COVID-19 exacerbated stress and trauma universally, creating a secondary pandemic that increased demand for mental health care in a system on the verge of crisis. An intense and immediate need for population well-being support resulted, and subsequent requests for resiliency training quickly followed. In response, three nurses in Georgia certified to teach the Community Resiliency Model (CRM) fast-tracked existing efforts to share this mental wellness training program across their state.
I remember one of my first in-person meetings with Dr. Lindy Grabbe (pre-pandemic). Almost immediately she invited me to her home for a potluck dinner with several peers to discuss trauma informed efforts and break bread. At the time I was very pregnant and very overwhelmed with work and life having recently been named executive director of Resilient Georgia. However, I left that evening feeling inspired and excited to get to work. Lindy has that effect on people. That was the evening I started to really understand the Community Resiliency Model (CRM).
Following that initial dinner, we had a series of calls and conversations about how to get CRM out statewide to different sectors and all walks of life. Simultaneously, I was busy trying to understand my new role, build our organization, understand all the partners at the table, and not drown in the acronym soup that so many people were using in my new day to day. (Googling acronyms almost never works!) Fast forward three short years, and we are in a place that I am so incredibly proud of and so indebted to these three women for getting off the ground.
Dr. Grabbe and her colleagues, Dr. Jordan Murphy and Dr. Ingrid Duva, are among Resilient Georgia’s closest partners and friends. They have delivered trainings across the state to all walks of life. They have helped so many understand their own resilience (myself included) and invited the masses to speak freely about their daily stressors; but more importantly they provide them with tools needed to combat stress. Resilient Georgia, in partnership with the Center for Interrelational Science and Pediatrics, is proud to provide this training. These tools are easy to use, easy to understand, and easy to revisit over and over again. See their most recent article published in the American Journal of Public Health.
If you haven’t had the chance to meet one of these three amazing women, I encourage you to do so. Sign up for a training, share this article, or contact us to learn more. Stay resilient!