Opioid Epidemic: A Mother’s Journey from Grief to Global Purpose 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.

N. Ireland Resiliency: The Prison Ombudsman and Victims Support 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.

Law Enforcement Interactions and the Community Resiliency Model 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 Stevens is a journalist and digital innovator, focusing on science, health and technology. She launched ACEsTooHigh.com and its accompanying community of practice, ACEsConnection.com. They focus on the research and consequences of childhood adversity, and how trauma-informed and resilience practices are being implemented in schools, hospitals, homeless shelters, social services, public health clinics, businesses, mental health clinics, courts, prisons, etc. Jane will share her perspectives on what she has learned as one of the leading advocates of trauma and resiliency-informed practices.

Jen Housholder is an Air Force civilian engineer, Army Reserve pilot, musician, and the founder and CEO of the Science of Active Resilience, LLC.  She graduated from Louisiana State University with a B.S. in Mathematics and later received her Master’s in Military Operational Art and Science from the Air University.  Jen began her career in the Air Force, and later transitioned to the Army National Guard/Reserve in order to fly the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, fulfilling a childhood dream.  As a survivor of childhood sexual trauma with two combat deployments, Jen has a passion to share the lifesaving knowledge and skills to others she has obtained through physiologically based trauma treatment along with resilience training certifications obtained through the Army, Air Force, and Trauma Resource Institute. She is especially close in heart to those struggling with suicidal idealization and is living proof that the darkness does not have to win. 

Welcome to the launch of the new radio show on VoiceAmerica, Resiliency Within, Building Resiliency during Unprecedented Times. Elaine will interview Dr. Robinson about building resiliency worldwide through his writing, his advocacy and his sponsorship of Resilience 2020, an international conference about cultivating resilience.