In this powerful episode, we welcome the brilliant Nkem Ndefo, founder of Lumos Transforms and creator of The Resilience Toolkit. Nkem is a visionary leader in the fields of trauma-informed care, resilience, and organizational healing. Together, we explore the intersections of compassionate communication, trauma-informed leadership, and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), offering insights that can transform not only our personal lives but also the way we lead and build workplaces and communities.
In this powerful episode, we welcome the brilliant Nkem Ndefo, founder of Lumos Transforms and creator of The Resilience Toolkit. Nkem is a visionary leader in the fields of trauma-informed care, resilience, and organizational healing. Together, we explore the intersections of compassionate communication, trauma-informed leadership, and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), offering insights that can transform not only our personal lives but also the way we lead and build workplaces and communities.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- What resilience truly means and how to cultivate it in times of stress
- How trauma-informed leadership can create healthier, more effective organizations
- The power of compassionate communication in fostering meaningful connections
- The role of DEI in creating sustainable, inclusive workplaces
- Practical strategies for organizational healing and cultural transformation
About Our Guest:
Nkem Ndefo is a certified nurse-midwife, trauma expert, and founder of Lumos Transforms. With a background in nursing, midwifery, and somatic healing, Nkem has dedicated her career to helping individuals and organizations navigate trauma, build resilience, and create systemic change through compassionate and sustainable practices. She will also be a featured speaker at the Justice as Trauma 2025 Conference in Vancouver, bringing her expertise to a global stage. For more info on this event, visit: www.myrnamccallum.co/jat2025
Resources & Links:
- Learn more about Nkem Ndefo and her work at [Lumos Transforms](https://www.lumostransforms.com)
- Explore The Resilience Toolkit: [Resilience Toolkit](https://www.resiliencetoolkit.co)
- Follow Nkem on [LinkedIn] (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nkemndefo) and [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/lumostransforms)
Join the Conversation:
Have thoughts on this episode? We’d love to hear from you! Share your reflections on social media using #ResilienceToolkit and tag us. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast—it helps more people find these important conversations!
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>>Myrna McCallum: I’m Myrna McCallum, Metis-Cree lawyer and passionate promoter of trauma-informed lawyering. As you know, I believe that law scholars and bar courses are missing a critical competency in their curriculum: trauma-informed lawyering. Becoming a trauma-informed lawyer will, among other things, challenge you to critically reflect on your personal behaviors, beliefs and biases. Call on you to positively transform the way you approach advocacy. Guide your practice in to avoid doing further harm to others. And ask that you commit to remaining open to learn new and old knowledge you didn’t know you needed before beginning your career.
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>> Myrna McCallum : Hi there, Nkem Ndefo Welcome to the Trauma Informed Lawyer podcast.
>> Nkem Ndefo: Thank you so much. I'm excited for this conversation.
>> Myrna McCallum : Is there, like, one thing that you usually say when you're introducing yourself that is maybe unique or different or just an important thing you'd like people to know about who you are, not just what you do?
>> Nkem Ndefo: Who I am? well, I would say I. As my mother often says when she looks at my career, she's like, m. It's quite eclectic, which I love. But the through line, the through line that is so me is I've always been interested in the relief of suffering, essentially healing and getting free, liberation. So no matter what it is I've been doing or who I've been working with, or my own personal journey in as a person, it has always been around healing and getting free.
>> Myrna McCallum : Wow. Where do you think that came from?
>> Nkem Ndefo: It's a really good question. I mean, I have legacy on both sides of my family of, dislocation, refugee oppression, genocide. In fact, there's a letter that my maternal great grandfather wrote when I was just a week or so old and I still have it. And he said, it's amazing you are alive. You are come from two streams of extremely oppressed people. On my. On my mother's side, Ashkenazi Jews who I had a. His father was imprisoned in Siberia for writing a paper against a czar and, you know, against pilgrims. And on my father's side, I was born at the tail end of the Biafran War, which was one of the first post colonial wars in Africa where a million of our people were slaughtered. So my great grandfather says, it's amazing that you are here, and it's a testament to the resilience of these peoples. And these two streams, I think, is how he wrote it. And so I kind of look at that and say, well, and he's like, so excited to see what I was going to become what I was going to do. that maybe perhaps he had a little invocation there about, you will be working around healing, you will be working around us getting free after lifetimes of this. So perhaps. And I'll say one other thing. My father, who's Igbo, from eastern Nigeria, my name, the name he gave me is Inkemdalim, which means what is mine, let be mine. And our last name, Ndefo means the chosen path. So something about, and I'm never really sure when they name, is it an invocation, right, like they are calling in and spellcasting or are they divining what is already there? But either way he was correct. And I have been like doggedly in pursuit.
>> Nkem Ndefo: Whoa. that is powerful. That is powerful. And somewhat. I don't intimidating
>> Nkem Ndefo: really?
>> Nkem Ndefo: well, kind of, it's kind of like if it was me, I would be like, whoa, I can't mess up. I've got to like walk the path, do the work, be a credit to my people. Yeah, I would feel some, some degree of pressure, but that tends to be kind of how I operate. Have you felt any kind of pressure to uphold the names and uphold the history? Or has it always just kind of been like, this is the path and I've been walking it and I happily do.
