Optimistic Voices
Vital voices in the fields of global health, global child welfare reform and family separation, and those intent on conducting ethical missions in low resource communities and developing nations. Join our hosts as they engage in conversations with diverse guests from across the globe, sharing optimistic views, experiences, and suggestions for better and best practices as they discuss these difficult topics.
Optimistic Voices
The Science and Faith of Bouncing Back: Nicole Wilke on Resilience
What makes some children overcome unimaginable trauma while others struggle to recover? Is resilience something you're born with, or can it be cultivated? These questions drive our fascinating conversation with Dr. Nicole Wilke, author and Director of Research at Christian Alliance for Orphans.
Drawing from her extraordinary background—growing up in a family that fostered 70 children and personally experiencing severe health challenges as a teenager—Nicole brings professional expertise and lived experience to this critical topic. Her insights challenge conventional wisdom, revealing that resilience is less "bouncing back from" and more "growing through" adversity.
The heart of resilience, Nicole explains, lies in relationships. "When I'm weak, I can borrow from your strength," she shares, highlighting how humans were designed for interdependence rather than independence. This perspective transforms how we approach trauma recovery, shifting focus from individual grit to supportive connections. For children who've experienced separation, abuse or neglect, healing happens primarily through consistent, attuned relationships that communicate worth and belonging.
What's particularly striking is how science and faith align in understanding resilience. Nicole unpacks research showing that spirituality correlates with better recovery outcomes, while biblical principles like finding purpose in suffering parallel scientific concepts of post-traumatic growth. This intersection offers practical strategies for parents, social workers, and anyone walking alongside vulnerable children.
The conversation takes a powerful turn when addressing systems change, advocating for family-based solutions over institutional care and locally-driven approaches
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Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.
https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html
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A bible study for groups and individuals, One Twenty-Seven: The Widow and the Orphan by Dr Andrea Siegel explores the themes of the first chapter of James, and in particular, 1:27. In James, we learn of our duty to the vulnerable in the historical context of the author. Order here or digital download
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Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone. Your small monthly donation, prayers, attention & caring is essential. You advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join
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Organize a Rooted in Reality mission experience for your service club, church group, worship team, young adult or adult study. No travel required. Step into the shoes of people in extreme poverty in Sierra Leone, West Africa, Helping Children Worldwide takes you into a world where families are facing impossible choices every day.
Contact support@helpingchildrenworldwide.org to discuss how.
Shout out to our newest sponsor: The Resilience Institute
Helpingchildrenworldwide.org
Welcome. Welcome to Optimistic Voices, where we explore stories and ideas that spark hope and drive change for children and families all around the world. I'm your host, laura Horvath. I'm excited about our guest today. In today's episode, we're joined by Nicole Wilkie, author, advocate and director of research and resources at Christian Alliance for Orphans, and a good friend, to talk about a word we hear a lot about in child welfare resilience. Resilience is critically important for children and families who've experienced trauma because it shapes how they recover, rebuild and move forward. Trauma, whether from abuse, neglect, separation, loss or systemic injustice, can disrupt a child's development, relationships and sense of safety, but resilience is what helps them heal and adapt, even in the face of ongoing challenges. But what does resilience really mean, especially in social work terms, and how do children bounce back and not just survive but really thrive after experiencing trauma, separation or instability? And what role do relationships, systems and faith play in that process? So, without further ado, I'm going to welcome to the podcast Dr Nicole Wilkie. Nicole, thank you for being with us.
Speaker 1:Hey, thanks for having me. It's so good to be here with you.
Speaker 2:I'm thrilled that you're on the show. Do you want to introduce yourself a little bit, explain your role and why this work is so important to you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would be happy to.
Speaker 1:So let's see, I started in this work as a child and my family fostered and adopted fostered about 70 kids and I now have nine adopted siblings, and so this has always been an important space to me, but I never thought of it as my professional space until I just kind of collected a number of different experiences working in residential care and respite and working with children with disabilities and it just continued to show me where the gaps were within the field and that there was still so much.
Speaker 1:There's so much good that's happening and there's also so much more work to do. So I have lived overseas as a missionary. Currently, my family and I live in Peru, where my husband leads a care reform coalition, changing the system of care from default residential care to default family, and then, as you mentioned, I currently work with CAFO. So that's a real privilege to come alongside incredible leaders like yourself there are many members serving in about 130 nations around the world to learn it's a lot of mutual learning and together think through how we can improve care for vulnerable children and families around the world together think through how we can improve care for vulnerable children and families around the world.
Speaker 2:I know the CAFO Research Center's work has been really foundational to a lot of the work that we do on the ground. We consider CAFO kind of the go-to place for resources and things like that, and being a part of the CAFO community has been a really rewarding thing personally for me, but also for Helping Children Worldwide and for our allied program in Sierra Leone. We've even had folks be able to come and participate in KPO Summit and that was really exciting. So it's a thrill to have you here. You're also here to talk about a book that you wrote with Dr Amanda Howard. Do you want to say a little bit about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we wrote a book together and then I actually, along with Aisha Day-Lopez, created a children's book along the same lines, and these are looking at resilience and breaking them down in really accessible stories, examples, terms, recognizing that it's something that everyone needs and it's often a really mysterious concept. So we wanted to get really practical, recognizing that this is a key idea in this space, in this field, and yet parents, leaders, advocates, those who are in ministry, often kind of have a general sense but not really clarity on the key ideas of how to implement practices that bring about resilience.
