Light in the Dark

by Olivia Ruffin

Being a light in dark places means embodying hope, resilience, and compassion in the face of adversity. It’s about bringing kindness, understanding, and action where they may seem absent, choosing to act as a beacon when the world feels heavy or uncertain.

In dark times—whether they’re personal struggles, community crises, or widespread societal challenges—being a light can look like standing up for others, even when it’s uncomfortable, or speaking truth to power in a way that inspires and uplifts. It can mean listening to those who feel unheard, offering support to those in need, or simply finding the strength to persevere when circumstances feel daunting. Light doesn’t always mean grand gestures; often, it’s the steady glow of consistency, compassion, and courage.

When we act as light in the darkness, we’re acknowledging that difficult times are part of the human experience but that hope and healing are always possible. In the words of poet Amanda Gorman, “There is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.” The choice to shine—whether through our words, actions, or even by holding space for those around us—empowers others to find their own light.

Ultimately, being the light in dark places is a powerful form of resistance. It’s a reminder that, despite hardship, people are inherently capable of making things better, one small action at a time. It’s about being willing to guide, to uplift, and to inspire hope, creating ripples of change that might brighten even the darkest corners.

Community Care

by Elizabeth Campbell, MS, LPC, RPT-S

“The truth of who we are, is that we are, because we belong. It’s in our DNA.” — Desmond Tutu

One of the most relaxed and oxytocin-filled times that I recall is waking up on my rope cot in my host family’s home in Ganeshpur, Nepal.  It was a chilly morning, I was curled up in my sleeping bag, and I heard the soft raspy voice of my host mother talking in the next room and engaging in her morning chores.  It was my first international service trip and first time staying with a host family.  I was amazed that I felt so connected to a family and a community that I could not easily communicate with.  The deep relationship that we formed through working towards a mutual goal:  building a school for the community, and caring for another in the process, was life-changing.  

The communal nature of Nepal’s culture and all of the rural communities I stayed in while doing international service work stands in stark contrast to our culture.  Families lived in adjoining homes or on the same property and shared chores and childcare.  Friends and family members were together throughout the day and no one was left with the isolation of a never ending to do list with no support.  Parents learned by example by seeing generation after generation raising children.  There is an oft repeated joke among parents when people say “It takes a village (to raise a child),” “How do I sign up?!”  

Unfortunately, for many in our culture, the village is not there.  Whether that is due to living far away from family members, cutting off toxic relationships, or loss, often modern American individuals are often isolated and overwhelmed.  We saw in the pandemic how isolation can breed stress and subsequent mental health and wellbeing challenges and the Surgeon General recently release research showing that it impacts physical and mental health.  Yet our society continues to value independence, which cuts us off from the benefits of interdependence.  

All of that being said, I am not ready to sign up for communal living.  I love spending time with others and then going home to have quiet time to recharge my Highly Sensitive, introverted batteries.  I say all of this to highlight the gift that interdependence brings.  I often see this gift in The Resiliency Center practitioner community.  The same wise clinicians that supported me when I began my practice are supporting me as I support supervisees to learn and grow.  I see this gift in my friendships.  I recommended to my neighbor the book Sensitive and she loaned me Hunt, Gather, Parent (a must read when thinking about community).  We so often think about self-care as taking bubble baths and doing yoga, which is lovely.  I encourage us all to also care for ourselves by filling up both ourselves and others in connection and support.  

Elizabeth Campbell is a Licensed Profession Counselor, Registered Play Therapist Supervisor, and EMDR Consultant in Training who provides empowerment and strength-based support to individuals in personal growth and change.  She specializes in play therapy with children, supporting Highly Sensitivity, and IFS-informed EMDR for all ages. She provides supervision and consultation for licensure as well as EMDR and play therapy certification.   If you would like to connect with Elizabeth, reach out at elizabeth@elizabethcampbellcounseling.com or 610-757-8163 or learn more at www.elizabethcampbellcounseling.com

Healing for Helpers

2022 March Newsletter:  Healing for the Helpers

 

Healing for Helpers

by Vanessa Mortillo

 

“My mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.” – Fred Rogers

 

From the hospital staff who have showed up for the sick and dying, to the parents who work double duty supporting their children and maintaining normalcy, to our teachers, daycare and eldercare staff, clergy, mental health professionals, first responders, and service workers, it is comforting to know that helpers are everywhere. Yet, it is difficult to find words that do justice to their extraordinary struggles during this pandemic. Many helpers rose to meet challenges head on, and many are tired.

