 So it is my absolute pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker for this morning, Tanir Kain Muldrow. She is indeed the true embodiment of a survivor and an internationally recognized trauma-informed care expert. She's a powerful speaker and author, and I know many of you have heard her speak in the past. As I said earlier, I heard the murmurings about how excited you were to hear her again this morning. Ms. Kain Muldrow speaks from a place of authenticity and firsthand awareness. Given her experiences, she has focused her life on heightening knowledge of the characteristics and effects of trauma, and improving the performance of service providers, government, business, and others who interact with trauma victims and survivors. She says trauma-blind spots distort perceptions lead to costly mistakes and limit the possibilities of victims and survivors. She's here to share with us her story, her struggles, and her survival, and to move us all to a higher plane. Won't you welcome please Tanir Kain Muldrow. OK, can everyone hear me? OK, good. So I am pleased to be here. So let me start off by saying I will be here, and then I'll moderate the panel. And then I have to leave, like, dash back out. I was just opening up the Baltimore County Schools Conference this morning at Martin's West. So I did the keynote rush here to be with you guys, and I need to go back there to close them out, because they're greedy like that, OK? Yeah, yeah. So I am pleased to be here. I travel the world. I travel all around the world. I'm never in Maryland. So it's really good that this week, I have been spending so much time with providers here in Allen State of Maryland. Yesterday, I was working with Andorunda County Medical Systems, the nurses and the emergency teams there. So it is good to be here. I see a lot of familiar faces, so I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to be here. You know, my story is a story of hope. I really, I am a vessel of hope. I take no credit for where I'm at today. There's nothing in me as a human being that could accomplish what has been accomplished in my life over the last 15 years. I give all glory to God. Let me just start off by saying that. You know what I mean? I'm not going to go pin a castle on you, because I go to a Southern Baptist church, because I only need one hour of power, OK? And I pass the gold plate if I speak. If I can't hear one more amen to gold plate coming around, I'm just saying. So my story is a story to get you fired up again, right? You know, I grew up in the projects. Well, let me be politically correct. Urban community, you know, the hood. So we used to have this stove where the pilot would go out all the time. And I was always the chosen one to blow up with my mother. You know what I mean? Because you're going to need, give me the newspaper. I didn't know back then how quick newspaper burns, you know? So I'd go get the newspaper. She does, she'd roll it up in. And she likes it, and she likes the pilot, because if she didn't like the pilot, she couldn't cook. So I'm here to light your pilot, to get you excited about your work, and the work that you are going to do to let you know, no matter how bad it looked, there is hope. And to let you know that you don't have the right to deem somebody hopeless. Please don't give yourself that. That is not your right. This is my belief. Nobody can change my mind. We are created in the image of the Almighty God. We are worth saving. So my story is going to get you jumped up, get that fire started. When you leave, you're going to be like, I'm going to save a life. At age nine, I created a belief system that I am nothing. I never amount to anything. And this is just how it's going to be for me. Thank you. I knew that some people live in these wonderful houses on the hill, and have these families that hug them, love them, and protect them. And some of us just lived in an alcoholic abuse of household like mine. And that's where you stay. At age nine, I had about seven and a half brothers and sisters. Always say half, because my mother was always pregnant. I never really knew where babies came from. I just knew she kept bringing them home. She would be like, I'm taking the trash out. And then two days later, she would come back with her baby at all. Don't know what's going on at that dose, the lady. But you might want to stay away from that for a couple years. I'm just saying. And so whatever has happened to my mother that has never been identified, addressed, and treated, it prevented her from the natural. It is not natural to have kids and not do everything you can for them, right? That's not natural. So it's something that's happened to prevent that in her life. So I thought that I had to be the one to take care of my brothers and sisters. Malestation and sexual assault started very early on in my life. And I never really understood how a grown man, who body was so big that it covers my child body, would find any pleasure out of hurting me. But because I had that belief system that I am nothing, I never melt to anything, there was something else that birthed out of that. And it was bad things just happened to bad people, right? So if this very, very bad thing has happened to me, that must mean I'm a very, very bad child. So I tucked it inside of me. And I didn't want to expose it. Because maybe I exposed just how bad of a child I am. I'm able to go to school a lot because I have to stay home and take care of my sisters and brothers when my mother didn't return home at night at times. She's an alcoholic. She would just go drink with her friends. This didn't come home. But after missing two and three days at a time, I will always go back to school, always giving my missed lessons, always passed off to the next grade, but nobody ever asked why. Why are you missing so many days? If there was any communication with my mother, there were no consequences. Because I was always just passed off to the next grade. Also started drinking alcohol around age nine. I used to wander into the living room after those last night's parties. And I would find these half-filled cups still sitting around. And what I realized was when I drank these half-filled cups when my mother was making me down call my names, it didn't feel as bad anymore. And when the men came, it didn't feel as shameful or painful. So I would seek out these half-filled cups to help me to deal with my reality. This is a photograph of me around age nine. I remember getting ready for it. We called it Free Pitcher Day. Because the time, she's shaking her head already, because the time back, you could go school and take pictures. And they would actually send the whole packet of pictures home in hopes that somebody's going to pay. How many of y'all got free pictures back in the day? When my mother, one of them people that messed that up for us, because now, when my daughter get her pictures once they money before or on a day, or your child not getting snapped, it's just simple as that. So I remember getting ready. I remember washing out this red and white connector polyester shirt with a bar of ivory soap trying to get it clean. After picking up off a pile of dirty clothes that we also use for toilet paper, getting a straight part to make these two perfect ponytail and brushing my teeth. I brush my teeth a lot, not because my mother said brush it in the morning after every meal, or because she would take us to the dentist. She's never taken us to the dentist. I brush my teeth a lot, because in my mind, my child's mind, I thought if only I could brush away the smell of the men. When they said, force them some in my mouth or around my face, is I could just brush the smell. See, no matter how much I brush my teeth, no matter how much I wash my face, the smell always seems to be there. So I would brush and brush and brush, but I didn't know anything else about any other hygiene, how to properly wash myself and clean myself. So my nickname in elementary school was Tissie Nene, because I always smelled like urine. Well, I had a whole bunch of babies sleeping on me tonight. Somebody would always pee on me. I would wake up in the morning, run into the bathroom, take an old beater toothbrush, stick it in a box of baking soda and brush and brush and brush. But I didn't know how to take care of myself otherwise. So when I would get to the school house, the kids would circle me and call me Tissie Nene. I would break through the circle, go into the bathroom, huddle down and cry. The teacher would come and get me, start today's lesson, but again, never ask why. Well, eventually, there was a complaint against my mother with the Department of Social Services around age 11. And when the social worker walked into our apartment seeing the filthy conditions we were living in, she immediately removed us from the household. And as you good folks know, there's not one family sitting around waiting to foster so many kids together, right? So we were separated. And we was put into different foster care homes, and I was devastated. It was my sisters and brothers that gave me the only joy I had in my life was to be surrounded by them. You know, I know our Child Protective Service were created to protect the child physically, but it has done very little to protect the child emotionally and psychologically, because the process of snatch and place totally disregards children. The only thing that this lady could tell me when she put me in her little white car was, don't cry. It's going to be OK. What's going to be OK? What are you talking about? I don't know why it's so hard for us to treat children like they're part of this process and say, you must be scared out of your mind. I am so sorry this is happening to you, your brothers and sisters, even to your mother. I'm about to take you to a total stranger's house. Somebody you never met probably before in your life, but we believe that this is the best family to take care of you while we try to figure this out with your mom and get you back as soon as possible. It's possible. But instead of that, she said, don't cry. It's going to be OK. And the next day, they sent me this food like nothing other happened. And they were getting reports like this. She doesn't focus well. She doesn't keep up with the class. We think she may have some learning disability. No. You turned the only world I had upside down, and you did not help me with this transition. You made it even worse for me. But thankfully, I was only in foster care for a short period of time. I had a family member who chose me. And she had three daughters around my age. And for the first time in my life, I felt a little safe because nobody was teasing me and nobody was touching me. She fed me. She sent me to school on time. She showed me how to wash myself and clean myself. And I felt so safe that I even tried out for the school play. And yes, there's more black people in Annapolis, Maryland than me. I think in the production world, we call it a tight cast, OK? So when I felt safe, they became my family. And I felt comfortable. Yeah, that's me. That's a little black me right there. And I know. Yeah, that's not the curtain. That's me. But unfortunately, within three years of being with my cousin, my safe cousin, my mother came back and she told me she loved me. I put to that point in my life. I have never remember hearing my mother tell me she loved me. So I didn't hesitate. I ran upstairs. I packed my things and off into the sunset, I went with my mother because that's what children do. They love the people they supposed to love unconditionally. But by then, she had three more kids. So she started to give her even more benefits than another public housing apartment. Within a week, she beat me in the street. I realized she didn't want me back because she loved me. She needed a babysitter. So how do I live with her? And I don't want to live without her. And I remember somebody saying, if you take up all appeals, you'll die. Well, in hopes of dying, I took a whole ball of pills. And when I woke up in the emergency room, with them trying to get the tube down my throat to get the charcoal on my stomach, I could see them talking to my mother off to the side who convinced them that I took an accidental odor on my own prescribed medication. I was released right back into her care. She didn't know what to do with me at that point. So she sent me to live with her sister who did the very best she could. But by age 15, I was an alcoholic. In order for me to stay in school, I had to sip on gin and juice all day long. And it still gave my mother some control over my life. So when this man was eight years older than me, he thought I was cute. And wouldn't mind making me his wife. And he befriended my mother by giving her all the alcohol she could possibly drink. So when it came time for her to sign the merge license, on my behalf, she signed it. I married him. I moved into his