>> Nkem Ndefo: So I think, I mean a lot of the. I mean there's other pressures for sure. I mean it, it sort of felt there was an inevitable quality to it, inevitability, that this is what I would do. I think the pressure would be more around is this the place I'm supposed to be working? Like, is it in this arena or this, like what's going to have the biggest impact? but no, it's also. There's a lot of joy, I think, especially at this point in my career in having seen impact and having some tools that work and work well and work consistently. So it's not all pressure. There's definitely joy in like if we can't, like sometimes I say, is it, you know, we're working towards something or we're struggling, but I'm like, can we play into something? Can we have joy and pleasure? Because I don't really want to me, the liberation and healing I'm looking for is not a struggle and fight place. I'm looking for a place of ease. And so I think that needs to also be infused into the process. And so that has been more and more of late,
>> Myrna McCallum : wonderful. Joy, I think is like a foreign concept for some of us who are just so focused on the struggle. I think, I mean, myself included. I, would say sometimes I forget to live and to enjoy the life that I live and enjoy the, the rewards of my labor or however you want to refer to it. Because I'm, I get very like, dialed into like the work or whatever it is.
>> Nkem Ndefo: I don't know, I'm a bit of a process nerd. And we, I don't believe we can get to equity without practicing equity, right? Like, it's not like we're going to have. We don't get to inclusion without practicing inclusion. We can't be like exclusive and then say, oh, look, here's our outcome. It's really inclusive. And so I think there's been a, shift for me to be able to say, like, what is a trauma informed world, right? It's not just not trauma, it's not what we're opposing, it's what are we proposing, what does a healed world look like? And so if we can't infuse that in some of the things we're doing, I'm not so sure we're going to get there. And it makes it more again. So, like, I do a lot of trauma informed capacity building, right? Not, you know, across different sectors. And people think, oh, trauma, oh, this thing's gonna be on trauma. It's gonna be heavy. You know, I don't know who has the saying, I don't know where it comes from, but that you have to make the future look sexy. Like if it doesn't feel good, people aren't gonna wanna do it. It's gonna be a drag. And so, yes, we can talk about hard things. We can talk about trauma and we can talk about the suffering. But if we can't talk about the healing and the good stuff, nobody is gonna join the party. You know, we're training and we're able to create a sense of safety and inclusion and connection and being validated. People are like, oh, this. And then they're more apt to talk about the hard things. so, you know, like, we also, for those of us in the struggle, like, I think we deserve some, some some ease. Like that's actually one of my organization, LUMOS transforms. One of our core values is ease.
>> Myrna McCallum : I like that. There's a lot to unpack in that. But before we get there, and as I want to talk to you about equity, inclusion, diversity efforts, like I'm hearing about people shutting down offices in the United States, I don't understand it. I want to talk about it because you know what The US does tends to ripple out. And in Canada, like, we feel the things. And we're probably going to have a conservative government in our next election who is like a mini Donald Trump, like the conservative leader Pierre Poliev, is definitely a mini wannabe Donald Trump. So scary times. But, I want to talk about those things, but before we do, I want to, like, go back a little bit to your, as your mother referred to it, an eclectic career or history or path that you have taken. And people will get to know through this conversation where you are now and what it is that you do now and what you deliver now. But where did it begin? What are your origins in terms of what did you study? What did you train to be? And is that vastly different and far away from where you are today?
>> Nkem Ndefo: In some ways, yes, and in some ways, no. So, when I originally went to university, well, the second time I went to university, the first time I was an art student, way too young to be there. So the second time I went back, I actually studied with Angela Davis on purpose. So she was my advisor for my undergraduate. And I studied American studies, African American, women's history. so it was because, I think, you know, lineage and history is really important. And so it was a lot of women's studies, ethnic studies, black studies, US history, pre colonial, colonial, so of Turtle island. Right. And I was planning to be a history teacher. And I thought education, like, if you have the information, you have the understanding, that's enough to make change. But I was also an activist at the same time. And as I started doing more and more activist work, direct action, I was realizing that people can have all the information and still not be able to make change. And I had, you know, I was young and I had my first child with a midwife. And I said, now this was a powerful experience. And, you know, he, you know, I thought about if you could change the trajectory of someone's life at birth, you change the trajectory of a family lineage, I mean, whole thing. And so I said there was something that wasn't just information. There was a power that I was able to touch. And so I finished up that degree and went all the way and studied midwifery. And as I was practicing as a midwife in various settings with, you know, I did a home birth practice, I worked in a mobile clinic providing, primary care to survival sex workers. I worked for Planned Parenthood, like, real range, right? I started to notice that trauma was the block to wellness. Like, it was a deeper root that the. What I call the long arms of trauma were reaching through. And even if I provided excellent care, that it was, you know, really helped people find their power through. Through the experience. Trauma was still there. Snatching, just snatching, snatching. And I said, there's something about trauma here. And so I reoriented and studied everything I could. I'm not going back and getting another degree. So I studied like clinical programs and. But I was interested in trauma not just as it's conventionally. I think about early, sort of more early trauma, informed care way it was scoped was much more psychologically based and in behavioral health. And it wasn't talking about the interlocking systems of oppression. But I came from an activist brain background. So I was interested in how do we do this at scale, how do we do this at a community level, not just at the individual level. And so it is in that probably I attended my last birth in 2007, but I still consider myself a midwife in the sense of, you know, when people say, oh, how many babies you do deliver? I'm like, two. I have two children, but I've attended hundreds of births because I wasn't the primary. I was there to walk alongside people, to be a guide, to be a resource. But this is a collaborative effort. And I. And, it's also. Birth is an incredible liminal space where you're in between worlds, right? And it's intense. It's a crucible. So I think often about change work. Similarly, the work I do with Lumos is, often about how do we prepare people for change, how do we build capacity, the skills, the knowledge, the spacious, the willingness to be together in the messiness and the unknown, to be able to be creative and responsive, like building that. Those capacities and then shepherding people through that crucible of change to the other side. It's just not babies now. It's through trauma and healing and not just individual. What's happening at an organizational level or what's happening at a systems level. so I very much consider myself a. A midwife still, even though it's not. It's not babies. But, you know, the lessons gleaned from, you know, to be able to be in labor and to not carry fear around. The intensity of the experience, to sit with somebody is what's needed to be in hard conversations about racism, hard conversations about. About trauma and not to collapse and to not do for. But to do with people. So there's a lot of lessons that came through, that I really appreciate from, from this Path
