Trauma and it’s shadows affect us all and our ability to care for others depends on our ability to care for ourselves.
Cendie Stanford, the founder of ACEs Matter will share what she’s learned about the side effects of adverse childhoods and how those adversities influence the way we behave as adults.
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MEET CENDIE STANFORD
Cendie Stanford is currently managing a not-for-profit called ACEs Matter which teaches adults how adverse childhoods affect children long into adulthood. This offers education to people who never heard about ACES, or adverse childhood experiences.
INSPIRATION VIA A GOOGLE SEARCH
At 42, Cendie couldn’t figure out why she was struggling with her finances, social relationships, relationship with her daughter, and spirituality, so she googled ‘What’s wrong with me’? –In her search for answers, she ultimately came across information related to adverse childhood experiences and this led her to starting ACES MATTER. Beyond the midlife crises, Cendie dialed in to what she was expressing emotionally and what was behind her responses to her emotions.
Cendie Stanford
During this podcast session, Cendie explained that what people misunderstand about ACES is the assumption that “everybody experiences trauma the same way”. Despite our differing response to trauma, the side effects are still the same for everyone who has a hard time getting to that place of, ‘How can I work on this?’.
According to the CDC, over 125 million adults (after the age of 18 years old) are suffering from depression based on what happened in their childhood. So, the study tells us to chase our roots.
ACEs Stretch Into the Workplace
ACEs show up even in the work setting. Some ways that this occurs: blaming others, being aggressive, being late, procrastinating, absences. –this shows that everyone has a reason to learn about this.
“Say you don’t see any ACEs in yourself, according to the ten questions that they ask; you will inevitably run into someone who does have them and their behavior won’t make sense to you. Once you understand ACEs -whether at a surface level, or you go really down the rabbit hole- people’s behaviors will start to make sense to you and then all of a sudden we begin to develop more compassion for ourselves and each other. That’s the end goal with it”.
Connect With Cendie
- Visit ACESMATTER.org to get your ACE score
- Become a zip code hero if you want to learn about ACEs and you have the intent to teach others about it
- Follow the ACES social media pages and share
- Connect with Cendie on LinkedIn
- Download Cendie’s Formula for overcoming hidden trauma