home. She moved in with my two little sisters because she had been evicted again. OK. Maybe this older man can protect me from all the other bad men of the world. But this night in shining armor, there was time when I would see his headlights from his pickup truck shining through the limber window when he returned home at night. I was often frozen in fear because I didn't know if this going to be the night that he decided to come in, take his finger after been drinking all night. So wipe his finger. Because if there was dust on his finger, he was going to beat me until he seen blood. Because what he needed to know was what was I doing all day long that I could not dust his house. So there were many beatings in that regard. So when someone came to me around age 19 and said, try this, it was crack cocaine. It was the answer to all of my problems. See, I could just use this drug. And I'm out of anything that ever happened to me. That smell that wouldn't go away. When I used that drug, that smell went away. But there was also a movie that had been developing in my mind over the years. You know the movie of the big man that covered my child's body. And while he was hurting me, he had his elbow up against my mouth so I wouldn't scream. That movie stopped playing when I did this drug. But unfortunately for me, in order to obtain this drug to help me to deal with my reality, I had to do some things. So yes, I stand before you with a criminal record of 83 arrests and 66 convictions. They told me I was going to spend the rest of my life going in and out of prison or I was going to die in the streets. When I would leave a facility, they'd say, see you when you come back, and when I always came back, they'd say, welcome home, you want your old cell, you want your old rubber rug. Nobody ever said, I really hope you give yourself a break. I still didn't understand what was wrong with me, though, because people kept calling me crazy. They still called me crazy mean. So I would check myself into I was 72 hour voluntary mental health unit at our county hospital. And it depended upon what day of the week it was. I went on a Wednesday, I was getting friends, I went on a Monday, I was bipolar, I went on a Tuesday, borderline Tuesdays. They would always give me a different diagnosis. And I would always ask, well, how do you know? I would explain to the psychiatrist that I had been up for seven days straight smoking crack cocaine. They never allowed the street narcotics to get out my system before they truly gave me assessment or evaluation. But I guess you get what you pay for because I ain't have no insurance. They didn't have opening, okay. That was funny in 2016. Hopefully it'll be funny again in 2020. Okay. This is my very first mug shot. I have a good relationship with before his apartment now. We're real cool now. As a matter of fact, as a matter of fact, one of the detectives, he just retired. Well, I'm not, we're very, very good friends. Right now he's an idler. But we're very good friends. The reason why we became good friends is because he was so amazed about the advocacy work that I was doing in the streets where I did all my dirt. I just went back to the streets reaching down, helping people. That's it. The reason why he was amazed because when he was a street officer, he was one of the officers that used to arrest me all the time. So he knew my history. So he would call me up to let me know if something was going on with one of the women he knew that I was trying to mentor off the streets. And I compared this to a young lady that I've been mentoring over the last several years. So he called me up one night, 1145. Let me just say this. If you guys know somebody that uses smoke crack and they don't smoke crack anymore, 1145 is considered late. Let's just say that right now, okay? You don't call me a quarter, man. Now that's gonna be like, you're normal people now. I ain't smoking no more. You know, he called me and I'm answering the phone. You know how you pissed off somebody calling you and you wanted them to know about it? Where you answered the, hello? They can see your head, hello? And he was like, hey, Tony, I don't want you to know if you can come down to the detention center at the booking unit. And I said, hell no. You know what I mean? You just don't call somebody up and be like, come to jail. Who does that? You know, you know. I mean, really, is the budget really that bad now when they just calling people up on the phone? Tell them, look, gas prices high this week. Chief only letting us take out two cars tonight. You know, we're gonna eventually get you anyway. I want you to jump on the public bus and turn yourself in. Oh, by the way, Tanya, we ran out of film, so if you got a picture of yourself, bring that too. I've never been that type of person that turned themself in or even show up to court. It just never really seemed like a win-win situation for me. But he goes on and says, no, Tony, we have Vicki. I know you've been trying to mentor her off the streets. We're just a restaurant, a major charge. Come down and support her. So I go down to the detention center, going back in the security unit, and I'm watching them process her. You know, she was crying so much they had to re-fingerprint her. She was fainting, excuse me, she was faking the fainting, because you know, when we get arrested, we know how to faint on a drop of a dime. I actually know how to stop my vital signs and everything, hoping that this could change their mind. It never works. Don't try that at home, it never works. But I'm watching them process her. She's taking these options through all that. And I think back to my very first major charge, even at a young age, I didn't seem distressed at all. I said, maybe I thought in my mind somebody will finally ask me what happened to you. Instead of what is wrong with you, why can't you get together? Maybe I feel safe. Maybe I get the help I need. Now I don't want to talk to you real briefly about being re-traumatized in the multiple systems I've been in. Let me start off by saying this. This is my own personal story. This is not a personal tag for anyone in your profession. We cool? This presentation is based on my life story, the movie, the book about my life and stories I created to bring a point. That's it, it's my story. Unless you was a provider 15 years ago and around the county, oh, we still may have some issues. All right? I'm from Annapolis. I lived in Annapolis all my life. I just recently moved to Bowie over the last couple of years. I'm from Annapolis. Anybody know Annapolis downtown? We don't have a tremendously high crime rate. Our gang activity just started a few years ago. You know what I mean? So it's a pretty decent town. But it still have all these issues. It's still a town where we had drug addiction, prostitution, all of the things that we had within the urban communities, right? So, but we have one police department. We do not have districts. We're into a neighbor. Let me say that. So the same officers, the officers that was arresting us was the same officers all the time. So I had made a deal with these two guys once. And the deal was this. If you give me this certain amount of crack cocaine, I'm going to perform these sexual acts for you. Well, when we walked around the abandoned building where all this was supposed to play out, they cornered me and they said, you're going to do this, this, and this, and we're not going to give you anything. So after they made me do everything I said, I was, they said I was going to do, they stomped me, they beat me, they stomped me down, they spit on me, and they left me there. So when I was able to get up and come from around the building, I seen a police standing against the cruiser. And when he seen me, he said, well, Miss Kane, we've been looking for you because I had a very true appeal warrant for something. And I'm walking over to him and I beat up very badly. He grabbed my arm, threw it around my back, and threw me against the police cruiser, and it broke my nose over top of everything else. I said, it really couldn't get past it. Where did I look or where did I smell? However, I was a 30-day repeater fender. Every 30 days I've even gone in correction mental health for some substance abuse program. This one particular time I went into the detention, I told him I was pregnant, they took my urine, got my urine mixed up with somebody else, told me that I was not pregnant, but I had a urinary tract infection. And they medicated me as if I had this infection that they insisted on. And I took the medicine every four hours when the nurse came around. I had to go to court one morning. I went to use the bathtub, my baby head came out. I was five months pregnant. They shackled me down to the gurney and threw a sheet on the bottom of my body with my deceased baby stuck between my legs while they tried to figure out who was going to escort me to the emergency room. I tell you this awful story for one reason. So often we see people come back and forth into our system and our program on our caseload. And we so easily and rarely make up our mind that everything they say is a lie. We manipulate, we seek some attention. Not for one moment in this whole facility, this medical department, did anybody say, hold up. Maybe this woman or more of her body than we're allowed on her. Maybe we should retest her just to make sure we're not wrong. It could have been prevented. Peerway may get a little tricky. Are there any public defenders here? Anybody with a public defender in their past life? Anybody want to be one of the next life? Where I come from and my experience with public defenders is this. You didn't see them and tell them morning of court. So we call them public pretenders. Then they will always come to court with a whole bunch of fouls. Nothing will be inside your foul. But on the front up there in that corner on those black lines have your name, your age, your race, and how many kids you have. That is your defense no matter what your crime is. Around my 40th arrest, the state is reading off my record. Possession, possession, paraphernalia, prostitution, theft, prostitution, possession, violation, possession, paraphernalia, theft, paraphernalia, possession, possession. So the judge says, huh, does this young lady have a drug problem with my public defender? She must have went to the same school I went to. She said they court ordered me to a 28 day substance abuse program. Right here in Bolton, Washington. 28 days were just enough time for me to get some rest and figure out how I was going to get high again. This is after 16 years of drug addiction, even longer alcoholism. And they all did the same thing. It would take us a whole week to tell us what we better not do. They had this one rule of regulation called the buddy system. So this is how the buddy system works. When you arrive to the program, they buddy you up with somebody else in the program. Here is why I had an issue with this. Hold up, sir, come back. She's gonna crack too. So at the end of the day, we talk each other into getting high. I'm jumping the fence to help pulling her over so you're gonna lose two instead of one. Around the second week, they start to give us a drug education court. They want us to know the natural names of the drug that we're putting in our system. Around the third week, they will show us pictures of unsafe homemade utensils. Please tell them we're unsafe because that's addict. That is our number one concern is safety, okay? And finally before you graduate, they tell you how to affect your brain. You need to know what it used to be called. I need to know what it's called now. See when that smell come back to feel like it's gonna choke the life out of me. I need to go get it and get it quickly because if I don't, I'm probably gonna blow my brains out. Know how to get it in my system safely. That's why I'm in your drug program. And who cares how it affects my brain? Tell me how to live a different life. How not come back and forth into the system? But this first court order program, I felt like there was a glimmer of hope because I seen people, they would look good. They sound good. So I got excited. And they told me I had to see the intake worker. And she said, Ms. Cain. And she waved me in the office and this is what this lady did. She said, have a seat. She said, Ms. Cain. Have you ever been a victim of domestic violence? I said, lady, every man I had went upside my head. She said, it's out of y'all. And she just checked the box. And then she said, well, Ms. Cain, have you ever been a victim of sex? So what? A view. I said, lady, I've been beaten and raped so many times I stopped counting them. She checked the box on this one page form, saved it inside a file, filed it away, never to be seen again. After telling this woman all the sufferings and violence by the hands of men all my life, I was assigned a male counselor. Let me