Speaker 2:Key ideas of how to implement practices that bring about resilience. All right, let's dive right in, Can you? Well, you've dedicated a lot of your life to walking alongside vulnerable children and families, and I'm wondering what keeps you grounded and inspired in this work, especially on hard days. This is hard stuff sometimes.
Speaker 1:Oh man, it is hard stuff. I mean, just yesterday was a really difficult day, where I have lots of days where I'm like I don't know I could quit. One day, when I was a therapist, I was driving to work and I saw this guy who was like mowing lawns and he had his big headphones on and he's just like bopping to the music and I thought you know what? He doesn't go home at night and stress about his job. Maybe I should do that. But I think it's embracing purpose and calling and recognizing that God is writing this bigger story and you know, the truth of it is this he could do this work without any of us. He could do it.
Speaker 1:Years ago I had about a nine-month-old. My first child was about nine months and I remember um, she really liked to quote unquote help me with baking, but it really created like a lot of mess and we had like chocolate chips on the floor and like flour in her hair, and so I thought I had hacked life when I said, listen, she's going to take a nap, I'm going to make the cookie dough, going to put it in these little Ziplocs and when she wakes up they'll be frozen and I can like break off little pieces and she can throw it on the pan right. So here she sits on the floor and I've got the pan on the floor, she's, I'm breaking off the piece, I put it in her little hand and kind of like toss it onto the pan. She is just smiling super proud of myself, because I'm like, look at what I have done and I watch her and she's so thrilled. And of course she did almost nothing. She looked pretty much literally nothing to contribute.
Speaker 1:And the Lord said to me that's you. And I was like what Come again? And he said, listen, like I really I don't need you, you don't have anything that I didn't give you. And yet, because I love you, I want you to do this work with me, I want you to walk alongside me and for me I think that's the most grounding thing, because it reminds me that the outcomes are not up to me and that I need to be faithful, I need to be diligent, I need to be responding to the needs of the world where the Lord will call me to be engaged. And yet, at the end of the day, I don't carry that weight, because it's a weight I can't carry.
Speaker 2:Right, that's a beautiful image. I love that image of a parent, you know, trying to. Well, just you got to get in the mess with your kids sometimes. You know it's good for them, you just got to. You know it's just part of it. I love that, all right. So let's talk about the book a little bit. So in Overcoming, you share powerful stories of children and families facing trauma and loss and injustice. And yet what shines through the entire book is hope around this idea of resilience. What was it like gathering those stories and telling them?
Speaker 1:Yeah, around this idea of resilience. What was it like gathering those stories and telling them? Yeah, well, I will say they weren't necessarily gathered in a systematic way. I would say that both she and I have worked in this space in different capacities for decades, and so we were really reflecting back on who do we know that we think of as an overcomer, or where have we seen overcoming in our lives? That was some of the genesis of this book, because, as researchers, we were seeing a very different picture than what we were seeing as former clinicians, former kinship care providers.
Speaker 1:Where we're seeing these glimpses, these like glimmers of hope, right, where people have this horrific background, this very heavy story that they're carrying, and yet they beat the odds, right. And so, as we started to dive into that concept, we were seeing how does this dovetail with scripture and science? And it was actually those stories. It wasn't let's go find those stories. It was those stories that made us say, hey, we need to figure this out, but those are, they're the very best kind, right. Where you're not looking for perfect humans, right.
Speaker 1:No story that we put in there is like a perfect person, but it is the person who had that ability to not overcome and bounce back, but actually to grow through that difficult situation. And there's no hint of us saying like, oh, that's fine. Like you know, I have a toddler, so sometimes it's like, well, she ate dirt, she's building her immunity. That's not what we're saying about resilience, like it's never okay for kids to experience adversity and trauma. And yet we can see through these examples how, just like with Joseph in the Bible, like God took what the enemy meant for evil and was able to grow people through that. There's actually this concept of post-traumatic growth that we get into a little bit, but these are the these are actually like the heart of the entire concept of the book is these people who give us hope that the kids we serve can, can thrive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love the idea that, that it was the stories that sort of drove you to, okay, but how are they able to do that? Why is that possible? And and what is it? What's the the sort of secret sauce of that? And you know, just in speaking about how this work gives you hope and there's so much hope in the work that you do, I think part of it for me, because I'm not a social worker, my background's not in that field and in this space of orphan care, which started in supporting an orphanage and then transitioning, you know that whole journey and learning as a novice and learning as a novice first of all, these kids have been traumatized, like the gut punch of this thing we tried to do caused harm to children that we cared about and living with that or whatever.