 

For anyone in a helping role, it is important to pay close attention to your own wellbeing. The classic airline safety instruction, “Put on your oxygen mask first before helping others,” is so true. Yet, so many helpers charge forward with little attention to their inner lives. If this sounds like you, I see you.  You may have been taught that taking time for yourself is selfish or fear that showing vulnerability will be concerning to others. As a result, you may not be asking for support when you need it.  I often hear the phrase “I am so done” from frustrated parents, teachers, and youth that I work with. Exhaustion, depressed mood, hopelessness, and frustration are all signs that it may be time to focus on your own healing. Doing so will expand your ability to help others immeasurably.

 

An oft overlooked aspect of healing is staying connected to other people and our community. Dr. Bruce Perry, a renowned child psychiatrist and trauma expert, states, “Relationships are the agents of change, and the most powerful therapy is human love.” Dr. Perry found that even short, positive 5-minute conversations with other people, spread throughout the day, can shift internal energy from distress into homeostasis. Connecting to community might look like asking trusted friends to check in, making an effort to call people more frequently, planning quality time with loved ones, or even joining a new community. This is one of the reasons the Resiliency Center offers classes and workshops. We understand that humans thrive in community.

 

Below are a few more self-care tips to support your healing journey:

 

·      Self-compassion: Understand that you are often simply doing your best with what you have available to you. You are just one human dealing with a lot, and it is okay to take breaks and attend to your own needs first. Give yourself grace if you make mistakes. Commit to loving kindness meditation practices.

 

·      Attending to your body: Moving, exercising, and massage can release tension and stress as well as relieve parts of your body that carry emotional burdens. Feed yourself foods that nourish you.

 

·      Seek therapy: If you have lost someone, have been exposed to trauma, or simply would like support as you support others or to experience your own healing, invest in therapy.

 

As many challenges as we face as helpers, there are many ways to cope. Creating a sustainable lifestyle that allows you to be your best self while helping others may involve getting to know yourself better and finding the self-care strategies that work best for you. We hope you take time for yourself and take care.

 

Vanessa Mortillo is a Licensed Professional Counselor with extensive training in play therapy. Utilizing mindfulness, expressive arts, and play-based interventions, Vanessa provides a playful space to harness creativity and imagination in the service of growth and healing. To learn more about her practice, view her profile or contact her at vmortillo@gmail.com or 267-507-5793.

Creative Self-Expression and Community

by Elizabeth Venart

 

Living during the time of COVID19 is living in an age of uncertainty and grief. Grief for lives lost and also grief for all the big and small losses. The milestones – like birthdays, weddings, graduations, and anniversaries – that we could not celebrate in our usual ways. The annual vacations and parties that just didn’t happen. A myriad of feelings may arise: boredom at the lack of variety, sadness about the loss of normalcy, loneliness, anger, and fear about the future.

 

Artists have long given voice to the challenges faced. But one need not be a bonafide “artist” to benefit from expressing ourselves through creativity. Creative self-expression is our birthright. Young children sing, color, mold playdoh, create rhythms on drums, dance. Expressing ourselves through writing, art-making, music, dance, photography and more provides a meaningful outlet for our emotions and a way to process our experience and give voice to that which we may not know how to say aloud.

 

If you have a regular practice of writing, singing, playing an instrument, or expressing yourself through art, you may have been drawn to create more over the past five months. If you don’t already have a creative practice, get curious about what naturally appeals to you. Maybe you enjoyed painting when you were younger but fell away from it when you started working. Perhaps you have dreamed of writing down the stories of your life – or creating an entirely new universe for a science fiction novel. Maybe you love snapping pictures with your phone already – and think it could be fun to join a group of other photographers to embark on an odyssey of shared learning and adventure.

 

When we come together in community to create, we often connect deeply. The very process of self-expression – and the vulnerability it takes to share our work – can create an atmosphere of intimacy as we recognize the sacredness of shared experience and the universality of our concerns. Local and national groups and interactive programs are listed below. Live online classes in which we have the opportunity to connect with other participants may be the most rewarding choice to help stave off feelings of isolation emblematic of current times.

