Trauma-Informed Ministry Starts With You: Alignment, Repair, and the Gospel (with Aminah Vargas-Harris)

Renae: Well, welcome, Aminah to the TraumaWise podcast. So glad to have you here.

Aminah: Absolutely. Absolutely. Renae, thank you so much for having me.

Renae: Well, I really enjoyed the time that we got to spend together in the May twenty twenty six ministry conversations, which is part of why we're having this discussion today. And I was, um, every time we, we talk, I for the work that you're doing, but also just who you are in this world and how you're showing up and your presence. And so I would love for you people to get to know you a little bit more if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself to the listeners.

Aminah: Sure. Uh, I'm Aminah, Aminah Vargas-Harris and just privileged to be here, uh, to engage in this space with you. Renae, you've built such a beautiful platform and container for people to grow in this work. And I, I'm grateful for you and I honor that. I am a trauma informed ministry and organizational consultant and system strategist. So what I do is I in in plain terms, I engage with, with different, uh, institutions, if you will, or organizational structures to integrate what trauma informed practice means. Looks like how that feels. I think there's been a lot of conversation around trauma. What is what does it mean to be trauma informed? What does it mean to recognize trauma? But how do we put that into practice when we're actually engaging in either faith work or social justice work? And so I'm, I'm at the intersection of all of those things. I am also a mom to three beautiful children, Layla, Joshua Junior and my baby baby boy John. Um, Uh, he's five months. Uh, and I'm also wife to Joshua Harris, senior doctor, Joshua Harris, senior. And, um, I, I find so much joy in my family. That is my place of, of restoration. And so, yeah, I, I'm happy to be here.

Renae: It's so beautiful. And I, and I will be really honest and say, I think of all the people I've talked to and I'm not throwing shade at anyone. I don't know that anyone has ever said that their family is their source of rest and restoration. And I think that there's something both super interesting and beautiful in that, because it gives you a little bit of an indication of the heaviness of the work that you do and that there's, Um, when we're, when we're talking about those intersections and when we're talking about the work in trauma healing and prevention, it's hard and it's heavy and it's exhausting.

Aminah: Yes.

Renae: Right. So for someone with a five month old to say, my family is my source of rest. It does give you a bit of a, an indication of, of how, of how deep and expansive the work is and that, um, that, that you do have to have an anchor. You do have to have a, a sustainable anchor anchors to do the work. And so I'd love to hear a little bit about how you got into this work.

Aminah: Yes, absolutely. Thanks for asking. And just to your, to your previous point, my family is definitely that for me, I, because of the, the work of being a trauma informed practitioner. There's that is embodied work, right? This it's not just, oh, I put on a hat, I'm trauma informed now and then I'm not later. Right. And so in all things, that's that's the ongoing endeavor, right. Um, to practice in a trauma informed way. But when I, I feel that you're also held to a different standard. Just, just to be honest with you as, as a practitioner in the work. And I think it's great because you, you know, you have influence and impact and you're able to model. But then there's also, again, sort of that, that weight, the weight and responsibility. And with my family, I feel. I'm, I'm not just practicing in parenting and being a wife, being a spouse, but I'm able to to be restored and actually practice and learn and gain experience. And I'm just. Aminah. Right? I'm just mom and sure all the, all the, ideally all the trauma informed things follow me home. But, but I get to be home. I get to make mistakes. I get to learn. I get to be, um, sharpened by my children. They will sharpen you, um, sharpen and edify. And through my relationship with with my partner. So yes, how I got into the work. I, through a series of events, really, simply put, wanted to see faith based spaces in, in, in my opinion, especially and specifically the church, uh, become. a place where people can grow and approach a sense of self safety by being a place and space that's trauma informed and to we were talking about this actually in our panel. That really, really means just being, doing, living out the gospel. Right? And so I, I have been in a couple situations and experiences where that just was not happening. And instead of saying, you know, I'm done with the church. Um, and, um, choosing to live with that feeling of betrayal and, um, feeling burned, uh, by, by certain ministries. I love the church, I love my faith. And so I wanted to work towards what does it look like to become and grow and be trauma informed and live and breathe that out, which is again, really, really be in the gospel. And then I was granted the opportunity to build out a trauma informed program at a church in Cleveland. Shout out to Bridge City Church. Love, love love, love my home church. Um, I was, I was granted the opportunity to build out their, um, trauma informed ministry, um, through peer support and resilience building coaching, um, training, training folks in the congregation, also training, um, leaders. And so that was, that was my journey into this niche niche work. So it started with personal experience. And then it moved into putting that personal experience into practice. And it's just grown from there.

