This has been an incredible year for the Watauga Community both in the challenges faced as well as the moments of joy. The Watauga Compassionate Community Initiative has been hard at work this year with Wednesday Conversations, Monthly meetings, Conference Planning, and Adversity/ACEs trainings. This past fall we have begun to spotlight our members and the phenomenal work they do. Below are some quotes from our interviews this year.
We sat down with:
- Mary McKinney, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist located in Boone, NC
- Jennifer Warren, the Executive Director of Western Youth Network located in Boone, NC
- Candis Walker, Watauga County Schools Prevention Counselor
- Denise Presnell, a school social worker within the Watauga County School system
Some topics we focused on were trauma, hope, resilience, and resources.
Trauma & ACEs
“No matter who you are, what setting, what kind of business, or neighborhood or whatever it is, people, unfortunately, do have these trauma histories and do continue to experience things.” - Mary McKinney
“It's important to know just how prominent [trauma] is. I think that was evident in the first ACEs study in the early 90s and it's still true today. There is no “us and them” there's no “oh that happens to certain types of people” or certain genders, races, or anything like that. It's so pervasive and so beginning to normalize that is important. Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, in her book The Deepest Well talks about how she wants to do a billboard campaign one day called The Faces of Aces and have celebrities and people speaking out to normalize ACEs. I want people to know it's us and we're not alone and it's not something we're walking through alone.” - Jennifer Warren
“There’s a solution to this problem and there are people out there like the CDC and SAMHSA who have these solutions written down. All we have to do is follow these methods and give people living wages, affordable and accessible child care, great quality therapy, and access to healthy food. Once we bring these supports around, I think we'd be amazed at how much change could happen. With the early screening and intervention and all of those supports for families that I just mentioned, change is possible and that's what I want us to all remember, is that this is not something that we can’t solve. As a nation we're pretty good at solving public health crises so this is no different, we just have to jump on it.” - Jennifer Warren
“I prefer to use the word adversity instead of trauma. I think sometimes we think ‘oh, trauma's a big deal’ and people will say, ‘that's never happened to me’. They may say, ‘I grew up with both my parents in my household and there was no alcoholism or drugs. We weren't in poverty. There were no deaths’. All these are things that we think about as traumatic experiences kids deal with as they're growing up. People think ‘well, none of that happened to me, so trauma is not an issue for me. I don't need to worry about this’. But we've all had adversity. We've all had seasons in our lives where things were hard, where things were difficult, where it was hard to get up and keep putting one foot in front of the other. That might not qualify as childhood trauma and it might not qualify as a huge traumatic experience, but adversity, a hard time, a difficult situation in life, happens to everybody.” - Candis Walker
“Understanding how adversity impacts our bodies and our brains is really important. It's important for us all to understand that whenever we have these adverse times, it can impact us if we aren't practicing resilience skills. If we're not taking time to step away, de-stress, let some of our nervous energy out, and to form good, solid, healthy relationships, then adversity can have an impact and create stress levels that are unhealthy for us.” - Candis Walker
“I now talk about myself in terms of my old self and my new self. I feel my brain now when something happens, I literally feel the part of my brain that was engineered in trauma telling me, “Let's react like this,” and then the other part of my brain who now knows better telling me, “It’s okay. You have more options than fight, flight, or freeze. You don't have to remove yourself from the situation. You can stay present and you have other options.” So to have that experience personally and to understand that for a lot of people I work with, their brains are doing some of those same things. I am able to talk with people about that experience and say there are other options for you, you don't have to live in this identity that was created for you. This happens to us when we're young and we grow up thinking that's all there is and that's not all there is.” - Denise Presnell
“You can't teach people from trauma unless you develop a relationship with them first.” - Denise Presnell
“I'm this person where if I don't accomplish 10 times the amount that a normal human does, I'm like, “Oh you wasted your day.” Just to acknowledge the fact that I get up in the mornings and take a shower and go to work every day that's good enough. It really changed how I viewed myself. As much as it changed how I view others, learning about my own trauma changed how I viewed myself and my kids.” - Denise Presnell
