🎙️ Episode 53 — “It Can Be Done”
Guest: Hery “Eddie” Acosta | Author, Speaker, Youth Advocate
Podcast: Resilient Voices & Beyond – A Healing-Centered Conversation
Foster Healing Fellowship Capstone Series

Episode Description:

In this gripping and hope-filled episode titled “It Can Be Done,” host Michael D. Davis-Thomas sits down with author, speaker, and youth advocate Hery “Eddie” Acosta, whose life story is both testimony and blueprint. This is more than an interview—it’s a healing-centered conversation that exposes the cost of trauma, honors the grind of growth, and celebrates the sacred act of becoming whole.

Eddie doesn’t sugarcoat survival. From being locked in a closet as a child to navigating cycles of generational pain, Eddie shares how he went from being misunderstood in classrooms to mentoring hundreds of teens every week through his groundbreaking work in Oregon. With 13+ years of hands-on experience in youth programs, Eddie is now the visionary behind Ohana Teen Night, where over 300 teens find refuge, belonging, and possibility every Friday night. 

Together, Michael and Eddie explore:

• Childhood trauma, behavioral stigma, and how schools often punish pain
• Mindset shifts from “why me?” to “watch me”
• The messy, nonlinear process of healing—and what real breakthrough looks like
• The burden of navigating trauma in Black and Brown communities
• What it means to become a diamond in the rough—and why pressure doesn’t always break us
• The spiritual, emotional, and cultural power of having a therapist of color
• Building youth programming that feels more like family than a facility

This episode is part of Michael’s Foster Healing Leadership Fellowship Capstone: Resilient Voices & Beyond: Healing-Centered Conversations and Storytelling, and it holds true to its mission—honoring lived experience as sacred knowledge and creating space for authentic, heart-to-heart reflection.

Whether you’re a young person currently in the struggle, a professional seeking to serve better, or someone carrying unspoken wounds of your own—Eddie’s story will remind you: It can be done. 

📚 Grab Eddie’s Book:
Eddie in the Rough – Becoming a Diamond

🌐 Connect with Eddie:
Website: speechesbyeddie.com
Instagram: @speeches_by_eddie | @neweddieacosta
Facebook: Eddie Acosta 🎧 Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube, and all major platforms.

📢 Support this Healing-Centered Work:
Venmo: @MDDTSpeaks | CashApp: $MDDTSpeaksInc | PayPal: MDDT1
Email: [email protected] for donations, sponsorships, or collaboration.

🎙️ Episode 52 — “She Believed She Could, So She Did”

Guest: Faith M. Keen | DHHS Intern • FSM Contractor • LEx Policy Advocate • TLE Member • BSW 
Candidate • Future MSW
Podcast: Resilient Voices & Beyond Podcast — Season 3
Host: Michael D. Davis-Thomas Episode Description:

In this powerful and soul-baring conversation, host Michael D. Davis-Thomas is joined by rising advocate, policy shaper, and lived experience leader Faith M. Keen, for an episode that feels more like a mirror than a mic. Titled “She Believed She Could, So She Did,” this dialogue is a tender, tenacious, and truth-filled journey through the harsh realities of childhood adversity—and the radical self-determination it takes to rise from it.

Faith doesn't just speak her truth—she lives it. From a chaotic upbringing marked by instability, addiction, and displacement, to finding belonging through advocacy, higher education, and a fierce belief in the power of lived experience, Faith’s journey is a living testimony of what resilience looks like when nurtured in community and courage. 

Together, Michael and Faith dive into:

• The emotional toll of caring for others when no one cared for you
• Reframing trauma as purpose without glamorizing the pain
• The role of policy advocacy in restoring dignity to foster youth
• The nuance of self-care in a space that demands our pain for progress
• Navigating healing while still showing up as “the strong one”
• The balance between being a voice for the voiceless and being heard yourself

As she shares deeply personal stories—from driving her mother while under the influence to being adopted by extended family who didn’t always understand her worth—Faith unpacks the layers of survival and silence, of grief and grit, that so many foster youth carry but rarely have safe space to process. She and Michael explore how systems often force youth to perform wellness while still bleeding, and how real change must include not just policies—but peace.

