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NONPROFIT
ACE vs. Resiliency:
While a high ACE score can mean greater
likelihood for many risk factors, this is not
always the case. ACE scores don’t measure
the positive experiences in childhood that
can help build resilience and protect a child
from the effects of trauma. Research sug-
gests that just one caring, safe relationship
early in life gives any child a much better
chance at growing up healthy. Having a
grandparent who loves them, a teacher who
believes in them, a trusted friend to confide
in can mitigate the effects of childhood
trauma.
Magdalena House provides an
environment designed to foster
resiliency.
Positive relationships are at the heart of
the success of women and children who live
at Magdalena House, a transitional shelter
near the South Texas Medical Center. Mag-
dalena House serves mothers and their chil-
dren who have fled dangerous and abusive
lives by providing “Home. Help. Hope.” to
alleviate the effects of high ACE scores.
Home:
At Magdalena House, a mother and her
children live in a beautiful, safe and nurtur- havior toward her while she was pregnant
ing home while they put their lives back to-
gether.
Help:
An individual program of supportive
services is created for each mother and
child, focused on educational and voca-
tional training, life enrichment classes, ac-
countability, volunteering in the
community, spiritual formation, and out-
sourcing to other agencies to meet the full
gamut of a family’s needs. Families may live
at the Magdalena House as long as they re-
main working toward completion of their
educational goals.
Hope:
A process that works toward empower-
ment, self-awareness and achievement of
personal goals. Magdalena House strives to
create a space that cultivates authentic rela-
tionships and nurturing community where
families move beyond their past to a future
full of hope and new possibilities.
So what does this process look
like in the life of a real woman
and her children?
(The following names have been omitted
or changed to protect the family’s identity.)
Christine was 7 years old when she first
realized her mother was addicted to drugs;
she also was 7 the first time she was abused.
By age 13, Christine began using drugs, fre-
quently alongside her mother. By eighth
grade, she stopped going to school and
began taking care of her 9-month-old
brother, and while her mother told her that
she was out working various part-time jobs,
Christine knew, even at her young age, that
her mother was working as a prostitute. Al-
though she wanted to finish high school, to
become someone different from her mother,
Christine ultimately dropped out of school
her senior year.
At 18, Christine began working as a
dancer at a strip club and became addicted
to drugs. She danced at the club until she
became pregnant with her older daughter,
and she and her mother continued to use
drugs together. By age 24, Christine’s life
was being wrecked by her addiction and
also by an abusive relationship with a man
who would later go to jail for his violent be- week course that helps parents at risk for
with her second child. Ultimately, Chris-
tine’s two children were removed from her
care. This event, however, proved to be a
turning point in Christine’s life. Christine
had always promised herself that she’d be a
different kind of mother: “It took losing my
kids for me to say ‘no more’ to drugs and
the lifestyle I was living.”
Three months later she was reunited with
her children, and she has stayed sober since.
Her greatest desire is to bring her kids up in
a stable, loving environment. At Magdalena
House, she says, she is “learning to be a bet-
ter mom, to guide them.”
By Christine’s count, she would score a 7
on the ACE test, and her children’s young
lives also would indicate a high ACE score (4
or more). However, both Christine and her
children are changing things for the better.
At Magdalena House, Christine’s girls are
taking part in Kids Connection Too, a cur-
riculum-based support group created for
kids in shelters as a direct response to the
ACE studies. Magdalena House has four
trained volunteers to take the children
through this curriculum, which builds pro-
tective factors to mitigate the high-trauma
situations that these children have experi-
enced. The goal is to foster positive beliefs
about oneself and a community of healthy
relationships.
Christine, as well as the other mothers at
Magdalena House, have one-on-one parent-
ing coaches through the Methodist Health-
care Ministries’ “Parents as Teachers”
program. And as a group, the mothers at
Magdalena House take Systematic Training
for Effective Parenting (STEP), an eight-
parenting problems learn effective parent-
child interactions. After all, life stories like
Christine’s, one in which love, security and
stability were rare, are unfortunately com-
mon at Magdalena House. Positive relation-
ships, both with the other moms in the
house, staff, volunteers and parenting
coaches, are producing growth and strength
for these families.
Christine is determined that her daugh-
ters’ lives will be different from hers. Mag-
dalena House is her partner is this quest.
Demand for Magdalena House’s services
is high. Having recently purchased their 5-
acre property, staff and board members are
working with KFW Engineering to design
and build a gated neighborhood with seven
homes so eventually 28 families may be
served at any one time.
A benefit for Magdalena House
is planned for Oct. 24 at the JW
Marriott Hill Country Resort.
For more information, visit
www.maghouse.org.
visit us at www.bcms.org 27