Renae: Are you comfortable sharing what that personal experience is that drew you to it?

Aminah: Absolutely. I mean, one of the very, very early fundamental and sort of etched in my brain experiences was I had to be fourteen or fifteen, and I had a really close friend and their sister had, um, got pregnant. Her sister was our age. They, they were very close in age. Sister got pregnant child out of wedlock. She was a young, young girl. Um, and I just remember her. All of us, we used to serve. We used to serve on ministries. We used to sing, all of us. We used to sing every, um, first Sunday, I think we would sing, and then also we would pass communion out like it was our responsibility, especially on youth days, to pass communion, communion out. I remember when she started or before she started showing, the pastor told her, when you start showing your pregnancy, you are no longer allowed to to serve in ministry. No engaging in communion. No getting up and singing during youth worship. Really, you really need to be out of sight, out of mind. And, um. I was so confused by that because in my young babe mindset, I was taught, you know, we are accepting and loving And, you know, we we chase after the broken and we welcome the broken and, you know, and women in the Bible, I mean, Rahab, like women, there are women who have tremendous stories, right? And it just didn't make sense to me. And I, I, I felt that viscerally and I felt, um, like she was wronged, like she was deeply wrong. And I knew it wasn't right even at that young age. And that among other, among other things, just really rocked me to the core. And I and I had begun working in ministry to kind of push back against that ever since.

Renae: Yeah. I can hear the really strong theme of, of justice in that, right? That, um, in that there's a cognitive dissonance. When a group of people say, this is what we stand for, and yet that's not how they're showing up. And, um, yes, I was to today's Bible, uh, scripture writing. I've, I do the scripture writing program, um, where I'm writing out pretty large passages, but it was. James um, one sixteen to twenty five and it says, don't fool yourself. The words don't mean anything without action. If you think that you, the, the words are going to do it, you're deceiving yourself. And I think that this is a little bit of what we might see sometimes in those faith spaces. Is this this cognitive dissonance where, wait, we say we stand for something, but we are not walking that and living it out. And, and so, you know, part of the conversation that's It's interesting to me is what happened. Like why, why, how, how did we become, uh, and again, this is a broad stroke. I know not my church. I know everybody, not my church, but, um, uh, how, how did, how did that disconnect get so strong that we would start to reject and reject people who didn't look, act, behave a certain way, have certain circumstances.

Aminah: Such a big question, such a good question. Um, because it's questions like these, honestly, Renae, that allow us to troubleshoot problem solve, come up with, with answers because there's no right answer to something like this. But I think every answer is a step in the right direction. It's a step in the right direction. But I do believe to your question that if. Where did we go wrong? Right. Um, or where do we fall off of the path of um. Being, being the gospel. Right. I think that's just a lack of huge lack of alignment. I mean, there's a lack of alignment between theology and leadership practice. That's one piece. But then also honoring individual's lived experience. And so there's, there's, there's this gray space, right where we have, we have scripture, we have pillars of the faith, we have rhythms, things to guide us towards, towards gospel living. um, which is trauma informed, living interchangeable. And there's a gap between where we are with application and where I believe it starts with leaders are with holding space for people's lived experience because it's easy to, um, it's easy to label her pain, shame, trauma as sin, but then we, we end up retraumatizing people, um, causing, causing harm again and again and again and again instead of in that gap of, of leadership, uh, and being the gospel, we have the, the reality of the human experience, which is trauma, hurt, pain, shame, rejection. Um, um, and so I think there's some, some misalignment with how we apply scripture and how we lead so that people can be held in that gray space, um, where application of the gospel should be. And, and leadership, leadership should live as well.

Renae: Yeah. I think that gray space is, it is the, um, it's part of the mystery, which we don't, um, in intellectual spaces, we don't like the mystery. We want to have answers. We want to know, we want to have the right checklist, the right direction, the right flowchart. Um, we, we want answers. We want it to be three steps or less. Um, we, we want it to be something we can measure outcomes. And there's something about ministry. Um, and, and, and having, having worked in ministry for many, many, many years and. It being how. It's how I see it should be different than businesses. You don't have measurable outcomes in the same way, right? You you, you can feel a shift in a, in a person, in a group. And you can see the evidence of, oh, this has changed. We are, we are loving, we are, we are more loving. We are more we're taking more action. We are trusting in God more and, and, and taking less action when it's not ours, right? Like there's a whole, there's all these ways we can see, but it's not measurable. And we don't like that we, we as humans, we want to quantify and qualify things. Right?