Faith’s work with Fostering Success Michigan, Michigan’s Team with Lived Expertise (TLE), and her continued advocacy through public speaking and youth engagement is helping reshape how the state and nation see system-impacted youth—not as broken, but as brilliant. Her upcoming pursuit of an MSW at the University of Michigan is yet another step in becoming the change she needed as a child. 

This episode isn’t about triumphalism. It’s about truth. It’s about community. And it’s about choosing healing—even when no one taught you how. 

📣 Because believing in yourself isn’t cliché when you’ve survived systems designed to make you forget how. 

🔗 Connect with Faith M. Keen
📸 Instagram: @keen.faith.210
📘 Facebook / 🔗 LinkedIn: Faith Keen

🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube, and all major streaming platforms. 

📢 Support the Podcast
Venmo: @MDDTSpeaks | CashApp: $MDDTSpeaksInc | PayPal: MDDT1
Email: [email protected] for sponsorships, collaborations, and donor inquiries.

🎙️ Episode 51 — “Still Waters Run Deep”

Guest: Sylvia Monica Parrott | National Foster Care Advocate, Public Speaker, Lived Experience Leader

Podcast: Resilient Voices & Beyond Podcast — Season 3

Episode Description:

Still waters don’t mean still souls. In this soul-stirring episode of Resilient Voices & Beyond, host Michael D. Davis-Thomas sits down with the quiet force that is Sylvia Monica Parrott—a woman whose strength is not in how loudly she speaks, but in how deeply she feels, how faithfully she leads, and how consistently she shows up for a system she survived. "Still Waters Run Deep" isn’t just the title of this conversation—it’s a prophetic description of the life Sylvia has lived and the legacy she’s building.

From entering Rhode Island’s foster care system at the age of five to navigating abusive placements, isolation, and reentry at 17, Sylvia’s story is anything but surface-level. She shares with unwavering clarity the silent storms of trauma, abandonment, sexual violence, and mental health struggles—alongside the quiet rebellions of mentorship, faith, advocacy, and healing that helped her rise. This episode is not a tale of pity or performative triumph; it is a sacred reckoning with the reality that not every survivor roars—but every survivor matters.

Together, Michael and Sylvia explore:

• The emotional toll of being system-impacted from early childhood
• The invisibility of introverted advocates in noisy advocacy spaces
• The crisis of mental health in group homes and transitional housing
• The trauma of institutionalization and the weight of being “too strong for too long”
• The spiritual grounding and self-forgiveness it takes to lead from a wounded place
• How Sylvia is quietly, persistently, disrupting the status quo without needing to shout

From testifying before legislators to co-authoring op-eds, from guiding youth at Foster Forward’s Drop-In Center to speaking on national stages, Sylvia is redefining what leadership looks like for foster alumni. Her work is not driven by ego—but by empathy. Not polished performance—but prophetic presence.

Michael, moved by Sylvia’s radical vulnerability, speaks candidly about the podcast’s journey, the cost of advocacy, and the urgent need for community-funded sustainability. As they close the episode, Sylvia offers words of truth to anyone feeling broken, burned out, or silenced in their struggle: “Don’t doubt yourself. You have so much to offer the world.”

This episode is a mirror for those who’ve learned to lead while still healing—and a mandate to make space for the still waters among us.

🕊️ Listen deeply. Share widely. Honor the stillness that runs deep.

🔗 Connect with Sylvia Monica Parrott
Instagram: @sylviamonica_
LinkedIn: Sylvia M. Parrott

🎧 Available now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube, and all major platforms.

📣 Support the Podcast
Your donations help keep the mic on for truth-tellers like Sylvia.
Venmo: @MDDTSpeaks | CashApp: $MDDTSpeaksInc | PayPal: MDDT1
Email: [email protected] for sponsorship and partnership inquiries.

🎙️ Episode 50 — “Your Story Is the Message. Your Story Is Your Legacy”

Featuring: Tamara L. Dillard | Author, Clinical Social Worker, Therapist, Foster Care Advocate, Foster Alumni

Podcast: Resilient Voices & Beyond Podcast — Season 3 
Host: Michael D. Davis-Thomas

In this milestone 50th episode and the Season 3 of the Resilient Voices & Beyond Podcast, host Michael D. Davis-Thomas sits down once more with powerhouse advocate and returning guest, Tamara L. Dillard, to discuss her emotionally searing and transformative debut memoir, “Letters to the Village.” This isn’t just a conversation—it’s a reckoning.

