Carey Sipp 10/13/248:31 PM

Former PACEs Connection employees Dana Brown (L) with Vincent Felitti, MD, co-author of the 1998 Adverse Childhood Experiences study, and Carey Sipp (R) in San Diego in January, 2024.

The last few months have been quite challenging, but we pushed, persevered, and didn’t give up hope.

The “we” is Carey Sipp and Dana Brown. We were long-time staff members of PACEs Connection determined to reinstate the website and the resources and information we provide to communities after the platform went dormant in April when our funding stream dried up.

We both vowed to do whatever we could to keep PACEsConnection.com from slipping away because imparting information about the lifelong effects of positive and adverse childhood experiences and ways to promote nurturing conditions for children, families, and communities is too important to leave to chance. So over the last six months, we’ve spent countless hours working to keep the site and the organization alive.

With encouragement and support from two key organizations—National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives (NPSC) and PACEs Connection’s former fiscal sponsor, Third Sector New England (TSNE)—as well as from many individual supporters—PACEs Connection’s doors are again open!

Our new mission-aligned home!

“We understood the importance of PACEs Connection to have a nonprofit organizational home with similar goals under which it could operate and bring in funding to continue its work,” Diana Fishbein tells us. Dr. Fishbein is founder and co-director of NPSC.

“NPSC and PACEs Connection had worked well together on several projects over the last couple of years, so having PACEs Connection become a division of NPSC made perfect sense,” Dr. Fishbein added.

(Graphic is an example of our work together on the 2022 webinar series on Building a National Movement to Prevent Trauma and Foster Resilience. To access invaluable resources from the series, click here!)

As its website shows, NPSC is “a professional organization dedicated to translating scientific knowledge from the field of prevention science into effective and sustainable practices, systems and policies.”

Among the 70+ organizations affiliated with NPSC is the Campaign on Trauma Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP), with which PACEs Connection has partnered for several years to advance the trauma-informed movement.

“We are thrilled that Jesse Kohler, who sits on the NPSC board and is executive director of CTIPP, will be the board liaison with PACEs Connection,” Dr. Fishbein adds.

We are happy and grateful to continue the work with CTIPP and Jesse Kohler, too!

We welcome back our 60,900 members engaged in the important work to prevent ACEs and promote health and wellbeing!

Please feel free to start posting again! Let the PACEs world – and us – know what you’ve been up to. (Posting instructions and trauma-informed community guidelines remain the same.)

Amidst the celebration of being back, we must also share this reality: We’re not out of the woods yet.

Our previous fiscal sponsor (TSNE) is kind enough to keep the social networking platform that drives PACEsConnection.com running until November 11. By November 5 (allowing time to process funds), we’ll need nearly $15K for PACEs Connection to stay afloat until March 31, 2025.

We’ve already heard from prior donors that they are ready to support the cause but we need more. The donor button is accessible here! Know, too, that your donation is tax deductible, as NPSC is a federally-recognized 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization.

Also, several content contributors we’ve alerted are planning and preparing posts to gin up support for PACEs

Dr. Lori Dorfman, director of the Berkeley Media Studies Group, a project of the Public Health Institute, was delighted to hear news of PACEs Connection’s revitalization, and is eager to see the network continue to grow and thrive.

“BMSG has conducted research on media portrayals of ACEs science for many years. BMSG found that the number of (ACEs) stories increased dramatically after 2012 – the year science journalist Jane Stevens founded the social network comprising ACEs Too High and ACEs Connection – especially in local and regional news outlets, even though the number of stories was low compared to other topics, particularly considering how impactful ACEs are,” said Dr. Dorfman.

As we think about new blog posts and resources to add to our Resource Center, the research on media coverage and subsequent studies are on the list to help show how important news coverage is to expanding awareness of the science.

Every blog post our members share on social media helps build awareness of the need to prevent and heal trauma; to foster resilience.

Support, patience, and some of what’s ahead!

You can support PACEs Connection today by making an online donation here, or mailing a check made out to the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives – with “PACEs Connection” on the memo line – in care of Dana Brown, 4364 Bonita Road, PMB322, Bonita, CA 91902. To make a wire transfer or other type of gift, please email Carey Sipp at carey.pacescommunities@gmail.com to receive NPSC’s wire transfer or other electronic funds transfer information. No amount is too small!