Speaker 2:But then finding that trauma can be healed, that there is, you know, redemption, that can be possible. I don't know how you could do this job otherwise if that, if that didn't exist. And so that was that's been healing for me individually, you know, as a person in this space or whatever, but it's been just a guide start for the work as well. So and I'm I'm struck too by like, yes, of course we don't want kids to, or anyone to, suffer trauma, but everybody could use resilience right, everybody could use those skills and what have you? And one of the central themes in your book is that resilience isn't something you're just born with, like I don't know extra grit or whatever and like maybe I wasn't one of them, but but you really make the argument that it's not something that you're born with. It can be grown, it can be nurtured, it can yeah, For sure.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think context is everything here right, like it really is about those inputs, and so I would never say, oh, there's no hint of genetic predisposition to resilience. I would say it's kind of unimportant to the conversation in a lot of ways, because what we see is that when we give the right inputs to kids, the fun thing about that for me is that, working internationally, there's often these concepts that it's like, well, that's great if you're like in an air conditioned office or if you have a million dollars or if you have access to these various systems that the rest of the world doesn't have access to. Like, the types of inputs we give are very much human inputs and they can be given across cultures. You know, honestly, a lot of it boils down to relationships and when you start to think about relationships, you can think about it through like an attachment lens, through like a developmental lens. But you're really thinking about about this idea of like number one the child was first created to live in the family, okay, like we were born into relationship from that. We were born into communities, right, and so there's always historically been these relationships where we're not suffering on our own. That was never the way that it was supposed to be.
Speaker 1:If you look at suffering throughout history, like people can endure extraordinarily difficult circumstances if they have somebody to do it with them. So the first thing is that we're not saying to kids like, well, that's too bad, good luck. We're saying like, hey, I'm really sorry, I am lamenting with you and I also am not ever going to let you believe that your trauma, your adversity, defines your life, because it doesn't. It's not your destiny, it's not your description even. It is an experience that you have had and it is important that we acknowledge it and validate it. But you are so much more than that and when we have healthy relationships that come in, are suffering with us, what we can do is we can have the courage to have that safety net right Like we can explore, we can take risks, we can do difficult things because we know that we have that safe place to land. It's not so much about a location, it's about the people that are there to catch us when we fall and when we start to have those things, it's amazing how that kind of creates this foundation for us to pile on these other protective factors right Things like mindsets that kids can have, or practices, habits, experiences like extracurricular activities, or even things like you know, at a community level, having like not living in geopolitical conflict, having access to medical care, access to education, like these are all protective factors.
Speaker 1:But I would argue now, this experiment has never been done, should never be done. But if you had a child that was receiving some of these things and they were divorced from relationships, it's not going to have the positive effect that we see. Like education, for example, it's not just about knowledge, right, it's about I mean, you're a teacher it's about the people, it's about the collaborative learning experience. It's about the person who shows up for you every day and I think we see that in all of these various protective factors that can help a child build resilience, relationship is absolutely foundational and that is what is the nurture part of it. Right, we have that nature and nurture. The nurture is far more significant in building resilience in case and adults, honestly but it's far more significant than thinking like I don't know, I wasn't really born a resilient person. Thankfully we don't have to have that conversation.
Speaker 2:That's so powerful and it's so exciting Because it just gives you so much to work with. You know that sort of foundation and I do think, like you know, a big part of our transition from the institutional care was because we realized finally, like you say, children are born into family, like that's the foundation for everything, and so getting back to that just makes so much sense. So you write that the ability to overcome comes not from within us alone, but from the community around us, and so you've talked a little bit about that. In terms of relationship, why is the idea of interdependence? I depend on you, you depend on me, we depend on those people, they depend on us for these things. Why is that so important in a world that, especially in an American culture that idolizes individual strength, that kind of cowboy spirit?
Speaker 1:Oh boy, well, that's such a great question. I don't believe that we were created to be independent, like. I just don't think that, functionally, we we don't see that in scripture, we don't see that in science, right, we know that kids who experience extreme neglect have a really difficult time throughout the rest of their lives. Like they could have they could have, you know, expensive toys and they could have access to things. But it is that interconnectedness that is so valuable. We know that, that you know even little little things like being attuned to our babies, like looking our babies in the eye has tremendous potential for like even developing their neurological systems in their brains. Right, like, development of the human is really about how am I being seen, how am I being received, how am I perceiving that I'm being received in this big, bad, scary world and who's there to be with me? And I would argue like, yes, that infant looks for the human that looks for them. There's no question. I will argue that I think every human does that throughout their entire lifespan. You're looking for the person that looks for you and you might have had this background where you're like I don't need anyone, I think. I mean, I would say that's a wound right. Like that is not us at our best and our healthiest.
Speaker 1:And I think, when we think about community, like one concept that I think is important here is that we can borrow from each other's strengths right, because when I'm weak, you can come and you can sit beside me, right. The cool thing about this is like it's not dependent on race, class, age, physical ability, like it doesn't matter, like you can be in that with me just by your presence. In this age of technology, like that might be the most important gift that we can actually give somebody is our unfiltered, unmitigated presence. And in doing that, when I'm weak, I can borrow from your strength. When you're weak, you can borrow from my strength, because we were never created to do this alone. We can't we really can't do this alone and emerge unscathed, but when we're going through these difficult things together, you can give me that perspective. You can give me that. You can help me filter. You know, give me that lens to see this difficulty when I'm too much in it, and I can do the same for you.
