[This podcast first aired in February 2021]

Today’s conversation is with 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 and I are both Americans living in Northern Ireland and have become friends through being members of the Corrymeela community. Just before Covid in 2020, I had the good fortune of taking a training from her in the Community Resiliency Model, through the Trauma Resource Institute, and it had a huge impact on me as I entered, along with the rest of the world, the collective trauma of coronavirus. It was so transformative for me that a few years later, I became trained to teach these resilience skills too, and now weave resilience tools into my spirituality work.

In this conversation, which first aired in 2021, I wanted to mine Sara’s wealth of knowledge on how we, as human beings, can come through difficult experiences.

So whatever it is that brought you here, I’m glad you’re with us.

More about Sara

To find out more about Sara, visit her website: https://www.cook-consultancy.com

Today I want to highlight a really wonderful opportunity coming up in April 2024 – the Resilient Spirit Pilgrimage to Ireland. Consider taking 11 days to come to Ireland to explore what brings us joy, strength, hope – resilience – to our lives. We’ll begin with six days at the beautiful Corrymeela residential centre in Ballycastle, on the north coast, which alone will take your breath away, but on top of that we have a program throughout our stay that’s geared toward helping you find resilience within yourself and to develop practices and wisdom that you can take back home with you. Resilience expert Sara Cook will be our first guest facilitator, followed by the brilliant reflective practitioner Paul Hutchinson from Episode 11. I’ll be leading a retreat day, and at the end of our time there will be we’ll have a session on Zoom with the one and only poet/theologian/Poetry Unbound creator/community member and former leader of the Corrymeela community Pádraig Ó Tuama. Pilgrimage participants will then head a few hours south to the stunning hills and ancient monastery of Glendalough, where we’ll spend a few days connecting with the beauty of nature and the wisdom of Celtic Spirituality, before spending a day exploring the vibrant city of Dublin. This is going to be a transformative, uplifting, joyful and inspiring experience…

Come join us on the beautiful north coast of Ireland at the Corrymeela Centre for the Resilient Spirit Pilgrimage in April 2024.

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