Focused on personal empowerment and promoting strategies to enhance resiliency, Joy Erlichman Miller will share her ideas and wisdom regarding the forum she has helped create: Resiliency 2021. She will share how the forum brings together inspirational speakers, empowering clinicians, talented artists, life-changing authors, and noted professionals, all dedicated to enhancing our ability to thrive. Her goal is to share creative and innovative strategies for dealing with the unexpected earth-shattering event that has changed every American’s life, COVID-19. She will discuss why offering new methods can reframe the Resiliency 2021 forum’s participant experiences and support each one toward discovering a “new normal” is so important. She will discuss the mission of Resiliency 2021: to assist participants to discover strategies for being grateful, finding purpose, examining personal meaning, and building resiliency. She will share how anyone can participate in this international program and it is free for everyone.

Cammie Wolf Rice, the founder of the Christopher Wolf Crusade, will share her journey as a mother who lost her beloved son, Christopher, to the Opioid Epidemic. She brings to light the lost promise of her kind, empathic son and how he tragically became addicted to opioids in the aftermath of countless surgical procedures and resulting prescriptions. She will share her passionate call to action to face this epidemic with the innovation of creating the Life Care Specialist Program, implementing a new layer of post-surgical prevention within hospitals. Out of a mother’s love and in Christopher’s memory, she will illuminate how her grief sparked her to create solutions to this epidemic threatening the fabric of our society. She will discuss how wellness strategies work to prevent self-medicating and the critical importance of innovative prevention she is bringing forth within hospitals via Life Care Specialists.

This episode will highlight the relationships that Lesley Carroll has been cultivating for a lifetime in Northern Ireland and how as a natural leader, she has cultivated bringing resiliency practices to her beloved country. After learning about the Community Resiliency Model(CRM)®, she saw a way forward from the entanglement of past experiences, not just for herself but for the community of Northern Ireland. She believes passionately that the wellness skills of the Community Resiliency Model could help those caught in the cycle of traumatic responses continually triggered by unsettled politics and public debate. She had been privileged to visit other conflicted communities across the world and her vision includes a vision for sharing the CRM skills in other places by training up people from Northern Ireland who can testify to the effectiveness of the skills and share them from their own experience with those living in similar situations. Since then, Lesley has facilitated the Trauma Resource Institute to train trainers to deliver the Community Resiliency Model and has put steps in motion to form the Community Resiliency Network Ireland. Victim Support NI is one of the organizations influenced by the Community Resiliency Model. Jolena Flett is currently Head of Services for Victim Support NI, the leading charity supporting all victims of crime in Northern Ireland. Jolena is responsible for the integration of CRM into the organization at all levels for staff and volunteers. Current work is now expanding on the CRM work through the development of a modified module that can be used by other victim support organizations across Europe.

Jen Wallace is a leader bringing innovative trauma and resiliency informed ideas into law enforcement. She will discuss why resiliency matters to police and how resiliency wellness skills can be organically integrated into police trainings. She is a strong advocate for community policing. She will share the innovative work she is doing with a talented team at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission.

The Dalai Lama and Emory University established the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics. The center has a vision of a compassionate and ethical world for all, and its mission is to promote human flourishing by developing educational programs, facilitating dialogue, and engaging in research. Brendan Ozawa-de Silva and Timothy Harrison will speak on two programs developed at Emory to promote resilience and compassion: Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) for adults, and SEE Learning for students in k-12 and higher education. Both of these programs are the subject of scientific research and aim to be at the cutting edge of trauma and resilience-informed contemplative practice. Tim and Brendan will outline the programs, which have incorporated resilience skills from the Community Resiliency Model (CRM), and will discuss how contemplative practice and resilience skills can be integrated for the promotion of physical, mental, and social well-being.

No person or organization is left untouched by the trauma of institutional racism, transgenerational trauma, historical trauma, discrimination and patriarchal power structures. We are all impacted by the inequities and injustices of our collective histories. Kevin McLeod and Michael Sapp will discuss how the Trauma Resource Institute (TRI) is committed to creating a world where people of all religions, races, ages, abilities, sexual orientation and gender identification are equally respected and welcomed. Since 2018, a committee of volunteers and staff was created, called the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee, to have ongoing leadership to create intentional dialogue regarding equity and diversity inclusion.  They will discuss how inclusion strategies can inform and direct other leaders to discussions of diversity and equity in healthy ways within their respective organizations.

Civil Rights icon Medgar Evers, was assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi on June 12, 1963. His dynamic, committed and compassionate daughter, Reena Evers-Everette, will share how the vision of her father and mother continues through the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute in Jackson, Mississippi.   She will share her personal experience of suffering and resiliency. She will detail living the mission of the institute: cultivating positive social change, intergenerational civic engagement, through research on social equity and justice worldwide.

Phil Allen discusses the enduring impact of racial tragedy through the lens of the extreme injustice his family experienced in 1953 when his grandfather, Nathanial Allen, was murdered. He will discuss the themes in his documentary and book, entitled Open Wounds. His works illuminate a transformative experience of listening and learning as he looks, laments, and ultimately leads his family and society forward toward a just and reconciled future. It is an essential part of our national reckoning with racism and injustice. The racial tragedy of the murder of his grandfather is not just something an individual, family, or community gets over and forgets. He states, “The tragic racial injustice that my family experienced in 1953 will forever be etched in our collective hearts and minds.” Phil Allen will discuss the hope and the resiliency also passed on from generation to generation. He believes healing and redemption is only available through truth.

How can we support and help our cherished healthcare workers battling the pandemic on the frontlines of their communities? In this episode, two distinguished healthcare leaders will share the anguish COVID has confronted to their professions. More importantly, they will share the resiliency practices that are helping their colleagues and themselves. Dr. Deborah Small, a board-certified Family Medicine Physician, is a founding member of the Trauma Resource Institute (TRI), a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing resiliency practices to our world community. Dr. Lindy Grabbe, a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner and Psychiatric/Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, is a leader of bringing the Community Resiliency Model (the modality created by the Trauma Resource Institute) to nurses nationwide and to the state of Georgia. Both guests will share their stories and immense wisdom.

Jane Ellen Stevens, founder and publisher of ACES Connection will discuss Positive and Adverse Experiences of Childhood (PACES) and how these experiences have not only shaped our thinking but our biology. She states, “The path our lives take depends mostly on the positive and adverse childhood experiences we have between conception and about age 18.” She will help us understand how PACES are crucial to humans, because they are at the root of disease, violence, being a victim of violence, mental illness, substance abuse, cruelty, anger, depression, anxiety, a belief in a dangerous world, mob violence and rage. The good news is people can heal and do remarkable things: Schools that integrate practices based on ACEs science are able to eliminate suspensions and expulsions. Suicide attempts by youth drop 98%. Recidivism rates by graduates of batterer intervention courses drop from 60% to 1%. A year after families participate in Safe Babies Courts, 99% of children suffer no further abuse.