It’s hard to make trauma meaningful. There, I said it. Even though this episode of YOUR LIFE AFTER TRAUMA addressed issues of resilience and meaning, it’s just not an easy road to travel.

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In my own experience, a weird thing happened: I emerged from my trauma with the feeling I needed to find meaning in it, and then came through recovery with the understanding I could only make meaning come out of it.

In this episode my guests, survivors in two totally different ways, discuss how we make meaning and access resilience. While they have different approaches the message remains the same: it can be done. Even when you find yourself at the bottom of the darkest place on earth, you have options for how you will haul yourself out.

MEET MY GUESTS:

As co-author of the best-selling In an Instant, Lee Woodruff garnered critical acclaim for the compelling and humorous chronicle of her family’s journey to recovery following her husband Bob’s roadside bomb injury in Iraq. Appearing together on national television and radio since the February 2007 publication of their book, the couple has helped put a face on the serious issue of traumatic brain injury among returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, as well as the millions of Americans who live with this often invisible, but life-changing affliction.

They have founded the Bob Woodruff Foundation (ReMind.org) to assist wounded service members and their families in receiving the long-term care that they need and help them successfully reintegrate into their communities.
A freelance writer, Woodruff has penned numerous personal articles about her family and parenting that have run in such high-profile magazines as Health, Redbook, Country Living, Parade and Family Fun.Lee Woodruff now works at CBS’s This Morning with hosts Charlie Rose, Gayle King, and Norah O’Donnell, after being a contributing editor at ABC’s Good Morning America. Her second book was a collection of essays, Perfectly Imperfect – A Life in Progress. THOSE WE LOVE MOST is her first novel.

In addition to freelance writing, Woodruff ran her own public relations and marketing consulting business for 16 years. Before that, she was senior vice president of public relations firm Porter Novelli.

Currently, Woodruff lives in Westchester County, New York, with her husband and four children. To learn more, please visit her blog, www.leewoodruff.com or find her on Facebook or Twitter @LeeMWoodruff.

Teresa B. Pasquale is a contemplative prayer teacher and advocate, ecumenical and interfaith conversationalist, yoga teacher, trauma psychotherapist and healed trauma survivor.