Resiliency Within

The Center on Child Wellbeing and Trauma (CCWT) is a partnership between Massachusetts' Office of the Child Advocate and ForHealth Consulting™ at UMass Chan Medical School. CCWT supports child-serving organizations and systems in becoming trauma-informed and responsive through trainings, technical assistance, communities of practice, and coaching. Audrey Smolkin, MPP, Executive Director, and Aliso...

As a Deafblind woman with partial vision in one eye and bilateral hearing aids, Elsa Sjunneson lives at the crossroads of blindness and sight, hearing and deafness—much to the confusion of the world around her. While she cannot see well enough to operate without a guide dog or cane, she can see enough to know when someone is reacting to the visible signs of her blindness and can hear when they're...

Brooke Conway is a mental health and wellness counselor at Kapi'olani Community College in Honolulu, O'ahu, Hawai'i. In this episode we will discuss Brooke's experiences implementing the Community Resiliency Model (CRM) on her campus as a strategy to support student mental health & wellbeing, particularly while navigating through COVID-19 pandemic and students returning to campus. Hawai'i's unique...

Nearly everyone will experience thoughts of suicide at some point in their lives. The problem isn't that we sometimes feel this way. The problem is that we suffer in silence when what we need most is to connect with non-judgmental and caring others. Neuroscientific findings suggest that humans are hard-wired to connect and that healing takes place in the context of human relationships. What this m...

J'vanete (Jay-vuh-nay) Skiba will share her perspectives from her role as the Assistant Director for Equity, Education, and Engagement for the New Hanover County Resiliency Task Force in Wilmington, North Carolina. The vision of the task force is a more resilient and compassionate New Hanover County. J'vanete serves the community through the idea of "functional compassion." "Functional compassion"...

Sami Aaron, the founder of the nonprofit, The Resilient Activist, will discuss how people everywhere are experiencing severe emotional distress caused by climate change and environmental devastation. And what makes it even more unbearable for some is when family, friends, employers, and governments don't understand and often don't care. She will share how the vision of The Resilient Activist was f...

Todd Wilcher, MA, CTRS, will share his work with Covenant House, Georgia. Covenant House provides services to unhoused youth. Their Crisis Shelter, the P.J. Garcia Youth Shelter, serves as a home for up to 60 youths ages 18-24. Youth can find a safe place to stay and wraparound support for 30-90 days. Youth who stay in the shelter work with a case manager to create a plan for their future. At Cove...

Carmen Turner-Schott will share her book, Sun Signs, Houses & Healing: Build Resilience & Transform Your Life Through Astrology. Carmen will share the themes in her book that can help you transform your life in 2023 through transformation, healing, and resiliency. This beginner-friendly book provides insights on all twelve signs and reveals how your birth chart can help you overcome challenges and...

Dr. Michael Sapp will discuss the importance of looking at mental health as a public health emergency with our host, Elaine Miller-Karas, a world-reknown trauma therapist. The impact of traumatic experiences on individual and community health is widespread. According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2021), "Traumatic events and loss are common in people's lives." There is a need to quickly e...

Natalia Valevska will share her insights from living within their beloved country, Ukraine, during the Russian invasion of February 2022. She will discuss her experiences and work with EdCamp Ukraine, an association of over 40,000 teachers, including her association with the Trauma Resource Institute. She will describe how, out of her despair over the war; she began helping with the resiliency sup...

Curious about something? Google it. But is curiosity simply information seeking? According to Perry Zurn and Dani S. Bassett, what gets left out in the conventional understanding of curiosity are the relations between ideas and between people. Curiosity, say Zurn and Bassett, is a practice of connection. It connects ideas into networks of knowledge and it connects the knowers themselves, both to t...

What do you say to the parents of a recent high school graduate who was just killed when the car she was riding in collided with a truck? Or to a son who asks you to do everything possible to save his cancer-ridden mother even though she has opted for hospice? Or to a patient when she informs you, with complete sincerity, that she can't change into a hospital gown…because she's a zebra? While find...

