The Atlanta Birth Center’s Nurse-Midwives, Molly Jobe and Hannah Walters, and Childbirth Educator, Tracey Goddard-Johnson, will present its innovative Wellness Within Project. The Atlanta Birth Center is a Georgia-based non-profit organization that operates Atlanta’s only freestanding, nationally accredited birth center, providing an optimal birth experience as anticipated by a childbearing woman and her family. They offer a home-like environment with a program of family-centered care before, during, and after pregnancy, labor, and birth. They adhere to eligibility guidelines set forth nationally by the Commission for the Accreditation of Birth Centers and the rules and regulations of the state of Georgia. Our guests will describe the Atlanta Birth Center and the Wellness Within project, which is a community-based research project taking place at the Center. The project aims to equip birth givers with the wellness skills taught in the Community Resiliency Model and to understand better how these skills can mitigate the impact of chronic stress and trauma during the perinatal period. The Atlanta Birth Center has Certified Community Resiliency Model Teachers who are implementing the project.

Clarence Nero will share his wisdom from his lived experience and his contributions to youth with innovative writing projects. He is an Associate Professor at Baton Rouge Community College, author, and screenwriter whose accomplishments include his critically acclaimed novel, Cheekie: A Child Out of Desire, nominated for ’Best Books for Young Adults’ by the American Library Association and selected as ’One of the Best First Novels’ by Library Journal which he adapted into a screenplay and is currently in pre-production. He served as a literary consultant to help his students self-publish a book called “Voices from the Bayou” that he adapted to the stage with the LSU Theater Department, and he then wrote the screenplay that led to the making of the short film “Voices.” He is the writer, producer and director of the stage play, “Trauma on this Land.” In 2011, after his brother was murdered in New Orleans, he launched the Bayou Soul Youth Literary Conference to empower and inspire Louisiana high school students

Survivors of childhood family trauma typically go through many stages in their path to healing. Kaytee highlights 6 of them: pre-awareness, uncovering, digging in, healing, understanding, and nurturing. Using elements from her clinical work, as well as personal experience, she provides support and tips for survivors navigating the healing journey. Kaytee will discuss the stages and provide insights into healing childhood family trauma. Most of us are only starting to become aware of how our foundational years contribute to who we are today. Our childhood environment shapes the foundation for our sense of self, how we feel about the world, and how we relate to others. If we experienced trauma or dysfunction along the way, it likely disrupted the pathways to these fundamental structures. Understanding our trauma is not about blame but about understanding, learning, and growing. In most cases, our caregivers did the best they could with the tools they had, often while dealing with external or internal stressors as well. With the world’s increasing understanding of trauma, this paves the way for understanding and growth.

Resiliency Within celebrates the legacy of Martin Luther King. This year, on Martin Luther King's Day, Dr. Brenda Ingram, who has made significant contributions to our collective understanding of Resilience, Recovery and Resistance will be my guest. She has co-authored a chapter in the book titled Black Women and Resilience: Power, Perseverance, and Public Health. The chapter she contributed Resilience, Recovery, and Resistance: Black Women Overcoming Intersectional Complex Trauma will be the focal point of discussion. When examining the pervasive issue of racism and its profound collective trauma experienced by people of color, it becomes evident that the concept of resilience may require a more nuanced definition and a broader perspective. Within communities of color, resilience can sometimes be perceived negatively when it exclusively emphasizes the psychological strength of individuals, inadvertently perpetuating the existing racism status quo. To truly address the healing process from racial trauma for communities of color, resilience must encompass an element of active resistance.

Dr. Ravii Chandra will share his wisdom and personal reflections about how we can amplify compassion to contain cruelty and abuse. Dr. Chandra's inspired words reflect what is important for all of us to remember at this time in our history. He said, The voices of all marginalized individuals and communities are profoundly important for the future because our survival and growth as a nation and world depend on empathy and compassion for vulnerability. When we see each other, when we see our own vulnerability and create connections out of the disconnections of our past, we can transform our predicament into possibility. Within this discussion, he will also share his views on models of power, from social psychology and cultural observation, and highlight what Dacher Keltner calls “enduring power,” which he has modified with the need for accountability and reparation.

This is an encore episode. As we start 2024, it is a time of reflection. It is important to remember, what else is true? This lively discussion explores Dr. Church's work and how we are all designed for creativity, resilience, and joy. Award-winning author and thought leader Dawson Church, Ph.D., blends cutting-edge neuroscience with intense firsthand experience to show you how to rewire your brain for happiness. Dr. Dawson will talk about his book, Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy

In Bliss Brain, famed researcher Dawson Church digs deep into leading-edge science and finds stunning evidence of rapid and radical brain change. When we cultivate these pleasurable states over time, they become traits. We don't just feel more blissful as a temporary state; the changes are literally hard-wired into our brains, becoming stable and enduring personality traits.

The conclusions of Church's research show that neural remodeling goes much farther than scientists have previously understood, with stress circuits shriveling over time. Simultaneously, The Enlightenment Circuit—associated with happiness, compassion, productivity, creativity, and resilience—expands.

During deep meditation, Church shows how the 7 neurochemicals of ecstasy are released in our brains. These include anandamide, a neurotransmitter that's been named the bliss molecule because it mimics the effects of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. It boosts serotonin and dopamine; the first is an analog of psilocybin, the second of cocaine. He shows how cultivating these elevated emotional states literally produces a self-induced high.