We ask you to be patient with us as we update our social networking site. There are broken links and scores of communities with new leadership. We’ve also been working on a business and sustainable funding plan so we can overhaul the site, be paid for our efforts, and hire staff as needed.

We are determined to continue to raise awareness of the impacts of adverse and positive childhood experiences. The benefits of preventing trauma and increasing positive experiences must be considered in all of our decision making, especially by parents, educators, child-serving entities, and policymakers. All organizations, including those in healthcare, business, education, childcare, and all levels of government, need to be aware of the causes and effects of trauma and well-tested approaches to prevent it.

Dr. Fishbein agrees: “We are excited about the opportunity afforded us to play a role in keeping this vitally important social network—the primary source of news and connection in the trauma prevention community—online and leveraged to further the movement to prevent trauma and build resilience.”

For more information about the origins of PACEs Connection and the history of the relationship between Vincent Felitti, MD, co-author of the 1998 Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, and Jane Stevens, founder of PACEs Connection, please click here or visit our History of PACEs Connection.

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 Carey Sipp 4/12/2611:44 AM

Emerging Research on Positive Adult Experiences Offers New Hope for Survivors of Trauma and Adversity

In the PACEs Connection community, we write and talk a lot about what infants and children need to thrive. Safe relationships. Consistent connection. A sense of belonging. The science of Positive Childhood Experiences — PCEs — has shown us that these early building blocks shape brain development, buffer the impact of adversity, and even help prevent adult mental illness.

But what about adults? What happens when those early positive experiences were missing — or when life’s adversities never stopped, and/or arrived later, in the form of toxic relationships — romantic, workplace, or otherwise — loss, trauma, or other sources of continuous toxic stress?

Positive Adult Experiences — PAEs — function remarkably similarly to Positive Childhood Experiences — PCEs

Emerging research published by the National Institutes of Health and Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry offers a powerful and hopeful answer: positive experiences don’t stop mattering after childhood. Positive Adult Experiences — PAEs — function remarkably similarly to PCEs, reducing depression and anxiety, promoting resilience, and helping to buffer the impact of early adversity — even when adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) were high and positive childhood experiences were few.

“Healing — and preventing more adversity — are not just for children,” said Jamie Huysman, PsyD, LCSW, Founder and Executive Director of the STAR Network Foundation. “Adults who have experienced trauma — whether in childhood or later in life — can experience genuine turning points when they find safe, consistent, accepting community. The brain remains responsive to positive experiences across the entire lifespan. That is not just hopeful. That is science.”

Key positive adult experiences identified in the research include social connection and feeling genuinely understood and valued; mentorship and personal growth; community belonging and purposeful work; and active emotional healing — the kind of deep, courageous work that actively recovering survivors of toxic and abusive relationships know all too well.

“Positive childhood and adult experiences can become their own protective factors. That shift in the trajectory of a life — toward connection, belonging, and hope — has a way of attracting more of the positive. It can help break generational cycles of abuse, neglect, addiction, and the sometimes learned behaviors of helplessness and hopelessness. Healing in one generation plants seeds of healthy relationships and outcomes for the next,” offers Carey Sipp, author of “The TurnAround Mom”, a book on reparenting oneself and breaking generational cycles of addiction, neglect, and abuse.

“Through decades of my own recovery and in years of volunteer work with fellow survivors, I’ve seen firsthand the healing that comes from adults learning to trust and be accepted by each other, to commiserate, share experience, strength, and hope, and to learn to laugh together,” said Sipp, Interim Editor-at-Large and Director of Upstream Strategies at PACEs Connection.

Studies show that adults with more PCEs experience measurably less depression and anxiety. While these experiences tend to have a stronger impact on younger adults, their benefits extend across the lifespan. And unlike the early years — when children depend entirely on the adults around them to provide positive experiences — adults can actively seek them out, build them, and offer them to one another.

