I absolutely believe we can meet this matching grant goal to win the additional $50,000. We need members to give what they can; the more gifts received the better, as our donor also likes to see how our members are supporting the network. We’re asking you to give in any amount, as best you can, to help us continue this work of raising awareness of the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences, and creating healing-centered communities, ” said Stevens.
Many donors have given of the purse and the heart, by sharing their thoughts and feelings about the work being done to prevent adverse childhood experiences, encourage positive childhood experiences, and create individual, family, and community resilience. Among the comments:
“ACEs Connection has made it possible to share my work and my passion for revolutionizing the way we think about and address human needs. It has an incredible community of humans that support the work — in the organization and around the globe. So grateful to have this space to commune with you all. Thank you,” wrote Emily Read Daniels, from Hancock, New Hampshire.
“I appreciate the work of ACEs Connection in keeping us informed about the progress that is made in understanding and mitigating the impact of trauma. Your work helps us to better serve kids and families!!” wrote Keith Bailey, Knoxville, Tennessee.
“I wholeheartedly support ACEs Connection. As the Founder of the Community Resilience Collaborative of Middlesex County-CT, my soul calling is to share about ACEs science, promote resiliency and contribute my small piece to changing our mindset and culture to a healing-centered one.” Rebecca Lamansk, Middletown, Connecticut.
The names listed below reflect a partial list of ACEs Changemakers. Additional names will appear in our next update story on January 24, 2021. We thank you all and so appreciate your support.
Sarah Wilkinson
Kristen Allott
Candace White
David Cote
Teri Wellbrock
Kathleen Cole
Jane Stevens
Judy Knapp
Calista Scott
Christine Hoepfner
Carolyn Curtis
Ellen Fink-Samnick
Christine Noble-Power
Rose Fonseca
Mary Clare Reidy
Emily Daniels
Cherri Pruitt
Steven Brown
Michael Fasher
Sarah Wilkinson
Courtney Ham
Christopher Freeze
Janet and Louis Frase
Michelle Quinn
Rebecca Lemanski
Carey Sipp
For more information on making a donation via check, please email Carey Sipp at csipp@acesconnection.com. Watch for updates on the campaign to find your name posted among our donors; we will post more donor names in the coming days. To make a donation, please click on the link below.
By Wendy Ellis, Tia Sheree Gaynor, and Laura Huerta Migus, The Columbus Dispatch, January 18, 2021
Six days into the new year, a mob of thousands of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and attempted a coup, surrounded by symbols of white supremacy.
For centuries, narratives in the United States have projected an image of a democracy built on the promises of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In reality, this narrative fails to acknowledge the incongruous truths of the country’s journey to becoming a superpower. The birth of our nation is romanticized in the stories of our first “Thanksgiving” and through plantation tours and weddings that celebrate a genteel antebellum south, while the truth of colonialism, genocide, and mass enslavement is systematically ignored and rarely discussed in history books or public forums.
As a society, we have to tear down the false narratives embedded in our history and see it for what it truly is: a pattern of intentional actions grounded in a belief in white supremacy and codified to ensure the superiority of white, heterosexual men. To effectively address systemic inequities, the truth of U.S. history must be told.
By Rachel Martin, National Public Radio, January 19, 2021
Filmmaker Ken Burns has spent his career documenting American history, and he always considered three major crises in the nation’s past: the Civil War, the Depression and World War II.
Then came the unprecedented “perfect storm” of 2020 — and Burns thinks we may be living through America’s fourth great crisis, and perhaps the worst one yet.
“We’re beset by three viruses, are we not?” he explains. There’s “a year-old COVID-19 virus, but also a 402-year-old virus of white supremacy, of racial injustice. … And we’ve got an age-old human virus of misinformation, of paranoia, of conspiracies.”
By Scott Horsley, National Public Radio, January 26, 2021
Karen Butcher’s son Matthew struggled for years with an addiction to opioids. She’s convinced the pandemic made it worse.
The restaurant in Scott County, Ky., where Matthew worked as a bartender closed before the pandemic, and soon other establishments, from restaurants to stores, followed suit as states imposed lockdowns.
“One day you’re a bartender and you’re serving people and having a great time at it, and then the next day the doors are closed,” Butcher recalls. “Then COVID hits. It was the perfect storm.”