tell you something. If you don't get anything else out of my presentation, please give them a budget. Are you guys ready? Come on, you ready? Because don't make me become the minister, really. I'm gonna be like, tap your neighbor. Tap your neighbor. Because I can't go there. You don't see the naughty noun. You will by the end of my presentation. Trust me, you're gonna see more of God unless and me by the end of this, I promise you that. When we come into your programs, when we come into your facilities, when we end up on your case, so guess what? We come with the hopes that you know what you're doing. Half of us don't have the willingness or the desire to wake up day after day. So when we hobble through those doors, broken in spirit, in mind, in body, we expect you to know what you're doing. So if you tell me that this man is the best thing for me, who am I to argue you're the expert you are? So I was compliant in this program, I graduated. And even though they deposed me right back into my drug infested neighborhood, I still stayed clean that first week. I couldn't believe it. I went to aftercare and they said, keep coming back, don't stop before the miracle. I went back home, stayed clean another week, two weeks in the same drug infested neighborhood. I was able to get a ride to aftercare, but I couldn't get a ride from aftercare. My drug counselor, who I was assigned to on this program, I was court ordered. And he offered me a ride home, but he made a pit stop to pull me out of his car, pushed me down and he raped me from behind. And when he pulled me up by my hair, he said, no sense telling anybody, you just a cracker, you just a prostitute, nothing, he threw me to the ground. I'm not making excuses for this man, but we truly understand the impact of trauma. Up to 92% of incarcerated girls has been exposed to emotional, physical, sexual abuse, given my answers to the intake form. Just maybe, just maybe. A male counselor wasn't the best thing for me after all. He has been held accountable for his actions. Always, always put into seclusion and restraint. I was that angry out of control inmate and shooter with more medicine, mental patients, that was me. One of the worst things you can do to somebody is it's a victim of neglect and abandonment, put them in a room, shut the door and walk away. Because my issue with my mother was always triggered. And nobody's helping me to identify, address, or treat my trauma. So I do the only thing that I know to do and that is to tap into my survival mode. And my survival mode has always told me to fight because I didn't know there was any other way. It is hot, and you know, it's hot in here. I'm sorry. I am so glad that I get to find out where he is so I can live right. So I ain't got to find out where eternal he is, right? I'm always put into seclusion and restraint. And it will come with the tray of medicine. I smack it on my face and now they're on a walkie talkie calling the code. People running towards me and usually men. Do you truly understand they were coming to restrain me? They to restrain a rape victim. Somebody that has been held down and raped multiple times caused more traumas, layers and layers of it, taking me even further away from the possibility of healing or recovery. Not intentionally, I know, but because we again, we don't understand the impact of trauma. We sometimes, oftentimes cause more harm. Always, always over-medicated. And truthfully, I'm gonna keep it real. I actually appreciated the free hide. You know, I wasn't one of the people like, I don't want your medicine. I'm like, where the nurse? She's late. She's late. But unfortunately for me, for bipolar disorder, they would give me thorazine, adavine and lithium at the same time. Somebody please help me hold my head up, talking about the drool out the corner of my mouth. Again, make it impossible for me to heal. As a result of rape or prostitution, my children were conceived. I never knew all but my first child. I never knew if my children, father was my rapist or my trip, but they were my children. And they were rightfully so removed from my care. Rightfully so. I would try to go visit my children and say, no, Miss Kane, you lost parental rights. And I asked, can I see two of my kids once? Because I was thinking, if only I had the opportunity to put their heartbeat against minds one last time and whisper in their ears, I'm so sorry. Maybe one day they'll be able to feel my love. Since I couldn't show it. So she told me when to come back. She said, I'll let you see your kids one last time. And by then I was a whinoa, the type of whinoa that's sitting in front the liquor store at six o'clock in the morning, begging for some change to get a pint of wine to get the shakes off. But I decided this morning I'm not gonna sit in front the liquor store. I'm gonna, I'm ejecting to the bathroom. I put soap in my mouth, underneath my arms, try to smell the best I can for my kids. Because I just need to put their heartbeat against minds. And when I arrived to the Department of Social Services, they put me in a room. The light came on on a one side mirror. They allowed me to watch my children with their new mom. They couldn't see me, but I could see them. I wasn't getting the opportunity to say I'm sorry or put their heartbeat against mine. When I left there, she gave me this. She put this in my hand. She said, this is the last piece of communication you'll ever get from us. This is a closed adoption. Do not contact us again. So I went deep, 19 years, living in the street, eating out of a trash can, prostituting, not allowed to go in anybody's house, being told and treated by the system that there was just no hope for Toneer King. I put this one in for two reasons. For 19 years living as a crack addict, I had really nice teeth, okay? Okay. Right, right, right. Look at those pearly whites, right? So when we were getting the footage about the film about my life, I had a camera crew that followed me for 20 months and so we went underneath the bridge where I spent a lot of my time and my toothbrush and toothpaste was still there. I would get pat down by a police officer, they said, that a weapon? I said, no, that's my toothbrush. Give my toothbrush. I always had to brush my teeth no matter what. And out of all my mug shots, it was a perfect time for intervention. 15 years ago, I'm back down Maryland Correctional Institution for Women for violation of parole and a whole bunch of other new charges. And I'm pregnant, again. And I'm terrified I'm about to lose another baby. And I don't know how I'm gonna live through having another baby snatched from my arms. See, I got used to the beatings and the rape. So used to, I said, put your gun, put your knife away. Just hurry up, so I can get back to what I need to do. I got used to that. But what I couldn't get used to is somebody taking my child out of my arms, turning their back and walking away. So here I was in prison, ready to have my child taken away from me once again. And something dropped in my spirit or maybe I remember somebody saying it, but it was like, if all else fail, why not look up to God? And I laid down in my cell, in my concrete floor, on that concrete floor, and I cried out to God. I don't call it a prayer, but it was an eerie cry of desperation. I said, God, I don't know if you listen to people like me, but if you do, please help me. Please don't let them take this one. And after I found out about this program, I mean, after that prayer, I found out a program that said it'll work on my trauma, my addiction, my mental health, my recovery. See, I really think these people can help me at this point. After 31 other failed treatments, no. But they said, you get to keep your baby with you. And I was thinking, if I can hold on to this one for more than three hours. So I wrote a request to go to this program, and it came back stamped that I was ineligible for this program, because you had to be eligible for parole to go, and just so happened I was in prison for violation of parole, they do not want to have that conversation. And but the Tay-Mart team, even though the warden said, no, she can stay here and do her time, she, they will always stop by to say hi to me when they came, when they interviewed other pregnant inmates for the program. I worked in the library because I was pregnant. And they told me one day, you don't have enough time to there, you're gonna get released in November. I said, yes, when I had my baby in August, even if I could find somebody to keep my baby from August to November, what am I gonna do? Take on these two bridge wings. I said, wait a minute, I need to go court for one more charge. What if I go court and ask the judge for more time? They took that back to the warden. The warden said, if she actually goes in the court and ask the judge for more time out of her mouth, I'm gonna personally find a way for her to go to the program. So the night before court, I'm all excited, cause I'm gonna get me some time. I couldn't even sleep. The next day they say court ladies, I was already up and dressed. And when they put me on the van, they handcuffed me to another young lady. So I'm handcuffed to somebody the whole time on the van. And she had my arms stressed out like this. Cause you know, when we go court from prison, we become very religious people. So she in prayer mode. The whole van was singing in gospel. The whole van was Jesus, hallelujah. They ain't people that cussed me out the night before. But I was like, okay, do you? Everybody had a rosary arm. Wasn't nobody Catholic on the whole van? Didn't nobody even know what the rosary was for? I did not hear one Hail Mary. I did not. And thank goodness for those prison ministry people to give it a New Testament Bibles for court. They had their Bibles, they had their crosses. I don't have to do none of that. I'm gonna get me some time. Deputy, I got to the courthouse. I said, deputy, deputy, who's the sitting judge today? When he yelled back who the judge was, I could have passed out. I've been trying to get in front of the judge for years because he's not like to give out time. When I need time, I get this man. Everybody gave me high fives. I was like, Jesus, hallelujah. Let me get that cross real quick. I'm gonna need that today. Cause I was in my eighth month of pregnancy. I've known if I gave birth to a prison, given my history of child protector service, I'd never get my daughter back. But I asked for time, he gave me time and I was able to go to the program. And when I walked through the doors to take my children, somebody greeted me and said, I'm so glad you're here. After 19 years of people shaking their head in disgust, telling me that I wasn't gonna be able to heal. I wasn't gonna ever get better. And I started to work with my trauma therapist. She worked on my neglect and abandonment issues. So I was able to begin healing in that. All the time I was emotionally, physically and sexually abused. We talked about every incident and assault that I could remember. And then she said, we're gonna talk about your children. I said, how can I heal from something that continues to give me pain? Every day that I wake up, I realize I have four kids walking this earth. If I pass them in the streets, I wouldn't even know it. How do you heal from that? She said, you do. You just don't do it by yourself. And then I was in a safe environment and I was getting all the help that I needed. And I was believed in everything. So I was able to begin healing and go through a grooming process of four kids at the same time. So people over the 19 years try to give me bits and pieces of information, but I only get surface. You know, I've seen the commercial. Y'all remember the commercial? This is your brain on drugs. I was a homeless crack addict. When I seen the commercial, I wanted an egg sandwich. I'm sorry, right? And remember how fresh the egg looked? So the bits and pieces of information only get surface. So much pain, so much trauma, pecs, so tight. The bits and pieces of information couldn't penetrate any of that to get rooters so I could build a foundation so my belief system can change from I am nothing to I am somebody and I can be anything I want in the world. And it's when my belief system changed that my thought process changed. And I started to make the best decisions in my life. And the best decisions I ever made was to go through a one-year course and guess what? How to be a mother. Yeah. Because if you don't know, you just don't know. My learned behaviors is from my mother. So I had to learn how to be loving and nurturing and protecting. I can tell you, my daughter's 14 now. She has a secure tattoo. That's a whole different traumatic experience being a mother of a teenager. It blows my mind. I'm like, I have never been victimized so much in my life. Really. I'm like, all the bees and rapes did not prepare me for this, you know what I mean? Like, really? But she's 14, she's about to go into high school. My daughter, she has tested in the Hydrocentyl Annihilation for several years for the National Standardized Test. She's been taking, for instance, first grade four times a week, so she's almost fluent in French. She's like this just really, really smart kid. And she's, but she's still a teenager. But what a difference it made in her life. They treated my trauma with the hopes I'd sell their system and it worked. But I often wanted to, they realized that treating my trauma was going to break that generational cycle in my family. See, my daughter doesn't know it was like, not to be hungry, not to be like, she goes to the best private, rated the best private school in Maryland, the key school. So, yes, I am living the American dream. I'm in debt, there you have it, you know what I mean? So they used to kept taking pictures of me and my daughter while I was in the program. I didn't understand why they keep randomly showing up, taking pictures. And they were showing us these pictures. And this is to me with my daughter and while I was still in the program. And when I see that, seen that picture, I knew things were changed. So she, I was able to form a secure attachment and maintain the attachment. 