Aminah: yes, absolutely. We do. And. I think especially in the the day and age that we're in where many, many churches and faith based organizations thrive off of grant funding and community development, which also you need to have numbers for. That has become more and more common, right? Where we are leaning more into what can I prove and less into how have people changed, right? Or how have we impacted the lives of many? And so it's, it's really funny that you that you mentioned that it's interesting that you mentioned that because that was a huge part of my work in building out the program. Um, in Cleveland and even now in building out my, my practice, how do we measure in a way that is trauma informed? And it was a shift. It was quite a shift because we had to sit in the room with with funders and with with people who were making these requests for, you know, proposals and all of these things and had to create the conversation around how do we make measures less about people's heads, like numbers and more about people's hearts? And I'm not sure that we got there one hundred percent, but I do feel like we did some significant work towards shifting at least how the funders that interacted with us. We're viewing numbers, right? Um, so yeah, it, that's a whole nother conversation about trauma informed data collection and analysis, but yes.

Renae: Right. Well, and I think it ties for me, it ties back to your, um, your wisdom around the comment of the lived experience. And I think that this is part of what has happened in academia, in the medical field, in the church, is that there's the there are people who are perceived as experts who are telling you with words, um, what should be done, not necessarily engaging in the practice with you and mentoring you, um, in that, but also this dismissal of the, the internal wisdom of the community, of the elders of the person and their ability to do their own self assessment. And I, you know, when I've done this work in community building, um, I, I would rely on self assessment in to to tell me because who am I? Who am I to decide what somebody transformation is? That's that's them. That's not my my job. My job is to create containers for people can have the optimal opportunity for transformation, but I, and I think that that's, that's the same whether I'm doing the community work, whether I'm doing that as an employer, whether I'm doing that as an educator or as a parent or as a ministry person. Yeah. Um, that that's how it's shown up for me.

Aminah: Yes. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Renae: So, um, the, in this work that you've done, um, both in the, the program and in the church space and now in your own practice, can you tell us a little bit about what, what framework are you really the most excited about sharing with people right now that that would help people to start to have an idea of, of how to approach this or how one could approach this?

Aminah: Yes, for sure, for sure. And great question because it is about it's all about approach. It's all about approaching. We're always approaching, right? We're we're never arriving. We're always approaching trauma informed implementation and integration. And so just appreciate your wording around that. Um, but this framework that, uh, that I've been working on that I've developed is called salt framework. And it is a framework that I've developed again, as I've worked with different churches and organizations and saw, like we've said before, that gap in, okay, we know what trauma is. We've done the trainings, we got the booklets, we've heard the podcasts, but how do we implement it? Right? How do we weave it into our practices, into our prayer, into our worship? And so in, in practice, and as I experience different places and spaces, I really wanted to start exploring, like, how do we cultivate conditions where healing and spiritual formation can really emerge? And so I landed on the acronym salt and salt stands for stabilize, align, liberate and transform. Uh, so this S is, uh, stabilized. And with that really focuses on is establishing a sense of regulation. And I use neuro neuroscience language, uh, throughout this framework because that's kind of, again, where I'm at the intersection of faith and neuroscience and integrating the two. Um, yes. So I have learned that we've got to stabilize the leadership first, and that comes from establishing environments, relational environments, among leaders, amongst leadership, cultivating transparency, predictability, relational consistency, where there can be a sense of, um, presence, shared space, leadership regulation, and, um, predictable ministry environments. And that's what, what leadership impacts. And then the, the, a, the line, it's about what we were just talking about restoring that integrity between the gospel, the leadership practices, lived experience, and in using that to inform our mission and our values and our embodied practices. Right. So, um, I was doing some wordsmithing with an organization that I worked with And we got down to down to the line where we were like, okay, what's our mission statement? This is all great, and this is all dandy. And this is, you know, wonderful. But what is our mission? What is our what are people going to see? And how will they know that we are working towards being trauma informed by the language that we use? Is our language aligned with our faith and aligned with what we're trying to do and being trauma informed? And so we moved. We removed words like, um, saving us or rescuing or, um, or, or delivering. Right. And we started to integrate words like partnering, walking alongside, holding space for, um, allowing, right, witnessing, right wording and language that was aligned with not only biblical, which is our foundational, um, foundation in the church, but also, um, aligned with, with trauma informed, trauma informed work. Uh, and so the L in salt is liberate. This gets into the space where we are actually implementing that trauma informed care within congregations, right? So oftentimes people are going to, um, come to houses of worship hurt, they're going to come to the church, hurt. That's oftentimes the first place that they come with their pain, with their hurt. And I think it's a privilege. But sometimes we get really intimidated by that because we look at it and start, how do I fix this? How do I, how do I deal with this? How do I change this? And so liberate is changing our perspective from I have to save you. Get you out of your situation into. Wow. Because I know that when you go through really challenging, traumatizing times, autonomy is stripped away, personal power is stripped away, choice is stripped away. And so we want to reintegrate that power of, hey, you're the expert of your own experience. You have choice here. You don't have to walk down to the altar call if you want to, to be saved, right? You don't, you don't have to engage in ministry in a very strict, specific way. Make it your own. And so liberating is we're not freeing people. So we're shifting that. We're really working towards creating environments where people can free themselves. Um, and resource their own pathways towards healing. And then the T is transformed and this leans the previous three S, a and L were, I would say, internally focused. That's how I look at this framework. We have heavy internal focus within the church, whether that's ministry leaders, um, focusing on how does the scripture align with mission, vision values, pastoral care, and then the transform starts to take it from within the church, out of the church. And I love this framework because it is shifting that perspective of we need to go and, and fix the broken people out there. Right? Turns us inward and says, well, wait, how are we going to be when the broken show up? How about we address where we are broken because we are also broken, right? Uh, we are, we are broken people. And so focusing on developing and cultivating environments again, where people can approach their own sense of safety and then going out and, and saying, how can we contribute to community care systems? How can we partner with the local mental health agency? How can we partner with the local food pantry? How can we partner with the local domestic violence center? Um, and, and gain a sense of what discipleship may look like when it's rooted around awareness, um, growth and community cultivation.

