Category: Transforming Trauma Podcast

When we receive a genetic testing result that changes our understanding of our body, our risk, and our future, something shifts at the level of identity. There is a before and an after. And in that threshold moment, the medical system is ready with options, timelines, and next steps. But who is holding the grief, the terror, the confusion, and the deeply personal question of what this means for how we want to live? This episode explores that gap and why closing it matters so much.

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, host Emily Ruth welcomes Sara Champie, a licensed clinical social worker and trauma therapist based in Northern California, for a deeply personal and clinically rich conversation about the emotional and relational dimensions of hereditary cancer, genetic testing, and the high-stakes medical decisions that follow. Together, they explore how the NeuroAffective Relational Model® (NARM®) offers a framework for understanding why people with similar diagnoses can respond so differently, and how therapy can help restore agency without bypassing grief.

Sara Champie is a licensed trauma therapist who specializes in supporting individuals and families navigating hereditary cancer risk, genetic testing, and preventative or reconstructive surgeries. Her work integrates trauma-informed, somatic, and relational approaches to help clients reconnect with their bodies and make meaning through uncertainty. Sara is the creator and host of the podcast Walking the Genetic Line, which explores the human experience of living with hereditary cancer risk. She is also a BRCA1 carrier whose mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when Sara was seven years old and passed away when she was ten. That early loss, and the long arc of healing that followed, shaped not only her career but also her deep understanding of the community she now serves.

“When we’ve been through a trauma, the projective memory is literally a voice like, I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die. I have to do something,” Sara shares, naming what so many feel but struggle to articulate when genetic results arrive. She describes how the concept of projective memory, a term for the way unresolved trauma from the past colors our experience of the present, helps explain the visceral, sometimes overwhelming quality of learning you carry a mutation associated with cancer. For Sara, finding out she was a BRCA1 carrier was terrifying not because of abstract statistics, but because all she had to associate with that result was the death of her mother at age forty-six. That kind of context, she explains, shapes everything about how a person holds genetic risk.

Sara uses the NARM® survival styles as a clinical map for understanding the range of responses she sees in her practice. Some clients arrive numb and intellectualizing, buried in research at three in the morning but unable to name a single feeling. Others cannot hear their own needs because the weight of being a burden to their family is too great. Some hide their vulnerability behind strength, terrified that showing fear will unravel the roles they hold at work or at home. Others go along with treatment plans while privately wrestling with choices they feel unable to voice. And for many, the experience of losing or reconstructing parts of their body opens profound questions about identity, sexuality, and selfhood that reach far beyond the surgical suite. “This amazing opportunity to finally get free, to finally explore these pressures and themes and the ways we relate to ourselves,” Sara reflects, “so that maybe this is a process of liberation that was never available to us earlier in our life.”

The episode also takes a clear-eyed look at the gap in emotional care within the medical system. Sara describes common examples of interactions with medical professionals that reveal how much work still remains. She advocates strongly for specialized providers, not general practitioners, to guide the care of people with genetic mutations, and for mental health referrals to be treated as a standard, not optional, part of the care model.

Transforming Trauma is grateful to Sara for the courage and compassion she brings to this work, and for her willingness to share her own story in service of a community that deserves far more support than it has been given. Her insistence that we can hold agency and helplessness at the same time, that we can grieve what medical decisions cost us even as we honor what they gave us, is a message that reaches well beyond hereditary cancer. It is a reminder that healing happens not when we rush to safety, but when we find someone willing to stand with us in the full complexity of being human.

Most of us know what it feels like to sit with a person who is suffering and sense that nothing we say will land, that the distance between our words and their pain is simply too wide. And then someone walks in, sits down, and says two words that change everything: me too. Not advice. Not a program. Just presence, forged in the fire of having been there. That simple offering, one person’s honest experience meeting another’s desperation, is the thread that runs through every minute of this conversation.

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, Emily Ruth welcomes Frank Meeink, a former white supremacist turned peer support specialist and recovery advocate, for a searingly honest conversation about what it actually takes to stop burning your life to the ground and start being of use to others. The pair explores the difference between performative vulnerability and purposeful sharing, why humility might be the most misunderstood word in recovery, and how a life of service can quietly rebuild the self-esteem that trauma and addiction hollowed out.