Setting Sail for Mental Health Awareness Month

The STAR Network Foundation is putting that science into practice in a decidedly memorable way this May — with the All STAR Cruise, departing Miami on Friday, May 1, 2026, and bringing together Survivors of Toxic and Abusive Relationships (STARs), healers, advocates, and community members for four days of connection, conversation, and renewal at sea — returning early Monday, May 4.

A special gathering at the Atlantis resort in Nassau on Saturday, May 2, will feature STAR Network International Ambassador Richard Grannon leading raw, thought-provoking discussions on trauma recovery, building resilience, and reclaiming your life — conversations designed not just to inform, but to transform.

“Every moment of genuine connection aboard that ship is the science in action,” said Huysman. “When a survivor feels truly seen, truly heard, truly safe — that is a positive adult experience. That is healing. And those moments add up.”

“For the PACEs Connection community, whose work centers on understanding both the adverse and the positive experiences that shape human lives across the lifespan, the All STAR Community Cruise represents something larger than a weekend getaway. It is a living demonstration that healing is possible — and that no survivor has to walk that path alone,” said Huysman.

For more information about the All STAR Cruise, visit: https://lnkd.in/duWJKYcV

Key Research Links

• PCEs as turning points for adult mental health after childhood adversity — Frontiers in Public Health (2023): https://www.frontiersin.org/jo…bh.2023.1223953/full
• PCEs and learned helplessness/optimism — Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (2023): https://www.frontiersin.org/jo…ha.2023.1249529/full
• PCE landmark study — Bethell et al., JAMA Pediatrics (2019): https://jamanetwork.com/journa…/fullarticle/2749336
• PCEs and adult outcomes systematic review — PMC: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10528145/
• Science Friday overview — accessible reading for general audiences: https://www.sciencefriday.com/…ences-mental-health/

About the STAR Network Foundation

The STAR Network Foundation is a worldwide 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to the support, treatment, and prevention of attachment disorders and narcissistic abuse. Through its free peer-to-peer, anonymous meetings each weekday, annual Scars to STARs Day Summit (coming up May 22; free registration is here), and community initiatives, STAR Network makes safe, consistent, accepting connection available worldwide to Survivors of Toxic and Abusive Relationships and complex PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

About PACEs Connection

PACEs Connection — PACEs stands for Positive and Adverse Childhood Experiences — is a  62,425 member global network advancing the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences to prevent and heal trauma, build resilience, and support flourishing communities worldwide. For more information contact Dana Brown, Interim Executive Director, at dana.pacescommunities@gmail.com; or Carey Sipp, Interim Editor-at-Large and Director of Upstream Strategies and Relationships, at carey.pacescommunities@gmail.com

 Carey Sipp 4/28/2611:16 PM

The Third Annual Scars to STARs Day Summit — Free, Virtual, and Open to the World — Register now for May 22, 2026

On May 22, 2026, thousands of survivors, scientists, clinicians, policymakers, educators, and community leaders from across the United States and around the world will gather — virtually and at no cost — for one of the most significant annual events in the global trauma recovery and prevention movement.

The third annual Scars to STARs Day® Summit: ACE Studies — The Next 30 Years, hosted by the STAR Network Foundation, takes place from 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. ET on the fourth Friday of May, held annually in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month.

Free: Register now at Scars to STARs Summit 2026 – STAR Network.

Nearly 30 Years of Science — So Much Work to Do

The timing is not coincidental.

Nearly three decades have passed since Vincent J. Felitti, MD, FACP, then working with Kaiser Permanente, and Robert F. Anda, MD, MS, then a research scientist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published the landmark Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study — one of the most consequential public health studies in American history.

Their findings revealed a striking, dose-dependent relationship between adverse childhood experiences and lifelong physical and mental health outcomes. At the population level, the higher a person’s ACE score, the greater their statistical risk of heart disease, cancer, addiction, mental illness, domestic violence, poverty, and premature death.

But the science has never been deterministic — a high ACE score is not a death sentence.

Not everyone with multiple ACEs will suffer those outcomes, and researchers have long sought to understand why. A landmark 2019 study on Positive Childhood Experiences — PCEs — helped answer that question, demonstrating that supportive relationships, community connection, and other positive experiences can buffer the impact of adversity and help explain why some people with significant ACE scores go on to live remarkably resilient, connected, and healthy lives.