Speaker 2:I think that's really powerful. I often will say to people you know at work, or we'll have conflicts or things you know, disagreements, and when I remember that deep down at the but, at the base of everything, people just want a theme for who they are. They just want to be really seen the way that God sees you and knows you. People are just aching for that, just to see me, and I think that's that's really powerful. My husband is also fond of saying that a person's attention is the most valuable thing in the world, and so that relationship piece, that resilience, is built in like who is, who is paying attention to you and who who sees you for who you are. It's amazing, love, that your writing is deeply rooted in your Christian faith. I mean you work for Christian Alliance for Orphans. How have you seen faith play a role in building resilience, not just for children but for caregivers and parents and frontline workers and community members?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think this is really pivotal because I think that one of the things, one of the core things that faith does is it talks to us about our identity. Who are we and why were we made and how do we fit in this big world, this big universe, this big kingdom? Right, and especially when we're talking about children who have had difficult experiences? Right, they're often accustomed to being looked at as less than, and it might be because they have difficult behaviors, it might be because they have disability. You know, I was just talking to this guy the other day. He's a missionary and he used to work in a camp for kids with disabilities. I used to work with kids with disabilities too, and I said you know, one of the things that I saw that changed my life in that work is, I recognized, I could realize that, even if I couldn't contribute anything, right, like the person who lives in a coma and cannot have a conversation, like you, can trust, when you're a person of faith, that this person, their presence, still has a purpose. Even though we as limited human beings can't understand that, when we start to think through that lens, it changes the ways that we interact with difficult behavior, you know, because it's no longer like trying to control the person right, you're seeing them as an eternal soul. They will, they will be like there's just this, this much bigger concept than this one moment. So when you can start to think of yourself in the context of being an eternal soul, with the human in front of you, with the child you're caring for, with the difficult person in the government or like the board member that is really on your nerves or whatever, when you start to think about them in that way, it kind of changes everything. You realize they are worth it, it is worth it to stay in this with them. Because I am just going to be really honest, I've had lots of times where I'm like I could quit. I could quit this relationship, I could quit this effort, I could quit this project. And then, when I'm able, by God's grace, to see it through that eternal lens, it's amazing how it changes your ability to continue.
Speaker 1:I think another thing that's really really, really key here is purpose. You know we have a lot of research that looks at optimism and some that looks at a future orientation, and both of those are seen as contributing significantly to resilience and I and both of those are seen as contributing significantly to resilience. And it makes perfect sense to me, right, because if you are a person who has experienced really difficult things, you're often stuck in your stress response. You can't see beyond this moment. The idea of growth, the idea of future is like it's like, superfluous. You can't even go there because you don't have the capacity to do it. Superfluous you can't even go there because you don't have the capacity to do it.
Speaker 1:So when we can help people to start to crawl out of this moment that they're in starting to believe, oftentimes it's just helping them believe today isn't forever, the future could be different. That's monumental stuff for certain people, right, once we start to help them recognize, like what the word said. What God's word says is that you have a purpose, that he created works for you to do you since before you were born, right, that he has a plan for you. And if he has that plan for you, then we can't logically believe that trauma is the end of your story, right? He has more. He has more for you, and that's very difficult to grasp onto unless you have that vision of higher calling. You know creator God, so I think you know those are a couple of examples where faith is so critical in helping people move beyond this horrific moment that they're in. That is justifiably and objectively extremely difficult, there's no question. But our hope and our role is to say hey, I believe in more for you, I can hold hope for you even when you can't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's kind of a message of you were made for more than this, this moment.
Speaker 2:It reminds me of. In my early days I taught um. I taught high school. Uh, had a lot of gang kids, um, in my class, in my classes. Um loved those kids. They had hard, hard lives, um, and I can remember I may have been like a second or third year teacher asking about you know, what's your plans for the future, and it's like you're describing, I mean they just kind of looked at me like what is that? Like what are you even talking about right now? That's an unimaginable you know thing for me. Kids that are in trauma in this space because they've been separated from parents, you know, living in horrific poverty and things like that. But that is the kind of, you know, hopelessness that anybody can have. They just can't see that a future is possible and I think faith is a huge plays, a huge role in helping you tap into that. God made you for something more than this moment.
Speaker 2:One of the most interesting angles for me about this book, um and I think not just for me is, I think, that a lot of people outside of our space, um, think about science is one thing here. You know, there's this science is over here and we're all about logic and reason and statistics and facts and you know whatever. And then faith is over here and it's something else. It's more felt, I guess, less concrete or something like that. But you take those two things and you pull them together and you go look, here's what faith says about, here's what the Christian faith says about resilience, here's what science says, and they're really close, if not the same. So talk about that a little bit, because I just think that's one of the coolest angles of this.
