I’m writing today because, like you, Joyful Heart has made a difference in my life, and I’d like to tell you how.

The Hawai‘i Foster Youth Coalition supports foster youth who have no family, no home, and often times, no hope. As staff, we deal with incredibly difficult and heartbreaking situations. We see youth at their most vulnerable.

We get calls from teenagers who have nowhere to stay, so they sleep on friends’ couches because their only other option is an adult homeless shelter. I've been working with a wheelchair-bound youth whose mother disowned him—he wants to go to college, but he can’t because he has no guardian to authorize his paperwork. Recently, we talked to another boy who has been ripped away from his parents and put in foster care—to protect him from abuse—but breaking apart the family has left him emotionally ruined. So many of our youth—Hawai‘i’s youth—are caught in a web of nightmares that no child should ever have to navigate, and at the Hawai‘i Foster Youth Coalition, we hear their stories, in vivid detail, every single day.

Joyful Heart’s Heal the Healers program was a wake up call for me. The program offered education about vicarious trauma and self-care practices, including art therapy, deep-breathing exercises, and aromatherapy. But most importantly, Heal the Healers gave me the space to realize that I was focused on everything and everybody else, except myself, and that I couldn’t possibly help foster youth if I wasn’t taking care of myself, too.

The wake up call has lasted, and thanks to Joyful Heart and its Heal the Healers program, I’ve changed the way that I approach my job and my life. I used to spend more hours in the office than at home. After the Heal the Healers program, I have a better work-life balance. I use the deep-breathing exercises that I learned in the program throughout my day to manage the calls that trigger my own memories of being a foster youth. Simply put, Heal the Healers has helped me to heal myself.

I was fortunate enough to be one of more than 750 healers served by Joyful Heart’s Heal the Healers program in Hawai‘i this year. Your gift today will guarantee that many other healers, and the people they support, will benefit from Joyful Heart’s work, including Heal the Healers.

With gratitude,

Pono

PS: Your support has made many remarkable moments possible in the Joyful Heart Foundation's work to heal, educate and empower. Joyful Heart is thrilled to launch a new website platform so that you can share your own moments of healing, joy, justice, gratitude and change. To upload your moment, click here.