Among ACEs Connection staff members, and guests from FindHelp.org who were on today’s staff call, joining me in thanking you for being a member of ACEs Connection, and for your support are (top row, l-r) Karen Clemmer, Carey Sipp, Ed Wunderlind, Gail Kennedy,(second row, l-r) Lara Kain, Suzanne Heritage, Rafael Maravilla, Natalie Audage, Laurie Udesky, Jane Stevens, Ingrid Cockrhen, Elizabeth Pruitt, Melen Vue, Donielle Prince, Marianne Avari, Alison Cebulla, and Samantha Sangenito.
Thanks to the donations of scores of ACEs Connection donors, and the matching grant offered by an anonymous donor for whom we are extremely grateful, ACEs Connection has raised $100,000 in its first-ever fundraising campaign.
ACEs Changemakers who donated to our ACEs Changemakers matching grant campaign included:
Adriana van Altvorst Adrienne B. Elder Alison Lobb Allan & Carola Friesen Allen Nishikawa Amanda Coggin Amit Janco Archana Gupta Asha Immanuelle Asli Kivion
Barbara Cady Barbara J Franco Becky Haas Betsy Knight Betty Devine Bickley Wilson Brigid McCaw
Calista Scott Candace White Carey Sipp Carlene Przykucki Carol Dolan Carol Koepp Carolyn Curtis Carrie Jensen Charity Cornet-Barnhart Cherri Pruitt Christina Algeciras Christina Bethell Christine Brugler Christine Hoepfner Christine Noble-Power Christopher Freeze Cissy White Courtney Ham Cristina Buss
Dale Bordelon Dale Coupland Dan & Cherie Porter David Cote Deanna Berry Deanne Tibbitts Deborah Bock Dena Klein Denise Busley Dianne Couts Don Steffen Donald Spachman Donielle Prince Donn Reid Donna Culver Doreen Downs Dustin Springer
Edward McKinley Elaine Spicer Elizabeth Meeker Elizabeth Prewitt Ellen Fink-Samnick Ellen Smith Emily Daniels Erin Myers Esther Gilbert Felicia Bellows Fitzroy Lewis
Gai Klass Gail Kennedy George Jagatic Gretchen Nash-Gardner
James Encinas Jane Stevens Janet and Louis Frase Jean Sullivan Jenna Quinn
Jennifer Nanda Jeoffry Gordon Jessie Graham Jim Sporleder Jim Wall Joan Caley Joe Barnhart Joel Fein John Soghigian Joni Cash Judith Lipson Judy Knapp Julie Cohen
Kaliopee Fiske Karen Clemmer Karen Johnson Karen White Kassie Gada Katherine Lucatorto Kathleen Cole Kay Reed Keith Bailey Kristen Allott Laura Dennis Laura Gilchrist Laura Hogan Laura Pinhey Laura Piscitello Leslie Leff Leslie Lieberman Linda Calvert PhD Linda Kauffer Linda Manaugh Lisa Frederiksen Lisa Reagan Lori Fougerousse Lynda Mallory Lynn Boyd Lynn Mumma Lynn Sharpe Underwood
Madison McHugh Margaret Fonseca Margaret Sipple Maria Manna Mary Clare Reidy Mary Giuliani Maxine Barish-Wreden Melanie Pollard Michael Fasher Michael Skoler Michelle Quinn Morgan Vien Myra Sabir
Peter Chiavetta Peyton Rardin Priti Irani Potts Family Foundation
Rachel Allen Ramona Danielson Rebecca Lemanski Rebecca Parton Regina McCarthy Rene Line Renée Wilson-Simmons Rika Alvo Risa Bernasconi Robert Quinn Roberta C Churchill Robin Cogan Rose Fonseca
Sam Henry Sarah H Waite Sarah Wilkinson Scott Frost Sebern Fisher Sharon Lockhart-Carter Shay Seaborne Sherri Sharkins Simon Mundy Skye Baloo Stephanie Covington Steve Wirtz, PhD Steven Brown Sue Adams Susan Delucchi
Tasneem Ismailji Teri Wellbrock Theresa Barila Tim Hamming Tim Wheatley Tracy Fauver Trevor Storrs
Vic Compher
Wendie Skala William Emmet
“We are over the moon excited about the participation of our members, and are thrilled to have achieved the matching amount of $50,000. Your helping us reach this goal means we were able to double your donations. I hope you are celebrating with us!” said Jane Stevens, founder and publisher of ACEs Connection.
As of February 1, the campaign was complete for online giving. The numbers were impressive as a steady stream of donations came in throughout the campaign.
