Raising Resilience

Pam Ressler talks with Jon Gay, executive director of The Children's Room on the unique aspect of children's grief and how peer to peer support can help build resilience.

Pam Ressler, founder of Stress Resources, and Lisa Mijares discuss yoga for golfers

The writer Joan Didion opines — “we tell ourselves stories in order to live”. When one is in the depths of a health crisis stories matter as a way to gain hope, healing, and understanding. Research has suggested that writing about our experiences, in the form of journaling, may be helpful in managing our stress and building resilience. In this episode of Raising Resilience, Pam Ressler speaks with author Faith Wilcox about hope and healing through journaling in pediatric intensive care units.

A longtime resident of greater Boston, Faith leads a journal writing program, Journals of Hope, at MassGeneral Hospital for Children for patients and their families designed to give participants the opportunity to express themselves, alleviate stress, celebrate victories, and honor their grief. As co-chair of MassGeneral Hospital for Children’s Family Advisory Council, she works with parents and medical staff to improve the lives of patients and their families. 

Faith believes that self-expression through writing leads to healing. Her writing is reflective of a growing body of medical research about “narrative identity,” which illuminates that how we make sense of what happens to us and the meaning we give to experiences beyond our control directly impact our physical and psychological outcomes. Faith learned these truths firsthand when her thirteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer that took her life. Faith’s journey from grief and despair to moments of comfort and peace taught her life-affirming lessons, which she shares today through her writing.

Faith is the author of Hope Is A Bright Star: A Mother’s Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning to Live Again that will be published in June 2021. Faith is also the author of Facing Into The Wind: A Mother’s Healing After the Death of Her Child, a book of poetry.

Nurses are the largest sector of the healthcare professions — with over 4 million nurses in the United States and more than 20 million nurses worldwide. As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept into our lives over the past year, nurses have played an ever more important role in the health and wellness of our nation and the world. However, nurses are also the canaries in the coal mine of healthcare — sounding the alarm on the impact of the pandemic on stress and resilience among our healthcare professionals. It is essential that those who care for us also have the tools and resources to care for themselves.

The American Nurses Association stepped up, even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, to offer innovative tools for nurses and non-nurses to focus on their own health and wellness — from a holistic standpoint of body, mind and spirit. As the pandemic has continued to rage on, these tools and resources are even more necessary and helpful. During this episode of Raising Resilience, Holly Carpenter, BSN, RN, Senior Policy Advisor for the American Nurses Association’s Nursing Practice and Work Environment Department, joins Pam Ressler in discussing:

* The unique stressors nurses are now facing

* Ways to build resilience during challenging times

* Resources to address stress, wellness and resilience for nurses and others

Here are links to the free resources that are discussed during this episode of Raising Resilience:

Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation

The Well-Being Initiative

ANA Nurse Suicide Prevention/Resilience

ANA COVID-19 Video Education Series

In this episode of Raising Resilience, we are going to talk golf and resilience. It is a topic near and dear to my heart as a relatively new golfer, but one who has embraced the challenge and seen the similarities between my training in mindfulness and meditation the game of golf. Golf guru Jim Flick one said, “Golf is 90 percent mental, and the other 10 percent is ….mental”. The game of golf and the golf course can be an intimidating environment for many women, especially for those who did not learn to play golf as young girls. That is why I find Lynn Cotter’s online presence such a welcome, encouraging voice for women and girls navigating the game of golf with confidence and….resilience.

Here is a bit about my guest on this episode of Raising Resilience, Lynn Cotter — Lynn is an avid golfer who has a passion for the game and instilling confidence in girls and women learning to navigate the game of golf. Last year she launched a website and blog, LynnOnTheLinks.com and recently began a Facebook group, Beginner Golf for Women, that has already garnered hundreds of followers. Lynn is. frequent contributor to NewEngland.Golf and GolfCritique.com and is a member of Golf Writers Association of America. She is a member of the LPGA Amateurs and Women on Course in the Boston, MA area.