Renae: And I think cultivation is exactly the right word for what I see as a through line in this because, um, cultivation it, the root of that is culture, right? It is, it is what we, we, it's an ecosystem. It's an ecosystem that has lots of different complex connections and moving parts and living parts and histories. And, um, so this work isn't isn't slow. I mean, the work is slow, the work is not fast. The work is very slow. Um, just like cultivating is very slow. If you move too fast in an ecosystem, you're going to kill the ecosystem. You will destroy the biology and the connections if you try to move too fast, or if you impose something foreign into it. And it's there hasn't been a gradual exposure to it. And then it's, I think it's the same way, um, in, in looking at, you know, structures and organizations and churches and communities that have, ah, have, they've already developed a culture. And so this shift work, it takes a long time. And so when people when, when maybe have you received pushback sometimes from organizations or churches that are like what we thought that we would get this figured out, like in a month or a weekend retreat or a year? Um, how does that conversation usually go?

Aminah: Uh, oh my gosh, yes, I have. Yes, I have received pushback and I don't think it's coming from a place of. I don't think it's coming from a place of we just want to get this done. I think it's coming from more of a place of. Are we there yet a desire to be there, a desire to be a place where people are engaging authentically and, um. Are engaging in the gospel, right? That that's, that is the desire of many, many, many, many ministries is to evangelize and to disciple, which is great. Like win over hearts for Christ, which is wonderful, right? I don't want to deny our our faith, but I do want to and have continued even in those conversations to give pushback and questions about. What, what, what does a right. What is a rival, right? What is a rival to that point? It's the work is going to going to keep growing and going. But in those conversations, I think what's really, really helped in those conversations is what we were talking about earlier, shifting the conversation around. Here's the number of people that I want over for Christ this month. Here's the number of people that joined our church this month, right? Here's the number of people that gave, right? This is how much was given into how many conversations did you have? How many genuine relationships have you built? How many people told you about something that was weighing heavy on their hearts? How many times did you engage with somebody outside of Sunday service? How many times did you engage with somebody outside of Sunday service and not at the church? How are we building relationships so that I what I think we miss in this conversation around discipleship, around trauma informed care, around living, around living out the gospel is how. Imperative it is for people to have relationships and know that they are surrounded by people that love them and want to see the best for them before their mind has the capacity to engage in a level of spirituality to where they're saying, okay, I can give myself up to this higher power. If if I don't have somebody to lean on, somebody to share and bear my burdens, somebody to be a witness to my life and say, wow, yeah, that is hard. It's going to be a lot more challenging for me to engage in. Hey. Yeah, I'm going to give my life to Christ. Hey, yeah, I'm going to go get saved. Yeah. I'm going to go down to the altar call. Yeah, I'm going to do all these things that I think that is the goal of many churches. But in those conversations, I've had to take several steps back and say, I know you want to be there, and I know you're hoping that being trauma informed will help you get to your end goal, but maybe we need to shift your end goal. Maybe your end goal looks different. Maybe we have to focus on this for a season so that it opens up pathways for people to feel within themselves safety, so that they can engage in conversations and hope and faith in in a higher power.