>> Myrna McCallum : very interesting, this pathway from midwifery to working with people on like addressing trauma in the workplace in leadership practices. And it's interesting that you mentioned fear because I mean what I see with some clients that I work with, it's just how fear has such a strong hold on some people. And then when you couple that with terrible legal advice that people are getting in terms of like protecting the reputation of companies or corporations. So like they're getting really terrible legal advice from lawyers who have no training in being trauma informed lawyers who have no training in centering humanity or human design or any of it. They just have your standard like legal training which is very dehumanizing. But so they're taking advice from these folks about on matters that relate to things like having conversations about racism, addressing discrimination, sexual harassment in the workplace or other things that are fracturing the workplace. And when you take it in that terrible legal advice and then you add in the fear that either that creates or the pre existing fear, it then tends to have like a lock on some leaders and they will become immobilized, so they make no decisions or they just step back and no one can reach them, connect with them, get a response from them. Like in many ways they go deep into their own trauma response and they stay there and then nothing happens. Talking about fear, I think, and addressing being able to address fear and what it takes to, to inviting courage to have conversations that need to be had, like how do you do that and what advice do you like would you give leaders, to achieve that? Particularly when the fear is so strong, their loyalty, to protecting the company or not creating any kind of liability issues for their employer. Like this is what leaders think about all the time, right? Like I can't have this conversation because it creates this risk.
>> Nkem Ndefo: One of the things that I think happens for leadership is the real focus on the external, the budget, the policies, the procedures, the external commitments, the structures. And there's a real fear to look at the interiority period. and yet that interiority because we have this idea of professionalism, right? So there's this professional line that we don't breach the interior. That's your personal business at work. This is all that shows up. But we know and I think it's important to do some education around how trauma works and how trauma hijack because usually, I mean there are some Machiavellian, but by and large people have good intentions and they get hijacked by fear and they don't like it either, but they don't have another way of working. And so when we explain some of the mechanisms about how fear hijacks, and it's sort of what I call it pierces, right? But trauma has that capacity. Strong emotions have that capacity to pierce that wall between personal and professional. And it clouds your judgment. And what could be. Where there could be 12 options, you only see one because you're so fearful. And so I think sometimes I lean into the science of what does stress. And some. And often with leaders, even using the word trauma is verboten. And if I can see that that's the case, I don't need to be technically correct and use the word trauma. I just say toxic stress. You know, I can use another code word. But to talk about stress and what it does to. To the brain, what it does to our relationality, what it does to our ability overestimate or over appraise risk, our inability, to have creative problem solving. And so I present a case for why addressing this might be useful. And usually that's enough. If you can find what it's blocking for the person or the organization and say, isn't this something you want? Right? And usually you can find it, then say, you know, let's just bring the stress level down and see what happens. And once you can get the stress level down, the conversations shift naturally, right? Rather than trying to beat it through cognitively, just bringing the stress level down, you're dealing with a different person. Suddenly we've gone from, it's black and white, and now there's 12 shades of gray in the middle. And we can access solutions that were not possible before. And so that rigidity that we're bumping up against, rather than for me to continue to butt my head against it, it's like, how can we soften this? And, you know, sometimes there are people who just aren't ready. But I think of a leadership program we just ran recently where they were, you know, this particular organization had an issue happen with an employee that was all in the news. It was bad. It was bad, bad, bad. An employee engagement survey. Bad, bad, bad. you know, like, it's really critical at this point, like this feedback, because now the media is on it. And this is a quasi, both. It's a public political organization. And so there was enough that leadership is like, oh, we ought to do something. Not that they, you know, something could have been done years before, but it was like, we need to do something now. And so it's in that spirit that we said, okay, like, what might you be open to. And as we began to talk and it turned out it was employee supervision was the place where we were able to soften and find some wiggle room and be able to implement some of these things. And people realized, they said, oh, like they had. Again, coming back to what I said earlier in the work is an experience of a slightly greater safety, of slightly less stress, and they can feel the qualitative difference. And it's say, oh, did you like that? That's. This is what's happening. And now let's approach the same problem. And you see a new, new lens there.
>> Myrna McCallum : Interesting. I like that approach. Like, looking for places where you can soften is. I think that invitation alone can bring a whole different, like, energy into the conversation and start to shift your. You away from the chokehold that, the fear has on. On you. And, you know, you're right. Like, I have yet to meet a leader or an organizational, like some kind of manager who has bad intentions or who is like, like just evil in their spirit. Everybody wants to do good. People are doing their best. And folks, either fear is operating because of some bad legal advice that somebody's being given, or they just don't have the skill set to sit and have the difficult conversations that need to be had that begin to, like, repair and heal things that are fractured in the workplace. So skills. It's skills training, right?