Speaker 1:Yes, well, that's just one of my favorite things in life, honestly, and I think what I would say is just, you know, all truth is God's truth and we can just, like we can, rest in that we don't have to fight sides, like we can just, you know, kind of luxuriate in the security of knowing that everything that is true and good comes from God. And I believe that one of those good things is science. You know, I see so many times like I love God's word and I couldn't live without it honestly. And also there are certain things that God's word is not going to communicate to me because of the complexity of the age and because the Bible couldn't mean for us what it didn't mean for the people that it was written to, right. So, like, if I want to ask the question, should my kid have an iPad? The Bible probably won't tell me that, right, I know, inconveniently right. One of the things I love is, like I can know, I can know Jesus and I can know, like, the bigger story of all of eternity from scripture. And then, where we have these different questions in our society, we can turn to good science. Here's what's crazy Good science is always going to align with scripture over and over and over again.
Speaker 1:We see this like so we're seeing, like we did a study of 1100 adults with care experience in 60 nations and we we actually I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but we didn't even ask them about spirituality. But as we're coding the data, we realized like there's just all of these mentions of prayer and Bible, jesus, church, oh you know, over and over. And so we decided let's just do this little thing right, this little mini study. So we draw that data out. We saw that the more spirituality that you were mentioning right, we didn't ask you the question, this was you volunteering it that you had higher resilience, you had higher life satisfaction, that you had higher resilience, you had higher life satisfaction, you had better mental health and better physical health. We didn't even ask, people just volunteered. And here we see these great things. But here's the thing then, when I look at scripture, it's like you know, we're made to be more than conquerors, right, it's like, okay, like I'm seeing, like you know, these different things. When I look at resilience, when I look at that verse, when I look at how people are overcoming horrific early starts, and you know what's interesting, even in the book.
Speaker 1:We talk about this little Yerkes-Dodson model that essentially says that if you have either it's kind of like an upside down U shape, imagine and on one end is people who have just no stress in their life. They just honestly don't have enough stress. Maybe they're coddled, maybe there's, you know, affluenza, these types of things. On the other hand, they have extreme, extreme stress. That area in the middle is where we see that peak in achievement, right. So essentially, if you have extreme, extreme stress, you're going to be less likely to achieve, but if you have actually too little stress, you are also less likely to achieve.
Speaker 1:So we see this thing of like, you know, difficulty can be used. It can be morphed and shaped and molded into something good. It can help us to grow. And then we look at, like I said, the story of Joseph what the enemy meant for evil, god has used for good, and we see this over and over. So we're seeing both science and scripture communicate about the same things in different ways. But what I love to look for is that intersection. Right, there are all these beautiful intersections of science and scripture and I feel like those are just little spaces that we can be there. They're, you know a little. They're gifts from God, honestly, where we can be so extra confident of of these things and we can know now not just the principle, which is what we get from scripture, but we get the practical from science, the how to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's that intersection between the practical and the principle. That's really amazing to me. I can remember very vividly when my first daughter was born. It's been a minute, it's been a long time. She's a married adult now, but the pediatrician came in to check on her and me in the hospital and he was explaining to me that she could only see, could only really focus, about six to eight inches.
Speaker 2:I don't even know if this is true he may be telling me this because I was a new mom or whatever but essentially he was like it's essentially the distance from your breast to your face, so, and everything else is a blur. So she's able to focus on the person, that she's bonding to, the attachments being formed, the relationship, relationship, everything else. It's there, but it's not. You know what she's focused on, whatever, and that that is it's. It's a different kind of sustenance that's happening. Right, it's a spiritual kind of thing.
Speaker 2:And he said to me you know the reason for that and he explains like you know, the rods and the cones and the eye haven't fully developed, like there's a whole scientific reason for that. But I remember sitting there thinking, yes, but God designed it that way. So, yes, there is a scientific reason, for you know the little things in her eyes that are magic. I don't know magic to me, making her able to focus and see, but there's so much beauty and elegance in the design of that that helps a child and a mother to bond in those in those early hours, um, and it gives me goosebumps still to this day?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely and essentially. Science is the discovery of that creation, of that order that she made.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's magical Isn't?
Speaker 1:that beautiful? Yeah, totally, yeah, it totally is.
Speaker 2:It's magical, isn't that beautiful? Yeah, it totally is Okay. Can you talk about the connection you drop in overcoming between faith and healing?
Speaker 1:How does trusting in something greater than yourself. Help people make sense of pain or injustice or suffering. Oh well, I mean, it is so hard, there's no question these are not easy things. I think these are straightforward things, but these are incredibly complex and difficult things. And you know, one of the things that I think about with this is I hadn't experienced my own life when I was from like 12 to 14.
Speaker 1:So, like you know, junior high like awkward already, just like kind of like the worst developmental stage, I think and I became extremely ill and for two years I missed the bulk of school, like I had a homebound teacher, I couldn't walk, I was in a wheelchair. I'm going back and forth, like all these different specialists, and they can't figure out what's wrong. And there's, you know, blood tests that aren't right, but they can't find the cause of it and they're just struggling. And I'm struggling Right, like is this it Right? And it took me to some very dark places. And I remember one night laying in my dark room with my mom she's laying on my bed with me and she's listening to me just absolutely rant about like the injustice of it all. And I'm just going on and on and when I finally stopped to take a breath. She says you know, I know that God's going to use you. I know that God has a plan for you. I know that he's going to use you. I don't know what it is, I don't know exactly what it is, but I'm listening to you speak and I know that he has a plan and a purpose.
