I've recently had the opportunity to attend a couple health conferences in Halifax which I found to be very encouraging for the ACEs Awareness and Prevention Movement in Atlantic Canada and across the country.
Dalhousie University hosted a Healthy Living, Healthy Life conference in September. There I was able to hear about a new ACE Study recently conducted in Nova Scotia. The findings haven't been published officially yet, but preliminary findings are staggering. I hope once this information is published it ramps up our collective attention to this long-standing public health issue.
Also in discussion with the researchers we have identified a possible partner for a nationwide ACE study. If we could get that done it would significantly raise awareness of ACEs and their impact across the country. It could also be one of the biggest ACE studies done in the world. I'm hopeful someone can make this happen.
I also attended a conference last week hosted by the local IWK children's hospital on Advanced Practices in Child Maltreatment. The IWK hosts Sea Star Child and Youth Advocacy Centre where investigations of suspected child abuse and support for affected children and families are centered. The folks there do great work with the kids, families and justice system.
The keynote speaker was Sara Austin, CEO of the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre in Calgary. Sara also founded Children First Canada and has recently launched an initiative to enshrine a Children's Charter of Rights in Canada. Sara has been a lifelong advocate for children's rights internationally. She remarkably successfully campaigned at the UN to include children's rights in policy.
During a Q & A I asked how much ACEs inform her work, and she admitted that they are the foundation. And yet she didn't mention them in her talk, and few other speakers did either.
With so many causes calling for our political attention, I think those of us advocating for child protection could be more successful if we coordinated our efforts.
I continue to promote an ACEs Awareness focus, because it does incorporate quantifiable research, and most importantly it covers children and adults.
The ACEs research done in Nova Scotia surveyed adults, the results of which will be very useful in raising awareness of the long term effects of ACEs and hopefully inspiring more service provision for recovery for adults.
Just focusing on child abuse prevention and parenting programs has not worked in the 40 years since I first learned about child development needs as an ECE trainee.
Our apparent collective reticence to speak of and address the residual effects of ACEs in the adult population continues to disturb me greatly. Unless adults face their unresolved effects we will never make the substantive changes we need to make in how we see and interact with others and raise our children.
In order to be able to adequately empathize with and protect our children, first we must be able to honestly empathize with and repair our relationship with the child within our adult selves.
I prepared a poster for the Child Maltreatment Conference entitled Supporting Adult Survivors of Childhood Trauma. Unfortunately, the poster portion of the program was not well attended, but people I did speak to expressed agreement that helping adults was important - just not important enough to be broadly willing to talk about and act on.
I continue to offer my weekly Peer Support Group for Adult Identifying Women Survivors of Childhood Trauma. I have a few regulars that attend and since September we've had a few new participants join us intermittently.
I continue to seek allies in promoting ACEs Awareness, Recovery and Prevention in Nova Scotia. Hopefully some of the people I have met recently will join our Atlantic Canada ACE and TIP Community so we can coordinate our efforts and start to create some traction for this movement in this region.
I continue to try to figure out how to get uptake on my offer of workshops on ACEs and trauma related topics. I haven't yet found the sweet spot where adults are willing to learn about how our childhoods have likely adversely affected the rest of our lives.
Talking with a friend yesterday I thought of the analogy that childhood trauma is like a Halloween ghoul. It follows us around, and as adults we might not realize it's there because we keep moving forward quickly and keep ourselves busy. But when we slow down, it catches up with us. We can never be free of it until we put our arm around it and let it join us throughout the rest of our journey. Sure it's ugly and scary and dark and nebulous, but as we accept it as adults we can soothe it and comfort it. It exists because the pain we experienced in childhood was legitimate. We couldn't acknowledge it then, or we wouldn't have survived. But we can honour it now, and doing so can help us reset our foundations and improve our ability to relate to ourselves, others and the planet going forward.
Unfortunately I've realized that until we recover, many of us repeatedly inadvertently interact in hurtful ways towards others - including adults and children, as we race to stay ahead of the ghoul whose cold breath on the back of our neck haunts us.
Even though I've done a lot of work for my own recovery, I have yet to make myself impervious to the pain inflicted by unhealthy, avoidant, projecting others. I've recently had to take some time for myself to recover from new relational trauma. I'm hoping to be back full force again soon.
In the meantime my goals still include hosting public screenings of Resilience, Paper Tigers and the other wonderful documentaries that have been produced to raise awareness about ACEs and mobilize communities to address them.
I am inspired by #ACEAwareNation in Scotland, and all the work being done by the members of ACEs Connection.
I am privileged to be here with you all.
I keep telling myself although what I know has been hard earned, it's a precious gift and can be a blessing to myself, others and the planet. I remain hopeful that I will find others locally who are willing to welcome me and collaborate for the benefit of all of us.
Until then, I remain thankful for my international colleagues.
Elizabeth Perry
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