>> Nkem Ndefo: Upskilling. Right. And, and so I think that helps soften because if we demonize somebody, we're already setting up a polarization, we're setting up a battle. If we can bridge and say, I see your intentions, I see, you know, I mean, this comes back to compassionate communication, right? Like, what are the universal needs? Like, everybody has needs for safety. Everybody has needs for competence and acceptance. Everybody, right? But the strategies we use to meet those needs might be really kind of twisted. So instead of disparaging the need, right. Where can we find the wiggle room? And one of the things I have learned over the years of doing, doing change work is although we are attracted to the hard spots and want to work on the hardest spots, actually it works better to start with the soft spots because I've, you know, I've long recognized, you know, things tend to be in a bell curve. So you're going to have the people who are like, yes, we want to do this thing, the people kind of in the middle and the people who are like, we will never do this thing. But if you can start with the yes, we want to do this thing, they're going to move forward and they're going to pull, pull the people in the middle over totally.
>> Myrna McCallum : Are you finding, as I am, that folks are just trying to find a way to heal, like heal themselves, heal their families, heal their lineage and heal their workplaces and heal their systems. People are ask. Like I'm finding more and more people are asking these questions. And at the same time as I say that out loud, there's also people out there who are not asking these questions, who should be asking these questions. But what is your sense right now of what's going on in the cli, like the environment?
>> Nkem Ndefo: I mean, I think it's both. I think there are people who want to heal and in those same people fear about what that means, what the disruption is. I mean, because we are talking about working with functional organizations that are providing services or doing whatever they're doing to think about what it takes to heal. At the same time, like, you don't just get to go on sabbatical and shut down for two years. You gotta keep doing the thing, meeting payroll and doing all the things you're doing. And so I think that even with the desire to want to heal, it's like, what is this gonna look like? What is this gonna be like? Will I be able to tolerate? And I think that happens at the same time. And I don't know if those of us doing change work are talking about the ambivalence of enough in people because we're just so happy. People are like wanting to move and do things to realistically say, like, let's talk about the parts of you that are scared because those are the parts that will sabotage. Those are the parts that will throw the monkey rent, even in the people who really want it. I mean, I can think of myself like, you know, and I'm sure you can too. Changes that you wanted to make or I wanted to make in my life that I knew were good for me and I knew were going to move, move me in a direction. And I still had a hard time, especially with consistency, especially with follow through. And so that helps bring a little layer of compassion to the people. When we're doing this in an organizational way, when we're dealing with legal structures and regulatory framework where the, you know, it's hot, it's a high, it's a steep curve. And I think by acknowledging some of the ambivalence that we have, we can bring our whole selves to it and not shame ourselves for having being of two minds.
>> Myrna McCallum : Yes. And I'm thinking about some of my clients and folks that are in my network who are leaders in regulatory bodies and in like even like judges in legal systems, there are some people who will argue, or just maybe not necessarily argue, but just vocalize the concern or the belief that because the system is just so adversarial in nature or its roots are in something colonial. What, whatever the language is, it cannot be trauma informed. You cannot embed trauma informed principles in it. What are your thoughts on that?
>> Nkem Ndefo: Sounds like a binary to me. So here we are judging a binary for being, you know, so rigid with a rigid approach. if we wait for perfect conditions, they will never arise. This is what we are dealt with. And I believe there is always wiggle room. Find the wiggle room. And so even in a regulatory body, like I've done a lot of work in healthcare, for example, which is highly regulated in the U.S. highly, highly regulated. Even there, where can you find wiggle room? Where are the places that are the least regulated, that have the most place for discretionary judgment? Right. Those are the places that are ripe to make change and that we can ripple out from there. And instead of saying, you know, if we think of one of the primary trauma informed principles is safety, if we are saying, well, look at this system, it's so adversarial, it's colonial, there's no way we're going to bring safety into this system. If you are framing safety as an absolute, you're right. But I actually don't believe there's 100% safety. I don't think it's, anywhere there's degrees. And so if we're going to say, if I can't do it all, then I'm not going to do anything. If you can bring in 5% more safety, is that valuable to the users of this system, the workers in the system? I would say yes, it is valuable. and it's not to say that that's enough. When I feel a little like dejected about the situation, right. Because it happens to everybody. I always lean into the saying by Fannie Lou Hamer, who was a, African American activist in the 60s onwards. And she said she was a little woman and she said, when I die, we will be 5ft 2 inches closer to justice. So remembering right, like this is if I'm requiring absolutes and perfection, it will paralyze me. What can be done and how can we get creative?
>> Myrna McCallum : I love that. How can we get creative? As you also share this, I think about some of my clients who are so courageous and open Minded and invested in how do we do what we've been doing but in a better way or how do we do it, so that we cause less harm. We may not be able to eliminate harm completely, but how do we cause less harm? And it's always those clients of mine that I find to be the most creative. They're creative thinkers though, they're solution oriented. And those are really my kind of people. Like the ones who are like, it seems impossible, but there's got to be a way, you know, people who say that as opposed to the ones who are like, it's impossible. I don't think there's any way, I don't want, I don't have time for those people I like, the other ones who were like, it seems impossible, but there's got to be a way. So let's find it.