15 years ago, I cried out to God to help me. I never had another desire to use drugs, alcohol or even smoke a cigarette. It's been 15 years with about one desire. Those of you that know him, like I know him, we call that deliverance, okay? I'm no longer on psychotropic, even though I had some girlfriends be like, girl, you might want to rethink that thing from time to time and get yourself. I graduated the program, the program was in Park High 70 in the Drug Infested Neighborhood, the program that I went to. I graduated the program in 2005 and I went into my own little apartment in Baltimore County with my little mice, me, my daughter and the community of mice that I had. But I was so grateful to have this opportunity. But they did not just put me in an apartment and expect me to know how to be a homemaker. They did. They taught me how to create a budget. I said, lady, I get a welfare check, how you budget that? She said, you do. They taught me how to open up a check account, how to pay bills. They said I had to pay a BGE. I thought it was a drug deal I owed. You know, I, you come to find out with Baltimore Gas Elections, who kinda is like a drug dealer, but you know what I mean, but you know. But they didn't assume. And because I had somebody to do that for me, within 18 months of graduating drug program, I built my own home. And it was, it was such a big deal back then. Baltimore Sun, such a big deal. Baltimore Sun ran like a four-page article. I think one of the hitings were Crackhead Builds a House. The wonders of the world. Today, I am CEO and founder of four different companies. I have many employees and programs and things like that, thank you. I'm an award-winning film and TV producer. We have several films that we produce. One of our new films, we have two new films that's coming up. One is called Walking Through Bullets, the gang-related film. And then we have another one that is called The Unseen Village, which is a film that I filmed in Nigeria last year about the girls returning to the village after being kidnapped by Bill Caron. So we have two amazing, amazing films, a new TV show that's about to hit air called Restoration. We're excited about that. We're gonna be filming some of that in Baltimore City as well. So we're excited about that. Also, I just was awarded my own talk show. So, yes. I will be actually in the studios next week to start shooting a couple of first episodes. So everything that, all of my content is inspiring, uplifting and give-holds. Work with a lot of different networks. Got a lot of different people in some very, very high places that we are just doing tremendous things that impact the world, that impact the world. This is my production company. So whenever you see that logo in credits, you'll see, y'all gonna be like, is that that crackhead meme? Y'all not gonna, y'all not gonna stay till near came. Y'all gonna be like, you remember that crackhead that spoke at our conference? I just seen her logo on this TV show. I said from jail to Yale, right here's a picture of me giving a lecture at Yale Law School. I travel the world, I'm known in 100 countries for my work and do my films, my book, my speaking and educating. I'm the former team leader for the National Center for Trauma and Form Care. So I'm considered one of the leading experts in our nation on it. I'm an author. This relationship after trauma is a new guide book that I developed to help people work through their trauma and develop some healthy tools. That is pre-order now and can be available. It'll be shipped out in August, but and then the study guide for the film Healing Needs and then all of my training manuals that we use to train the providers around the world on trauma and form care. There is no black people in South Dakota other than me that day. I was trained, I go to South Dakota almost every year to train the Supreme Court system and the court system. They always make me come in November and December which is the coolest thing ever. They've invited me to South Dakota but that is them holding up my book. They brought 500 copies of it. This is my daughter. Last year she won the Humanities Award, the book, The Letters of a Congress. She came in second place in the state of Maryland, 1,800 submissions and 60,000 in the nation. Her award came with cash. I get awards all the time. Mines don't come with cash. One of the most difficult relationships I ever had was being married. I don't like being married most days. It has nothing to do with my husband. He's an amazing man. It has nothing to do with him. It has something to do with the fact that I am a survivor of domestic violence and sexual abuse so I'm triggered all the time. My husband had to learn how to be rejected over and over again until I was able to find healthy tools. You know what I mean? To self-serve, self-regulate so it wouldn't impact him in a negative way. It takes work but it can be done. And when we, our marriage is on the rock of Jesus Christ so we do a lot of prayer, you know? And so a lot of relationships that do have to, trauma survivors have to go through, man. It's just, we supposed to live on life terms but as the trauma survivors, it's a lot different. It's a lot harder for us. You know, especially those of us that are children of God because the word of God tells you one thing in the world says, reclaim your body. And the word of God says, no, no, your body not yours no more. You can't deny your husband like, huh? And you know when you don't want to do what God said, you want to pretend it's Old Testament? You want to be like, you want to say, that's when we couldn't eat pork. That's before the blood, you know? No, there's a New Testament. So just learning how to live life on life terms. So what if at age nine, somebody recognized my trauma, I had the opportunity to embrace trauma treatment. The school employees and everybody was trained, was trained in how to deal with me, and it's possible that this woman could become, that child could become this woman. This is Marilyn Mosby's, a state attorney, Marilyn Mosby presented me with a citation for some work, for appreciation for some work that I do in the nation, and in Baltimore City around trauma and form care. We're actually opening up a trauma house in Baltimore, and we're building a whole wellness center. So we're excited to bring that to Baltimore City. This is a man, Belishek Georgia, not the state Georgia, but the country over top of Turkey. Last year I was asked to come and give a keynote presentation on the need for people to access legal aid in a criminal justice system for free around the world. So I presented to 60 dignitaries from 60 different countries last year, impacting 60 countries at one time. Three of my four kids has been restored to my life. That's my youngest son giving me away at my wedding. So what if this woman was yet again in your program, in your system, on your case, so 83 arrests, 66 convictions, 19 years of drug addiction, being diagnosed mentally ill. In the past, would you be able to look at her just like that? Be on community member, family member. 83 arrests, 66 convictions, 19 years lost, all her kids. Here she come again. Would you truthfully be able to look at her and imagine me today? Truthfully, do we truly believe in the people that we serve? This is my belief, nobody can change my mind. We are creating an image of the Almighty God. We are worth saving. We are worth saving. So would you be able to look at her and imagine her on the red carpet in Hollywood ready to receive an award for her work? Where there's breath, there's hope. Remember, when you make somebody feel safe, they will be in power. They'll start to see that they're worthwhile and they'll be able to become the survivor. Always remember how bad it is. No matter how bad it looks, where there's breath, there's hope. Treat the trauma. You will get different results. I'm your evidence. Thank you. There is nothing to say after that. So I am not even gonna try, except that you are amazing. That's simply amazing. And for you to share, not just today and with us, can hear back there, okay? Not just today and with us, but across the world. I mean, your story. And it gives, I said I wasn't gonna try. And here, I'm talking. I hate when people say, you have anything to say? No, and then they start talking. And I'm doing it. But you deserve it. And thank you so much because you have embodied the things that we have begun to talk about, which is learning and understanding about someone's trauma and knowing what you've said. Never give up on someone and there's a way to intervene and to do something for somebody. So thank you ever so much for that presentation. Tenir talked about her publications and when you came in, you got a raffle. There will be some raffles at the end of the day for a signed copy of her book, Healing Neen. It is, as she is, a powerful read, I tell you. So you'll want to be here for that. Gotta be here to win. All right, let me just quickly move us on to the youth and young adult panel that Tenir will lead for us. We have several brave young people who have agreed to come and share their stories, their triumphs, their struggles with us. It's all very personal and I know that so many of you raised your hands right at the beginning and said, yes, we work with children so you'll know how to receive them. I'm sure, correct? Yes? All right, all right. So I'll call their names and they'll come forward. We're talking first names only. The first is Leo. Leo is a high school graduate and I am happy, wait, wait, I am happy to tell you. He's a high school graduate but guess what? In the fall, he is going to the University of Virginia on a full scholarship. Kairi is 19. She's a college student and she is studying psychology in order that she can assist young teens as well who are enduring their own personal struggles. So Kairi, I do know a little bit about this young lady because I visited one of her support networks recently. Chante is a rising high school senior and she's got her network here with her today. She has experienced unbelievable familial loss in recent times and she may talk to you about that. Danita is 15, here she comes from the back. She attends Douglas High School. She's here to talk to us about her life but I will tell you that little birdie told me that she has an incredible artistic gift and someone may just want to ask about that. I'll leave that teaser out there. And Mike is another artist. I met Mike earlier today. Mike appeared for two seasons on The Wire and has since written a series of short films about issues related to addiction and homelessness in city communities. So it looks like I don't know what I'm doing. That's exactly what you said. I'll let you know so they just kind of, some people just throw stuff up in the contract just all willy-nilly like do we want to add a panel? So it is, it's a pleasure to be up here to moderate this but to spend some time with you guys just want to make sure and have the audience be able to act. Do we have an order? Okay, I see. Oh, well, I mean, I think it's important that we at least have everyone introduce themselves and tell a little bit about themselves. So let's start there. Leo, since you hit the table first, you tell us who is Leo? Hello, everyone. My name is Leonardo Acosta. I am actually one of 11 children. My father has married six times and my mother was the fifth wife. So that's a little contact about me. I just graduated high school and I will be attending university through my own perseverance and help with my guidance counselor who helped me socially and academically get through everything. My name is Kyrie. I grew up in a single parent