Domestic Violence: Finding the Strength to Leave
August 15, 2022
Hosted by Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW
[Download MP3] [itunes] [Bookmark Episode]
Guest Information
Episode Description
These are the facts: 1 in 4 women globally experience domestic violence. On average, it takes 7 times for most survivors to successfully leave an abusive relationship. But behind the statistics are human beings. One Saturday morning, Beverly Gooden was woken up by her husband shoving her off their bed for no discernible reason. Despite her quick thinking and even quicker footsteps, he caught her, his sudden anger inexplicable. No words were exchanged. He began to strangle her as he had done many times before. With unflinching vulnerability, Gooden details what she had to do to walk away and how others can use her experiences to escape their own abuse. She provides practical advice on things like finances, possessions, and housing—from skimming the grocery money to squirreling away personal belongings, to navigating a domestic violence shelter. As importantly, she offers strategies for overcoming the social and emotional barriers survivors often face, such as overcritical social circles and, most powerfully, love. Uniquely compassionate when it comes to the heartbreak of still loving one’s abuser, Gooden shares how she transformed and extended this love outward, using her story to encourage others to choose themselves. The voice and fire behind #WhyIStayed, she’s exceptionally positioned to explore the many reasons victims stay in abusive relationships, and how they can muster the resources and motivation to leave.
Resiliency Within
Monday at 1 PM Pacific Time on VoiceAmerica Health and Wellness Channel
Elaine Miller-Karas will amplify the message of hope, healing and resiliency she has learned from our world community as she has traversed the globe after human made and natural disasters. Hope often springs forth in response to suffering and trauma. Our beliefs and our wellbeing are being challenged during these unprecedented times.
The program Resiliency Within is about cultivating individual and community resiliency. Resiliency is the capacity to lean into our strengths with compassion during the most challenging of times and to remember "what else is true?" about our lived experience.
Her guests are inspiring global leaders actively promoting healing and resiliency from a variety of backgrounds. The goal is to spread wellbeing and give individual and community examples to inspire how wellness skills, including ones based upon neuroscience and the biology of the human nervous system, can be integrated into one's life, family and community during challenging times.
Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW
Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW, has been called an "ambassador of hope" and a "resilience guru." She is an author, advocate, a social worker, a trauma therapist, a co-founder of an international organization, the Trauma Resource Institute and key developer of the Community and Trauma Resiliency Models.
She is the author of “Building Resiliency to Trauma, the Trauma and Community Resiliency Models(r)” (2015). She is committed to bringing accessible and affordable interventions based on neuroscience and the biology of the human nervous system to our world's community. Her models have been introduced to over 102 countries.
Elaine is a recognized international speaker and has presented at the Skoll World Forum at Oxford University and the United Nations. Her book was selected by the United Nations curated on-line library as one of the innovations that can help meet its Sustainable Development Goals.
Elaine feels passionately about the impact of climate change on our world community. She is a founding member of the International Transformational Resilience Coalition, an organization focused on the impact of climate change on mental health. She is dedicated to the world's children and she has worked with collaborators to develop interventions for children, parents and teachers to help reduce the impact of trauma. Consequently, she is a Senior Consultant to Emory University’s SEE Learning program, inspired and launched by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 2019.
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