>> Nkem Ndefo: I mean, let's find it together. Like, I firmly believe that the answers are locked inside of us and stress and trauma has locked them up. And so when, you know, because we know like that rigidity that happens when we are. And judgmentalness, right, in order to be creative, sometimes like you've got to let like some softness around your ideas because a brainstorm, if you shut them down before you even have a chance to really let that thinking get divergent. And so this is, it's actually how I came to work around embodiment. And is, is this idea that if we know trauma happens in the, you know, it happens in the body. It's not just a cognitive experience, it's a whole body experience. So working in the body is one of the ways, like you can't just work in the mind. I don't know what to say. I mean, I think it's useful, I mean, even for people who tend to be like pretty rigid around this. The science is really clear about, for example, embodied cognition, right. We think what's happening in our body influences our thinking. So if you want to entertain that, continue to entertain the fiction that the mind and body are separate, the science is very clear that that is not the case. It is just not the case. And so, I mean, even with the science, people really want to hold on to that because people don't have the language or the skill skills around working with the body. And I. And so, you know, one of the big things I say is your body doesn't really care what you think many of times and it's going to do the thing. Would you like to be able to work with it or just be hijacked by It. So let's develop the skills. and most people are grateful. What they say is like, I didn't know how to do this. I was afraid of it. But when I learn, it's just like learning a foreign language. If I asked you to speak, you know, give a presentation in Mandarin talk tomorrow, Myrna, you'd be like, no. And you would avoid it. Of course. You don't know how to do it. But when we can say this is a capacity issue and that can be solved, people go, oh, I can actually do this thing. And then they realize the benefit, not just professionally and their, you know, relationally professionally, but relationally personally, but also the quality of the work that they do, the capacity of their creative problem solving is just.
>> Myrna McCallum : I know, it's incredible. I mean, I just. I love what you are saying because it is. I mean, I've seen it. It's true. And also I think about the profession I come from. I mean, part of what drove me to want to be a lawyer was all of my. My childhood trauma. Like, I looked for a profession where I could live inside my head because I figured if I could operate from my mind, I would never have to feel what's actually happening in my body. And when I looked around to see, well, who's doing that and who's getting paid well for it, like, I immediately was like clocked onto lawyers, right? Like, just. Just the most, I don't know, disconnected group of people, like, ever. And so. And I think a lot of lawyers listening to this will be like, yep, yep. Because I'm sure I'm not the only one who, pursued law as a career as a means of avoiding feeling and, experiencing or re. Experiencing. And so. But then, of course, what I learned after some years in criminal law was that in order to see the humanity in other people, this is my belief, you have to be willing to feel it in yourself. And I realized that as long as I decide to hold on to this idea that I'm going to be disconnected and operate only from my brain and, you know, be dehumanizing in all the ways I can be, then I'm going to do harm to a lot of very vulnerable, vulnerable people who are, like me, like they're indigenous like me, or there are other people of color who've been kicked to the margins for such a long time. And a lot of the ones that I was working, like, a lot of the victims of crime that I worked with were children. And that was a real soft spot for me. And I could not do it anymore. So really it was a six year old boy who change changed my life. He changed my trajectory on, in terms of how I was going to practice law. And this is really where trauma started to come into like, come into play in my life but also in my practice. And and I'm just thinking about this and I'm sharing it now because I know that there are a lot of people out there, lawyers and people who are very analytical and are really proud of their analytical ability, their rational ability, I use air quotes who are, I would say they're probably the toughest people to convince to recognize things like the benefits of emotional intelligence or acknowledge how your body actually contains a lot of wisdom and messaging and can help you actually do what you do a lot better. That's not just for you, but it's for your clients, for your colleagues, for everyone around you. Yeah, some people are just, they, they're protective I guess of how they've been trained and how they've been operating because it serves them well. And I mean, I guess I'm not putting this out there, to invite you to say, well how do we challenge that? But rather it's just an acknowledgment that I wanted to, want to put out there because you know, as much as like the people listening to this podcast are probably already carrying convinced that there's some wisdom and trauma that can help them do better, be better, I, I just think they can also recognize that there are people within their systems who are resistant and will say absolutely not. Not for me. Those are soft skills. That's like woo, woo. That's I'm not here to coddle people. Hold them when they cry, no thank you. Like pull up your bootstraps and get to work or get out. Right.
>> Myrna McCallum : There's still that mindset. And so I think the work for us is to just to continue doing what we're doing and seek out like minded people who are creative thinkers who are also insightful enough to go, okay, how do we improve on the systems that we have actually been upholding or that we have inherited? And I think that sometimes the magic is in the question.
>> Nkem Ndefo: It is. And I mean I don't, you know, in general I feel less of a need to convince people. I just do the thing and you know, when you say it's working for them and then I question, is it right? So this is the, you know, the magic is in the question, is it working for you? And in what way? Where might it not be working because, that word you use, protection. We all have protective functions and parts of ourselves that are going to do all kinds of sometimes very, transparent and clear ways that they protect us. Like, you know, being in my head protects me from feeling, protects, me from loss, protects me from. Right. But it also protects me from love. Right, right. So it's both. And so usually if you can, what do you say, you find people's pain points, like the place where it's not working and people will be often open. Not everybody, but some saying like, what's possible? And you start small again. I'm really a fan of wiggle room. I have looked, you know, I don't think when I was a younger practitioner I would be like, wow, look at this big change. This is amazing. But I learned that pendulums swing both ways and that a pendulum that you look like, wow, we got this big breakthrough and then you see this retrenchment. So I see like what happened in the summer of 2020, this summer of racial reckoning. This door, door swung wide open and look at the slam shut. I have come to appreciate the small and steady changes because they are more enduring and more sustainable. A whole system has to adjust. A whole culture has to adjust. Right. And that takes a moment, but then you can use that as leverage for the next change and the next change and the next change. So I still have my eyes on the prize, but I'm more clear about the steps that are taking. And they're both like, it's. What does they say? Revolutionary intent, evolutionary in, revolutionary and intent and evolutionary in implementation. Like the actual steps, you know, where you're going, it's just right. And also being able to discern how much wiggle room is in a person, how much is in a system, and then take what you can get and make it solid and then push again so that people. I do agree. Finding like minded people places where it feel like home, finding co conspirators, and limiting how much energy we do about pushing against the really hard spots. But don't write them off because there might be wiggle room there that we didn't appraise. There might be an opening. Like, you know, I'm always open for that conversation. Or that little, like if you can sort of strike when the iron's hot, like, wow, you got in.