“You have to be really brave and vulnerable to admit that you have a hard time sometimes and to be open to change. Being able to react in a way that is productive instead of destructive.” - Denise Presnell
Hope
“When I first started working it was pretty overwhelming and I would dream about my clients at night and fret and worry about what was going on in cases. I was having trouble engaging in the rest of my life because of it. Once I got more experience under my belt, it certainly became easier to trust and believe that what I was doing could make a difference. The hope is definitely my favorite part, being able to see people really turn things around in their lives regardless of the degree of suffering that they start with. Every time I’m a part of that, it is really such an honor and I’m pretty amazed that I get to do that every day.” - Mary McKinney
“We've talked a lot about how in WCCI, our collaborative here, we shouldn't speak of trauma without speaking of resilience. I think that there's such hopefulness in that, particularly when you're working with kids.” - Jennifer Warren
“The earlier we intervene the better and I think science backs that up and so I feel like there's just so much hope in what we do. The hope is in the healing and the possibility of healing but I think the really powerful thing, too, is that for that person you might unlock something. They may have always gone through life thinking something was wrong with them or that they did something wrong. When they start to learn about how their body is having a perfectly normal response to the stress and trauma that they've experienced, all of a sudden, that’s like a weight lifted from them and they can breathe again and maybe that's the thing that unlocks the power that allows them to move on. I see that there's so much hope in that and if we can do this cycle-breaking work, we can change generations to come.” - Jennifer Warren
“All of those things, hope, resilience, and change are what I love about trauma work. You don't have to have a degree in it. You can be a positive, consistent, caring person and you can heal people's brains. I think that's so amazing.“ - Denise Presnell
“I really thought when something bad happens today, that's it. It's going to be a bad day, that's all there is. You can continually work on changing how your brain reacts to things and the emotions that you feel. You can soothe.” - Denise Presnell
Resilience
“There absolutely is help. There’s a lot of different things that really can be offered, in practical logistical ways but also in clinical therapeutic ways to help, just to help. That people don’t have to try to do things alone” - Mary McKinney
“None of us, no matter who we are, no matter how strong we are, really can be well without being both well in ourselves as well as in our relationships” - Mary McKinney
“Resilience looks to me like anything that connects a person to real hope, support, and connections, all of those components of what a person needs in order to be resilient. The actual ability to connect to those even when sadness, grief, and fear are still a part of the picture” - Mary McKinney
“Think of a time or setting that makes you feel really at peace and then try to develop that to such an intense degree. Feel the wind on your skin, see the ocean waves coming in, smell all the air. You really activate all of your senses in that moment until it can bring your neurological system down. The more you can immerse yourself in this sense-oriented event, that was really positive for you, it can be a powerful and pretty quick opportunity to bring your nervous system down.”- Jennifer Warren
“What works for me as a resilience skill may not work for you, and may not work for the next person. We have to find different things that work for us.” - Candis Walker
“If we take care of our bodies then our emotions stay more even. There are lots of things about taking care of our physical selves that enables us to be more balanced emotionally; simple things like taking a walk or a run, doing some jumping jacks, getting your heart rate up, and taking a sip of water. These are resiliency skills” - Candis Walker
“Sometimes those things may sound like “oh, that seems sort of flaky or sort of weird” but whenever we explain what that means, people realize that these are just common sense things that they can fit into their day. Taking a few minutes to tense up one's muscles, to squeeze one's muscles really tightly and then to take a deep breath and let those muscles loosen; anybody who tries that for the first time automatically sees how their body does feel more relaxed.” - Candis Walker
“You probably already have something that you do first thing in the morning that is your routine. Well, having a routine is a resiliency skill. Having certain things that you do at certain times of the day, that's a resiliency skill. People who exercise on a regular basis, even if that's just a good stretch whenever you first get up in the morning or after you've been sitting for a long time staring at a zoom call, you wiggle around and give your body some movement, is a resiliency skill. To get up and take a walk and go see the sunshine after being trapped inside all day, drinking water throughout the day, having a conversation with a friend, having a conversation with a colleague, those are all resiliency skills.” - Candis Walker