Even before Covid, parenting was hard. According to physician, writer, and father of three young children, Andrew Bomback, "From day one, parenting can feel like a version of 'we are flying the plane as we build it.'" Bomback investigates the emergence of an immersive, all-in approach to raising children that has made parenting a competitive (and often not very enjoyable) sport. He considers the h...

With a practical approach that weaves together Eastern medicine, western psychology, and African ancestral principles of spirituality, author Lindsay Fauntleroy teaches you how to use the elements to improve physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Experiences such as heartache, anxiety, and procrastination are signs that one of the elements is out of balance within you. Discover how to...

Many of us suffer from nightmares, and those generated by trauma are among the most insidious and frightening. Whether it is Big T trauma such as abuse, violence, or oppression, or a small trauma such as microaggression, a fender-bender, or minor surgery, these events can stretch their sticky fingers into our night dreams and haunt our daylight hours. Some Traumas are acute, and others are chronic...

Bob Doppelt, the coordinator of the International Transformational Resilience Coalition (ITRC) will discuss why community-based initiatives that use a public health approach to build population-level mental wellness and transformational resilience are important approaches to combat widespread harmful mental health and psychosocial problems generated by the climate emergency. In September 2023 alon...

A $702 billion global diet/nutrition and weight loss industry shows that people worldwide are devoted to achieving maximum health and their desired bodies. Yet mainstream approaches are failing these individuals, and sadly, science supports this. Intent on gaining the "health," "confidence," and "happiness" that diets promise, consumers keep trying. Along the way, they often become sad and frustra...

We are more similar than we are different! There is more beyond our own beliefs, we all have blind spots. Presenting a groundbreaking new paradigm for understanding a variety of perspectives, Granddaughter Crow will share with listeners her ideas outside the dogma you may have previously been taught. By exploring your own pre-existing beliefs and the themes various spiritual and cultural tradition...

"I think this is what Nelson Mandela meant by the 'rainbow nation'. Learning about how to stabilize the nervous system is equality and is beyond nations, culture, religion, and ethnicity." Community Resiliency Model Teacher, South Africa The Trauma Resource Institute (TRI) has brought their ideas about healing the wake of traumatic experiences to Asia, Europe, the Mid-East, the Caribbean, Africa,...

Carey Sipp, leader of strategic partnerships with PACEs Connection and Kelly Purcell, Well-Being Consultant and CRM teacher with Ground. Connect. Empower. LLC will share how strategic partnerships and involvement with local resiliency initiatives alongside CRM can work to create lasting systematic change. Carey and Kelly will highlight how counties in North Carolina are using both the PACEs Connec...

Dr. Tara Well will share the elements of Mirror Meditation which she describes as an in-depth exploration into the power of reflections. She will share the benefits of Mirror Meditation reported by practitioners and students, including: • Illuminating their ability to solve problems • Providing perspective on their experiences • Validating hunches and intuition • Building a vault of creative ideas...

Sara Cook will share her extensive experience working with people affected by conflict internationally and in Northern Ireland. She is the United Kingdom representative to Women Mediators Across the Commonwealth. Those working in the fields of peacebuilding and humanitarian aid are known for providing desperately needed support to people affected by conflict, war, natural disaster and inequality a...

Dr. Glenn Schiraldi will share his latest book: The Adverse Childhood Experiences Recovery Workbook: Heal the Hidden Wounds from Childhood Affecting Your Adult Mental and Physical Health. He will explore the links between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), which occur in the first eighteen years of life, and health outcomes in adulthood. We will discuss the overview of the ACEs research and the...

These are the facts: 1 in 4 women globally experience domestic violence. On average, it takes 7 times for most survivors to successfully leave an abusive relationship. But behind the statistics are human beings. One Saturday morning, Beverly Gooden was woken up by her husband shoving her off their bed for no discernible reason. Despite her quick thinking and even quicker footsteps, he caught her,...

Reena Patel believes in the words of Resmaa Menakem when he stated, "Resilience is built into the cells of our bodies. Like trauma, resilience can ripple outward, changing the lives of people, families, neighborhoods, and communities in positive ways. Also, like trauma, resilience can be passed down from generation to generation."—Resmaa Menakem (2017). Reena Patel and Elaine Miller-Karas will dis...