With honesty that cuts and compassion that heals, Tamara invites us into the sacred corridors of her lived experience in Kentucky’s foster care system—where pain and policy intersect, where community was both absent and found, and where healing arrived not as a gift but as a decision. Her memoir, structured as a series of unfiltered letters to the helpers, hurters, and bystanders in her life, challenges us to consider: What kind of villager have you been? What kind will you choose to become?

Together, Tamara and Michael explore what it means to write from wounds, not for pity but for purpose. They unpack the emotional labor of storytelling while managing PTSD, and they speak to the burden—and blessing—of advocacy as foster care survivors. Michael reflects on the bystander effect within systems and communities, while Tamara calls for intentional, systemic, and personal accountability. It’s a bold, layered conversation about trauma, memory, forgiveness, authorship, and the audacity of telling your truth when silence would be easier.

Tamara’s voice is prophetic, measured, and fierce. Her writing process wasn’t linear—it was sacred warfare. She shares how “Letters to the Village” nearly broke her but ultimately rebuilt her—chapter by chapter, truth by truth.

In closing, Michael reflects on the growth of Resilient Voices & Beyond through its third season, emphasizing the continued need for listener support, community sponsorship, and sustainability as he carries this labor of love forward. This Episode isn’t the  ending—it’s an altar call for justice, truth-telling, and restorative storytelling.

Because your story is the message. And your story—yes, yours—is your legacy.
📚 Read “Letters to the Village” — Available now.
📢 Support this podcast through donations, sharing, and ongoing engagement.

Ways to Support

• Venmo: @MDDTSpeaks
• Cash App: $MDDTSpeaks
• PayPal: MDDT
• Book: Resilient Faith (available on Amazon)
• Podcast: Resilient Voices & Beyond (available on all platforms)

🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube, and all major streaming platforms.

🔗 Connect with Tamara Dillard:
📘 Facebook: Tamara LeeAnn Dillard
📸 Instagram: @missdillardsroom
🎵 TikTok: @missdillardsroom
💼 LinkedIn: Tamara (Vest) Dillard

🎙️ Episode 49 – Season 3
Title: "Broken Systems, Funded Silence: Deconstructing the Nonprofit-Gov Pipeline” (Part 2)
Guests: Bobbi Taylor (Founder & CEO, Proximate Solution) & Tamara Dillard, MSW, CSW (Clinical Social Worker, Advocate, Foster Care Alumni)
Host: Michael D. Davis-Thomas | Founder & CEO, MDDTSpeaks

💥 Episode Description: 

In Part 2 of our ground-shifting series "Broken Systems, Funded Silence," we continue the courageous conversation that most platforms avoid—dissecting the dangerous comfort between nonprofits and government systems. This episode isn’t just a discussion. It’s an exposé. 

Host and systems reformer Michael D. Davis-Thomas sits down with two national powerhouses: Bobbi Taylor, a cross-sector systems leader and Founder/CEO of Proximate Solution, and Tamara Dillard, a licensed clinical social worker, policy influencer, and fierce advocate. Together, they deconstruct the nonprofit-industrial complex—unpacking how funding stipulations, performance-based contracts, and “collaborative” partnerships often dilute community-centered missions into digestible, data-driven deliverables for the very systems they’re supposed to challenge. 

From the trauma of tokenization to the manipulation of “lived experience,” this episode brings the raw truth: nonprofits cannot claim proximity to community while dancing to the tune of governmental preservation. 

We ask hard questions:

• What happens when organizations built to fight systems start protecting them instead?
• Can you really center community if you're still begging for permission to speak?
• What does ethical inclusion look like when your invitation comes with a muzzle?

Michael, Bobbi, and Tamara also reflect on deeply personal stakes—sharing their own sacrifices, burnout, and battles with survival in a world that capitalizes on their pain but rarely funds their power. They address the emotional tax of being the bridge, the weight of being “brought in but not brought under,” and the exhausting cycle of being visible yet voiceless.