The ACE Study has since generated thousands of follow-on studies worldwide. And yet, nearly 30 years later, it remains largely unknown outside the fields of education,  public health, medicine, and social services — far from the tipping point of public awareness needed to change the systems that perpetuate childhood adversity in the first place.

May 22nd is a day dedicated to helping change that.

Honoring the Scientists Who Started It All

The summit will open with a short film — The Legacy of the ACE Study and the Future It Made Possible — honoring Dr. Felitti, who will receive the 2026 STAR NeuroLeadership Award in a filmed presentation.

Dr. Anda will receive the STAR Global Impact Award for Public Health Impact in Trauma Science, presented virtually by The Honorable Patrick J. Kennedy, Co-Founder of The Kennedy Forum, former U.S. Representative, and recipient of the 2025 STAR NeuroLeadership Award.

A Day-Long Journey — From Science to Action

The summit is structured in three chapters — Understanding Trauma and Healing, Voices of Recovery, and Building the Next 30 Years — moving participants through a carefully designed arc from scientific grounding to personal reflection to collective commitment.

The program opens with a Global Prevention and Recovery Innovation Marketplace, where participants can connect in real time with organizations advancing trauma-informed care, youth resilience, addiction recovery, survivor support, and prevention innovation from around the world.

Featured speakers and sessions include:

The Honorable Patrick J. Kennedy, Co-Founder of The Kennedy Forum, delivering a keynote on leading the next 30 years of mental health systems reform.

Diana H. Fishbein, PhD, Senior Scientist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Co-Founder of the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives, presenting What We Learned — and What Comes Next — a critical examination of how ACEs science has evolved and what it now demands of us.

Dr. Melissa T. Merrick, President and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse America and former Lead Scientist on the CDC ACE Study, presenting From Awareness to Prevention: Rewriting the Conditions for Childhood in America — reframing trauma not as individual failure but as a systems-level challenge and shared responsibility.

Mercie Josina DiGangi, DO, Regional Chair of the Child Abuse Prevention Program at Kaiser Permanente Southern California, presenting Your Brain on ACEs: Why the Past Lives in the Present — and How to Change It.

Jennifer Hays-Grudo, PhD and Amanda Sheffield Morris, PhD, both of Oklahoma State University, presenting From ACEs to PACEs: Defining the Next Era of Prevention — introducing the growing science of Positive Childhood Experiences and how supportive relationships and environments can buffer adversity and change life trajectories.

Jesse Kohler, Founder and President of The Change Campaign and former Executive Director of the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice, offering a survivor leadership reflection: When the System Failed Me — What I Chose to Build.

Michael J. Menard, Founder of United Against Childhood Trauma and author of the recently published Greater Than Gravity: How Childhood Trauma Is Pulling Down Humanity, presenting From Personal Tragedy to Global Movement.

A panel on Addiction, ACEs & the Brain, moderated by Doug Tieman, Chairman of the Board of the STAR Network Foundation, featuring clinical leaders from The Retreat, Ascension Recovery Services, Ashley Addiction Treatment, Turnbridge, and Caron Treatment Centers.

A panel on When Systems Work: Building Care Survivors Can Trust, moderated by Thomas G. Bognanno, Founder of Alliance Practice LLC, and Jamie Huysman, PsyD, LCSW, Founder and Executive Director of the STAR Network Foundation, featuring Dr. Mya O. Price, Executive Vice President and Chief Social Impact Officer of Creating Healthier Communities, and George Rapier III, MD, Chairman and CEO of WellMed Medical Management.

Richard Grannon, International Ambassador of the STAR Network Foundation, presenting Psychological Freedom: Breaking Cycles of Coercive Control.

Omer Golan, Founder and CEO of the MyWhatIf Foundation, offering a survivor leadership reflection: From Trauma to Transformation: Data to Dignity.

A Survivor-Centered Experience

Throughout the day, the summit weaves together guided regulation and reset breaks — recognizing that engaging with trauma-related content requires care, and that healing happens not just through information but through the experience of safety, connection, and community.

