On this special episode of Resiliency Within, host Elaine Miller-Karas sits down with Michael Sapp, Executive Director of the Trauma Resource Institute, for a heartfelt conversation reflecting on the remarkable global journey of the Trauma Resource Institute. What began as a small idea rooted in compassion and neuroscience has grown into an international movement of healing, hope, and human connection, reaching communities across cultures, languages, and lived experiences worldwide.

They will share reflections on the profound lessons learned from decades of working alongside educators, therapists, healthcare workers, parents, community leaders, and young people who have brought the Community and Trauma Resiliency Models into their daily lives. Together, Elaine and Mike discuss the importance of understanding that reactions to stress and trauma are not signs of weakness, but part of our shared human biology—and how practical wellness skills, compassionate relationships, and community connection can restore dignity, resilience, and hope. This dialogue also explores the realities of building an international nonprofit organization: the vision, perseverance, partnerships, and deep trust required to sustain a mission dedicated to human resilience.

The Community Resiliency Model (CRM)® contains powerful skills for nervous system regulation that can be used anywhere and anytime.

CRM in Schools is a strengths-based, compassionate approach that is helping school staff and students re-connect to their bodies and understand new ways to support their well-being through nervous system regulation.

Since 2019, the Community Resiliency Model has been shared with thousands of educators and students, world-wide. Pro-active and preventative skills like resourcing, grounding, and the Help Now! strategies can be practiced daily as classroom routines, during class meetings and brain breaks, or at crucial moments like before a test or during conflict resolution.

Feedback from educators and students suggests that the CRM skills can improve students body literacy, self-compassion and sense of empathy towards others. Educators report feeling more resourced to manage the physical and emotional demands of their profession.

How can CRM be brought into schools in a way that supports teachers and students, rather than burdening them with "one more thing" to do.

How can CRM be integrated systemically so that the climate of school becomes a place that is welcoming to the educators and students "whole selves"?

Can schools truly become places where trauma-and-resiliency informed practices are understood and applied by everyone from the support staff, to the principal?

This episode with Lindy Settevendemie and Christa Tinari explores the use of CRM in school contexts and their insights about how CRM can support individuals and transform the learning environment.

In this episode of Resiliency Within, Elaine Miller-Karas interviews Cathy Salser about a deceptively simple proposition: that time and connection — not paint or canvas — can be one of the most powerful art supplies we have.

Cathy is the founder of A Window Between Worlds (AWBW), a non-profit dedicated to nurturing art-based journeys of transforming trauma. Since 1991, AWBW has grown into a national circle of co-creation reaching nearly 150,000 participants annually across 44 states and 8 countries.

She shares the orgins of how she came to this work, and what it looks like when art becomes a circle of co-creation where every person is welcomed as an innovator and a founder of their own path forward. She draws on stories from across her 35 years of practice — from the personal level to the relational, organizational, and national.

She is also honest about what art is not: it doesn't replace therapists, hotlines, or economic justice. But it does something that nothing else does — it can help people create quick, but lasting, tangible tools to hold onto their strength, vision, and one another across time.

Cathy shares from a very personal place. Her home burned in the Palisades fire, along with her studio and 35 years of AWBW archives. The spirit of that work is not defeated — it is sprouting back up, even through this conversation.

This conversation welcomes us to rethink what art is and what it can do — not as a luxury or a talent, but as an accessible scaffold for change that anyone can build a life around.

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About Our Guest:

Cathy Salser is a social practice artist and the founder of A Window Between Worlds (AWBW), a non-profit dedicated to nurturing art-based journeys of transforming trauma. She holds time and connection as her primary art media — co-creating and mentoring site-specific works that welcome people to crystallize leadership in the face of challenge, sustain action over time, and replace isolation with community.

In this too-busy world, she loves the magic of art practices that are super quick yet super lasting — practices that disrupt and divest from legacies of trauma, and invite space for something new.

Since founding AWBW in 1991, Cathy has nurtured a circle of co-creators that today includes 600+ active community sites, reaching nearly 150,000 participants annually across 44 states and countries including Australia, Canada, Cameroon, Guam, Malawi, Mexico, South Korea, and Venezuela — engaging hundreds of thousands of adults and children who've experienced domestic violence, homelessness, incarceration, sexual assault, and intergenerational trauma.

She's been nationally recognized with the Women's Caucus for Art President's Award, the Bank of America Local Heroes Award, the LA Domestic Violence Council's Betty Fisher Award, and the CA Partnership to End Domestic Violence's Karen Cooper Lifetime Achievement Award.

Cathy is dedicated to living art as a brave and vulnerable practice — a catalyst for interactive journeys transforming trauma that lives in our bodies, relationships, communities, and systems.