Tag: community

Storytellers in suicide prevention have the power to shift culture and change the world in ways other stakeholders are not able to do. Our “voices of insight” have influence and shape others’ understanding on a deep level. People with lived experience seek to stand in solidarity with our research colleagues, policy champions and mental health professionals to embed our deep wisdom in a processes of partnership. In this podcast, I speak with the world renowned Bronwen Edwards, a global authority on the power of lived experience to drive large scale change in suicide prevention. We talk about how we can approach our partners — who may have different values, priorities and points of view — with “compassionate curiosity” so we can “collaborate the big collaboration” (instead of “fight the good fight”).

About Bronwen Edwards
Bronwen is the CEO of Roses in the Ocean, a national lived experience of suicide organisation that has spent the last decade building the capacity of people with lived experience to utilise their voice and insights to inform, influence and enhance suicide prevention, and the capacity of communities, organisations and government to meaningfully engage with them.

Having advocated for non-clinical alternatives to traditional services for many years, Bronwen and Roses in the Ocean also work with communities to co-design new service models including safe spaces, develop and support the critical suicide prevention peer workforce, and continue to drive and support the implementation of system reform.

Bronwen holds a variety of state and national advisory positions, to which she first and foremost brings her personal lived experience of suicide to the table, while also striving to honour the vast perspectives of others she has been privileged to work with and walk alongside over many years.

Bronwen is the Co-Chair of the International Association of Suicide Prevention Special Interest Group: Lived Experience.

Well-being is a current obsession. When you hear this word, what comes to mind? Fitness? Nutrition? Bliss? A sense of belonging? What is often forgotten in these conversations is our spiritual well-being. For some people this means engagement with their religious traditions and faith communities. For others it is about connecting deeply with nature, the arts or social justice. Still for others, it means contemplative spiritual practices that connect us to a higher power. The common theme throughout all of these practices is a journey to understand ourselves in the context of something much larger and mysterious that invites curiosity, stillness, wonderment, reverence and courage.

In this conversation I speak with Kate Eckman, an elite college athlete, broadcast journalist and TV personality and recent author of “The Full Spirit Workout: A Ten-Step System to Shed Your Self-Doubt, Strengthen Your Spiritual Core, and Create a Fun and Fulfilling Life.” We talk about the neuroscience behind our understanding of well-being — and what gets in our way of achieving and maintaining well-being. We discuss the curious versus the anxious brain and the learning versus the judging brain. We explore the questions of “when is enough, enough?” and “who do we really want to be?” We close with specific strategies on how to tip the scales from immobilizing fear to the ability to “stretch the comfort zone” and “build the emotional muscles.”

About Kate Eckman
Kate Eckman is the author of The Full Spirit Workout: A Ten-Step System to Shed Your Self-Doubt, Strengthen Your Spiritual Core, and Create a Fun and Fulfilling Life. She is a broadcast journalist and TV personality who brings her expertise in communications, performance, and mindfulness to her practice as a success coach for business leaders and professional athletes. She earned a B.A. in communications from Penn State University, where she was an Academic All-American swimmer, and received her master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She graduated at the highest level from Columbia University’s executive and organizational coaching program and is a certified ICF coach (ACC) and a licensed NBI consultant. Passionate about mindfulness practices for both brain and body health, she is also a meditation teacher and course creator for Insight Timer, the world’s number one–ranked free meditation app. Visit her online at kateeckman.tv. and www.thefullspiritworkout.com for more information go to https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/hope-illuminated-podcast/94