“if a kid comes to us and has not had the things that they need to be ready to learn, it makes it harder for them to learn. We know that if a kid's not had food, if a kid's not had a good night rest, if a kid has had to listen to parents arguing that morning, lost their dog that morning, had a car wreck on the way to school, or whatever the thing is, it's going to make it harder for that child to learn. When we think about trauma and adversity, those are the kinds of things that I like to remind people; this is not news. We've known this. Educators have known this forever.” - Candis Walker
“The general public understands that if we have hard stuff that we go through, it makes it harder for us to do the jobs that we need to do, whether that's learning or working in a business or whatever it is. It's easy to understand how trauma and adversity impacts us. It's also easy to understand that when we acknowledge that and we build in some skills for resilience, such as slowing down and taking a deep breath, having somebody that we can vent to, taking a sip of water before we start to go off on somebody, all these little resiliency skills that we can build into our day can be so very helpful, even if we don't think of ourselves as people who have dealt with trauma or adversity very much.” - Candis Walker
“We teach [resiliency] skills that help universally across the board. The skills that we teach- breathing strategies, taking care of our bodies and all of those resiliency skills are good for my kids and are good for every kid and every adult.” - Candis Walker
“I remember it clearly and going, ‘Well, they're talking about me.’ My trauma had impacted my brain, and I've always had this warrior identity, just ready to take on whatever. I realized that's not necessarily who I was born to be, that's who I was created to be from all the trauma.” - Denise Presnell
“We have these emotional rating skills that we're teaching in schools now with one to five. One is I'm okay, two is not the best but I'm still ready to learn, three is I need to do something like breathing or positive self-talk or lemon squeezes, four is I need to use a tool in the calm corner like stress balls or relaxation coloring books, and five is I need help. I think one of the first things is you have to be willing to look at what's going on inside of yourself. Think through where you are on any rating scale you want to use. Being aware of what you're feeling and what's going on with yourself and being willing to talk to somebody is important.” - Denise Presnell
“The other huge thing is changing my perspective from self-care which I feel like is this froo froo, hour massage for 150 dollars, and switching to the critical necessity of wellness and meeting our basic needs to be able to take care of anybody else.” - Denise Presnell
“Take care of each other. Part of the resilience we talk to kids about is having safe adults to go to when you need help...not “if” because I think up until now we've given people the impression that it's not okay to need help or it's not okay to not be okay.” - Denise Presnell
Resources
Mary McKinney (Mckinneymft.com mmftinboone@gmail.com)
Jennifer Warren (Western Youth Network)
https://www.westernyouthnetwork.org/
“We match students with caring adult mentors, which of course, in the resilience world means that we know having a safe stable nurturing caregiver is one of the best things we can possibly do for children to mitigate all that toxic stress response. We also offer a trauma-informed after-school program. That's a time for us to keep the kids safe and supervised in the after-school time, help them with their homework, and then also introduce some of those other resilience skills like mindfulness, meditation, physical activity, and proper nutrition. We also have a community health component to what we do.”
Candis Walker (Watauga County Schools)
Watauga Compassionate Schools website - resources for staff, students and families
“Calm corners help Watauga students manage big emotions” - local newspaper article
Denise Presnell (WCCI and Watauga County Schools)
Next year in April, we're going to host our conference virtually. We really have to do a lot of resource sharing, this is not just a conference where you're going to sit and hear a lecture, we're going to be doing a lot of cool stuff and you'll have some resources to keep with you even after the conference is over. So overall we have reached 1,300 people so far though some of those are repeats. The conference is one of the most powerful experiences of my life besides my marriage and my children.
“Positive interactions can help heal people's brains. That's a huge thing for me I think. We have a responsibility to be that caring, compassionate person that people haven't had. Once you know about this I feel like you have a responsibility not only to change how you are in the world and how you interact but to also pass it on.” - Denise Presnell
Online Resources:
National Child Traumatic Stress Network
SAMHSA (Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Association)
Books:
The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity
By Dr. Nadine Burke Harris
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
By Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
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