Frank’s story spans decades and defies any tidy arc. Raised by parents struggling with their own addictions in rough Philadelphia neighborhoods, he found the first people who ever asked him about his life at the age of 14, inside a neo-Nazi group. “If I came home with a black eye or a trophy, neither of my parents would say, how’d you get that, son?” he recalls. The white supremacists were curious. They listened. They gave a scared boy something that felt like belonging, even though it was built on hatred. Frank went on to live in neo-Nazi compounds across the country during what should have been his high school years, before eventually leaving the movement and devoting himself to civil rights work and deradicalization. But sobriety remained elusive. He cycled through rehabs, built extraordinary careers in hockey coaching, radio, and international speaking, and burned each one down. “I would get sober for a little bit and I would build up a big, beautiful life and do great things,” he says. “And then I burned it down in front of everybody.”

The turning point, Frank explains, was not willpower. “I don’t even know who Will is. My name is Frank.” It was a moment of total collapse in a car, screaming out to God to end his life, and hearing something back. He describes it as the gift of desperation, and emphasizes that this was not a moment of self-generated strength but one of surrender. He called an older man in Los Angeles, a mentor from the rooms of recovery, and moved across the country to begin what has now become six years of sobriety.

What emerged from that surrender was a daily practice Frank calls STAY: Stop Thinking About Yourself. He describes the relentless mental loops of resentment and personalization that fueled his addiction, the imagined confrontations with people who wronged him, the obsessive narratives about a friend who didn’t text back. “John doesn’t think about me the way I think about me, and he didn’t do it personally,” he says. STAY became his interruption, his way of catching the self-centered spiral before it pulled him under. Paired with daily God walks, morning hours of prayer and listening, these practices form the infrastructure of a recovery that is less about abstinence and more about reorientation, a turning outward after decades of turning inward.

Frank now works for Share, the Self-Help and Recovery Exchange in Los Angeles, as a peer support specialist. His most distinctive role is what he calls undercover recovery. Contracted through Apple, he works at a store near Skid Row, posing as a customer. When unhoused individuals or people who appear to be struggling come in, he approaches them casually, strikes up a conversation, and carries a backpack full of resources: meeting locations, housing information, legal aid contacts. He does not lead with advice or programs. He leads with presence. “They might not even be receptive to that right now,” he says. “Just let me listen. Acknowledge and accept their presence. Make space for them. That’s what people just need today.”

One of the most striking threads in this conversation is Frank’s evolving relationship with his own story. For years, he describes himself as a self-deprecating narcissist, someone who would share his most harrowing drug adventures at dinner parties with people who had no context for them, then feel hurt when those same people judged him. The shift came when he began to understand humility, not as a performance but as a practice.

The conversation closes with what Frank calls the broken vessel metaphor. “God uses the broken vessels to help others,” he says. “The broken vessels, when put back together, our light shines different. It doesn’t shine like everyone else’s, because it’s been broken and now reassembled.” He is careful not to romanticize the breaking. The pain was real. The harm was real. But the reassembled vessel catches the eye of someone who needs to see that particular kind of light, a light that only shines that way because of what it has been through. “There’s nobody that can’t be put back together,” he says. “People are not thrown away.”

Transforming Trauma is deeply grateful to Frank for his honesty, his humor, and his willingness to model the very practices he describes. His insistence that recovery is not willpower but surrender, not performance but service, not isolation but the quiet power of me too, offers something genuinely useful to anyone who walks alongside people in pain.

What would it mean to see hip hop not just as entertainment, but as a powerful, culturally grounded source of healing and empowerment for individuals and communities impacted by trauma? On this episode of Transforming Trauma, Dr. Raphael Travis joins Emily Ruth to explore hip hop culture as much more than a musical genre—revealing its “organic healing culture drawing from both current as well as distal roots” that feeds individual resilience and drives social change. Through insightful stories and practice-based reflections, Dr. Travis makes the case for hip hop as an essential vehicle for recovery, growth, and positive youth development.