household with the help of my amazing mother and my family and a great support system through my schools and yeah, I am currently studying psychology. Awesome, awesome. Hi, my name is Shanae. I know I have a T in it, T is five words. There with me. I'm a rising 12th grader at Benjamin Franklin High School. I do a lot in my community with the help of the well drink at the well and I would like to think I'm a rising citizen of the community. That's right, that's right. Hello, my name is Donita. I'm 15, going on to 15. In high school, I got a buddy by the time I was 11th grade. I was supposed to skip, but I decided not to be. I had a big grade. Awesome. I was on the roof. I'll play basketball. Okay. Hey, why you doing it again? My name is Mike Wilk. If you guys ever heard about, if you got familiar with Gilmore Holmes, the Freddie Gray Rice and everything, that's exactly where I'm from. My sister used to date Freddie Gray, but I'm here on behalf of just doing a bunch of nonprofit work in Baltimore City and our local community and do them efforts. I was able to link with some people at University of Maryland and they always bring me a board on great opportunities and stuff like this. So I'm just happy to be in front of you guys today and I hope you guys can learn something from it. So I'll start the first question. Do we have somebody for the audience that's gonna be right? Okay, so anybody that wants to answer this, please feel free, okay? You don't have to use your inside voice, okay? What trauma experiences are you familiar with? Either do your personal experience or do an experience with others? Denita? When I was young, I was molested by a friend, close to be friend of the family. My mother is in molested, my grandmother is in molested. Certainly a cycle. Good. So this is a personal experience. I lost my father at the age of five to gun violence. He's a family member and I just lost my mother recently, April 12th, to pancreatic cancer. So I'm dealing with a lot. Yes. Go ahead, okay. Get the mic, baby. How y'all doing again? Mm-hmm. Traumatic experience, I experienced real quick. I don't want to get too much into detail, but if you guys familiar with guns, like, all right, it's an automatic rifle called a Mini Draco and a Mini Draco can hold up to 5,200 bullets. Long story short, wrong place, wrong time. I didn't actually felt like the heat from these bullets fly past my head and there's nothing I was involved with. Like I said, it was just wrong place at the wrong time, anything could happen, so just gotta be super cautious and that's a situation right there that I didn't do a lot of my life, but it's just certain stuff that catch you like, boom. Like, oh shoot, that was close. And earlier you said, on the board, I saw something say retraumatizing or retraumatizing. And I can get into detail later about how that situation right there got worse once police and everything got involved. But that's a crazy situation right there and it got a lasting effect on me, ducking bullets and you don't even know like what's going on, who's doing it, or why it's going on, so. For me, the reason why I was brought up in a single parent household is because my father actually is, he has PTSD and because of that, he started using. So yeah, he's been in and out of my life, most of my life. Hello again, the reason I was called to speak here is because of the domestic violence that I've experienced in my family, not only that, but child violence as well and that's pretty much it. And so just listening to just five individuals here, we heard about domestic violence, right? Which we know is traumatic for children, as well as the person, the victim as well. PTSD, a lot of our veterans and a lot of people that experience trauma exactly, because we don't have systems that well in the United States to cope with those that returning to our, and our country from war or even just not even, just even being, going through the training, they said it's just so vigorous that there's just nothing to prepare them. And that has always been drug addiction, Vietnam war, look at all the people that came back because they were actually issuing drugs to them to help them to cope. So we hear about that, we hear about your father being killed, I mean, community violence. And I think a lot of times we forget that community violence is traumatizing for those that witnessing it. We so focus on let's deal with the violence itself and we should, but how are we dealing with the people, the children and those that got, these kids that got to duck bullets and be so traumatized by that. So any questions from the audience regarding what we just asked? Not so much what was asked, but I noticed that one of the things that each of you mentioned was a relationship or relationships that was critical in what you're doing or how well you're doing. Can someone just speak a bit more to the power of relationships and how that's been helpful in managing some of the things you've had to go through? Like relationships with people that help you like impact the life and stuff, it's just like when you go through something, you gonna need love. That's what anybody, you gonna need love. If you don't have love, that's it, that's nothing. Love, when you got love for people, that's it. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, support, that's it. Yeah, that's what, excuse me y'all, but yeah, that's what I was about to say. It boils down to just having that support system, just having, just feeling like somebody care, because at the end of the day, it's like once you feel like nobody care about you, you start thinking on different levels of stuff like, all right, well, if nobody care about me in this situation, well, the fact that nobody care about me, I'm gonna go do what I want because I ain't affecting nobody, or, oh, I need $20. Nobody try and give me no money, I've been, you feel me, your mind just going, make you do certain stuff because you think people don't care about you and having them people in your corner and everything, like I'm gonna quick story real quick. Before I joined University of Maryland, don't work with Miss Kay and Miss Brittany and everybody. I never worked the day of my life. This was about four years ago, I ain't know how I punched a clock, ain't like, say for instance, somebody be like, hey bro, if you punched this clock, I'll give you a million dollars. That's a million dollars, me and my mom just won't have because I ain't even know what punching a clock was. So it just became a point, like after the Freddie Gray rides and everything, you know, they was hitting the CVS, it's taking the prescription medicines, the under the count, all types of medicines and everything, and it just was like, all right, the fact that nobody care about me and the fact that nobody trying to help me get no money or anything, it's just like, all right, I got connections in the street. I know these people, it's easy to do this, easy to do this. And it just was like, all right, I can go to these people for this type of help and they can lead me down this road, but I never had like, no like universal type of help or people that actually care. So once I found out like, oh all right, it's people I can talk to about my situation, oh all right, it's people that actually care about my situation. It helped me to stop thinking like short term, like all right, I gotta get this $50 right here. It started helping me think like, oh all right, these people got money in their account. I want money in my account, you feel me, these people. So it's just all boards down to having that support system. At the end of the day, it can change your mind. There's so many different ways, but just having somebody say, I love you. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, you know, that is, support is so important and support don't, like you said, don't have to come from family. And you think about Leo and you talk about domestic violence. A lot of that is we taught that keep it inside the house, don't tell nobody, because your love for your parents, you don't want nobody to get told on you, you don't want to be taken away. But where do you go to support? Did you have support? There was anybody there to give you support? So that's gonna talk about how I believe that relationships are very important. So in my household, of course, we had a divorce and I was eight years old when this time happened. So I kind of lost that support of who to talk to you about. I didn't want to talk to my mother, I didn't want to talk to my father because he wasn't home, he abandoned us for eight years. I didn't want to talk to my sister because it was kind of a vow of silence. And once my stepfather came in, I just had a lot of distrust and it only started bettering my situation when I opened up to my friends and my guidance counselor on how I can be open about my emotions, what's going on, and finding help through a psychiatrist and just talking to people. I realized that I built a lot of distrust over that period of time, kind of the term love. I didn't really believe it too much until people really showed it to me after I opened up because I didn't allow myself to kind of experience that love. Awesome, awesome. Another question from the audience before we go to the next. It seems like all of you are very active and I wanted to know what is the hardest thing that you go through trying to help your friends? I have grandsons I'm trying to help in. I'm out of touch with this age, so help me. So I have a couple of siblings that are younger than me and what I found that helps them get through what they're going through, you have to find things that they like. If you don't spark their interest, they're not gonna care, they're just gonna shut down. It happens to me. If you find something that they like, like little things like Legos or playing with like their teddy bears, if that shows their interest, if that shows them that you do that with them, it shows them that you're interested in what they wanna do and it helps them connect with you on their level when they're ready and you can't just force it, you have to more like ease into it because if you force a child, that's automatic shutdown on them. So I learned that the hard way with my little brother. And mentoring ship, finding good mentors is crucial, especially if they're teenage, are they teenage? Still, young adults, finding good in support with great mentors, men that are mentors, finding that to wrap around them, you know? And if you're gonna take something from them, substitute it with something that they can use. Yeah. I learned the hard way, taking something from someone and not substituting it with something they can use. So, yes or no? I was just curious as to what about the person you opened up to made you feel like you could trust them? Like, how can we convey that to you? So, as said earlier. She asked the person that you opened up to, how did that help you? Oh, how did it help us? Why did you open up to them? Why did you open up to them? So, kind of the idea of no one asked. Actually, someone asked me, that's why. So, being best friends with someone for six years, one day, they finally asked something and I, you know, kind of was waiting for that question. So, I told them everything. That's awesome. So, asking is very important because some people won't take the initiative. And those of you that are providers, if you do ask the question, I always say prepare to hear the answer. You know, don't ask the question just because you want to ask the question. Make sure that you are prepared to hear the answers and be able to get them in a safe place after it. Okay. Ms. Kane, your story showed how when you had asked the question about it, someone had asked you, asked you was everything all right or why you were doing what you were doing. So, I want to ask the children, I'm not the children of the young people that are on the panel right now, have you all received counseling and are now getting help for any type of trauma that you have experienced? Go ahead please. Oh, so when my father passed away, at the time my mom didn't think counseling was necessary because I was so young she thought I would forget. But growing up in Baltimore, it really opened my eyes like everybody has fathers and father-daughter dances and that triggered something in me and I had a really rough teenage year. And now that I'm 18, I'm getting the right mentorship and counseling that I need to cope with the death of my father. Good. And it makes it a lot easier to talk to somebody when they come to you and ask what's going on, how are you getting yourself? Thanks. I was in school one day and we had to do like a test, like I forget what test it was, but it was talking about sexual molestation and all that. So, I had asked one of my administrators, do you have a therapist? So, I went to the therapist ever since I met Dr. Patterson. It been