Couverture de Resilient Voices & Beyond

Resilient Voices & Beyond

Resilient Voices & Beyond

De : Michael D. Davis-Thomas Aka MDDTSpeaks
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À propos de ce contenu audio

 Resilient Voices & Beyond is a podcast that amplifies the voices of those who were once silenced and aims to empower a new generation of foster care alum leaders. Through conversations with community partners, leaders, advocates, and activists, this podcast educates listeners on reforms, policies, and advocacy related to foster care, adoption, kinship, CCIs, JJ, and the child welfare system. The podcast challenges stigmas and labels surrounding these topics and creates a dialogue on reform and advocacy that is already happening or needs to happen. The core values of Resilient Voices & Beyond include empowerment, inclusivity, education, collaboration, authenticity, and innovation. The mission of the podcast is to create a platform for silenced voices to be heard and received, while the vision is to inspire and empower a new generation of leaders committed to making a positive change in the world.Michael D. Davis-Thomas/MDDTSpeaks Hygiène et vie saine Psychologie Psychologie et psychiatrie
Épisodes
  • Healing while curating dreams and breaking generational trauma.

    Healing while curating dreams and breaking generational trauma.
    Feb 28 2026
    Resilient Voices and Beyond Podcast, Season Three, Episode 54. Healing while curating dreams and breaking generational trauma. Guest, Julissa Grozozski Torres, YPA, NYCPS, CRPA, Founder and CEO of Triumph OVA Struggles Advocacy and Consulting LLC.

    This episode holds space for healing centered conversations and storytelling inside my Foster Healing Fellowship capstone work, and it honors the truth that survival skills keep people alive, and healing skills set people free. Julissa walks listeners through a life shaped by early loss, foster care, adoption, religious control, abuse, psychiatric institutionalization, chronic illness, and the long fight to reclaim identity with intention. She names what it costs to grow up inside systems that label behaviors but ignore pain, and she names what it takes to rebuild a self when other people spent years defining it for you.

    Julissa breaks down the moment she chose her own name at twelve, and she frames that decision as an act of self definition when life offered her few choices. She speaks with precision about how religious restriction narrowed her sense of self, and how adulthood demanded an intentional return to joy, interests, and personal agency. She also connects lived experience to leadership, and she draws a straight line from survival to service, including how peer work, advocacy, and consulting form a mission rather than a slogan.

    We confront the systems themselves, foster care, psychiatric institutions, and schools, and we talk plainly about what helped and what harmed. Julissa also speaks on diagnosis, misdiagnosis, neurodivergence, and the exhaustion of living inside an identity built around symptoms, then fighting for clarity that fits reality. She names cycle breaking motherhood as active work, not a slogan, and she describes the daily labor of building a home where children experience emotional safety, support, structure, and freedom to simply exist as kids.

    This conversation also tells the truth about boundaries, grief, and letting go. Julissa speaks on the hard decision to release relationships that kept her trapped in old harm patterns, and she names the difference between forgiveness and access. We close with a grounded charge for anyone who feels buried under labels, trauma, and fatigue, take ownership of your life in small steps, protect your healing, and refuse the lie that your past defines your ceiling.

    Connect with Julissa Grozozski Torres. Instagram, triumph_ova_struggles. LinkedIn, Julissa Grozozski Torres. Website, triumphovastruggles.org.
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    1 h et 4 min
  • It Can Be Done

    It Can Be Done
    Dec 6 2025
    🎙️ Episode 53 — “It Can Be Done”
    Guest: Hery “Eddie” Acosta | Author, Speaker, Youth Advocate
    Podcast: Resilient Voices & Beyond – A Healing-Centered Conversation
    Foster Healing Fellowship Capstone Series

    Episode Description:

    In this gripping and hope-filled episode titled “It Can Be Done,” host Michael D. Davis-Thomas sits down with author, speaker, and youth advocate Hery “Eddie” Acosta, whose life story is both testimony and blueprint. This is more than an interview—it’s a healing-centered conversation that exposes the cost of trauma, honors the grind of growth, and celebrates the sacred act of becoming whole.

    Eddie doesn’t sugarcoat survival. From being locked in a closet as a child to navigating cycles of generational pain, Eddie shares how he went from being misunderstood in classrooms to mentoring hundreds of teens every week through his groundbreaking work in Oregon. With 13+ years of hands-on experience in youth programs, Eddie is now the visionary behind Ohana Teen Night, where over 300 teens find refuge, belonging, and possibility every Friday night.

