“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in” -Desmond Tutu.
This quote captures the essence of why resilience matters. To Community Resilience Initiative, Resilience is not about “lifting yourself up by your bootstraps” or “bouncing back” from serious harm or injury. To us, Resilience is about self-discovery and self-awareness based on what the ACE Study, neurobiology, and epigenetics tell us about our development. It is about building a community that models and promotes mutual help and reciprocity universally, across all social domains, so that individual resilience is buoyed by collective, community resilience.
When we go upstream to understand the root causes and negative behaviors connected to trauma, we can then explore the opportunity to become aware of our own defenses. We are able to view what we learned to protect ourselves from the wounds left by our personal life experiences. We can move into inquiry and insight, to face the fear and beliefs that created barriers in our lives. We recognize the freedom in finding the love, trust, and safety that move us beyond our fear-based default patterns, to the help, hope, and healing that is reciprocated throughout the community.
It is discovering that a rising tide lifts all boats.
Explore how CRI saw the Focus on Resilience as the rising tide, and how we began to transform mindsets and hearts both individually and at a community-wide level through an understanding of contextual resilience, learning and support.
Words matter, and the word “resilience” as we use it here at CRI, is to welcome all to the table, to learn what it means to be resilient, and to help buffer the negative effects of our own exposure to “isms”. This is about community co-care, and how we created a community conversant in ACEs, brain architecture and most importantly, Resilience.
Teri Barila is a co-founder and current CEO of the Community Resilience Initiative. She holds a MS in Fisheries Management and a BS in Biology. She uses her science background to communicate with precision the science of ACEs and resilience. She is involved extensively in training, consulting, writing and researching in the area of trauma, resilience and community capacity building. Her work has attracted attention in a variety of venues, in part due to the focus Teri places on grassroots organizational development and the focus on the hope of Resilience.
Teri's showcase of Focus on Resilience is the fifth and last of CRI's 5-part series titled "Big Ideas in the Big Room."
The 2019 Beyond Paper Tigers Trauma-Informed Care Conference on June 26 & 27, 2019 will revolve around the theme, “Building Resilience Across the Life Span,” with Pre-Conference Trainings, Social/Networking event, and film screenings beginning on Tuesday June 25, 2019. The conference will be held at the Red Lion Hotel in Pasco, WA. Click here for session information, or to purchase tickets.
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