Kate Nicholson is a civil rights rights attorney, an arts activist, and, recently, a writer and speaker. She served in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice for more than twenty years and is a nationally-recognized expert on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). And then it changed…Kate was thrust into the personal lived experience of severe, chronic pain and disability, something as an ADA lawyer she was all too familiar with professionally but not personally. As a self-described “Type A”, Kate struggled with maintaining her professional identity, her passion for advocacy and change, along with her need to slow down and listen to her body and its new limitations. See links to Kate’s story, her advocacy efforts, and innovative arts projects on StressResources.com

We are now half a year into navigating a new (ab)normal in our lives due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The return to school and childcare is on the minds of parents, kids and teachers, along with the myriad of unknowns that coexist with the logistics of returning to group settings. How do we strengthen our resilience in times of increased stress and anxiety — and maintain a sense of control during times of uncertainty? In this episode of Raising Resilience, Pam is joined by Dr. Jody Thomas to discuss the unique challenges posed this year, the ubiquitous nature of dealing with stress in our lives and the lives of our children, and evidence-based tools to help us all cope more effectively.

Dr. Jody Thomas is a clinical psychologist, and specialist in pediatric medical illness and trauma. A well-known expert in pain who teaches internationally on the subject, she is also a founder and the former Clinical Director of the Packard Pediatric Pain Rehabilitation Center at Stanford, and a former Assistant Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Though she now lives in Denver, CO, she still serves as Adjunct Faculty for Stanford, supervising and teaching. An active consultant for the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, she directs projects on the integration and innovation of pain management using tech-based intervention. Her passion for bringing together the power of medical science, technology and design to transform the way we think about kids and pain led her to create the Meg Foundation, a non profit dedicated to empowering families around pain. In 2019, Dr. Thomas was chosen for the prestigious MayDay Fellowship, which supports pain experts in assuming public leadership roles to help end human suffering through public discourse.

Meg Foundation COVID-19 Coping Tools for Parents and Kids

ImaginAction (digital tool for coping with emotions and pain developed in collaboration with Stanford University)

Meg Foundation Resources for Coping with Pain and Anxiety for Kids, Parents and Caregivers

A definition of resilience is the ability to bend, adapt and adjust to change. Our current global pandemic has necessitated a rapid adoption of different ways to deliver healthcare and the challenge of building resilience and sustainability in these new models. One of the areas that has been fast-tracked is telehealth or virtual visits with healthcare providers. In-person office visits ceased, elective procedures were canceled, hospitals and outpatient practices saw staff furloughed and redeployed to other areas. Primary care practices were rapidly thrust into a steep learning curve of implementing new methods of patient-provider interaction. After the pandemic dissipates, how will healthcare be delivered, are there best practices that are emerging, can telehealth be delivered equitably to vulnerable populations?

On this episode of Raising Resilience, Pam is joined by Barbra Rabson, President and CEO of Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP) MHQP who shares her observations of this tipping point of telehealth as well as opportunities and challenges it presents to patient and provider interaction and experience. Are there ways to raise our collective resilience with adoption of new methods of healthcare delivery?

Barbra Rabson, President and CEO, of Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP)

How do we find ways to compassionately support and nourish ourselves while intensively caring for others? In Episode 6, Pam is joined by Ashley Newcomb, RN, MS, CNL, C-EFM, founder of Resilient Superhero, and a labor and delivery nurse at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, New Hampshire. As a nurse leader, Ashley has been instrumental in promoting self-care and resilience in the hospital and at home by developing Resilience Kits The resilience kits were designed to encourage self-care and a feeling of community support. These kits are meant for anyone working on the “front lines” of life — We ALL need resilience and reminder that we are loved and cared about in these unprecedented times.

Yikes…the kids aren’t going back to school?! With most states canceling school through the rest of the school.year due to the coronavirus pandemic, how do kids and parents readjust and learn in this abnormal situation? While we think of frontline healthcare providers as those who are staffing our emergency rooms and intensive care units, there is also another frontline of healthcare heroes, those working in our communities keeping our kids and parents as healthy as possible during these unprecedented times.