 

One of the creative practices sustaining me through the pandemic is writing. In April, I discovered the Isolation Journals. They are the brainchild of Suleika Jaouad who believes that “life’s interruptions are invitations to deepen our creative practice.” Collaborating with artists of all disciplines, she responded to the pandemic by creating a journey through 100 days of writing prompts. Readers were encouraged to share their writing in a dedicated Facebook group, and the results were inspiring. The project now has over 100,000 members spread across 100 countries. Her website includes all 100 prompts, featured writing by members, and an invitation to join the community and receive weekly journal prompts for your own wirting. Suleika describes the project as “our living archive of human creativity”, highlighting the project as a place where “stories of vulnerability become stories of resilience and strength that unite us as a community.” It is said that to be a great writer, you must write whatever you most fear writing. Taking risks to be real – and share our rawness with others  – strengthens our capacity to face fears, find our voice, and go deeper still.

 

Creative writing need not be lengthy to be satisfying. Gotham Writers had a “silver linings” contest for the best 19-word story about a silver lining during COVID 19. It is challenging to write a story with only 19 words, but I certainly had fun trying. I shared the contest with friends and family. Not only was the process of writing our “silver lining” stories fun, it gave us an opportunity to connect beyond the routine “how are you?”

 

We are living through a remarkable time in history, and it is unmistakably hard. Listen to yourself and give voice to what lies within. As Bill Moyers said, “Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.” May your discoveries delight and surprise you – and foster deepening courage and connection to navigate the days ahead.

 

Elizabeth Venart, LPC, NCC, is the Founder of the Resiliency Center and a Licensed Professional Counselor specializing in working with Highly Sensitive Persons, artists, entrepreneurs, and other therapists. With advanced training in EMDR Therapy and IFS, she supports people in getting to the root of the places where they feel stuck, so they can experience greater joy. A Certified Laughter Yoga teacher, Elizabeth leads weekly zoom laughter classes  and infuses laughter into her work and her life. Learn more by visiting her website.

The Healing Power of Telling Our Stories

by Rachel Kobin of the Philadelphia Writers Workshop

 

When the writers workshops migrated from The Resiliency Center to Zoom in March, I was initially concerned about whether I’d be able to recreate the comfort participants develop from writing in the same room together week after week. Although I always provide participants with the option to use the workshop time as a substance-free escape from reality, the tentacles of the virus had us in its grip. Some expressed their fear and frustration with humor, while others' emotions poured onto their pages like tears shed mourning for the dead. No one held back despite the electronic context. 

 

When the Black Lives Matter protests began, I decided to address the issues head-on in the best way I knew how: I offered prompts that would give us the opportunity (but not obligate anyone) to write about aspects of the movement. Today a woman responded to the prompt "If I were the last storyteller in my tribe..." with a story about the resiliency the three branches of her family developed as they rose above suffering by making love their guiding force. Of course, she phrased it much more elegantly than I just did, but the point is that storytelling is how we make sense of the world around us. 

 

The writing and conversations provoked by this summer's writing made me see, once again, how healing it is to listen and be heard. When one person shares their story, we grow by coming to understand that while our life journeys may be vastly different, the feelings they evoke are universal. Even when the togetherness we create is on computer screens, the connection is real."

 

Rachel Kobin leads the Philadelphia Writers' Workshop at The Resiliency Center. The workshop provides a safe, structured setting for writers to express themselves, experiment, learn, and grow. To learn more about joining her fall workshops - and learn about her new writing marathons once they are announced - see her website at www.phillywriters.com.

On the Anniversary of a New Beginning

by Elizabeth Venart

In March 2017, Brittiney George, Tracie Nichols, and I hosted our first community gathering for Highly Sensitive Persons. We have been excited and gratified to connect with over fifty highly sensitive women this past year – and to explore our innate strengths, challenges in embracing the gifts of high sensitivity, and the many forms of expression available to us as we welcome and stand in our power most fully.  This March, we led our first full-day retreat for Highly Sensitive Women, and it was a sweet and rewarding day of slowing down, connecting with our senses, tapping into our intuition, and learning to listen deeply to ourselves.

As Highly Sensitive Women, our empathy connects us to the emotional experiences of others and can make it difficult to stay tuned in to self. Becoming a highly sensitive leader, we need to develop our ability to return again – and again – to our breath and our senses as a way to truly distinguish between what is me and what is not me.