>> Myrna McCallum : I. Okay. So I really like what you say about wiggle room and like looking like these little adjustments, what can we do? What can we like it doesn't always have to be a massive overhaul, which I think some people probably view, especially if they get mandates and you have to bring more trauma, informed principles into like how you're delivering services to the public or how you protect the public. I think some people get overwhelmed going, how do we actually, actually do this? We're talking about a, massive overhaul. But I love this approach of like wiggle room, tiny adjustments, where can we make small changes? And, but also what you said about how in this like racial reckoning with the door like swinging open and then it slams shut, I just felt that. And I wonder is one of the ways in which the slamming shutter is like, is that being evidenced by the fact that there seems to be a war on diversity, equity and inclusion right now?
>> Nkem Ndefo: Yes.
>> Myrna McCallum : Because I don't even understand why people are shutting down their equity offices.
>> Nkem Ndefo: Well, I mean one, that door swung open, but it was also, it wasn't deep. And a lot of the work that was done was around optics and it was around performance. And you know, this is the one thing about diversity. everybody's like, oh, not everybody, but lots of people say we love diversity. There are, you know, conservative folks who do not like, they like homogeneity. But for a liberal person, they will say, I love diversity, but are you willing to be changed by the diversity you invite in? And most people are not. So they just want to multicolor their staff. They want to have a few cultural celebrations, but they're not willing to be changed by it. So they're not really interested in inclusion. And I.
>> Myrna McCallum : Optics and tokenism.
>> Nkem Ndefo: And so this is a lot of what happened. And so also is you suddenly have a DEI officer. Whenever I'm doing change work, one of the first things you got to do is you got to get to that strategic plan. If you're not part of that strategic plan, you will just be initiative of the month or the year or the era. It's getting to be part of, the strategy strategic plan. It's not extra, it's not nice to have. Right. It becomes core. And so I think a lot of these organizations, it didn't get to that point. It was just like, we have an officer and then they were also when we do, because I did one of those large initiatives at that juncture and one of the things I said before we were invited into a very large system m a very large safety net healthcare system in the United States is we will only do it if it's an embodied approach, leadership agrees to be coached. and that patients and Community are involved from the beginning and those were our conditions and they were met.
>> Myrna McCallum : Yeah, huge. And like the whole leadership leader. Like leaders have to be coached. I can't tell you just how frustrated I get when like training occurs and no leaders show up. There's no leaders present. Anyway, I digress.
>> Nkem Ndefo: I'll let you shift me, but that's it. Right. Like, and so with that we did, you know, we made some structural. And we were really about process. So we really talked about process the whole time through. Because you can't get to equity without practicing equity. And so you can't. What does inclusion look like? And I firmly believe that nothing about us without us. Right. And so where are the patients? Where are. So we had strategic planning groups that included warehouse workers and clerks along with administrators and doctors. And it was uncomfortable even for doctors of color to say I'm working next to a clerk or a warehouse worker. They're they, you know, and so really a cultural shift. And once you got that genie out of the bottle, you're not going to get that one back in. And we started with embodied. We used. Even though this was an anti racism initiative, we said we are using a trauma informed approach here. And so because how, if, if I mentioned the word white supremacy and you feel a clutch in your stomach, how are you going to write policy here? You have to upskill your ability to be with these hard conversations. So we concentrated on capacity building around the emotional pieces so people could be in these hard conversations.
>> Myrna McCallum : That is really, that's something. And I want to ask the question about embodied practice, particularly for leaders. What does that look like? What kind of vulnerability, does that require?
>> Nkem Ndefo: Well, I mean I think I want to frame it more around self awareness. Right. Most people are aware, fairly aware of their thoughts but have not great awareness of their emotional state and how that might be influencing or their thought process. And they're even, I m. Think more poor awareness of the body if you're very stressed for like, I'll give you a classic example. I'm a leader, I run an organization. And, and if I am feeling very stressed, I find for example, my patience goes way down, my listening skills go way down and my willingness to entertain various ways to go from A to Z goes way down. And I generally want things my way. I become more controlling and more micromanaging. These are not great leadership skills, folks.
>> Myrna McCallum : Or transactional.
>> Nkem Ndefo: Much more transactional. Right. but if I'm not, not aware that I'm stressed. Right. Then these just seem like status quo. If I Come into awareness that I'm stressed, it opens up a choice point to say, oh, is my level of stress actually useful for me right now or is it not? And if it's not, what can I do to lower it so that I can bring in more of the leadership skills that the way I want to show up as a leader. And so I think the willingness is not so much about being vulnerable, vulnerable with other people, it's about being vulnerable with yourself. Right. For me to admit, like, oh, this is what's going on here, right? Yes, this is what's going on. And my willingness to attend to that and not be hijacked so that I can be the leader I want to be. And so embodied skills, and we call them embodied leadership skills, is to have the self awareness of what my stress level is, the capacity to discern when it's useful and when it's not useful. And lastly, the skills to be able to settle disproportionate responses so I can show up the way I want to show up.