Speaker 1:And I was 14. So I was like too cool to be like wow, mom, gee, thanks. You know, I was on a roll. I needed to finish my rant, but there was this tiny seed of an idea of like what if God could use me in this way? What if God could use me for his glory? And, and, by his grace, they found out that my appendix had burst and it had been septic for two years, and so they removed it, and, and, by his grace, I am able to to be healthier, although not unscathed.
Speaker 1:And yet there was something in that moment that made me go okay, listen, if I'm not dead, he has a plan and a purpose for me. He's not done. And so there was something about that connection to that much bigger story that pulled me out of myself and I was able to say to him listen, you know that my fervent hope is to be healed. And yet, if your will for me is to lay here and I don't know like, make me a great prayer warrior or something like, I trust that you'll do that. I want to live with intensity for you and I trust that you'll give me that and I couldn't have ever had.
Speaker 1:And again, it's that student of yours that can't look to the future because you're so in that moment it's taking all of your capacities to survive. But that tiny seed of an idea from my mom kind of extricated me from that situation so that I could look to something else and you know what situation, so that I could look to something else. And you know what the truth was like in the moment. What I needed was a hope. I very genuinely believed that something there could be, some purpose, but in that moment I needed the possibility of purpose to be able to move me out of the situation. So that's just one example where I think the keys here are again the relationships and the relationship to people, but the relationship to God, and then that identity piece, trusting that he has a story that is bigger for me than just my adversity, that gives us the hope to go on.
Speaker 2:And I'm struck that that story starts in um I, really in the relationship and that you have with your mom. You know that that's that's where that conversation starts, and and your faith and her faith, uh, and your connections to that. So in the book you don't just focus on individual healing, you also advocate for rebuilding systems that honor dignity and connection. What does that look like in practice?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think that one of the things for us to think about is that sometimes we are working on individual healing while the system is continuing to perpetuate adversity, right? So one of the things about resilience that we need to recognize is that it's very, very difficult to build resilience if the adversity is still being perpetuated. Now, that could you know abuse, neglect, violence, exploitation, so many different things, right. But I think it's really important for us to consider what are the inputs that are ongoing that put us in the position where we're not actually building resilience but we're simply continually undoing damage. Does that make sense, where things are still tearing down the very fabric of well-being for an individual, for a community? So I think that one of the big things in our individual, for a community, so I think that, you know, one of the big things in our life around this, is family. I mean, it's so central. It is so central, as I've stated over and over, relationship is at the core of building resilience, of building the ability to overcome obstacles, and it's very difficult for children to get a sufficiently intensive relationship outside the structure of a family. Families can look all sorts of ways, so this isn't trying to parse that, but it's more saying this idea of that person that is uniquely dedicated.
Speaker 1:I remember when I first had this realization in this intensely personal way with my own children and you know I've been advocating for family care for a long time before that and then I had this little baby. She's like two, three months old and I'm nursing her one day and I look at her and I realized like, oh, my role is truly, in the truest sense, unique, like there is no other mother that she has. It's unique for her Right. And so I am uniquely called to care for her, to invest in her, to advocate for her, to fight for her, to protect her. It would be very difficult for me to do that with, you know, 30 kids at one time, right. And so I think, when I think about systems, I think about what does it look like to support those natural relationships, for example, family being.
Speaker 1:In my personal perspective, family is God's design for children. It's the original design for discipleship, for development, for all of the things that we think about as we raise a child, right. But then communities, right. And so I think the goal here is looking at systems that are redemptive rather than punitive, so we're not in the business of like you made a mistake, we punish you, right. That's not helpful and especially when we're talking about trauma and adversity, a lot of times within communities you're seeing generational presence of these themes, right, so they're continuing to propagate, not because people are bad, but because it's all they've ever known.
Speaker 1:So when we think about systems, we want to think about how do we restore, how do we empower, how do we encourage and inspire? And then here's a key that I think is like somewhat controversial, but I'm going to say it, say it it's offering as little intervention as possible, like sometimes we get in the way of ourselves, right. We're like we want to help, we want to be the helpers, and sometimes we're just actually not that helpful or not that important. So I think you know when I'm thinking about systems that support resilience. Number one is family, if you know, sometimes we oftentimes we see situations in which children have been removed from family care for reasons that didn't necessitate that response. Or you know all sorts of situations where, if we're able to provide these simple supports, we can see that family restored right.
Speaker 1:So, for example, we did a cohort of organizations moving towards family solutions and one of the most common requests we saw from families was that they needed another bed, and it was like, okay, yeah, I think we can figure that out, we can figure out the other bed so that you can have your child there. And often it's those basic needs. And so what does it look like for us to envision, with following the people that we want to help, not inserting our own ideas? And then again, what do we really need to offer? And remove ourselves from the situation, right, like nobody wants to be a project, so offering, saying like, hey, I want to come, I want to be with you, and yet I never, never want you to be dependent on me. So can we have mutuality? Can we have like an honest, real relationship that isn't like the helper and helped, right, but it's actually seeing you in that eternal soul, um, uh, identity that you have as somebody who's created in the very image of God?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's so powerful and kind of dovetails with the conversation I was having earlier today about um, you know the, the need to, to, to let local, local solutions and local contexts and let you know people and let people know what they need, and they don't need you to rush and say you know what you need, I've got a solution for you. I saw this great meme the other day of a monkey very gently and lovingly lifting a fish out of the river and saying to it let me help you as it's placing it in the tree. I thought that's such a good metaphor for how we approach this sometimes and man, I've been there.
