From Self-Care to Soul-Care:
How to Build a Practice of Radical Wellness
Description
It can be hard to prioritize yourself and your well-being, especially in our line of work. Why is that? Why is it that we can easily encourage our clients, staff, colleagues, and loved ones to care for themselves while we run ourselves into the ground, utilize little PTO, and/or are often left exhausted at the end of each day with little left in the tank? We're told to do "self-care" but what does that even mean and what does it actually look like in real life?
Self-care doesn't need to be a grand, costly, social media-worthy event or an extravagant "treat yourself" gift (although both those things can be nice)! Self-care turns to soul-care when we reclaim small moments in our day to check in with ourselves, notice what's coming up, take time to meet our own needs, and know when we need community care to help us heal.
Come be a part of a meaningful dialogue about caring for yourself while working in the field, ways to identify how trauma work may be impacting you, and what you can do to minimize the effects.
Objectives
Participants will gain the following:
Understanding of how working in the field can and likely will contribute to feelings of secondary trauma, burnout, moral injury, and/or compassion fatigue
Introductory information on somatics and how the work we do can take a toll on our body, mind, and soul
How to commit to radical self-care that is sustainable and necessary for longevity in the work & more importantly your well-being!
Facilitator
Melissa Silver is a leader, advocate, organizer, and trainer. Her passion lies in engaging with systems partners and advocates to create sustained institutionalized change to reflect the needs of survivors and the communities they serve. This drive has led Melissa to work on college campuses, in domestic violence and sexual assault community organizations, in state-wide coalitions, and in other community organizations as a peer advocate, crisis and support line specialist, first response/court advocate, coordinated community response team founder and co-chair, advocacy program director, board member, and trainer and coach on how to meaningful address intimate partner violence and how to best utilize coordinated community response models.
Melissa is the Coordinated Community Response (CCR) Team Leader at the New Mexico Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NMCADV). As the team leader, she coaches and provides technical assistance to community organizers, law enforcement, forensic nurses, court personnel, and others who seek to prevent intimate partner violence fatalities and improve outcomes in and outside the justice system.
Melissa strives to create spaces for authentic collaboration and communication in communities where partners can be honest about their challenges and experiences with intimate partner violence cases to develop sustainable survivor-centered solutions.
Regardless of role or title, Melissa is a tenacious advocate who believes that collectively we can create communities where survivors and their children can feel safety, support, and belonging.
Listen to her podcast here.