Tamara reminds us: being showcased is not the same as being centered. Bobbi adds: transparency without accountability is just theater. And Michael? He gives voice to the silent screams of so many: we are tired of being sold as data and discarded as people. This episode is both an indictment and an invitation—to reimagine, rebuild, and reclaim nonprofit work as sacred, not systemic. 

🔊 Listen in as we honor truth, challenge power, and amplify the unapologetic voices of those who have not only survived the system—but are actively rewriting it. 

🎧 Now streaming everywhere podcasts are available.
🧾 Support the podcast, share this episode, and let the world hear what funded silence can no longer bury.

📚 Featured Book: Letters to the Village by Tamara Dillard – Available now on Amazon. 📌 Take Action:

• Support this work through donations, reviews, and reposts.
• Book these guests for your next training, panel, or consulting engagement.
• Demand better from the nonprofits in your region—follow the funding, follow the harm.

Season 3, Episode 48
🎙️ Resilient Voices & Beyond Podcast
Title: “Broken Systems, Funded Silence: Deconstructing the Nonprofit-Gov Pipeline” – Part 1

In this explosive Part 1 of a two-part special, Resilient Voices & Beyond dives into one of the most underexamined yet critical realities in system reform: the nonprofit-to-government pipeline. Host Michael D. Davis-Thomas, nationally recognized advocate and Founder of MDDTSpeaks, sits down with two powerhouse changemakers—Bobbi Taylor, Founder & CEO of Proximate Solution, and Tamara Dillard, MSW, CSW, clinical therapist, policy influencer, and child welfare advocate—for an unfiltered, intellectually rigorous, and emotionally grounded conversation about how broken systems are not only funded but protected by silence.

We confront the sacred cows.
We name what’s often hushed.
We question whether systems are “broken”—or simply functioning as they were always designed to.

These leaders don’t speak from theory. They speak from trenches. From lived experience as alumni of foster care and juvenile justice. From boardrooms where reform is discussed but rarely lived. From advocacy tables where funding decisions eclipse impact. This is a conversation about ethics, power, complicity, and survival in professional spaces that demand proximity—but punish truth-telling.

Together, we dissect how nonprofits, while often well-intentioned, can become complicit in systemic harm by prioritizing contracts over community, grants over grassroots, and optics over outcomes. We explore how lived experience is sometimes tokenized rather than empowered—and what it looks like to reclaim that narrative.

Featured Guests:

Bobbi Taylor – Founder & CEO, Proximate Solution
National systems-change strategist | Child welfare + juvenile justice advocate | Lived experience leader | Thriving Families Safer Children Executive Committee | Researcher, author, policy contributor

Tamara Dillard, MSW, CSW – Clinical Therapist & Child Welfare Advocate
Foster care alumni | Mental health professional | State & national policy influencer | Public speaker | Systems disruptor | University of Kentucky graduate

Key Themes Explored:

• GROUNDING TRUTH: What it means to live through systems before analyzing them
• TOKENIZATION VS. TRANSFORMATION: The risk of nonprofits centering funding over lived wisdom
• FUNDED SILENCE: The invisible cost of staying quiet in systems built on compliance
• VALUES VS. PAYCHECK: Holding onto truth in institutions that reward forgetting
• BAND-AID POLICIES: When intention isn’t enough, and how surface-level reforms deepen wounds
• THE COST OF TELLING THE TRUTH: Retaliation, blackballing, and standing in integrity despite it all
• HISTORICAL ROOTS: The evolution of foster care as a profit-generating system, from orphan trains to federal incentives

This episode is for you if:

• You’ve worked in or alongside nonprofits and wondered why real change feels so far away
• You’ve ever questioned whether advocacy is being bought and sold
• You’ve been silenced, sidelined, or tokenized—and want language for what happened
• You believe truth-tellers deserve platforms, not punishment

🎧 Listen in as truth meets strategy, advocacy meets accountability, and silence is shattered—one story, one truth, one system at a time.

Produced by: MDDTSpeaks Media
This podcast is recorded, edited, and released independently to protect the integrity of truth-tellers and lived experts. Support our work through reviews, donations, and by sharing these stories that systems too often suppress.

Because silence is comfort for systems—but truth is freedom for people.