The day will close with a solemn moment — The Empty Chair for the Children We Lost and the Children We Can Still Protect — followed by the signing of the ACEs Next 30 Declaration: A Global Commitment to the Next Generation, inviting participants worldwide to affirm their commitment to transforming trauma recovery, prevention, and resilience over the next three decades.

Free. Virtual. Global. May 22.

The Scars to STARs Day® Summit is free and open to anyone, anywhere in the world, with sessions designed for global participation across time zones.

This is not a conference. It is a movement. And it begins — again — on May 22.

Register now at Scars to STARs Summit 2026 – STAR Network.

For more information, visit the STAR Network Foundation at STAR Network – Become a Survivor of Toxic Abusive Relationships! and PACEs Connection at PACEs Connection.

About the STAR Network Foundation The STAR Network Foundation is a worldwide 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to the support, treatment, and prevention of attachment disorders and narcissistic abuse. Through its free peer-to-peer, anonymous meetings each weekday, the annual Scars to STARs Day Summit, and community initiatives, STAR Network makes safe, consistent, accepting connection available to Survivors of Toxic and Abusive Relationships and complex PTSD worldwide.

About PACEs Connection PACEs = positive and adverse childhood experiences, The organization is a 62,400+ member global online learning community and social network advancing the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences to prevent and heal trauma, build resilience, and support flourishing people and communities worldwide. STAR Network Foundation partners with PACEs Connection and is its fiscal sponsor.

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(This blog posted on PACEs Connection on April 12, 2026.)

Emerging Research on Positive Adult Experiences Offers New Hope for Survivors of Trauma and Adversity

In the PACEs Connection community, we write and talk a lot about what infants and children need to thrive. Safe relationships. Consistent connection. A sense of belonging. The science of Positive Childhood Experiences — PCEs — has shown us that these early building blocks shape brain development, buffer the impact of adversity, and even help prevent adult mental illness.

But what about adults? What happens when those early positive experiences were missing — or when life’s adversities never stopped, and/or arrived later, in the form of toxic relationships — romantic, workplace, or otherwise — loss, trauma, or other sources of continuous toxic stress?

Positive Adult Experiences — PAEs — function remarkably similarly to Positive Childhood Experiences — PCEs

Emerging research published by the National Institutes of Health and Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry offers a powerful and hopeful answer: positive experiences don’t stop mattering after childhood. Positive Adult Experiences — PAEs — function remarkably similarly to PCEs, reducing depression and anxiety, promoting resilience, and helping to buffer the impact of early adversity — even when adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) were high and positive childhood experiences were few.

“Healing — and preventing more adversity — are not just for children,” said Jamie Huysman, PsyD, LCSW, Founder and Executive Director of the STAR Network Foundation. “Adults who have experienced trauma — whether in childhood or later in life — can experience genuine turning points when they find safe, consistent, accepting community. The brain remains responsive to positive experiences across the entire lifespan. That is not just hopeful. That is science.”

Key positive adult experiences identified in the research include social connection and feeling genuinely understood and valued; mentorship and personal growth; community belonging and purposeful work; and active emotional healing — the kind of deep, courageous work that actively recovering survivors of toxic and abusive relationships know all too well.

“Positive childhood and adult experiences can become their own protective factors. That shift in the trajectory of a life — toward connection, belonging, and hope — has a way of attracting more of the positive. It can help break generational cycles of abuse, neglect, addiction, and the sometimes learned behaviors of helplessness and hopelessness. Healing in one generation plants seeds of healthy relationships and outcomes for the next,” offers Carey Sipp, author of “The TurnAround Mom”, a book on reparenting oneself and breaking generational cycles of addiction, neglect, and abuse.

“Through decades of my own recovery and in years of volunteer work with fellow survivors, I’ve seen firsthand the healing that comes from adults learning to trust and be accepted by each other, to commiserate, share experience, strength, and hope, and to learn to laugh together,” said Sipp, Interim Editor-at-Large and Director of Upstream Strategies at PACEs Connection.

Studies show that adults with more PCEs experience measurably less depression and anxiety. While these experiences tend to have a stronger impact on younger adults, their benefits extend across the lifespan. And unlike the early years — when children depend entirely on the adults around them to provide positive experiences — adults can actively seek them out, build them, and offer them to one another.