>> Myrna McCallum : Yes, that makes sense. What you're talking about aligns for sure with a lot of the training that I have done. that self awareness piece I think is so important. And, and a lot of people would say, well, I'm pretty self aware. I mean, I think they're self aware to the extent that you talked about, which is like, I think they could discern sometimes, like, am I in a good mood, am I in a bad mood? Right. But like, I don't think that they take it to the level of actually reflecting on how is my, you know, current state having an impact on my team or having an impact on the psychological safety that others are experiencing in this meeting or in this process or whatever it is. Like, are people feeling comfortable enough to ask questions to challenge me? Do they feel like they belong in this conversation? Have I created that space? Space?
>> Myrna McCallum : I, I think, I think there's definitely more work that people could do to get to that level because I don't see people enough people actually reflecting on those types of questions. And like the magic is in the question and the answer that comes absolutely.
>> Nkem Ndefo: I mean here's where a little bit of science is useful. When we become stress activated, our hearing retunes away from the range of the human voice to low and danger sounds in the environment. So we physiologically do not hear each other well, the more stressed we are.
>> Myrna McCallum : Yeah, makes sense.
>> Nkem Ndefo: Right? And so if we think about communication is not just what I say, it's you know, half of communication is My receiving, my receiving and my capacity to receive. And as a leader, to be able to closely listen to what is happening is what people are saying is crucial.
>> Myrna McCallum : People want to be heard. They want to be heard. They want to know what they say to you matters. And if you can't provide that experience, that's a problem, particularly if you are the leader in that organization. I think this is a good segue into talking about the resilience toolkit that you created. Can you tell our listeners about that, about that work and what inspired it and how it's going to
>> Nkem Ndefo: I think what inspired it. I mean I'm a big I'm definitely an empiricist. So I'm always trying different things and working in different organizations and recognizing many of the needs that we've talked about and identified and surfaced here. M. You know, recognizing how much the long arms of trauma and stress hijack people from being who they want to be, from the healing, from the getting free together and all of the things. And so the resilience toolkit is what I call a stable, a set of stabilization skills and a framework to hold those skills. And it teaches people how to develop the kind of resilience that not just allows them to overcome adversity and to heal, but to also have bandwidth and capacity for changing, the systems of adversity, the harmful relationships that are creating inequity and oppression in the first place. You know, teaching people the self awareness skills, the discernment skills. Because sometimes we are in a, you know, if you're having to do a deposition in an adversarial situation, you know, being, you know, sharp and in that state, that fight state is really necessary. But when you are, when you're done with work and you're coming home and you're trying to go to sleep, sleep, you don't need that level of activation. So the discernment is very important as well as we use real time skills to settle disproportionate stress responses. Not all, just disproportionate ones because I don't. Most people can't go on retreat. We actually need skills in our day to day. You know, if you're going from meeting to meeting to meeting, are you carrying the stress from the first meeting into the second, the third, by the time you're in the fourth, fourth, you're just like, you know, about to explode. Right. And one of the really important things in the toolkit is about how do we know what we're. The practices we're using are working for us because there are a lot of practices and they don't all work for everybody. And I think it's really important that people have that self knowledge. This is working for me, yes or no and to be able to pick. And so that really was. The set of skills are. So when we do, for example an anti racism initiative, we will embed this set of skills at the beginning before we do any work. Right. We're strategic planning or I've done a lot of trauma informed consultation for system design. Different. whether we're talking, I was thinking recently about a gang intervention program, how to bring a trauma informed approach and how do we bring this embodied piece into it. So that's the place, that's the place that it sits in.
>> Myrna McCallum : That is really cool. I think that is an incredible tool kit for people to be checking out. Because a lot of what you just explained, I would say based on my experience with clients, is something a lot of them are. It's a common experience or a common challenge that they're having and, and this practice, like there are others, of course, all over the place. You can find them on social media talking about hustle culture and upholding hustle culture. And there's a lot of people who see it as a badge of honor that they, from 7:30 until 6:30 at night, they're in one meeting after another in a hearing, in a trial, in a sentencing, in a meeting, in a deposition. And their whole day is like that. There's not no moment. They didn't eat, they sometimes don't sleep. And they talk about that like it's ah, a thing to be proud of. but I feel like what you're saying is it's kind of like whatever energy you're picking up in one experience potentially could be accumulating and informing the next experience. And it's just adding up, adding up, adding up. And then where do you go when it's all piled up and you're at the end of your day and, and now you're allowing yourself four hours to sleep as you get up early to prep for the next thing and then have another round of a day like that? And I think, you know, I think part of that is just kind of toxic practice that comes with certain professions. And I think part of it is the flight response. Like if I could just go, go, go and stay busy. I don't need to like feel what's going on or really think about the things that I need to be thinking about so I could make My life better or improve, improve on things. And so there's, there's a lot of value and wisdom in what it is that you are offering leaders. And I think it's so cool, you
>> Nkem Ndefo: know, saying, just slow down. Right? Like, if slow down is, you know, hey, the work I'm doing in the world is really important. It's really needed. Why? How can I slow down? I've got huge debt from school, I need to pay this off. How can I slow down? I have a family to support. How can I slow down? Right. And also maybe it is pieces of if I stop and feel X, Y or Z, it's going to be so much. So it can't just be like a mantra, slow down. We need the tools to be able to slow down and to be able to find some comfort when we do that. It's not just going to all be more terribleness. Right. One of the keys of resilience, effective resilience, is knowing when it's safe enough to rest and resting effectively. Right. But you've got to be able to appraise is, is this safe enough? Can I rest? And being able to shift your state, you can always come up and perform. But we only get this round once. Let's also have some enjoyment. Let's come back to this idea of play and joy in the work. and this was a lesson I learned as a midwife. Right. Labor is hard, contractions hurt, but in between there's actually very little pain at all. So if you can rest, you come down and then you take another one and then you come down one at a time. But if you don't relax and you're racing for the next one instead, after each one you climb a step. You climb a step because you're not coming down after each one. And I think most people are living, their professionals especially right in the go, go, go are living without coming down in between each engagement. And then you need a vacation and you like, you know, you take this big vacation and then you come back and you're right where you started. And it's like a hamster wheel.
