Marlon was that nerdy little kid who loved to write and went door to door in his little suit to share church pamphlets. But even a protective family could not shield him from the violence in his neighborhood. Marlon was in elementary school when he was first robbed. His exposure to violence made him hyper-vigilant, but nothing could protect him from being raped at gun point at the age of 14. As Marlon puts it, this event took away his childhood freedom and sentenced him to absolute silence and the beginning of his belief of his own brokenness. At 19, he went to jail, facing a life sentence for his part in a fatal robbery.
Read MoreWhen Robin’s father was 12, he hid in a closet while his family was gunned down in one of the first mass shooting in US history. 60 years later, Robin’s niece hid in a closet while her classmates were murdered in the Parkland highschool shooting. Robin decided at that moment to become an activist against gun violence. As the child of a survivor and a school nurse, she knows first hand the damage caused by gun violence. When she learned about ACEs, her activism broadened from fighting against gun violence to thriving to promote trauma-informed schools and communities.
Read MoreCissy grew up in Hell, as she puts it. Hyper-competent and emotionally disconnected, she managed to keep her trauma at bay, until it came crashing in in the form of panic attacks in college. She was diagnosed with PTSD and started therapy, but her redemption came through writing and through mothering her adopted child. Through mothering she realized what she truly missed as a child: to feel safe, to be seen, to be loved. It's not the bad stuff that happened to her that matter the most, it's what was missing. Once she could see that, she could heal.
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