Renae: Yeah, I, I appreciate the, the reframe of that, of what it it's not unlike the conversation of the, you know, the measures that we talked about before the outcomes. Mhm. Uh, that, that, that Quantifying peace, adding the quality of will. How? How do I see, how do I see the results of this? And I think that even even to push a little further, that the. If the goal. What if the goal I'm going to say, I mean, I listen, y'all, I have a master in divinity. I am deep in my Bible. I have a deep relationship with God. I love Jesus, the Holy Spirit is present and.

Renae: I'm a witness. And maybe…

Renae: It's not my job. Maybe it's not my job to win souls. Maybe that's God's job. And maybe and maybe my job is to partner in the reconciliation and, and of of this world, in this life with and, and we are creating Pockets and echoes of heaven here on earth by saying, things don't have to be the way that we've defaulted to or fallen into, or has become normal. That that is not the way of alignment. That is not the way of peace or love or hope or joy. Those things are not pointing toward it. And, and, and maybe that whole thing of, oh, did we have the altar call where the words said, did the baptism happen? Those are those are containers that help to mark things for people. But that's not the measure, maybe of whether ministries effective.

Aminah: Exactly, exactly. Absolutely. I'm you took all the words out of my mouth.

Renae: I'm sorry everyone. You didn't even see. You didn't even see Aminah's lips move when she said all that. Um, but I think it, you know, and I think that even the word trauma informed, like, um, I think people have largely thought of that to mean I've been informed about trauma versus because I understand more about trauma. It informs how I do everything.

Aminah: Yes. Yes.

Renae: Right. And, and, and if we replace the word, for instance, if I'm Jesus informed, does that mean I know about Jesus? Right? Or does that mean that it's informing everything that I do?

Aminah: Exactly, exactly. Yes. Right. Yes.

Renae: And so I, I just, I just so appreciate the, the depth that of your approach with this, this frame work to say it, it does start internally and that, um, that has, um, even the way scripture has been written. Um, whenever God's talking the Ten commandments, it's an internal, it's a, it is a, a vertical before it's horizontal. It is about your relationship with God and with yourself before it's about other people. Um, and that it doesn't mean that we wait until things are perfect, right? It means that we, um. We create when we're in leadership, whether we have a title or not. Um, when we're in leadership, we have this responsibility to, um, support the people that we're leading and to create the environments in which they can experience safety. And we're, and part of that is admitting when we get things wrong.

Aminah: Yes.

Renae: And doing repair work. And so I was wondering, could you point to a time where you've seen that actually go really well where, um, whether it's in your own experience or, um, people that you've been working with where that you saw the power of that repair work.

Aminah: Um.

Renae: I.

