Trauma, Devastation, Recovery, Resiliency & Love: Look Both Ways
March 20, 2023
Hosted by Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW
[Download MP3] [itunes] [Bookmark Episode]
Guest Information
Episode Description
After a nearly fatal run-in with a car at age 11 that left her paralyzed from the neck down and unable to breathe on her own, Brooke Ellison went on to graduate from Harvard, write a memoir, earn master’s and doctoral degrees, and teach policy and ethics as a tenured professor—all the while navigating the world as a woman with ventilator-dependent quadriplegia. It would be easy to admire Brooke from afar—and keep our distance. Many of us are uncomfortable around people we consider “unfortunate.” We tend to simultaneously avoid and heroize the disabled, thankful that we don’t have to deal with the day-to-day “mechanics.” Like breathing. Or using the bathroom, or going on a date. Brooke will share her perspectives about disability. In her newest book, “Look Both Ways,” Brooke refuses to let us look away. She tears off the cloak of invisibility around disability not only to champion the rights of the blind or the mobility-impaired but to make a far more earth-shattering claim: what she’s experienced—having to relearn how to live—differs from what every human being endures only in a matter of degree. We are more alike than we are willing to see. Brooke’s transformation is “an amplified version of the kinds of adjustments we all need to make when we have undergone an unexpected and, often, undesired change in our lives.”
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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