Transforming Lives and Communities: Shen Chefalo on Trauma-Informed Change and Foster Care Reform

Shen Chefalo's journey is a testament to resilience and the power of healing. Our conversation highlights the profound impact how our own lives can lead us in unexpected places. We delve into the heart of what it means to create trauma-informed communities, addressing root causes in health and social challenges, and the power dynamics within organizational environments, offering a fresh perspective on cultivating empathy and fostering supportive workplace relationships. Shen guides us through the intricacies of building trauma-informed organizations, conflict resolution, and the foundational importance of establishing safety.

We also dare to reimagine a foster care system that upholds family preservation, advocating for a shift in policy that emphasizes mental health support and the cruciality of maintaining familial bonds to prevent generational trauma.

Shen Chefalo's Bio:
Shenandoah Chefalo is a sought-after speaker, award-winning author, and expert
trauma-informed specialist with over 20 years of leadership consulting
experience with governmental, public, and private organizations across various
sectors, including health care, human services, education, and nonprofits.
As the Founder and Lead Strategist of Chefalo Consulting, Shenandoah
provides trauma-informed organizational change management and workforce
development services to improve outcomes for individuals, organizations, and
communities. Her lived experiences of poverty, homelessness, foster care, and
juvenile justice inform her approaches, which provide effective, equitable, and
inclusive systems change frameworks that transform organizations.

Links for Shen:
Connect with Shen at https://www.chefaloconsulting.com/

Grab her book! Garbage Bag Suitcase

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Community Possibilities is Produced by Zach Price
Music by Zach Price: Zachpricet@gmail.com

Transcript

Ann Price: 0:00

guitar playingسم Music 2019.

Ann Price: 0:36

Hi everybody, welcome back to Community Possibilities. It is 2024 and I am wishing you all good things, filled with amazing possibilities for you, your family and the communities that you serve. To start us off this year, my guest is Shen Chefalo. Shen is a sought-after speaker. I first met her this past December at the Root Cause Summit and she just well, she was just amazing. She had the audience in tears and on their feet and I know you're going to be inspired today.

Ann Price: 1:15

Shen is a sought-after speaker, an award-winning author, an expert trauma-informed specialist with over 20 years of leadership consulting experience. She's worked with government, public, private organizations across various sectors and she's the founder and lead strategist of Shepulow Consulting. She provides organizational change management and workforce development services and, yes, she wrote a book. Her memoir Garbage Bag Suitcase is a must-read about her life in the foster care system. She's a graduate of Michigan State University. She's a coach, she is a volunteer, a mom. She's amazing and I know you're going to enjoy our conversation. Hi, everybody, welcome back to Community Possibilities. I am so excited to have my guest today. We are honored and just I feel really blessed, shen, to have you on the show. My guest is Shen Chefalo.

Shen Chefalo: 2:25

Thanks so much for having me. I feel excited to be a guest on your show this morning.

Ann Price: 2:31

Well, very good, and your full name is Shenandoah, which I love, but you got by Shen.

Shen Chefalo: 2:37

Yeah right, it's one of those names that took me probably four decades to begin to embrace in my life.

Ann Price: 2:46

Well, I know we're going to get into your story. Let me just start by telling everyone I had the pleasure of attending the Root Cause Summit for the first time. I'd never been to that meeting, even though it's, you know, it's really interesting because it's a lot of community health providers and community health workers, but it's a new organization for me, but I almost felt like I found my people right.

Shen Chefalo: 3:17

Yeah, I've been fortunate enough to be involved with Root Cause for several years now and in the team there, and I say the same thing Every time I go I've been fortunate enough to be, I guess, three in person and maybe a virtual, there in the. Tokyo area somewhere, but just people really committed. I mean, as the name suggests, right to Root Cause issues in communities and kind of pulling out by the weeds, if it were.

Shen Chefalo: 3:48

Yeah yeah, roots and be able to move the conversations forward and what I think is a really unique and engaging way.

Ann Price: 4:01

Yep. So Shen did the what do you call it? The keynote at the event. And you know I'm a people watcher, so not only was I listening to you, I'm also also watching. You know, kind of everyone's like reaction. You definitely had people in tears and excited all at the same time, standing ovation. The whole deal and I think I mentioned this to you afterwards is, you know, I go to a lot of. I go to a lot of conferences and I've seen some pretty good keynotes. That's probably the best keynote I've ever seen, and I'm not just saying oh gosh, well that's.

Shen Chefalo: 4:42

That means a tremendous amount to me and any keynote speakers out there who are probably listening, is that as a speaker, especially when you're in a room that large, you sometimes wonder does anyone right? It can be. You have lights shining in your eyes. You can't always see the facial expression Right.

Shen Chefalo: 5:04

Exactly, you have. You know, from the stage point of view you always have a little bit different removal from from the audience. So for me that's super high compliment and praise. That. That I am immensely grateful for, especially because it was at the end of the year, the conference it had a long travel season for me and you sometimes are like why am I doing this? Am I making a difference? Does any of this matter? And so it's. I very, very much appreciate that high praise.

