Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic experiences that happen before age 18. The original ACE questionnaire looks at 10 experiences involving abuse, neglect, and household challenges.
Your ACE score reflects exposure, not how deeply something affected you, and it is not a diagnosis or prediction of your future.
Before You Begin
Your ACE score is not a diagnosis, prediction, or definition of who you are. It is simply one tool for identifying certain types of adversity you may have experienced during childhood.
Your number tells you something about what you experienced. It does not tell you who you have to become.
TAKE THE ACEs ASSESSMENT BELOW!
I’ll never forget the first time I took the ACEs assessment.
The instructions were simple: “Check the boxes that apply.”
So I checked one.
Then another.
And another.
By the time I got to the end, I had checked 9 out of 10.
And what hit me the hardest was realizing I had experienced all of it by the time I was nine years old.
For a moment, I just sat with that number…
Because I knew the little girl behind those nine boxes. I knew what she had survived. I knew the choices she had made just trying to protect herself.
But I also knew who she became.
Earning my master’s degree. Making history at my high school. Built a life beyond the circumstances I was born into.
I was living proof that my past didn’t have to become my future.
That made me ask myself a question: How did I get here?
That question led me to something just as important as understanding my adverse childhood experiences: my positive childhood experiences.
There were teachers, coaches, mentors, and trustworthy adults who saw something in me when I couldn’t see it in myself. They offered me guidance, encouragement, and a different way of seeing what was possible.
And eventually, I let them in.
Those relationships helped me recognize and begin breaking cycles I was born into and patterns I didn’t even realize I was carrying.
That journey became part of the foundation for R³ and the work I dedicate my life to today.
So before you check your first box, I want you to remember something I had to learn for myself:
Your ACE score can help you understand what happened to you. But it does not get to decide what happens next.
Your story may explain you. It does not have to define you.
Find out your score below.
Think about your experiences during your first 18 years of life. Select the answer that best reflects your experience.
Your ACE score can bring awareness to experiences that may have shappen your survival responses, patterns, and decision but it doesn't define who you are or who you will become.
Your ACE score represents the number of categories of adverse childhood experiences you reported. It also does not measure your strengths, resilience, protective relationships, healing, or explain what is possible for your future.