    Together, Michael and Eddie explore:
    • Childhood trauma, behavioral stigma, and how schools often punish pain
    • Mindset shifts from “why me?” to “watch me”
    • The messy, nonlinear process of healing—and what real breakthrough looks like
    • The burden of navigating trauma in Black and Brown communities
    • What it means to become a diamond in the rough—and why pressure doesn’t always break us
    • The spiritual, emotional, and cultural power of having a therapist of color
    • Building youth programming that feels more like family than a facility
    This episode is part of Michael’s Foster Healing Leadership Fellowship Capstone: Resilient Voices & Beyond: Healing-Centered Conversations and Storytelling, and it holds true to its mission—honoring lived experience as sacred knowledge and creating space for authentic, heart-to-heart reflection.

    Whether you’re a young person currently in the struggle, a professional seeking to serve better, or someone carrying unspoken wounds of your own—Eddie’s story will remind you: It can be done.

    📚 Grab Eddie’s Book:
    Eddie in the Rough – Becoming a Diamond

    🌐 Connect with Eddie:
    Website: speechesbyeddie.com
    Instagram: @speeches_by_eddie | @neweddieacosta
    Facebook: Eddie Acosta 🎧 Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube, and all major platforms.

    📢 Support this Healing-Centered Work:
    Venmo: @MDDTSpeaks | CashApp: $MDDTSpeaksInc | PayPal: MDDT1
    Email: mddtspeaks@gmail.com for donations, sponsorships, or collaboration.
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    1 h et 7 min
  • " She believed she could, so she did ”

    " She believed she could, so she did ”
    Sep 11 2025
    🎙️ Episode 52 — “She Believed She Could, So She Did”

    Guest: Faith M. Keen | DHHS Intern • FSM Contractor • LEx Policy Advocate • TLE Member • BSW
    Candidate • Future MSW
    Podcast: Resilient Voices & Beyond Podcast — Season 3
    Host: Michael D. Davis-Thomas Episode Description:

    In this powerful and soul-baring conversation, host Michael D. Davis-Thomas is joined by rising advocate, policy shaper, and lived experience leader Faith M. Keen, for an episode that feels more like a mirror than a mic. Titled “She Believed She Could, So She Did,” this dialogue is a tender, tenacious, and truth-filled journey through the harsh realities of childhood adversity—and the radical self-determination it takes to rise from it.

    Faith doesn't just speak her truth—she lives it. From a chaotic upbringing marked by instability, addiction, and displacement, to finding belonging through advocacy, higher education, and a fierce belief in the power of lived experience, Faith’s journey is a living testimony of what resilience looks like when nurtured in community and courage.

    Together, Michael and Faith dive into:
    • The emotional toll of caring for others when no one cared for you
    • Reframing trauma as purpose without glamorizing the pain
    • The role of policy advocacy in restoring dignity to foster youth
    • The nuance of self-care in a space that demands our pain for progress
    • Navigating healing while still showing up as “the strong one”
    • The balance between being a voice for the voiceless and being heard yourself

    As she shares deeply personal stories—from driving her mother while under the influence to being adopted by extended family who didn’t always understand her worth—Faith unpacks the layers of survival and silence, of grief and grit, that so many foster youth carry but rarely have safe space to process. She and Michael explore how systems often force youth to perform wellness while still bleeding, and how real change must include not just policies—but peace.

    Faith’s work with Fostering Success Michigan, Michigan’s Team with Lived Expertise (TLE), and her continued advocacy through public speaking and youth engagement is helping reshape how the state and nation see system-impacted youth—not as broken, but as brilliant. Her upcoming pursuit of an MSW at the University of Michigan is yet another step in becoming the change she needed as a child.

    This episode isn’t about triumphalism. It’s about truth. It’s about community. And it’s about choosing healing—even when no one taught you how.

    📣 Because believing in yourself isn’t cliché when you’ve survived systems designed to make you forget how.

    🔗 Connect with Faith M. Keen
    📸 Instagram: @keen.faith.210
    📘 Facebook / 🔗 LinkedIn: Faith Keen

    🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube, and all major streaming platforms.

    📢 Support the Podcast
    Venmo: @MDDTSpeaks | CashApp: $MDDTSpeaksInc | PayPal: MDDT1
    Email: mddtspeaks@gmail.com for sponsorships, collaborations, and donor inquiries.
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    1 h et 5 min
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