Season 3, Episode 47

Title: “Your direction is more important than your speed.”

Subtitle: From Surviving to Serving: Reclaiming Purpose Through Pain 

In this deeply moving episode of the Resilient Voices & Beyond Podcast, host Michael D. Davis-Thomas (MDDTSpeaks) sits down with Andrea Atkins—a single mother of four, foster care alumni, and child welfare specialist—for an unfiltered, soul-stirring conversation about survival, motherhood, healing, and the audacity to rewrite your own narrative. 

With raw vulnerability and unwavering strength, Andrea shares her journey through the foster care system—beginning with removal at age four, adoption at ten, and ultimately a disrupted adoption that led her to find family in unexpected places. But this isn’t just a story about trauma. It’s a testimony of intentional healing, of learning to embrace authenticity after years of masking pain, and of turning personal wounds into a mission of service. 

Now a child welfare professional, Andrea doesn’t just occupy space in the system—she’s reshaping it. Fueled by lived experience and maternal wisdom, she advocates for youth who feel voiceless and unseen, helping to create trauma-informed spaces rooted in dignity, empathy, and care. This episode unpacks the messy, miraculous in-between: the tension of healing while serving, the weight of single motherhood, and the power in moving forward—not fast, but faithfully. 

Key Themes Covered:

• Growing up in and aging out of the foster care system
• Navigating disrupted adoption, identity loss, and cultural disconnection
• Breaking cycles and reclaiming voice through motherhood
• The unspoken pressures of “beating the statistics”
• From performance to purpose: why healing is the real work
• Systemic gaps in child welfare and the role of lived experience experts
• Self-forgiveness, therapy, and the slow walk toward wholeness
• The power of proximity in advocacy and why small actions matter

Whether you’re a parent, professional, survivor, or simply someone navigating life’s unpredictable terrain—this episode will meet you right where you are. Andrea’s story is proof that your pain is not pointless, your pace is not your identity, and your past doesn’t disqualify your purpose.

Guest: Andrea Atkins

• Foster Care Alumni | Child Welfare Specialist | Advocate | Boy Mom of 4

Season 3, Episode 46

Title: “Life is not what happens to you, but how you respond to it.”

Subtitle: Stepping Into the Call: From Surviving to Surrendering

In this transformative episode of the Resilient Voices & Beyond Podcast, host Michael D. Davis-Thomas (MDDTSpeaks) reconnects with long-time friend and fellow advocate Ashley Watkins—and what unfolds is nothing short of sacred. Together, they journey through Ashley’s powerful testimony of resilience, healing, and divine surrender.

Ashley Watkins, a spoken word poet, therapist, foster care advocate, and founder of Her Untold Stories Heard, opens up about her evolution—from surviving childhood trauma, navigating the foster care system, and enduring abuse, to stepping boldly into the woman God called her to be. In this vulnerable yet victorious dialogue, Ashley shares how she moved from living in the shadows of her pain to reclaiming her voice, redefining her worth, and helping other women heal through truth and transparency. 

Key Conversation Highlights:

• The journey from surviving abuse and abandonment to discovering divine identity
• Choosing surrender over striving, and trusting God in the midst of uncertainty
• Why healing isn’t linear—and how to stay the course when the process hurts
• The importance of self-trust, faith-led obedience, and emotional accountability
• Ashley’s founding of HUSH (Her Untold Stories Heard) and her mission to help women evolve through their truth
• The spiritual tension of being called but not yet prepared—and what it means to wait well
• The reality of mental health battles, faith fatigue, and learning how to pray when words run out

Throughout the episode, Michael and Ashley exchange reflections on surrendering ambition for purpose, embracing God’s timing, and answering the call to be light—even when life has tried to extinguish that light. Their conversation is raw, rich, and soul-deep—reminding us that our response to adversity defines our resilience.

If you’re in a season of questioning, healing, or trying to find your footing after brokenness, this episode is your invitation to stop surviving and start surrendering.

