Healing the Hidden Wounds of Childhood

Adverse childhood experiences can continue to shape how we respond to relationships, stress, conflict, vulnerability, and change long after childhood has ended.

Healing the Hidden Wounds of Childhood is a four-hour participatory workshop that offers a compassionate and structured pathway for understanding these patterns and beginning the movement from survival toward healing and connection.

The workshop follows five stages:

Trauma → Awareness → Healing → Transformation → Connection

Rather than treating trauma responses as personal failures, the workshop helps participants understand how many difficult patterns began as intelligent adaptations to overwhelming or unsafe experiences.

Through teaching, reflection, guided exercises, and optional group participation, we will explore:

• What adverse childhood experiences are and how they may affect adult life
• Common survival patterns such as people-pleasing, perfectionism, emotional withdrawal, hyper-independence, overwork, and difficulty trusting others
• The deeper wounds associated with safety, connection, control, meaning, and self-worth
• Practical pathways toward greater awareness, integration, compassion, and connection

You participate at your own pace. No one will be required to disclose personal experiences or speak in the group. This is an educational and experiential workshop, not group therapy or a substitute for professional mental health care.

This workshop is for adults of all ages. No previous knowledge of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) or trauma healing is required.

Saturday, September 12, 2026
1:00–5:00 PM
Please arrive between 12:40 and 12:55 PM so that we can begin promptly.

Main Meeting Room 116
Main Library
137 W. Margaret Lane
Hillsborough, North Carolina

Attendance is free, but advance registration is required because space is limited.

The workshop is offered by the All Is Grace Community Partnership Initiative, a Hillsborough-based nonprofit supporting vulnerable children and families in Zambia through education, school meals, practical skills training, and trauma healing.

There is no charge to attend. Participants who feel moved to support this work will have an opportunity to make an entirely voluntary donation. A gift of approximately $50 per attendee, for example, could collectively help fund a month of operating support for All Is Grace School if 50 participants chose to give.

No donation is expected or required.

“From a clinical perspective, this workshop stands out by moving beyond education and coping to offer a structured pathway for healing. It reframes trauma patterns as adaptive responses and supports participants in moving from survival toward integration, connection, and lasting change.”

Hussam Alsarraf, MD
Psychiatrist