Aminah: I have, I, I definitely, definitely have in two circumstances. So the first one was. Building out a peer support program for church and. We had to start looking at. Understanding ourselves as humans that are going to make mistakes. And so the repair work. A lot of the repair work began there. And knowing, hey, we're going to make mistakes. So it's our responsibility to constantly be ready to reconcile and repair, um, on a consistent basis in the context of these relationships, because we are. When you're engaging in relationships, you have the potential to, to create harm. And so a lot of that repair work was developing language and equipping people with knowledge to understand what is repair, what is reconciliation? When, when do we, when do we approach that? How do we have those repair conversations and approach reconciliation? But another piece was when, um, there was a group of men that had a. A Bible study at a, I want to call it a, um, it was, uh, like ninety day maybe like sober living, uh, I'll call it that, um, sober living. But they, but the goal was okay, we're gonna go, I'm gonna give these guys some food. I'm going to read the Bible and then they're going to start coming to our church. And they were. It, it, it got to a point where they'd heard about our program and heard about the trainings that I did and the equipping sessions. And they're like, well, we just don't get it. We just don't get why, um, or how, you know, they're not engaging. Like, don't they want to, don't they want to engage? Like we're bringing them food, we're reading the Bible. And so we had to start preparing internally and, and start saying, well, it's not necessarily about the conversations that you're having with them. It's about your approach internally is causing people to not want to engage. And, and, and they believe these, these people with their experience that you're missing, missing the mark. You're not understanding them, you're not relatable, you're not connectable, you're not able to engage with them on a level that is, um, that feels safe for them. And so we had to start that repair work within, within our little system of this Bible study. Over a series of months. And I mean, and it went back to that, when are we going to be done with this? I mean, we were engaging for, for several months and it was frustrating and it was painful. And it was, um, you know, it was a lot of questions like, well, what have we been doing this wrong the whole time? And, and it was, well, no, it's not about right or wrong. It's about intentionality. But that repair had to start from the inside out. Um, and I, I really, really, really believe that, that, that repair piece is a part of that liberation piece within, within the salt framework. It's, it's shifting our perspective from, again, we have to restore you into. Well, I made a. I might have made some mistakes with that perspective. How do we repair and create room for you to reach your own sense of restoration? Um, and allow allow space for reflection, prayer, presence, emotional intensity that isn't judged or doesn't look like your cookie cutter outward expression of, of praise or gratitude or, or whatever. But the repair definitely starts from the inside out. And, and once that, that repair happened within this specific group, once we started looking at ourselves. Um. I mean, they, they got folks coming to church after a few months of really implementing this practice of, we're going to work on ourselves before we show up. Right. And, um, and it, and it was really phenomenal to see because I don't even know that by the end of the time we had done our work, that they were necessarily in the mind frame of like, we've got to win hearts, we've gotta win hearts, we've gotta win hearts. They were so focused on embodying these principles and these practices that the whole concept of numbers was kind of out the window. But that was at the time when they kind of relinquished. They were able to really, really be relatable and, and bring, bring several members to their, to their church from that, from that Bible study. So I've seen it work out in several ways. Um, but that would probably be the most impactful story. And I mean, if you did these group of guys, great group of guys, but you would just never think that their perspective would shift. Like they were definitely from that kind of like standpoint of like, figure your own stuff out, just read the Bible and you'll be fine. And, and I mean, that work was, I was so happy about the repair within themselves and within the dynamic of that group. Everything else was just extra.

Renae: Yeah, yeah.

Renae: I love oh my gosh, I love that story on so many levels, on so many levels. Um, it, it's almost another conversation. Um, so what I, what I will, what I will say is that is a perfect example of the work of implementation without imposition. Yes. Um, right. The second part is when, like when, when we are, the implementation has to happen internally so that we are not imposing our own perspective, our narrow lived experience perspective onto some. One else. But instead we learn of what what is actually going to be better. Like when there's a there's a difference between pulling up the roots and changing the soil versus what can I add to what is already there? Can I please respectfully approach what is already there and say, do you want this?

Renae: Yes.

Renae: Consent matters in ministry.

Renae: Yes. Yes it does.

Renae: Oh my gosh. And so that's such a beautiful. And I think that's I mean it, whether it whether a person who's listening to this is involved in ministry or not. Um, the, This is where I think we have gotten off the tracks is that we, we have, um, these histories of thinking that evangelism means that we, we go out and say, did they convert or not? Versus, um, what a, an evangelist that can talk about their experience with joy because they want to share, but not with an outcome in mind. Right? Those are two very different approaches. And so, um, if you could leave our, our audience with, um, um, I don't do those like questions at the end or any of those fun things that other podcast hosts do. I just ask like, do you want what would be if a person said, I have to fast forward to the end. I just want a very juicy, meaty. But. Um, what is a word of encouragement or, um, uh, something you would just really like to leave with people who, who are, have been doing this work or want to do this work in a sustainable way.

Renae: Mhm.

Aminah: Good question. I would say that the work starts with you. The work starts with becoming aware of. Your own stuff, your own hurts, pains, traumas, maybe where you're engaging in ministry from. Like what, what, what place am I engaging from? AM I engaging from a place of pain? AM I engaging from a place of hope? Um, and work on. Your own sense of self regulation, self restoration, reconciliation within yourself before you look out and continue doing the work of what people would call the fixer. Right. It's so important to know who you are, where you're operating from, so that you are able to engage with, with, with the hurt, with, with the, with the hurting, with people who are in unimaginable spaces in their life. But you can only show up if you have really sat with your own stuff. I think trauma informed ministry work starts with the heart posture of those who are, um, wanting to embody the work. So I would definitely one hundred percent say it starts with you. It starts with you. Trauma informed ministry starts with you.

Renae: Beautiful.

Renae: Well, Aminah, thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, your stories, your heart for the way that you, um, shine hope, um, into spaces and that you speak truth with love.

Aminah: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate this conversation.

Renae: Thank you.