Guest: Ashley Watkins

• Spoken Word Poet | Therapist | Foster Care Advocate
• Founder & CEO of Her Untold Stories Heard (HUSH) 

Connect with Ashley:

• • @soulevessel__
  • @heruntoldstoriesheard_
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook

Season 3, Episode 45

Title: “Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.” – Colossians 3:23 (NLT)

In this deeply moving episode of Resilient Voices & Beyond Podcast, host Michael D. Davis-Thomas is joined by author, advocate, mother, and lived experience leader Kayann Foster—a woman whose life and work exemplify faith, resilience, and radical healing.

From surviving childhood trauma, homelessness, domestic abuse, and aging out of foster care, to becoming a Lived Experience Consultant for the Department of Children and Families in New Jersey, Kayann’s journey is one of extraordinary transformation. She shares her story with humility and honesty, reflecting on the path that led her from survival mode to sustainable healing—both for herself and for the communities she now serves.

In this episode, Kayann opens up about:

• Healing from childhood trauma and domestic abuse while navigating motherhood
• The power of faith, transparency, and self-compassion in breaking generational cycles
• Why embracing her scars instead of hiding them has become a cornerstone of her healing
• Her work as a PACEs (Positive and Adverse Childhood Experiences) trainer, creating trauma-informed spaces across New Jersey
• Balancing advocacy and motherhood while raising five beautiful children
• Publishing her book “Water in the Wilderness”—a reluctant but powerful act of obedience and courage

Kayann also reflects on the emotional weight of being a mother determined to parent differently—choosing connection, honesty, and grace over reaction and shame. She and Michael explore the importance of naming our survival-mode behaviors, reframing pain as purpose, and stepping out of isolation into healing-centered community.

If you’ve ever struggled with trauma, faith, parenting after pain, or finding your voice through adversity—this episode will meet you exactly where you are. Kayann’s story is a beacon for anyone ready to stop hiding their story and start living healed.

Key Themes:

• Resilience through motherhood
• The intersection of faith and healing
• Self-care beyond survival mode
• Systemic advocacy rooted in lived experience
• Owning your truth and sharing it with others

Order Kayann’s Book:
Water in the Wilderness – [Available on Amazon] Follow Kayann Foster:

• LinkedIn: Kayann Foster
• Email: [[email protected]]

Episode Title: "Your Story Is Your Superpower—Own It, Share It, and Let It Open Doors for You."

Season 3, Episode 44

In this transformative episode of Resilient Voices & Beyond Podcast, host Michael D. Davis-Thomas sits down with powerhouse speaker, author, trauma expert, and former foster youth Dr. Danisha Keating for a deeply authentic conversation about healing, identity, and turning pain into purpose.

From living in her car while navigating college, to raising her siblings while building a life rooted in impact, Dr. Keating’s story is one of resilience, grit, and radical self-determination. She shares how her experiences in the foster care system and with generational trauma shaped her—but didn’t define her. Instead, she reclaimed her narrative and has since dedicated her life to empowering others to do the same through storytelling, education, and systemic advocacy.

As the author of Faith Through the Desert, From Foster to PhD: Letters from a Suitcase, and Taking My Voice Back: Healing What Broke Me, Dr. Keating is a leading voice in the foster care reform space and a nationally recognized coach for speakers and authors. Her mission is clear: to help others own their voice, craft their message, and step into spaces they were once told they didn’t belong.

In this episode, Michael and Dr. Keating explore:

• Navigating homelessness and foster care while pursuing higher education
• The emotional toll of systemic disconnection and budget cuts
• How to recognize and break generational trauma and learned helplessness
• The power of community and finding just one person who believes in you
• Turning your story into your platform: authentic storytelling as advocacy
• The importance of self-care, celebration of small wins, and setting boundaries

This conversation is a reminder that your story is not a liability—it’s leverage. For every listener who's struggled with feeling unseen, unheard, or unworthy, this episode is your invitation to reclaim your voice, rewrite your narrative, and realize your worth. Connect with Dr. Danisha Keating:

• Website: www.danishakeating.com
• Instagram: @drdanishakeating
• Facebook: Dr. Danisha Keating
• LinkedIn: Danisha Keating, PhD
• YouTube: The Dr. Danisha Keating Show
• TikTok: @drdanishakeating

Explore her books on Amazon:

• Faith Through the Desert
• From Foster to PhD: Letters from a Suitcase
• Taking My Voice Back: Healing What Broke Me