good. Oh, praise God. Praise God. Praise God. Praise God. Praise God. Gracie. What can we as providers do to get the message or build the trust with young adults so that they would be willing to tell us what's going on and not always hiding? Okay. So, I think something that was really important for me was not feeling judged because growing up, like I just had this idea, no one put it in my head, I think it's just something I cultivated myself that what I went through wasn't worth talking about or especially since my brother, so my dad isn't my biological father, but my brother's biological father. So, there'd be times where he'd come to our house and try to steal my brother and my mom would run after him and I would be left there to a neighbor and I'd be like, oh, well, it doesn't really affect me because I'm not the one going through it and all of these things. So, I think I was just afraid of someone being, someone confirming that feeling that I already felt like what you're going through doesn't matter. So, I think something that's really important is making sure that you tell them that there will be no judgment and meaning it because people would say that to me. They'd be like, please tell me what's going on and then immediately, that's not that bad, that doesn't really, you should be fine, yeah, you don't. So, that hurt me and for a long time I kept everything in and that just made it worse and so when I actually did go to counseling, I actually, it was very difficult to open up and I stopped going. So, yeah, create that environment where they feel comfortable. I think a very key character trait to getting someone to open up instead of trust is persistence. For me, as I said before, I was kind of waiting for the question but it's very easy to say no to the first time someone asks. The second time, a little harder and then the third time, that's when I finally broke. Asking, for instance, so my guidance counselor asking me what's going on, what's going on, that's when I finally opened up because in my situation, I didn't really want to open up about domestic violence, possibly having social services coming to my house, separating my siblings who really needed that mother. So, that's my opinion. I have already done it again. I know I said it already, like five times. But, for me, I just find, for me, opening up to someone, all right, I'm gonna start here. Like, you know how sometimes people can say, oh, trauma is bad, you feel me? And low income community, trauma can be super bad but sometimes you gotta turn your bad good when you don't got no other way to go, you gotta make your bad good. And for me, I started using my traumas to make me stronger, like I put it in my head, like, oh, example, say for instance, if it was a trap right here and you knew it was a trap right here and one day you put your foot down and hit that trap. All right, now you know it's a trap right there, you feel me? So, nine times out of 10, you gonna walk around that trap or you gonna tell somebody else like, hey bro, it's a trap right there, don't hit that trap. So, I just started learning to myself like, all right, well, let me present this problem to this person and let me see their body actions, let me see their language, let me see how sincere they sound, let me see if they make an eye contact because you can tell a lot from a person by their body, justice, and you know what's going on in a moment. So, I just trained myself, not like I'm Superman or nothing, but I just trained myself to know if somebody really cared about me, you know? Because it's like, what I've been through is like the average person on Google, so you got like treated like a treasure box because the fact that I've been through that stuff and I'm still here, you really got to treat yourself like prize and joy. So, like being here right now, like it's really nothing to me to open up and share my story because it's like, all right, I've been through it already, somebody else in the audience probably already gone through it so maybe I can help them out. So with me, it's just that understanding, that eye contact that, you know, that vibe, like I'm not no push or nothing, so I just don't, you feel, that's another story, but yeah, y'all get what I'm saying. Yeah, it's just that sincerity. You gotta feel like that person is with you versus just saying, like he said, somebody can be like, so what's going on with you, get the whole drop on you like this and be like, oh, I bet like earlier, the lady with the check, you feel me? The way you was talking, I called it, it's like she really didn't care, but safer as if she was talking to you like, yes ma'am, can I help you with anything else? Then maybe you feel me, the whole vibe would have been different. So it's just that sincerity and that body language and stuff, it'll get you what you need. I like how she talked about judgment, that's important. And then being able to switch it around because so often we as trauma survivors are told what our weaknesses are, but nobody's pointing out our strengths, you know? And I had somebody that actually pointed out that using crack cocaine was a strength for me. I found something that could help me stay alive long enough for me to be able to find help there too. The fact that I was able to find something that helped me to cope enough so I would not continue to try to commit suicide was a strength, nobody ever said that before. So using telling people that the world she is a witness is, it actually has been a strength, but like you said, you're here, I'm here. You know what I mean? So we definitely got to work from that perspective of people. That segues perfectly right into my question. My question is a lot of emphasis when we're talking about trauma is on PTSD and that's post-traumatic stress disorder. But what happens when the person cannot escape that trauma and that trauma is ongoing? And I like to label that present traumatic stress disorder. How do you manage that? And I would think that because you're living in a community, it's ongoing for you. And like you said, you want to speak a little bit more about knowing you still see people, your friends, but fathers in those graduations and things like that. That's like you being triggered all the time, right? I find it really hard to go on with life without my dad because still to this day my friends come up, oh, my father, there's my father, that I can't relate to at all. So when people come to me, I'll just be like, oh, well, I'm happy for you. So like I'll put my mind in a different set. Like if my father was here, what would you want me to say? What would you want me to do? I look through his eyes, I do everything through his way so that I know that I'm making him proud every day. So it's gonna be stressful, it's gonna be take time, but eventually I'll get through it. So that's how I get through it. That's coping, that's coping, that's coping. And for me, it's like no soft story or nothing, but I never met my father. Like, I ain't never say I'm not one time, but I did have a conversation with him on my 18th birthday. I didn't even know he had a Facebook, you know? And the thing was, I was like, all right, it's my 18th birthday. I'm about to take it about. I'm becoming a man. I'm about to go find out who my father is, you know? So I went on Facebook and typed in Michael Wills. That's my name. And he popped up and another picture popped up. So I went on there and I'm like, all right, yeah, this guy look just like the one you feel in my heart. But yeah, he think he got away. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Facebook will find him. Facebook, that's like the FBI. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. I'm telling you, if you're looking for a teacher that you had a second grade type on that Facebook, she gonna. Ha ha ha ha ha. Anyway, yeah, so when I was saying, I'm like, yeah, he look just like me, he got my face features and everything. So I inbox him like, um, what's up, pop? Ha ha ha ha ha ha. I'm thinking to myself, like, should I have a like little sad little soft story that I miss you? Right, right, I'll be keeping it real, right? So I just like, what's up, pop? Try and be like a young adult. He gonna reply back like, you ain't my son, you feel? Like I'm like, it's funny to me you feel because it's like I already made it this long. What else you want me to do? Right, exactly. Just like to understand and like, hey, give me some money or something. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Like, you want to have child support? No, no, you gotta waste, got clean. You gotta waste, got clean. Ha ha ha ha ha. You're in the Alabama now, but anyway, so he gonna tell me, um, yeah, I'm sorry to say, but I hate that I had to get in contact with you on your 18th birthday for one. I got in contact with you, you didn't get in contact. Ha ha ha ha ha. You trying to eat that? You take credit for that. You take credit for that? Ha ha ha ha ha ha. I'm not even mad. So anyway, long story show, he told me, yeah, I didn't know how I'd tell you. That's what I wanted in your life. You not my son, um, we just look super alike. We got the same name, but I'm like, bro, so we got the same name. He gonna say, oh, I forgot to tell you, you got a brother with the same exact same name, too. Ha ha ha ha ha. So I'm like, wow. So I look on Facebook the second picture I saw. It was your brother. No, he was my brother. The same name. I'm like, bro, what's your grandmother name? Valerie, mom, what's your uncle name? Mark, I'm like, oh, shoot, so we brothers, but long story short. I just look at it as, I didn't really look at it as like traumatizing me because I went so far without it, but I really didn't know him. But to answer the question about the PTSD, well, you remember I was saying earlier about retromatizing myself. So after the gunshots and everything went on, mind you, I'm still not understanding myself. I see the bullets flying through the window. Like the bullets were so close, like I can feel the heat. Like every bullet you can hear, I'm just thinking like, I'm just imagining like, oh, shoot my brain. I'm just picturing my opinions. So it's like, you just feel every bullet hot. It's getting hotter and hotter and it's getting louder and louder and louder. So it's letting me know like, what's ever going on is getting closer. So as I just get out of the car and start running, like I said, wrong place at the wrong time, live driver and some trouble you feel me. So as I get out of running this stuff, I still hear the boom, boom, boom. So like, say for instance, there's a pull right here. It's like, I can see the bullets spark and go do the pull right here. Like, boom. And once that happened, I just ran and jumped the fence. But when I jumped the fence, I cut my leg. So my leg bleeding. So now I'm laying on the ground back like, oh, shoot. You been shot. I'm shot, you feel me? So my mind is taking over now. So I got a little cut on my leg, but I'm like this. Long story short, the Uber driver happened to call the police. Police came, found me lying in the grass and everything. And the thing that confused me is, they locked me up. And they gonna tell me, oh, well, we don't know what you was doing or what was going on. So we, God take you into custody and everything. Okay, so they come lock me up and everything. And that's what I mean about retraumatizing myself. So they asked me what's going on. I'm telling them like, officer, I do not know. Like I was getting in the lift. Like I do not know. He just looking at me like, oh, you young dread statue. You lying. He telling me like, you lying. You know what's happening. You know what? You lie again. I'm taking you down. No question. So now I'm in my head thing like, still do I really lie? But I'm sticking to my, like, bro, I don't know what's going on. So his captain, Lieutenant Webber was, came in there. Let me go. So I go home. I'm in a hole. I remember I turned on SpongeBob because after everything that happened, I wanted to feel like a kid again. That's my go to. That's my go to too. Captain Crunch. So now I got a big bowl of cereal. As soon as I do like this, I just hear like a bomb. It sounded like a bomb when I was just in that situation. So now it's just like my any little pop. And I never knew PTSD was so serious. This thing is so serious. Like a knock-a-bark and drop on the floor. You in there like, what was that? Anybody good? Anyway, from that situation right there, time out. I mean, the police come in there. They had like strip wire. And the strip wire, yeah. They put the strip wire on the door. They had the SWAT team. They had helicopters outside, everything. And it just was like, am I Tony Montana? Did I really do something that I don't know about? So long story short, they blew the doors down with the tape wire and everything. Mind you, the situation from that really messed my head up. So now it's like, when that situation