Thanks!
In December 2014 we signed a lease on some offices in the Uptown district of Westerville, Ohio. We negotiated a discount on the first month's rent by offering to paint the place ourselves. So, through the holidays that year, we picked our colors ("we" meaning Lara) and we painted the whole suite ("we" meaning Kevin). Our enthusiasm got us through those first scary months of starting a new venture, even when the couch we ordered for Lara’s therapy office didn’t fit through the door. (We did eventually get all the furniture in, and even added a second therapist to Lara's practice).
We developed Trauma Responsive Care and took it on the road. We survived a global pandemic and brought Lara's practice, our trainings and consultations to Zoom. We’ve been blessed to have worked across the country, from Maine to Washington state, from Ontario to Texas, and so many places in between.
We’ve each published a book with The National Association for the Dually Diagnosed (NADD) Press. Lara's is The Way Through: Trauma Responsive Care for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Professionals and Kevin went on to publish The Way Forward: Implementing Trauma Responsive Care for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Professionals. Two more titles are on the way, projected to go to press in 2025 and 2026.
Over the past few years, we've expanded our offerings to include helping professionals' own self-care. Lara is training about the most recent research into vicarious traumas, moral injury and empathetic distress, looking at how helpers can heal the emotional stress of our work. Kevin, as always, is focused on organizations, teaching leaders and managers how to understand and prevent burnout, and developing a burnout assessment specifically tailored to DD and other human service providers. Our next books will be the companions to this work.
It's all been exciting since we set out on an unknown course a decade ago; some of it maybe a little more exciting than we expected! But the greatest thrill in these ten years has been you. We’ve been privileged to work with so many skilled and caring people. It's been astonishing and humbling to see how much dedication and creativity there is in our professions, serving the most vulnerable among us. We learn from you every day.
And so, with the deepest gratitude and appreciation, thank you for all you do, and for being a part of this journey with us.
Here's to another ten years.
Lara Palay and Kevin Aldridge