This is an encore episode of Resiliency Within. The great spiritual leaders, Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama wrote about their commitment to compassion and joy and expressed their ideas in their book, The Book of Joy. Desmond Tutu called himself the “prisoner of hope” and his message of hope and joy will live on. Many people in our world have expressed being tired and feeling a sense of hopelessness about the world condition. Desmond Tutu faced great hardship in his life, yet he was hopeful about the world condition, and he would say, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” Reena Patel, LCSW discusses with Elaine Miller-Karas, the meaning of joy and how we can be lifted from suffering and hopelessness to embrace the spring of joy within each one of us. They discuss the eight pillars of joy: perspective, acceptance, humor, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and generosity. Listeners will be asked to explore how they can nurture their joy to live life with greater meaning and restore hope.

What causes schizophrenia? Is it a genetic glitch or are environmental factors at play? A combination of the two? Whatever the reason, what medication and course of action will give the patient the best chance at a normal life? Of all the mental illnesses, schizophrenia eludes us the most. Despite the strides scientists have made in neurological research and doctors have made in psychiatric treatment, schizophrenia remains misunderstood, almost complacently mythologized. Without a reason for the illness, patients feel even more alienated than they already do, families are left hopeless, and doctors struggle to provide effective care. After an almost forty-year medical career dedicated to caring for those affected by schizophrenia, Dr. Steven Lesk became determined to find the answer to its existence. In Footprints of Schizophrenia, he presents a groundbreaking theory that weaves evolutionary evidence with neurological findings. His conclusions promise to forever change the lives of the mentally ill by generating much-needed cultural dialogue about this stigmatized illness, and ultimately by provoking new psychiatric and pharmacological research. Dr. Lesk’s “primitive organization theory” has its basis in human evolution—from Neanderthals to Homo sapiens—and the specific changes to our brains after the emergence of language. We’ve existed in human-like form for six million years, but we’ve only had language for 50,000; as Dr. Lesk explains, within the vast span of evolutionary time that’s hardly any time at all. He posits that the twenty million people in the world who have schizophrenia don’t suppress the hormone dopamine, which is affected by language, in the way evolution has trained us, so their brains don’t process language well, leaving them to function as if they’re in a hallucinatory, delusional dream state. In addition to focusing treatment efforts for schizophrenia, Dr. Lesk’s theory could affect what we can do to help people with other dopamine-related illnesses like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s chorea, Tourette’s, ADD, and more. Calling on such diverse fields as anthropology, language theory, neurochemistry, evolution, and even the second law of thermodynamics, Footprints of Schizophrenia offers hope to those with schizophrenia whose dopamine doesn’t flow in our new, adaptive way. It will usher in a new era of psychiatric understanding—one that the field and the public desperately need.

This show is a story of hope, resilience, and love. Resilience is sometimes the outcome of some of the darkest moments in one’s life. My guests, a mother, Sue Borrego and her daughter, Kelsey Bunker Robertson, had very different experiences following Sue’s coming out when Kelsey was 9. Sue was occupied by the fear of losing her children and job and moving through the generational shame of her sexuality. Kelsey became a fierce advocate, proud of her parents and much less touched by the shame her mom felt.

Sue gave birth to her children, Kelsey and Bryce in the 1980s. When they were toddlers, it became clear to Sue that she was a Lesbian. Nothing about her life and work had space for her truth. She was married to a man and working successfully at a Christian University. She chose to live closeted until she could no longer live so incongruously.

Sue needed to find a different job and initiate divorce proceedings. Initially, Sue was not public about her sexual orientation. Ironically, Kelsey’s dad came out several months later. Together they lived as a “non-traditional” family in a very traditional town. Sue, consumed by the worldview of sexual orientation she grew up with, was terrified of costing her kids a “normal” life and losing the world she had carefully built.As an “emancipated minor” she had carefully constructed a world that she thought would protect her future. Kelsey continued to develop her sense of justice and love. She was a guest on panels, an advocate at school and an educator in her life.

Today Kelsey is a mom of 6 and Bryce a father of three. Both of their parents are married to their partners and have lives filled with joy and love. There are many LGBTQ+ parents who wonder about the impact of their lives on their families and LGBTQ+ young adults who wonder about their futures. The culture wars, with vitriolic rhetoric and attacks on LGBTQ+ individuals, are taking their toll. They will share their journey of love, hope and resilience.

In Crusade to Heal America, Judy Pearson shares the never-before-told story of Mary Lasker, a woman who was savvy, steely, and deliberate, with the goal of eliminating human suffering. While scientists looked at disease as a problem to be solved, Lasker saw it as a beast to be slain. Her first step was creating, with her husband Albert, the Lasker Foundation, which bestows annual awards for medical research. Next, they reimagined—and renamed—the American Cancer Society, greatly increasing the donations. But when Lasker learned that 40% of WWII volunteers had been rejected for health reasons, she asked the question no one else had: Why wasn’t the federal government funding medical research? Proclaiming herself a “catalytic agent,” she led a ceaseless, behind-the-scenes crusade to improve the health of Americans. Lasker’s crusade transformed the National Institute of Health from a single, poorly funded entity to the greatest medical research facility on the planet. And while she counted legislators, medical experts, celebrities, and presidents as allies, she was not without naysayers and enemies who wanted to see her fail. When her beloved Albert died of cancer, Lasker doubled down on her crusade, insisting that a cure for the disease was within reach with more research money. Her crusade ultimately resulted in an extraordinary $1.3 billion for cancer research ($9.6 billion today), turning the nearly always fatal disease into one that was survivable.