happened, when they blew the door down, it just like, it really like, like I'm a strong person. And I've been through a whole, whole, whole lot. Like I handled that gunfire situation. But I think when the police blew the door down, that's what really triggered like my PTSD. And I haven't been to the doctors to get professionally, you know, or nothing like that. But I really do believe that situation right there triggered it, but after that situation, I'm almost done. I just put it in my head because after that, I just started walking around every single day like, oh shoot, somebody else again, I can lose my life any moment now. So I put it in my head like, I'm good. Nothing happening to me. And I told myself like, me worrying is like walking around with an umbrella on a beautiful day, waiting for it to rain. And soon as it started raining, now my umbrella, now I gotta wear it. So I might as well enjoy it. So I just put it in my head like, as long as I got feet and as long as my heart can beat, I'm really not going to put this situation on myself. I just gotta man up and be strong. And that's what I mean by my trauma, my traumatic experiences made me a better person. It probably don't work for everybody, but that's what I told myself. Like I'm not gonna walk around with an umbrella waiting for the rain. So it's easier said than done, but that's what it was. Yeah, yeah. So I do wanna get, I wanna get, because we want the audience to know about some of the things that help you guys. So what was available social support that actually helped me the most? Start with you. Social support? Well, as I said before, the psychologist helped me a lot, posing questions as what I should do. Also, the reality of it is identifying the problem. So when you're living in a household that every day is just a fight and every day you walk into your house, your stress is just increasing drastically. I mean, you can become numb to it. And when you're seeing movies of kids getting beaten, parents getting beaten, you think, wow, this is just reality. This is how everyone's supposed to be. So getting professional help with social work, they really identified the problem that this is not normal, this is not okay, and something has to be done about it. Grace, could you repeat that one more time, please? Can you repeat it? What are some of the social support that helped you the most? What kind of social support are you utilizing now or then? I guess, talking to people, obviously, that could help, but unfortunately for me at a younger age, I didn't do that. Like I said, I just had this wall. So for me, it was more keeping myself busy, focusing on school, which some people can do, and you would never know. People always used to tell me, everyone thought that I was rich, and that my parents were rich, and everything was great in my life. And they'd be like, oh, where do you live? They didn't know where, they knew nothing about me. So that's another thing, just to be aware of the fact that you never know what someone's going through, and you never know what drives them. Like that drove me for school. And just to think about like, my mom making her proud, because she's been through all these things with my dad and with my brother. And yeah, so I think that's what drove me. Being social, trying to be nice to everybody, because I felt abandoned, and I just felt like I needed people around me at all times. So, yeah, that's what helped, kind of. And funnily enough, Kari and I lived in the same community, and every small day in middle school, I'd see her at the bus stop. She had the brightest smile. I literally think she was the happiest person ever. But lo and behold, we're both here now. I love that. I love that. Chantay with a selling tee. They actually called me that in school. So, I think the only thing that helped me a lot was people outside of the home. Because my dad's side of the family disowned me, because they didn't know if I was his or not. It was a lot. I'm the only girl in my dad. I have all 12 of my brothers. I'm the only girl. They never thought he could have a girl. I popped up. Oh, that's not his child. Okay. Just recently, my uncle finally agreed to do a, I guess a sibling uncle DNA test. Wow. So we're gonna get that done, prove everybody wrong. But the only people that I know that was there was me through everything with my mother and Miss Mandy right here, because I would cry all day and they would just hold me and tell me it's okay. It's gonna be okay. They never once, oh, this is your fault. They never once judged me. They never once spoke down on me. They always encouraged me to do my best and be the best version of me that I could possibly be. And you're doing that too. People who helped me was my therapist, my mother and my grandmother and God. Praying, going to church more. Just like, I'm delivered. Like. They're already. And make a long story short, Mike. Mike. You know. I hope your situation can come all through and that's in your daddy. But I know that's my father. If I just put a picture of that, he looked just like me. And the brother that got the same exact name must look just like me. So, and the funny thing is I'm the junior, but he is the oldest one. So I don't know what my father was doing, but. Well, he's doing something. He's doing something. He's doing something. But yeah, to be honest, what helped me in my situation was, like I said, I never had a job or anything since. My first job was 2016 at a nonprofit called Newlands. And from Newlands, I was doing a bunch of nonprofit work in my community. And I've ran into Miss Kay right here. Miss Kay Connors can we clap for her real quick. And I'm gonna just say, the thing that helped me is because I was so installed in my community, I really didn't see like past Gilmore Homes. And it just was like once I linked up with Miss Kay and Miss Britt and the rest of the people at University of Maryland, they really just showed me like it's more the life in my community. Like now I'm traveling around the country. I've been to California. I've been to New York. I've been to Virginia. And it's just been like, I'm just spreading the word to other people that's younger than me, trying to better them. And it's just like, you know you're doing something good when the same people you use the wrong way around the way, you feel me? I'm keep it funky. The same ones that hold on, the same ones that gang bang, you feel me? When you can go back and they can see you starting to be positive and productive. Now they wanna learn how to work a computer. Now they wanna learn how to, so it was like I really do appreciate Miss Kay because it's like I'm the man of my community. You feel me? And it's just like all the good reasons. And I can honestly say like, I appreciate Miss Kay and University of Maryland. Oh, thank you. We're gonna go back to the audience for our students. I'm being a hood no more. I'm being a hood no more. Go ahead. Miss Kay mentioned the essential need of faith in her life. And I'm just curious if you could speak to either the role of faith in your life or what you believe the role of houses of faith should be in the community to make a difference in your world, in your personal life, and also perhaps in the community life. Well, for me, I'm a firm believer in God. And the structure and the relationship for me, it was the most important, not necessarily like, oh, you can't do this and you can't do that. It's feeling connected to something greater than me and someone who loves me when I told myself that, oh, it's not possible. People can't love me because something's wrong with me. People keep abandoning me. There's no way that that's possible. That role of faith was something so important to me. I still struggle with things. It's impossible not to think about something that I had that thought process for so long in my life that it just disappeared one day, but knowing that I'm not alone, like even for people who aren't necessarily religious, the relationship, even with another person or with something like a sport or something can really just bring you up and lift your spirit and make you feel less alone. I classify faith as in having faith in someone helping me. So funnily enough, I actually lost all faith and people helping me. I had an older sister, many older siblings. I thought, why doesn't my older sister go in and stop this chaos? And after my sibling or my sister left the house, I kind of completely gave up on faith. I relied on myself. And that's how I stood up to the problems in my household and finally resolved them by having faith in myself and empowering myself. To make a long story short, I'm gonna. I'm gonna make a long story short. For me, my faith came, like I said, just going through stuff and just at the end of the day being able to overcome it. I just put it in my mind, like I said, I don't like to look at others. I'm super, maybe I do, you feel me? Because I've been through a lot and I'm still here. So the fact that I've been through that and I'm here in front of you guys today, it just shows me like time's gonna get hard but if you just keep rolling, it's always gonna get better or it's always gonna fix itself out. So that's what I'm gonna do. So I just wanna say really quick, someone's gotta take over for me because I need to get back to my other event that I started this morning in Baltimore County. But I wanna personally say God, I love you guys. And I hope you stay connected with me and you guys are so amazing. And I look forward to having you guys work with my organization and do some more powerful work, okay? I'm gonna put a plug in for Mike too. He's an awesome filmmaker too. Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing some of your work. Okay. Okay, so as you're leaving, Miss Kane, I was fortunate to be at one of your trainings a couple of years ago and you really changed my perspective as a clinician in terms of how we treat trauma and you talked about strength-based and it made me and forced me to look at sort of the post-traumatic growth that we see from individuals that sustain trauma. So thank you for that. And then I wanted to go to the panel for that and say just for us as clinicians, I think we often do start with sort of the weakness and I wanna just talk about or hear you guys if you could just share the strength that you all acquired from your individual traumas because I think oftentimes we talk about how it has traumatized you but I also believe that you have gained a bigger perspective individually, culturally as a community perspective. So can you share with us how you all grew from your traumas? So how I grew from my trauma was I took it day by day. I didn't worry about what was tomorrow. I took it from that day. From the moment I woke up, I played my day out. So this is what I'm gonna do in the morning, it's what I'm gonna do in the evening, it's what I'm gonna do in the middle of the day. I didn't go into the future or this is what I wanna do in the future. No, you can't do that because then if something don't go right, you will blame yourself for the rest of your life. That is something that you don't wanna hold on your shoulders. So the strength that helped me was taking it day by day, maybe even hour by hour. Everybody's different. You take it at the pace of you. You don't go to everybody else's pace. You go to your pace. If you feel like you go faster, you go faster. You feel like you gotta go slower, go slower. There's no in between, it's all up to you. Okay, so not to pat myself on the back, but I think I'm a very empathetic person. And yeah, thank you. So I think that's a very, it's a necessity basically because for the field I wanna go into, you have to have empathy. Even if you can't personally, if you didn't experience it, you can't just invalidate someone else's experience because you didn't feel it. So having that, and it's like I have empathy for my father, my brother, my mother, everybody involved. It's just, that's like everybody on this panel, it's just everyone's story is important. So I gained that at a very young age. And I guess trying to be friendly as well, I gained very personable skills because I just, I was so afraid of being alone, so afraid that it helped me, so. Thank you. A strength I received, as I mentioned earlier, is empowering myself, really. So I plan for how am I gonna tackle this issue, how am I gonna resolve this problem? And if others come by, well that's great because you can help me as well, accomplish my goals. And another strength that came about from this experience is just the magnitude of the problem. I mean, domestic violence before, I was so entrenched into it that I didn't realize it was a problem. And now that I'm sought to resolve it, I really see how much of a problem it is, how much it's affected me, my older siblings, and even my younger siblings that are now growing up. So I've become sort of an educator. I worked with the