The episode begins by reframing hip hop’s image, moving beyond popular misconceptions and surface stereotypes. Dr. Travis lays out the vital difference between the culture’s commercialized product and its true essence as “a participatory culture,” emphasizing the five key elements—MCing, breakdancing, DJing, graffiti, and knowledge of self. Together, the hosts dig into how these interconnected elements foster both self-reflection and collective belonging, providing what Dr. Travis calls “tools of individual healing…tools of belonging and…tools of social change.” They also discuss the therapeutic leverage points that hip hop opens for young people facing adversity, trauma, or systemic barriers.

Dr. Raphael Travis is a professor, MSW Program Director at the University of Delaware, and Executive Director of FlowStory, PLLC. His research and leadership in social work education and arts-based health promotion center on hip hop culture’s capacity to transform wellbeing, resilience, and empowerment, especially among youth. As author of “The Healing Power of Hip Hop” and director of the CREATE Lab, he brings real-world expertise on blending research, community, and creative practice for sustained impact.

Hip hop, as Dr. Travis shares, is uniquely equipped to counter trauma’s threats to identity and agency by offering a space for “regulation, counter narratives, and reestablishing how you see yourself.” He reflects on his own coming-of-age immersed in hip hop’s formative years, sharing how “there was pride, there was identity, there was belonging, there was resilience,” and how these values are deliberately cultivated in effective therapeutic and educational settings. The conversation highlights practical strategies—lyric analysis to process resilience, beat making and DJing for creative engagement, visual arts like graffiti to build community, and even technology-assisted modalities such as haptic devices to enhance connection and healing.

At the heart of Dr. Travis’s work is a dual focus on individual and community change. He challenges deficit-based helping models and advocates for empowerment-based youth development, encouraging practitioners to ask, “What kind of opportunities, how do we invest…to see them realize their potential?” The dimensions of empowerment he describes—esteem, resilience, growth, community, and change—provide a holistic framework for supporting post-traumatic growth and fostering active citizenship, not just survival.

Throughout the dialogue, Dr. Travis’s passion for connection shines, grounding complex theory in lived experience and heartfelt advocacy. He describes hip hop as “a culture you participate in,” one that roots healing in both self-awareness and collective action. As the conversation closes, listeners are invited to pursue Dr. Travis’s work further through his books, ongoing projects, and research, reinforcing the transformative power of culturally grounded, creative approaches to trauma and wellbeing.

Transforming Trauma extends gratitude to Dr. Travis for illuminating hip hop’s role as a rigorous, culturally relevant modality for trauma transformation and youth empowerment. His insights prompt us to imagine new possibilities for healing, belonging, and community change.

What does it mean for trauma therapists to truly grow—not just in knowledge, but in deep presence and human connection? In this reflective episode, Brad Kammer, Stefanie Klein, and Marcia Black reunite for a candid look at the first year of the SPACE Program at the Complex Trauma Training Center. Together, they share what happens when a professional community focuses as much on therapists’ inner experience and vulnerability as on clinical skills. The discussion explores the profound shifts that emerge when therapists give themselves permission to receive support, reveal their struggles, and build safety through honest collective exploration.

The group discusses the evolution of the program, participant impact, and where the vision is headed next. They also reveal how modeling openness, exploring therapeutic enactments, and inviting feedback have created a uniquely dynamic community. Listeners hear firsthand stories of the tenderness, courage, and transformation that arise when “people feel able to be vulnerable, be open, receive support, to ask for support, and…want to go more deeply into those challenging and dark spaces.”

Brad Kammer, LMFT, LPCC, is the Training Director and Senior Trainer at the Complex Trauma Training Center (CTTC), where he develops advanced training and mentorship programs for mental health professionals working with complex trauma. Stefanie Klein, LCSW, is a NARM Master Therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner with 30 years of psychotherapy experience, specializing in trauma and anxiety. Dr. Marcia Black is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, NARM Senior Training Assistant, and NARM Faculty Committee member, and has been in private practice for over 40 years in SF and the East Bay, specializing in treating complex and developmental trauma and other psychological conditions, including depression and loss, anxiety, relationship issues, and addiction.

