Resiliency Within

The Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a shock wave throughout our world. As the images of destruction besieged our social media, many of us wondered how we could help. The Trauma Resource Institute was called into action by our Ukrainian colleagues at EdCamp Ukraine on February 24, 2022, when they asked us to provide support for their national network of educators, children, and wider community. They shared their thoughts about the support that was needed. They requested a Community Resiliency Model workshop to be offered in a series of four webinars, meeting through Zoom and to stream on EdCamp Ukraine's Facebook Live for accessibility to their wider community. They then requested daily support meetings where we could address questions with regard to the stress and trauma of war. Thus, TRI's Ukrainian Humanitarian Resiliency Project (UHRP) was created. Wendy Flick is the International Coordinator for the Trauma Resource Institute and coordinating the logistics for UHRP. She will dialogue with Elaine Miller-Karas, TRI's co-founder of their experience in supporting Ukrainian from afar. They will share poignant questions posed by Ukrainian parents and teachers and how the Trauma Resource Institute is responding with trauma therapists and Community Resiliency Model Teachers.

What do we learn when we integrate the perspectives of trauma and systems change? Why is a trauma-informed lens absent from the mainstream discourse about social and environmental problem solving and what changes when we bring that lens from the periphery to the mainstream? This episode of Resiliency Within dives into an exploration of how trauma shows up as a force to be reckoned with in systems that touch our lives - our education systems, healthcare systems, housing systems, etc. - drawing on insights gathered by the Collective Change Lab in conversation with dozens of social change leaders in Sri Lanka, Romania, Australia, Tasmania, Canada, Colombia, India, the US, and elsewhere. In this episode, guest speakers Laura Calderon de la Barca, John Kania, and Katherine Milligan also offer collective healing practices adopted by social change leaders in pursuit of systems change.

In Correctional, Shankar frames his unexpected encounters with the law and the unraveling of his life through the lenses of race, class, privilege, and his bicultural upbringing as the first and only son of South Indian immigrants. Vignettes from his life, as a child in colorful Chennai; an angsty adolescent fighting against the model minority myth in Washington, DC; an emerging writer in Brooklyn; and, later, an accomplished poet and academic, set the scene for his spectacular fall and subsequent struggle to come to terms with his own demons. Many of them, it turns out, are also our own. At once the story of what led to Shankar's incarceration and the revelations—both personal and societal—that came out of it, Correctional challenges us to rethink the way we view and treat the previously incarcerated, and to reexamine the justness of our criminal justice system.

The Loma Linda University (LLU) International Behavior Health Trauma Team (IBHTT) operated by the LLU School of Behavioral Health (SBH) has been providing international trauma preparatory training and psychological first aid disaster response since 1995. Dr. Bev Buckles and Dr. Kimberly Freeman will share their international work as members of the IBHTT. Dr. Buckles is the founder and lead for the IBHTT and first required the team supporting services in Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, to complete initial training in the Community Resiliency Model (CRM). Dr. Freeman, a member of the team and a specialist in child development has been one of the key members of the IBHTT. Dr. Buckles and Dr. Freeman, both social workers, will discuss the impact social workers can make in response to human made and natural disasters globally. Since 2010 the IBHTT has used CRM in over 90 international services and trainings around the world, which have included serving as members of TRI's global response as needed. Beginning in 2012 the IBHTT began collaborative research with TRI to continue to evaluate the effectiveness of CRM. Under the leadership of Dr. Susanne Montgomery, Associate Dean for Research a robust CRM research agenda continues to expand to support global outreach and healthcare applications.

Pediatrician Mark Vonnegut has spent forty years treating children for coughs, fevers, ear infections, and sometimes more serious complaints. In that time, he has seen the American medical system change in ways he couldn't have imagined as a medical student—some of them good, others not so good. But what hasn't changed is his commitment to his young patients. There's Anna Maria, a little girl with an incurable case of bone cancer; Adeline, who has a syndrome so rare none of Dr. Vonnegut's colleagues have seen it before; Marlowe, whose life-threatening anemia is cured by his just-born baby brother; Jamal, who is autistic but has so much empathy that he donates his hair to a company that makes wigs for chemotherapy patients; and Malcolm, who is permanently paralyzed from the waist down and whose regular care includes treatment for bedsores, medication for urinary tract infections, and mountains of paperwork attesting that his wheelchair is still "medically necessary." Whether recounting the cases that have stuck with him or detailing the changes in medicine that he has seen over the past four decades—the privatization of healthcare, the barriers to mental health services, the skyrocketing costs of insurance and pharmaceutical drugs, and the decreasing quality of care—Dr. Vonnegut is a personable guide through what is often seen as an impersonal system. He doesn't pull any punches in his criticisms of the medical-industrial complex. His is the story of a life lived in medicine, with all the hope and heartbreak that entails.

Many in the global community want to help Ukrainians and may not know how. Vira Salzburn will discuss with host Elaine Miller-Karas how a group of international Community Resiliency Model teachers gathered with their Ukrainian colleagues at EdCamp to create webinars to support the wellbeing of Ukrainian children and adults. They will emphasize the importance of promoting peace and healing as a global community. They will share how over the last few days, they have witnessed the resilience and strength of Ukrainians. Vira believes "in the power of touching hearts and changing minds through shared stories of our human experience.

We are inundated with information about all that is wrong in the world. Sometimes it feels so overwhelming we throw our hands up, believing we can't possibly make a difference. But we can. There is a quote that goes, "everyone wants to save the world, but nobody wants to help mom with the dishes." There is something every single one of us can do, right now, right where we are to ease suffering. We can start by recognizing where we have power and choosing to use it honorably. And where we don't have power…we still have a choice to practice compassion and loving-kindness in response to our genuine and warranted despair. Barbara Gibson, Housing Programs Director with the Women's Resource Center in Decatur, GA, talks about the work of ending domestic violence, choosing to help however we can, rather than give in to hopelessness, and connecting with our innate resilience as one path to safer homes and communities.

Bernita R. Walker, the CEO and Co-Founder of Project Peacemakers, Inc. will share the wealth and wisdom of her experience as a Violence Prevention Practitioner, an Intimate Partner Violence Survivor, and a retired Deputy Sheriff for the County of Los Angeles. She will share what she has learned on what she calls "the truth on how to not become a victim of intimate partner violence. She will share the way to become a survivor and the reality of being what she calls a THRIVER of domestic violence/intimate partner violence. She was recently selected for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's African American Advisory Board and the District Attorney's inaugural Governance Board for south Los Angeles.

A team of multi-generational civil rights leaders, historians, educators, community leaders and clinicians gathered together to participate in a landmark initiative, the Kellogg Foundation's Racial Equity 2030 grant opportunity. Reena Evers-Everette assembled a team of progressive thinkers dedicated to empowering future generations with historic civil rights truth through a trauma-informed lens. In the process, new partnerships were formed and new meanings about race, equity, and healing were articulated. Kenneth Mason, Kevin McCleod, and Jordan Murphy will share their thoughts and insight into what it means to take steps in courage and confront the truth about race and trauma through a lens of healing and resilience.

Reggie will discuss how Black youth in America are confronted by trauma disproportionately affecting their communities. As we remember the past, engage the present and envision the future, the protective factors within youth, their families and communities can be strengthened through wellness skills. Despite inadequate access to mental health resources, black youth can draw on a rich legacy of faith-based cultural resiliency to help them navigate life's challenges.