Center of Help, try to help people tutor kids. And even if I stumble upon a problem, as in they are having an issue family-wise, I try to bring it up with the president of the board. Gotcha. Smooth. My strength, I received, I received two strengths. It was, it is resilience and understanding. And I say that because it taught me how to get through situations and it helped me understand, like life not gonna always be peaches and bubbles. So as long as, you know, I can stick that in my head, as long as I stick that in my head, then I won't be let down thinking that my life gonna be great. So as long as I put it in my head, like, all right, I must, I'll probably stumble somewhere, you know. I ain't gonna say I'm expecting it, but you know, I'm just not really putting all my eggs in one basket. So I say resilience and understanding that things can't go wrong so you don't be let down in the long run. Hi, I used to be a correctional officer at Ann Arla County, so I can testify to Ms. Keynes-Cray-Cray days, but she was here and I got to speak to her for a minute, so that was amazing to see her transformation. Wow. But my question for the panel and for everyone actually, tell me how important it was for you in your relationship to have that heartfelt, look-in-the-eye conversation where there's no judgment and nothing but love that is at the base root for your transformation and your journey and what you do, and tell me how you got to that point and by who and how important a mentorship mentor was in that. I got you. For me, like I said, well, really, Ms. Key really helped me out a lot because it was like times in my life where I was confused, I didn't know what steps to take next, and then I just called Ms. Kay and she had just talked to me and she had just let me know like, well, if there's anything you need, just let me know. And a lot of the times when people say that, it just rolls right off their tongue, you know? Anything you need, just let me know. Then you hit them, they be like, oh, shoot, I got you next week, you know? But it's just like, it's good to have people in your corner that their word is their bond, so their word is solid. It's good to have people that you know you can depend on if they say they're gonna come do for you. And for me, it was super easy because it's like, you gotta build relationships with people. Like even if I was the walk up to a stranger right now, it's all about how you present yourself. Like you can walk up to a stranger and you can talk a little aggressive and they can be like, oh, I ain't trying to highlight you or you can walk up to a stranger and you can talk with some respect and sincerity and let them know like you on their page, you try and work with them. So like I said, when I shared my story with Miss Kay, it's just, you know, that relationship was already built. So it was just like, all right, I'm talking to someone that wants to understand what I'm going through and someone that wants to help versus, or I'm just talking to somebody that wanna hear my problem. So it's just that understanding that line right there of knowing who you're talking to and that relationship with who you're talking to. It'll make the situation in the conversation that much different. So I had multiple people try to get me out of my shell but only one really like scooped in there and got me out and once again, it was Mandy. She constantly called me, constantly make sure I was okay even if that meant her coming from, straight from work to come to my house to make sure I was okay and I was eating and I was sleeping if she wanted to go out, I'd go out with her just to get off the house. It was not until after my mom recently passed away when everything started hitting the ceiling and I started getting back into my old habits. So from there, Mandy, I appreciate it to this day that Mandy constantly called me, constantly made sure that I was okay, constantly was just there. She was a shoulder to cry on, a friend when I needed her, a mother when I needed her, which was a lot. She was just the biggest role model that I could have ever asked for. Yeah, nobody's gonna ever replace my mom but she comes so close to being another mother to me that it's like she's the first person I call when I wake up, she's the first person I text when I have great news. So I couldn't imagine her not being able to be there and me not being able to call her or text her about the great news that I get every day. So seeing that and seeing the dedication that she's had to see me grow into the wonderful young lady that I am today, it really inspires me to do so much with my life. Yeah, I'm a little on the rocky road but I got this. And with her help, this is easy. This is easy. That's what I'm talking about. Well done. Is it? One more? One more question? Yes, my question is around one of the statements that was made earlier about having a sport or something that you are involved in. Do any of you have any kind of gifts or talents that you, in dealing with your trauma that you've been able to use to be able to handle what's been going on, even if it's just for a short time or for that moment? And if so, can you just give us a taste? Okay. I would say something that you should, anyone, everyone should do honestly is writing. So many people told me to write and I don't feel like it. I don't want to. That's not gonna help me. And then as soon as I do it, it just, it comforts me to have everything that's in my mind, feeling like so chaotic, writing it down and making it plain, basically putting out your thoughts on the paper. It can be a journal, poetry, anything, that helps. But also physical stuff helps as well, release endorphins and everything. I have like kind of the typical thing that people do. I like to run and I like to play tennis. So I play tennis and run whenever I want to relieve stress or even just go to school. School is a very relaxing place for me because I like to study. And actually studying is another manner that I just release anything that I have just by indulging myself, myself in knowledge. The last, cause I got a poem since y'all. Okay, gotcha. He wants to see a picture. Well, for me, I play XEFL football. So it's funny you see that cause I'm up here rubbing my knuckle. I had a game Saturday day and I messed my knuckle up, trying to catch an interception. I dropped the ball, but it's all good. But yeah, I play football to get over what I go through cause it's like, that's the only sport where you can really like, mm, mm, mm. So, and another thing I found, listening to like Motown music, like 50s, 60s music, bar music. Yeah, yeah. And like Chinese instrument flutes and just like meditation music, like you'll be surprised how deep your mind can think when you by yourself. So meditation if you can. So, sorry. He said he wanted to get a taste of it. So I read poetry a lot and it's more like for my feelings and stuff. So I've seen, so I see that that helps a lot more. So here you go. This was the one I read at my mom's memorial. My world, my everything. I never knew hurt until I lost you. I never knew pain until you took your last breath. But that never stopped me from loving you then or loving you now. I pray every day that you've made it to the gates of heaven. I always thought that we would have forever. You were my world and my everything. I love you, mama. You're youngest. Shanae. Oh. Oh. Oh. Hold on. Danita, before we get to you, there was a question that I think might be helpful to the audience. And let me just get a quick answer from you guys. There are some people who deserve some shout outs. Mandy Memmel, I'm sorry. Memmel right here. Brittany Parham over there. And of course, Kay, who have supported these people. And so the question is, how did you guys get connected with these great mentors and supporters very quickly? Very quickly. Long story short. You owe me $7, man. I got you. So at the age of 14, I was basically doing stuff that I wasn't supposed to be doing. I was smoking and drinking with friends that I thought were my friends, but weren't. They didn't have the best interest for me. My mom at the time was a really bad drug addict and alcoholic. So I didn't care. My mom didn't care. Miss Mandy and my mom was walking down the street. This lady would not stop smiling, OK? I thought it was weird. So she was like, can I pray for you guys? So I kind of kept walking because at the time, God wasn't part of my plan. He was not even in my circle. She prayed for us. Since that day, I have been a dedicated godly young lady that has let God in my life, God is my everything. He comes before anybody. That was meant to be. Go ahead. So someone not mentioned those here unexpectedly is Mrs. Richburg, Kathleen Richburg. After my trip to Yale with Mrs. Drayden and Mrs. Richburg, they noticed that something was off with me when I kind of shared my stories, my life stories. And they kind of opened up a little. And one day, Mrs. Drayden called Mrs. Richburg that something was up and to look into it. So her persistence, dragging me into her office, finally got me to open up about myself. Of course, I cried about it. And it was very tough, but she was always there. And she even sought the help that I needed. I met Mrs. Paul Ham by my school. But the fun thing I met her, I was terrible. I used to fight every day. When I meet every day, do you want to say five days a year? In my old elementary school, I used to fight every day. If you want a problem, you can get it like that type. I was that type of person. I used to lie, grow bad. I used to have bad grades. Now I'm a honorable. I used to do terrible stuff. But when I met Mrs. Paul Ham, she taught me, it's not your fault what you do, stuff like that. That's all I needed. My mother, my grandmother, my family taught me that. But by having another person outside of your family teach you that, it's amazing. So I actually have two. One, Mrs. Richburg, because she's just amazing. She never once made me feel like I couldn't come to her. And because of the things that happened, I have anxiety and depression. And high school, I used to have so many panic attacks because I would just feel like something's going to happen. Something's wrong. I don't know. And then I'd just feel inferior. And I would go to her. And she never once turned me away. She just, oh, you want to bring her work in here? You just sit in here? And yeah, that was amazing. And then also my pastor, her name is Cheryl Menendez. She taught me about forgiveness. And that was big because once I forgave my dad, that's when everything turned around for me. That's when everything, the weight was lifted off of my shoulders. I didn't have to feel those things anymore. And that's one thing, actually. I know everyone always says, forgiveness is for you. Forgiveness is for you. And no one ever, when you're upset, you don't want to hear that. I don't want to forgive anybody. So it's hard to do, but that's where that empathy comes into play as well. Because I had to realize that he's not using because of me. It's not my fault that these things happen to him. And that's a hard thing to face when you're a kid and you just don't understand why everyone else has their dad around. And yours comes and leaves and tells you he's staying. And it messes with your head. So yeah, forgiveness and also having someone to be there for me. And just let me feel the emotions that I was feeling. And not just tell me, oh, well, you need to go back to class because you've been out of class all day. Because I would be out of class all day. But yeah. So let's go back to Mr. Campbell's question in the back, which was about your art. Donita, you didn't get a chance to respond. Would you like to? Yeah. I sing. Never without you, I would have lost it all. But now I see how you were there for me. And I can't say I'm stronger. I'm wiser, I'm better, much better. I can see that you were the one. Applause for these really amazing, wonderful, brave, young people. In a minute, we're going to go to the lunch break. Again, the unpopular one. We're going to go to your breakout sessions, which will begin at 1.05. So they run from 1.05 to 2.45. And they're by the cohorts that we talked about before, family and community, educators, clinicians, providers, workforce, and faith-based, and legal and law. The rooms are up here, located up here. If you're going to the School of Nursing, down the stairs and around the corner, you can take the elevator to go up. Hold on one second. You can take the elevator to go up, or the stairs are back here. At the end of your breakout session, there'll be a little break. But then come back here, because you've heard so much about the importance of resilience in the discussions, and also from these young people. And we really need to have you complete that day that way. So there are box lunches in the hallway. You can bring them in here to eat, or you can proceed right to your breakout rooms. Thank you.