Setting Sail for Mental Health Awareness Month

The STAR Network Foundation is putting that science into practice in a decidedly memorable way this May — with the All STAR Cruise, departing Miami on Friday, May 1, 2026, and bringing together Survivors of Toxic and Abusive Relationships (STARs), healers, advocates, and community members for four days of connection, conversation, and renewal at sea — returning early Monday, May 4.

A special gathering at the Atlantis resort in Nassau on Saturday, May 2, will feature STAR Network International Ambassador Richard Grannon leading raw, thought-provoking discussions on trauma recovery, building resilience, and reclaiming your life — conversations designed not just to inform, but to transform.

“Every moment of genuine connection aboard that ship is the science in action,” said Huysman. “When a survivor feels truly seen, truly heard, truly safe — that is a positive adult experience. That is healing. And those moments add up.”

“For the PACEs Connection community, whose work centers on understanding both the adverse and the positive experiences that shape human lives across the lifespan, the All STAR Community Cruise represents something larger than a weekend getaway. It is a living demonstration that healing is possible — and that no survivor has to walk that path alone,” said Huysman.

For more information about the All STAR Cruise, visit: https://lnkd.in/duWJKYcV

Key Research Links

• PCEs as turning points for adult mental health after childhood adversity — Frontiers in Public Health (2023): https://www.frontiersin.org/jo…bh.2023.1223953/full
• PCEs and learned helplessness/optimism — Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (2023): https://www.frontiersin.org/jo…ha.2023.1249529/full
• PCE landmark study — Bethell et al., JAMA Pediatrics (2019): https://jamanetwork.com/journa…/fullarticle/2749336
• PCEs and adult outcomes systematic review — PMC: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10528145/
• Science Friday overview — accessible reading for general audiences: https://www.sciencefriday.com/…ences-mental-health/

About the STAR Network Foundation

The STAR Network Foundation is a worldwide 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to the support, treatment, and prevention of attachment disorders and narcissistic abuse. Through its free peer-to-peer, anonymous meetings each weekday, annual Scars to STARs Day Summit (coming up May 22; free registration is here), and community initiatives, STAR Network makes safe, consistent, accepting connection available worldwide to Survivors of Toxic and Abusive Relationships and complex PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

About PACEs Connection

PACEs Connection — PACEs stands for Positive and Adverse Childhood Experiences — is a  62,425 member global network advancing the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences to prevent and heal trauma, build resilience, and support flourishing communities worldwide. For more information contact Dana Brown, Interim Executive Director, at dana.pacescommunities@gmail.com; or Carey Sipp, Interim Editor-at-Large and Director of Upstream Strategies and Relationships, at carey.pacescommunities@gmail.com

(Published on PACEs Connection on May 16, 2026)

Photo from May 13, 2026 of Ben David, chief executive officer of the New Hanover County Community Justice Center; Elaine Miller-Karas, key creator of the Community Resiliency Model (CRM) and co-founder of Trauma Resource Institute; J’vanete Skiba, director, New Hanover County Resiliency Task Force; myself, and Casey Gwinn, founder, Alliance for Hope International, co-founder, Camp Hope, on break at a strategic planning session for the New Hanover County Community Justice Center. Elaine visited Wilmington and Raleigh, North Carolina, from California to meet with business leaders and CRM trainers in the region and dropped by the planning session to meet Ben, Casey, and Catherine Johnson, president of Alliance for Hope International. This photo represents a few of the hundreds of thousands of people working upstream to prevent and heal trauma, to create the positive childhood and community experiences that help prevent next-generation trauma. Their work — and that of their predecessors over generations, including that of grandparents, teachers, coaches, neighbors, family friends, and more who have provided safe, stable, nurturing environments  for newborns and children enduring trauma — is a major reason why high ACE scores do not automatically equate, at the individual level, to negative outcomes. Your work — our work — matters!)

Reading the 1998 ACE Study in 1999, freaking out, doubling down on self-care

About 27 years ago, when I first learned about the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) via the 1998 ACE Study, I was so devastated by my ACE score that I wept — and put the study in a drawer.

Fortunately, I’d already increased my activity in several supportive communities following a divorce, as I sought help rearing my two precious children as a single working mom.