Tracie, Brittiney, and I began our conversation about working with Highly Sensitive Persons three years ago. After a two-year process of incubation, exploration, and discovery, we began to offer programs for the community. It was rewarding to begin slowly and intentionally – together. Over the course of the coming year, we will continue holding monthly gatherings for Highly Sensitive Women Leaders on the 3^rd Wednesday of every month. We will also be offering full-day and, eventually, weekend-long retreats, inviting Highly Sensitive Women to come home to themselves, cultivate their gifts, and share them with the world. Our voices are stronger in community and, in community, we have an experimental playground in which we can begin stepping into leadership – together.

Elizabeth Venart is a Licensed Professional Counselor and the Founder and Director of The Resiliency Center. She is a Certified EMDR Therapist and EMDRIA-Approved Consultant who specializes in providing counseling and mentorship to other therapists and working to empower Highly Sensitive Persons to heal the wounds of the past so that they can embrace their gifts more fully and experience greater joy. Learn more at www.elizabethvenart.com.

The Power of Authentic Presence: Why Community Matters

by Elizabeth Venart

How did the rose ever open its heart and give to this world all its Beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light against its Being;

Otherwise, we all remain too frightened.

- It Felt Love – from The Gift: Translations of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinksy

Authentic connection – to ourselves and each other – is at the heart of resilience. From the first moment I imagined creating The Resiliency Center, community was always at the forefront of my mind. We are stronger together than any of us could be alone, and we crave opportunities to connect and feel understood, soft landing places during life’s difficult times and strong foundations for our risk-taking and growth.

Isolation can breed loneliness and depression, and wearing a mask in the company of others can be as isolating as sitting home alone. When we do not have places where we can show the myriad colors and sounds of our true self, we may fail to see the universality in our struggles. When we do not have places where we can show up authentically – and be accepted for who we are – then we can feel alone, isolated, and unhappy. We long to be seen and to connect. The growing addiction to social media actually reflects this need, yet it often fails to meet the need it highlights.

In a world increasingly oriented around virtual connection, some people feel more courageous in sharing their thoughts, ideas, experiences, and beliefs – and others feel shut out of the conversation or shut down in the midst of trying to engage. Behind a keyboard, we may feel brave to express some facet of our identities, but how fully are we able to share the vast range of our experiences as human beings?  And, if we are only sharing a small piece of our full experience through social media and yet social media has become a primary way in which people do connect with each other these days, how connected do we really feel?

There is a power in connecting with others face-to-face, in seeing and being seen, in sharing and listening and learning together. The Resiliency Center offers many opportunities to do just that - from meditation twice weekly to movement classes, spiritual poetry gatherings, groups for teens and new moms, and a monthly mindful knitting circle.  We look forward to seeing you - and connecting - soon.  

Connecting to Spirit

by Elizabeth Venart

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. – Rumi

In a time when the answers to so many questions are only a few keyboard clicks or a Siri search away, deeper questions about meaning and spirituality may go unasked or, when asked, feel even more elusive. Since the beginning of recorded history – and certainly through oral traditions for a long time before that – people have sought a way to make sense out of the inexplicable and extraordinary. Spiritual mystics from every faith tradition have shared their transcendental experiences of Divine Connection as a way to support others on the path to enlightenment. In our monthly spiritual poetry gatherings at the center, we explore their writings – from 12^th century Rumi and 13^th century Hafiz through Rilke and modern-day Mary Oliver. Sufi poets Rumi and Hafiz are often at the center of our evenings, as they speak eloquently of experiences of connection with the Divine – and the experiences of longing when the connection to God feels distant. These spiritual teachers grapple with the big questions about love, life, death, beauty, joy, and suffering. In a world where hard questions and concrete answers abound, Sacred Poetry has the power to help us open more deeply to Mystery.

Over the past five years of monthly poetry evenings, we have embraced the time together as its own act of surrendering to Mystery – moving away from a more solid plan with specific poems copied to share and moving toward spontaneous selection of poems from a pile of books in the center of the room. We take turns choosing poems at random and those who wish to read aloud do, so we can all listen with humor and curiosity to see to see what wisdom and themes emerge. We don’t always understand the poems read, but we gain something regardless – a phrase or image that jumps out at us, laughter, tears, a new question, or the peace or cacophony stirred by the poem’s language and rhythm. Our poetry evenings are sometimes whimsical, sometimes profoundly deep, and always connecting. Join us – if you feel curious or called. Learn more at https://www.meetup.com/resiliencygatherings/events/239488901/

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