Speaker 1:I can say this from a place of like hey, learn from my mistakes. Not like some expert on high, but like a lot of us with our good intentions have gone in, have made mistakes, have learned and are still learning. But I think there's there's there's such good learning for us to have from the very people that we seek to serve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I love that idea of empowering people and just the integrity and the dignity that's baked into that. Where are you seeing that shift happening, that move from systems of rescue to systems of restoration?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, well, I mean, I think in this huge movement towards family-focused care for kids, I'm so encouraged by that. I think that I mean it's definitely happening in other sectors as well, especially like in the broader faith based sector and humanitarian aid and in, you know, working against violence and anti trafficking and all of these different things. I think we're all kind of noticing similar themes and praise God for that. But I think one of the things that is so core to it that is also difficult is like reckoning. It becomes very personal right, where you have to reckon with your own biases, and that is not really fun work Like that's not my favorite, laura, just to be honest when it's like, oh, I didn't even realize. I mean, the point of a bias, right Is you usually don't realize that you have it. But you know it's so easy in these systems to believe like, especially around children and families, to believe like if you just had what I had, if you just knew what I knew, if you just wanted what I wanted, you would be so much better off. And and yet that actually like dilutes the diversity of what God has created Right, and it assumes that they need what I need and they probably don't. So I think I think one of the cool things that I'm seeing is just this like increasing commitment from people of working together, like investing in locally driven solutions with local leadership, from local communities, where I'll give you an example Like my husband leads this alliance here and it's like him and all Peruvians, and he is a non-voting member, so he's coordinator, he brings people together and he is so good at not inserting himself in things.
Speaker 1:Okay, so he'll come from a meeting and I'll be like, hey, how'd it go? And he'll tell me about it and I'll be like, listen, it's a terrible idea. I do not like that idea. I think it's going to end in destruction, and here's why. And he's like listen, sweetie, I love, I love your gifts and skills here, but the decision's been made. And so the good thing about that is that, first of all, that I'm not in his seat, because this would be a disaster, but that he's saying like you know what we don't have to be afraid of.
Speaker 1:Maybe it does end in disaster, like it's probably not going to be an emergency, right, but more often than not, like it works out pretty okay. And so I think, like being able to have the self-control to remove ourselves and our own desire for, like, dominating a situation is really so important. And I think you know I'm hearing increasing conversation and seeing increasing examples of this focus on this like redemptive and restorative type of intervention where it's saying, hey, like I'm here as your brother and sister, as your equal, as a peer, and I'm also recognizing I don't know what. You know, how can I be of use to you? How can I be of service? Can I be of service and accepting that, like, sometimes we're not useful and that's okay, that's okay, god has other things for us to do.
Speaker 2:I think that that humility doesn't come naturally to a lot of us, especially for, like, well-educated and went to school a lot and we know things and we you know, we know our capacity and have some confidence around that or whatever but having the humility to to take a back seat and let somebody because, honestly, honestly, innovation is the space to try things and fail. That's where learning happens, Like that's, that's a critical part of growth, and when we rush in with solutions, we get in the way of other people's innovation and growth and so yeah, but it's, it's not my favorite, it's not that easy.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so hard we can do it together.
Speaker 2:That's right, we'll be accountability buddies. Just listen more than you speak. That's what I tell myself all the time, just, and every time you open your mouth. It should be a question all the time, just, and every time you open your mouth.
Speaker 1:It should be a question and not like a leading question yes, so anyway, okay.
Speaker 2:Um, for listeners who want to take action but don't know where to begin, what's one thing they can do to be part of building a more connected and healing world for children and families?
Speaker 1:Okay, so I need three. If that's okay, I need three things.
Speaker 2:Go for it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, like really core here, because I believe this with every fiber of my being is really starting with prayer. Okay, and I think that when we're thinking about diving in to the challenges that are being experienced by children and families, especially those who have gone through adversity and trauma, these are, these are holy things, these are supernatural things in those liminal spaces and we cannot trust ourselves to know fully how to respond. Okay, so for me, like it really does start with prayer, yes, praying for them, but often, typically in that process, the Lord is is changing my mind and my heart about how I should engage. And, like, the person that often needs to be changed is just me, right, like it starts with me. And then I think the second piece is just my encouragement is like you need to take care of your soul. It is really going into battle and it sounds very dramatic. Be here like 12 minutes and you'll all of a sudden realize like, oh yeah, I know what she is, she was talking about it is harsh, it is a very you know. Again, like these are the reasons that I want to go mow lawns for a living, because these are like dark things that you're delving into and sad, and like it will bring up your emotions and you'll grieve and you'll lament, and and you need to be pouring into your soul in order to do that caring for the whole person, right your body, your sleep, your relationships, your time of prayer, your being in nature, like being in God's word, like all of these things, you have to feed yourself or you will have nothing to give. And like I can tell you that from experience and like low times of this, you will just have nothing to pour out, and so like the second thing is you've got to take that seriously. It is not selfish, it is 100% needed if you want to do this and you want to make a difference. And then the third thing I think is like leaning into relationships.