>> Myrna McCallum : Yeah.
>> Nkem Ndefo: When it doesn't have to be.
>> Myrna McCallum : Absolutely. Dr. Poojalakshman wrote this book called Real Self Care. I don't know if you've heard of it. And she talks about, she talks about like the four principles of real self care. But the first is boundaries. And what she essentially says is real self care is really the, the hard work of making decisions that eliminate excess from your life and extra things and that maybe in the short term brings a little bit of pain, but it's long term gain. So you're kind of like having to look at your relationships and figuring out, do they serve me, do they align with my core values? This activity I'm engaging in, does it serve me? Does it align with my core values? do I say no? Or have I been like holding the line when somebody has like cross whatever line it is that I've created? And it's a really interesting book because part of, in part of it, she, she defines the difference between faux self care and real self care. And really it's essentially echoes what you're saying because I think a lot of people look at Cabo at Christmas as like, okay, that's when I rest. But then they come back into the loop, the grind. And then at Christmas time again, it's not really rest, it's really recovery from, from the grind and then you come back into it. So where does the rest take place? And the other piece I think that's really important to, for people to consider is that there are different forms of rest. So rest isn't necessarily being laid up on the sofa watching Netflix. For sure, that could be a form of rest. But there's other forms of rest that I think, especially in this technological, screen addicted world that we live in, that we should be thinking about all the different forms of rest that could benefit.
>> Nkem Ndefo: Absolutely. I think there's, I often will distinguish and this may be very similar. There's distraction. Right where I'm feeling uncomfortable and I'm distracting. And just be clear, it's not bad or wrong, it's just distraction. But it doesn't move the needle, it doesn't restore us. We don't feel revitalized through it, we don't feel reconnected. And and so that's something to pay attention to. And for different people, different things can be revitalized. Because someone could use yoga, which is supposed to be like this great self care and they might completely check out and not come back feeling connected and and vital. So it's not what you're doing, it's this is the self, this is the self awareness. Is it working for me or is it not? And in what way? What does restoration feel like? Right.
>> Myrna McCallum : Oh my gosh. What does it feel like? I have no answer to that question for myself personally. I hope anyone listening to this conversation immediately has some ideas about, oh, I know what that means. Great for you. I have to contemplate that one.
>> Nkem Ndefo: like practice how about practice and like, you know, try it. Like, is this feel restoring? Does this feel restoring? Does this? Yeah, like what? And sometimes, you know, working with folks where I'll say, what does comfort feel like in your body? And I'll hear especially from folks of professionals, of color, I don't know. So this is an exploration. So I'll say asking the question is, could I be more comfortable what might happen if I try this or this? And paying attention and your body will give you clues. So this is like, you know, it's an exploration.
>> Myrna McCallum : I love that. Yeah, it's the, again, back to the question, what could I. Is there something I can do to create more comfort? Like, also, is there something I can do to create more safety, especially for those of us who feel unsafe in the world? Right. And so we don't need to necessarily have all the answers or have everything be perfect right now because. And all of the elements in play right now because that just might not happen. There's maybe no perfect time and no perfect environment or perfect scenario, but there might be, like you said, say, wiggle room where we can make these small adjustments that can then create improvement.
>> Nkem Ndefo: Yeah, I love that. I love that we got there.
>> Myrna McCallum : I love that. I am so, so pleased that our. Our paths crossed and that we had this conversation and that you're coming to Vancouver for the Justice's Trauma Conference in March, where you're going to be delivering a keynote on a heavy topic, Healing Collective Trauma, which is so many people are feeling all kinds of things right now for all kinds of reasons. And I think that is a. Is a presentation that a lot of eyes, ears and hearts are going to be open to embodying, embracing, taking in. And then, you're going to deliver a workshop on this resilience toolkit that you created, which I know I am going to. To be present for that because we could all benefit. There's all. There's room for improvement for us all. And so I'm really excited that you're coming to Vancouver.
>> Nkem Ndefo: I am, too. And, I'm hoping that in amidst the heaviness, we can find some lightness, we can find some joy at the same time, not to eclipse or deny the severity of what folks are going through. It's a bonus, both and definitely.
>> Myrna McCallum : And once you get to know me, you will know. And anyone who's ever had me in for training, I infuse a lot of humor into what I do because it doesn't have to be heavy all the time. And trauma, like informed leadership, or trauma responsive, trauma wise all the different things, types of leadership training, keynotes, educational stuff is not therapy. It doesn't have to be breaking down and breaking open and like certainly you can have that experience experience if you want but it can also be funny, it can be engaging it can be interesting, it can be joyful. It could be a pleasure. We're definitely going to deliver that experience. We absolutely are. It's going to be fun, it's going to be engaging, it's going to be insightful it's going to be thought, thought provoking and it's going to be just deeply transformational. I know it is because the last one was and so I just feel really honored that you're going to join us. So thank you.
>> Nkem Ndefo: Thank you so much for this lovely conversation. The invitation to join you in the Justice's Trauma conference and I can't wait, I can't wait.