Today's guest is Sara Cook – a social worker who has worked in conflict response, peacebuilding and mediation in Northern Ireland and internationally for the past two decades. Sara offers trainings in the Community Resiliency Model through the Trauma Resource Institute, and here, she draws connections between resilience, spirituality and the psalms, providing practical tools to balance the adversity and the joy in our lives.
Sara is such a wealth of knowledge and I'm so delighted that she agreed to talk with me on this podcast to share some of the practical skills she teaches in her trainings, and I found it fascinating to explore with her how we find resilience through spiritual resources like the Psalms. I've listened to this many times in getting it into podcast form, and I'm still learning new things from what she says every time! I hope you can take away some new skills for building resilience in your lives, or that it reminds you of things you already know, and that you also appreciate looking at the Psalms and our spiritual lives in a fresh way, as I did.
More about Sara:
Sara Cook is a social worker and conflict response specialist who has extensive experience working with people affected by conflict in Northern Ireland and internationally. Her peace building work includes mediation, dialogue and storytelling encounters between conflict-affected populations, including victims and survivors of violence, security forces and paramilitaries. Much of her work addresses the psychosocial impact of conflict, including the impact of mediation and peace building work on practitioners. For 20 years, Sara has designed and implemented methodologies to address conflict-related impact and provides training and facilitation in mediation, dialogue, trauma intervention and resiliency. She has trained people from over 30 countries, including humanitarian aid workers supporting the resettlement of Syrian refugees in both Turkey and Lebanon. She is a UK representative to Women Mediators Across the Commonwealth and is a board member of Mediation Northern Ireland and the VSB Foundation.
Sara Cook can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-cook-394312b8/
Featured Music
Celtic Psalms (Kiran Young Wimberly & the McGraths):
Come Spirit Come (Psalm 144/The King's Shilling)
The God of Jacob (Psalm 46/The Dawning of the Day)
How Lovely (Psalm 84/Carrickfergus)
You Have Searched Me (Psalm 139/The Banks of Claudy)
The Lord's My Shepherd (Psalm 23/The Parting Glass)
Celtic Psalms (Kiran Young Wimberly & The McGraths) music can be found at www.celticpsalms.com, iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube
CDs and published notations can be found through GIA music
Ep. 2 Holding the Adversity and the Joy, with Sara Cook