About three years later, I took the ACE study out of the drawer. Brain science had come out with a lot more information on neuroplasticity — how we’re not “stuck” with the brain we’re born with, or that might have been harmed by ACEs. I started doing more research and writing on parenting, health, brain health, recovering from trauma, and ultimately, ACEs, and then positive and adverse childhood experiences (PACEs) science.

Reparenting and parenting

Fast forward through years of reparenting myself as I parented my children — with the belief that we needed to be in healthy communities where they could have as much exposure as possible to happy, healthy families and adults modeling great relationships. I encouraged my kids to be glad they had “other mothers and fathers” — lots of strong, positive influences in their lives.This was 20 years before the Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) study of 2019. But when it was published, it was deeply affirming of how relying on a “village” and asking for help, as instinct guided, had been the right habit.

We were NOT our ACE scores. My high ACEs didn’t mean I was doomed — as I’d so feared when I first read the 1998 study. And low ACEs didn’t mean anyone was “out of the woods.” We all need as many PCEs as possible.

Here is a truth I want every person with a high ACE score to hear: a high ACE score is not a death sentence. It is not a destiny. The ACEs study measures population-level risk — and at the population level, the implications are sobering. But populations are made up of individuals. And individuals have agency. There are outliers. There always have been.

The 2019 PCEs study and many subsequent studies on the power of PCEs affirm what many of us had already lived: positive childhood and community experiences are buffering and protective; that they can and do change trajectories. For people without those buffers — facing greater poverty, isolation, racism, inequity, and lack of healthcare and support — the risks the ACEs study describes are more likely to materialize. That is chief among the real injustices we must address.

For those of us who fell into or found community, who were held by neighbors and grandmothers and the parents of friends — those relationships were medicine.

I have had health challenges that line up perfectly with the assault on my developing brain and central nervous system — digestive, respiratory, and sleep issues. AND the communities my children and I were part of boosted our health and stability. Years of meditation taught me how to breathe and calmed my nervous system. My respiratory issues are now few and far between.
*My* children are now 33 and 36. Both are in terrific marriages. A first grandchild is due soon; he will be welcomed with and into tremendous love. I am in a safe, stable, nurturing relationship, surrounded by one of the most caring communities I’ve ever known.

#WeAreTheMedicine. Creating and being in community — and knowing we have agency — changes everything. Community is the preventive and antidote to trauma and the trauma of isolation, loneliness, “othering.”

People with high ACE scores are not broken. We are not necessarily destined for an early grave. The science tells us about risk. It does not tell us about about you and me!

                                                   *********************

Invitation to learn more, so much more, about positive and adverse childhood experiences on Friday, May 22nd. Register now for Scars to STARS Day, global summit on the future of ACEs Science.

Please join the PACEs Connection community by registering now for the “ACEs the Next 30 Years” Summit this Friday. We’ll be honoring the two principal co-authors of the 1998 ACE Study, Vincent Felitti, MD, and Robert Anda, MD, MS, and welcoming notable speakers including the Hon. Patrick Kennedy, co-founder of The Kennedy Forum; Melissa Merrick, PhD,  president of Prevent Child Abuse America; Diana Fishbein, PhD, founder and director of the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives; Jennifer Hays-Grudo, PhD and Amanda Sheffield Morris, PhD of the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity , presenting on ACEs to PACEs —  Defining the Next Era of Prevention; Jesse Kohler, founder and president of The Change Campaign; Michael Menard, founder of United Against Childhood Trauma; Jamie Huysman, PsyD, LCSW, founder and executive director, STAR Network Foundation, and Mercie Josina DiGangi, DO, regional chair of the Child Abuse Prevention Program at Kaiser Permanente, Southern California.

Free: Register now at Scars to STARs Summit 2026 – STAR Network. (STAR stands for Survivor of Toxic Abusive Relationships) Registration is free though a donation is encouraged. Download the agenda here to learn more!

*Some 10,000 people in New Hanover County have been trained to some degree in the Community Resiliency Model (CRM), proven to help users re-regulate and increase nervous system resiliency in response to stressful situations, including natural disasters, which is of great benefit in decision-making and providing care in times of crisis.

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