“With these funds we will continue our grassroots work to help local communities start and grow ACEs science initiatives, initiatives that will help community members come together to solve our most intractable problems,” said Stevens.
“Many pioneers in the ACEs movement have made stunning progress,” she continued, citing examples that are providing ideas and guidance for other pioneers:
A program that drastically reduces opioid deaths — by combining law enforcement, rehab centers, and hospitals — saw a 26 percent drop v. 84 percent increase in deaths in surrounding counties.
Safe Babies Courts that show that one year after participating, 99 percent of the children suffer no further abuse.
Hundreds of schools — including schools in Antioch, CA, Suisun City, CA,San Francisco, CA, Spokane, WA, San Diego, CA, and Walla Walla, WA — that have integrated trauma-informed practices; many of these schools no longer need to suspend or expel students, and their grades, test scores and graduation rates increased.
“More than 350 geographic communities (and growing!) are in the process of integrating policies and practices based on the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences,” said Stevens, adding, “They will multiply these remarkable achievements across all organizations and sectors to create healing-centered communities.
“This is a time of great change in our nation, our world. Our donors are on the leading edge of that change, helping us support more than 400 communities (including interest-based communities) that are leading the way toward a more compassionate, accepting world where all people thrive,” said Stevens.
Have questions about the campaign? Please reach out to Carey Sipp at csipp@acesconnection.com. Again, thank you for being with us!
Author, speaker and neuroscience educator Sarah Peyton is a friend to ACEs Connection. When I asked her recently to speak to the importance acknowledging the grief and trauma most of us are feeling during COVID-19, as we see the number of deaths increase and as people we know fall victim to the disease, she welcomed the opportunity.
I wanted to ask Sarah to do this because recently, as I was listening to her “Your Resonant Self, Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain’s Capacity for Healing,”, it clicked for me what has been missing as a trauma survivor during the pandemic.
Sarah was telling the story of Nepalese boy soldiers who went off to civil war. The 2010 research showed that the boys who “came back to a welcome from their communities ended up with fewer signs of post-traumatic stress. But the boys who went off to the same war, fought shoulder to shoulder with those other boys, and came back to communities that turned their backs on them had much higher levels of post-traumatic stress.”
“This research helps us to understand that trauma is less defined by what happens to us than it is by how we are received afterward,” Sarah writes.
Acknowledgement of the trauma of having been in a war was the difference for the Nepalese boys.
The night before the inauguration, when President-elect Joe Biden with his wife, Jill, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris with her husband, Doug Emhoff, held their somber memorial for the 400,000 Americans who had died during the pandemic, it was healing because it was acknowledgement. Seeing those deaths marked by 400 luminarias, one for each 100 victims, was healing because the truth was being seen, shared.
Having our country’s leadership acknowledge the pain and the loss we’ve seen day in and day out allowed us to breathe a collective sigh of grief and relief. Our grief is real. Most of us feel it. As Biden said, “…to heal, we must remember.”
As a trauma survivor, I was in my sixties before I began to embody the importance of grieving for myself about the trauma and the losses I’d experienced as the result of trauma. Trauma has cost me in terms of how well I did in school, in relationships, in my career, in my finances.
Sarah Peyton’s beautiful book, recommended to me by colleague Cissy White, has been a touchstone. Each time I’ve pulled it up to take another read or listen, I process a bit more.
How are you doing? Does it help you to know that some leaders are genuinely sorry for what we are all going through?
By Peter Hermann, The Washington Post, February 12, 2021
Engulfed in the crush of rioters storming the Capitol, D.C. police officer Jeffrey Smith sent his wife a text that spoke to the futility and fears of his mission.
“London has fallen,” the 35-year-old tapped on his phone at 2:38 p.m. on Jan. 6, knowing his wife would understand he was referencing a movie by that name about a plan to assassinate world leaders attending a funeral in Britain.
The text confirmed the frightening images Erin Smith was watching on live stream from the couple’s home in Virginia: The Capitol had been overrun.
Carey Sipp 12/15/205:12 PM
“We want to model what a trauma-informed organization looks like by truly taking some well-deserved time off during the holiday season,” said Stevens,
To recap, we began this campaign in November with a challenge from an anonymous donor, who told us that if we could raise $50,000, there would be another $50,000 coming. Our original deadline was December 31, but we closed our doors during the last part of December and the beginning of January to give our very tired staff a well deserved break. So our donor graciously extended — through January 31, 2021 -— the deadline for ACEs Connection to raise the match through member donations.
Carey Sipp 