One theme that emerges powerfully in the conversation is the essential humanizing of therapists within the community. Brad observes, “So many therapists are really wanting to do a great job for their clients and just even if we’re not thinking so much about ourselves…our clients are gonna benefit so much when we’re getting our own support.” Stefanie notes the ongoing paradox: “Those people are often not asking for and receiving support, whether that’s just community and hearing other people’s experiences or their own psychotherapy or their own consultation.” Marcia reflects on how being “supported and inspired by the courage and vulnerability of each other” enables everyone to explore unknown places within themselves. Participants describe moments that “sneak up on me and you’re like, whoa, that was much more powerful than I thought it was gonna be,” highlighting the sacred, surprising quality of collective work.

From modeling vulnerability to running intersubjective explorations in pods, to integrating group feedback and shaping new experiential offerings, Brad, Stefanie, and Marcia illustrate how therapist growth flourishes in relational contexts. They speak to the reality of therapeutic enactments, the shame and complexity that often keep challenges hidden, and the relief that comes from openly sharing and unpacking these experiences together. The group’s commitment to “co-creation with the space participants” and to continually evolving the program based on lived experience and honest dialogue reinforces the mission: to nurture a field where therapists can “be intimate and real and authentic,” deepen their own enjoyment and sense of meaning in the work, and become more effective supports for clients.

As the SPACE program enters its second year, new topics, immersive weekends, and opportunities for deeper integration are on the horizon—always shaped by the needs and voices of therapists themselves. “We just expect it to keep evolving, as we go, while again, we’re adding more things to the same intention,” shares Stefanie. The conversation closes with gratitude for the shared journey and a reaffirmation that therapists’ willingness to invest in their own presence not only transforms their clinical work, but also reverberates throughout their lives and communities.

What happens when a social worker brings heart-centered innovation into a rural school community grappling with intergenerational trauma? On this episode of Transforming Trauma, Emily Ruth Ruth sits down with Kelly Cook to explore how trauma-informed care and a deep respect for agency are transforming not just individual young lives, but families and entire school systems. Their conversation reveals both the profound tenderness and the daunting reality faced by children and teenagers subject to adverse childhood experiences—and the powerful hope that positive environments and conscious care can bring.

Kelly shares how her lifelong empathy for the “underdog” led her from a childhood of noticing mistreatment to a career devoted to supporting vulnerable students. Describing her early years, Kelly recalls, “I would see someone who was being left out or being bullied or being mistreated in some way, and I would come home and I would just sob to my mom.” Those formative experiences, combined with later personal grief, solidified her sense of purpose. When she returned to school to earn her Master’s of Social Work and later took on the challenge of being the first school social worker in her district, Kelly recognized both the need for systemic support and for internally grounded tools to manage the toll of working in high-stress environments.

In her work, Kelly beautifully weaves elements of the NARM model into school-based therapy, adapting the approach to create space for agency in children and adolescents—sometimes for the first time in their lives. She observes, “The question itself of what is it that you most want for yourself out of our time together today…is so impactful because very rarely if ever a teenager is going to be asked that question.” This simple act of inquiry plants seeds of possibility, creating room for students to begin reconnecting with themselves even in the face of daunting circumstances. Kelly reflects, “It feels like I found myself,” echoing the words of a student who began to awaken to her own needs after months of gentle, affirming support.

Kelly’s commitment extends beyond individual sessions. She played a pivotal role in building school-based programs anchored in multi-tiered support, guiding colleagues to recognize behavioral and emotional indicators of trauma, and advocating for greater resources. Her leadership transformed her solitary position into a collaborative team effort, as she describes the journey “from one single social worker to now having a team of social workers,” with the effort rooted in “healing as a family and healing as a community.”

The episode touches on the challenges of working with families who may initially distrust outside intervention, underscoring the importance of relational safety and collaboration. Kelly affirms, “If a parent is not okay, their kids are not gonna be okay. And if we can help support parents and caregivers in their good work that they’re trying to do…and give them better resources…then that’s the best kind of work.” Her approach, informed by NARM’s “50-50 balance” of mutual humanity, attends to the needs of both the child and caregiver, reminding parents, “their needs are of the utmost importance in a home.”

Transforming Trauma expresses deep gratitude to Kelly Cook for her candor, compassion, and pioneering spirit. Her story is a testament to the resilience of young people, the healing potential of trauma-informed care, and the ripple effect created when just one person chooses to show up—with curiosity, humility, and heart.