Speaker 1:There are no quick fixes here. There are no one size fits all approaches, there's no prescriptions that you can apply and just like all you need to do is see this person for 15 minutes and then they're good. Like this doesn't work that way. You need to do is see this person for 15 minutes and then they're good. Like this doesn't work that way. I was just talking with somebody who is a social worker and she wants to to invest in changing the social work system here. And and I said like really, your best bet is not let me do something and like take it to all these places. Like, perk yourself, find a place that people want to hear what you have to say and stick there. Like, find one department and invest there. Find one family and really get to know them, build trust. Find one organization, start to be part of that regularly.
Speaker 1:Whatever that looks like Like commit, it is a long-term play.
Speaker 1:There are no quick solutions.
Speaker 1:So thinking about like like commit, it is a long-term play, this is not.
Speaker 1:There are no quick solutions.
Speaker 1:So thinking about like what does it look like to lean into relationships and, within that, recognize that you have this high and holy, sacred role of helping to literally rewire somebody's brain to be able to see their identity in a different way, to see the fullness and the wholeness of who they are, to know that they have purpose, to walk with them through difficult things, to persevere through these difficult things, like that is no small thing, and so when we started to recognize the gravity and the magnitude of it, I think that's where we can give it its adequate due and the time and the presence that it really takes to make the difference.
Speaker 1:So it's long, it's slow, there are going to be huge swaths where it feels pretty thankless and when you do it and you look back, you will be like I cannot imagine my life if I hadn't stepped into this space. It would never be the same. I can't imagine that for me. I'm so grateful that God invited me in and that I get to do this, and for all of the amazing people who are doing this and we get to do it together, right, so that's such a joy.
Speaker 2:That does feel like the luckiest. I do feel like the luckiest person in the world to be in this space. Um, often, often, I want to. I just want to point out, before I ask you the last question, that the question I asked you was for people who wanted to take action. What would you? And the very first thing you said was okay, sit down, put your head down, get quiet in yourself, get in touch with God, like, calm yourself, and I love that.
Speaker 2:The response because I think you know even the way that the question was phrased is this sort of American like what do I do? Like what can I do, like what can I do? And the answer is just sit down for a minute and get aligned properly, because this is, this is not it's. It's not a sprint, it's a marathon, this is a journey and you and then to connect with yourself and then connect in relationship, and I just think that's a word of wisdom on a Thursday afternoon and I appreciate you sharing it. So, all right, the last question we ask on Optimistic Voices is usually my favorite and that is what keeps you optimistic or hopeful in your work keeps you optimistic or hopeful in your work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I see evidence of God in this everywhere and I need that, like for my own self. I, you know, you hear the news, you hear the negative. You know you hear the news, you hear the negative. You can easily feel like things are unraveling and he is, he's everywhere, but he is definitely in these really difficult spaces and I think that for me, I often feel you were saying I feel like the luckiest person. You know.
Speaker 1:I'll say, I'll say to our team, like, listen, people work jobs, they despise and they donate money to this ministry and we get the privilege of being able to actually do the work. Like whoa, mind blowing, so grateful. And within that work it is hard sometimes. You know, there, there are those low days, Everyone has those.
Speaker 1:But you see those glimmers of hope, right, you see the kid that should literally not make it for the next two years. They're finding that they're starting an NGO or they're serving, you know little old ladies in their town, or they get connected to somebody in there in this mentorship and they're like taking over a business, like you see these incredible things. You see people who have every right to be better, every right to be better and yet they chose. They choose to serve and give and pour out and make their life count.
Speaker 1:And I think the thing that gives me hope is not just hope for vulnerable people, it's like literal hope for humanity that these people who have nothing that they owe are showing up time and time again saying like I want to invest in other people, I want to sacrifice my own self in this very self-focused world, and God shows up in that and does incredible things. I was thinking one time about the CAFO summit and I wonder. I was thinking about these little like heat maps that they'll have from space, or these maps of electricity, and I was imagining, like from heaven, when you look down on all of these different people who bring very, very different gifts, very different skills, very different contexts, I can imagine having looking down and seeing one of those, and the shape that we make up is the shape of God's heart together. We can never do that independently, but when we're willing to step into these difficult places as imperfect humans and say like to every, to the vulnerable people we're serving, like, hey, you matter and we need you, I think that changes.
Speaker 2:That's a beautiful metaphor. To end on a beautiful image. To end on Nicole, thank you for being on the podcast today.
Speaker 1:It was real, really wonderful to talk with you today. Hey, such a privilege. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:Laura, absolutely so. We want to thank the audience too for joining us on this episode of Optimistic Voices. You know we like to say that it's a big messy world out there and there is no shortage of need, but we here at Optimistic Voices believe that with radical courage and radical collaboration together we can change the world. Thank you.
