I look at the computer screen, tears welling in my eyes.

“Your ACE score is 5,” it read.

I think I already knew what that meant: I am a victim of childhood trauma.

It feels strange to write those words, even now. When you’re in a toxic or unsafe situation, you don’t always realize what’s really happening—or how bad it is. That was true for me. I didn’t grasp the full darkness of it until I finally left.

When I went away to college, I didn’t stop to reflect. I just ran, without looking back. But even after leaving home, I couldn’t escape it completely. Flashbacks would creep in—memories of painful experiences from my high school years. I tried to push them away, to convince myself this was just how things were. It wasn’t until my late twenties that I realized my “normal” was anything but. That’s when I sought therapy for the first time and was told I came from a “dysfunctional family.”

Still, I didn’t call it “trauma.” Not yet. That word felt too big, too heavy. It wasn’t until this past year—at 32—that I finally allowed myself to name it. To face it. To start untangling what I had lived through and how deeply it had shaped me.

But what does an ACE score of 5 actually mean? I did what many of us do—I opened Google.

Here’s what I found:

• “People with high ACE scores are more likely to be violent, to have more marriages, more broken bones, more drug prescriptions, more depression, and more autoimmune diseases. People with an ACE score of 6 or higher are at risk of their lifespan being shortened by 20 years.”
• “If the ACE score is 1–3 with ACE-Associated Health Conditions, the patient is at ‘intermediate risk.’ If the ACE score is 4 or higher, even without ACE-Associated Health Conditions, the patient is at ‘high risk’ for toxic stress physiology.”
• According to BMC Public Health, most individuals experienced at least one ACE (57.8%). Roughly 42% had an ACE score of 0, while only 3.8% had a score of 5. My score wasn’t just a number—it put me in the minority.

So what exactly is an ACE score?

The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard explains it like this:
“The Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ‘ACEs’ quiz asks a series of 10 questions about common traumatic experiences that occur in early life. An ACE score is a tally of different types of abuse, neglect, and other adverse experiences. A higher score indicates a higher risk for health problems later in life.”

The risk is real—but the score isn’t destiny. It explains why some struggles feel harder, but it doesn’t seal your future. Healing, therapy, and safe relationships make a difference.

Dr. Gabor Maté describes it this way:

“When children are traumatized, one of the ways they cope with it is to soothe themselves, and that is where addictions come in. But another way to cope is if you get the message ‘you’re not good enough.’ That you are not ‘worthy’ enough. Then you spend the rest of your life trying to prove that you are. And how do you do that? By being very nice to everybody. By never saying how you feel, because they may not like how you feel. By never expressing healthy anger when somebody’s crossing your boundaries. By working too hard to prove that you’re worthwhile.”

Reading those words was like looking in a mirror. For me, the ACE score was not just a number on a screen—it was a key to understanding my story, and a reminder that healing is possible when we finally give ourselves permission to name the truth.

So, why am I sharing all of this in the first place?

Like many other moms, when I used to imagine marriage and starting a family, I pictured a dream. I thought I would be an amazing mother who loved nothing more than staying home with my children, raising them, and caring for our home.

Instead, after having my daughter, I discovered something I wasn’t prepared for: my unresolved childhood trauma resurfaced. This past year, I struggled under the weight of motherhood while also grieving the lack of support—the “village” we so often hear about but don’t always receive. I suffered in silence, and because of that, I developed postpartum depression (PPD) as well as postpartum anxiety and anger (PPA). Old wounds split open. Resentment I thought I’d left behind bubbled back to the surface.

It felt like a perineal tear left to fester—purulence seeping out, infecting my mothering.

I fear becoming her. The anger. The gritted teeth. I always told myself I would never be like my mother—not in life and definitely not with my own children. Mine would feel loved, without question. I would cauterize the wound and break the cycle.

But after having my second child, I felt the slap of her hand again—not just hers, but the heavy shadow of others in my family, too. Postpartum is hard enough: the weight of losing yourself, your body, the pain, the sleep deprivation. The exhaustion and anxiety that come with every new issue. The emotional and physical toll of breastfeeding. And all of this while also caring for a toddler, a husband, and carrying the massive visible and invisible load that comes with being a woman.

When you don’t have many people stepping in to help, you begin to feel like you’re failing. Then, when my baby and I developed thrush, it all began to fall apart.

Maya Angelou once said:
“People will forget what you said,
People will forget what you did,
But people will never forget how you made them feel.”

That quote lives in me, because so does this memory…

The door slams open, crashing against the wall. My mother storms in—lips pursed, face red, eyes hard. My friends are sitting next to me on the couch. Did she even notice them? Does she care who sees anymore?

It’s all happening so fast, I can’t process it. Terror floods me. What did I do? What is she about to do?

In seconds, she’s in front of me. Snarling, she lunges. Her fist tangles in my hair, yanking so hard I wince and cry out, “Ow.” She doesn’t stop. She drags me from the couch, across the room, down the stairs—her hand locked, ripping at my scalp.

I don’t remember what happened immediately after. The next thing I recall is sitting silently back on the couch beside my friends. One asked softly if I wanted to talk about it. I shook my head no. We quietly—and awkwardly—turned back to the TV. It was never spoken of again.

That memory lives in me still. It resurfaces in moments when I feel overwhelmed, when I grit my teeth, when anger rises too quickly. Postpartum has made the shadow of those moments harder to ignore. But unlike before, I am naming them now. I am working to face them, to break the silence, to cauterize the wound.

Not just for me—but for my children.