Anita is an Associate Professor of Marriage and Family Therapy at George Fox University in Portland, OR. For the past 20 years, she has been active as a trauma responder and educator. Offering her services on local, national, and international levels, she also trains master level mental health professionals in PTSD prevention, intervention, and postvention strategies. Her approach as a trauma responder can be summed up in a conversation she had with her students in a CISM-peer responder class she was teaching in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. “As tears filled the eyes of our students upon our departure, I shared that I imagine one day they might make a journey to America to walk beside members of my community in our hour of despair. (Earlier we had reflected upon the inevitable fact that mass tragedies will strike again…). And if that day ever comes, I would be privileged to be comforted by them, and to learn from them given all that they had survived.” As members of the human family we are all called to be “trauma responders”. Anita sees her work as equipping professionals and non-professionals alike in the business of circling one another in mutual support and encouragement.