Ann Price: 5:42

Yeah, well, I'm telling you I am I don't think I have told you this before. People who know me know this I'm actually pretty shy, so for me to like go up and talk to you know a speaker or a keynote speaker which is funny because I was there speaking at the conference, right, but it's just so funny it's really hard for me to like reach out to somebody else, but I just really felt compelled to like, oh, I got, I got to connect with this person there on the podcast so we can. I want, I want to give you the opportunity to talk about kind of how you, how you came to be who you are, and that I think why is why your keynote was so powerful is because you did a really great job of telling your story throughout your keynote. You can talk about your keynote later, but because it kind of exemplifies the work you do. But before I give away like the final chapter, let me just let you introduce yourself to my audience and tell us who you are.

Shen Chefalo: 6:41

Well, I appreciate that and I think I appreciate you realizing you know, using the power of our own stories to tell this kind of larger community story right, and how do we make change? Which for me is at the core and base of why do this anyway? Because as a kid who was in foster care, right so I spent a long time in foster care and in prior to foster care, a long time moving throughout the nation. So I tell people all the time that I entered foster care at the age of 13, but prior to that, right over 50 moves, attended over 50 schools prior to the age of 13. And then, of course, that was only exacerbated once I was in the child welfare system, because moves don't stop just because you enter that system and oftentimes they get worse.

Shen Chefalo: 7:32

But for me, I had made a commitment to myself when I turned 18 in age, out of foster care, that I would actually never talk about my story, and I think that's a really important piece to this work, because there were so many myths, so many bad things attached to being a foster kid right, so many times of like well, what did you do wrong to end up in the foster care system? Questions that I still get asked today, by the way, right, that haven't like dissipated that we maybe think would have right, what did you do that your parents, you know, couldn't keep you at home? Like, what did you do what? What's wrong with you, right? And so, at 18, when you're already struggling with trauma, struggling with your own mental health and wellness, struggling in the world, as, I think, even 18 year olds who are raised in the best families, with the most support of families right, struggling to figure out who you are and how you fit into the world.

Shen Chefalo: 8:37

I made a promise to myself that I would never talk about it, because I wanted to distance myself and I was also coming of age in the time of pull yourself up by your bootstraps, which you know and you're gonna have talked about my least favorite phrase yeah, but they can tell you, make it right, just just pretend it's all okay and and listen, I was the queen of it.

Shen Chefalo: 9:06

I was, I was really really good at it and and I just pretended it didn't exist. And I pretended so much that I pretended, you know, from my spouse, I pretended from the people closest to me where, when I began having you know my own midlife crisis which really for me, was in my 30s, which I hope does means I'm living longer than 60. But we'll see right so I I was starting to struggle with coming to terms that I was struggling because I was working in a criminal defense law office and I was seeing the revolving door of the criminal justice system and I was living in a community that was building, you know, a multimillion dollar new jail facility and I was struggling, just personally, with questions of like is are these even the right things? Right.

Shen Chefalo: 10:03

Like why are we building more space instead of trying to limit space in jail?

Shen Chefalo: 10:09

Right Like why do we need more cells instead of less cells? And some of those questions, still, pretending that nothing had ever happened to me, by the way, right, still trying to kind of walk this, my life is perfect. I'm married to an attorney, I have a daughter, you know, everything is is perfect. And in the question of like, how do we help our own clients in our law office, we came up with this idea that I'd go back to school and get my coaching certificate. Maybe we could coach our clients to make quote better decisions. Right, which is a really naive thought and question. But sometimes those really naive places can lead you to some beautiful places. And so for me it did.

Shen Chefalo: 10:54

And and coming back and meeting with those clients and listening to their time in foster care, their time in the child welfare, I started asking deeper questions, not only about my community but about myself, and kind of going to those coaching classes, having the face to face with my clients, led me to a deeper understanding and I began to transition out of that work, start working on my own healing, wrote my first book, Garbage Bank Suitcase, and then that really was a book that I thought nobody would read and I was fortunate that not only did a lot of people read it but it hit home for a lot of people, and so I got invited to some larger stages where I then got to find my real passion, which was how do we do sustainable trauma-informed change? Not just talk about being trauma-informed on some sort of pseudo academia level, but like how do we take that science and information and actually change the way in which we do the work day in and day out in organizations so that people are better supported and not retraumatize doing hard work?

Ann Price: 12:13

So you've taken that midlife crisis, did that self work, got put on a path or stepped on a path? I don't know where your spiritual leading is to do this trauma-informed work and a lot of people are talking about trauma-informed work, and you know the thing that I have noticed, cause I told you I was a community psychologist I'm interested in systems level change. When you talk about why do we work to keep people out of jail rather than big, build more jails, right, that like really resonates with me. But one of the things I'm always attracted to is how do we build trauma-informed communities or trauma-informed systems? And I know that's something that you're working on and a lot of people don't. So maybe you could talk a little bit about the work that you do. Now You're no longer managing hordes of a turn I shouldn't say hordes, that's not what I mean Longed groups of attorneys.

Shen Chefalo: 13:14

Yeah, which just may be a fortunate thing for me. My husband's still a practicing attorney, and so I still get to hear the wheel spinning there, and every once in a while I'm like kind of glad that that's not my thing. Sometimes I miss it, but not all the time, yeah. So the community work for me is really the key, and I think my philosophy is, of course, adopted out of my own experience. I don't. For me, my experience is who I am and it's the lens in which I see everything, through which, of course, inherently comes with its own bias and problems of course as well. But for me, we all have experienced something that's overwhelmed us. I haven't met an adult who has never been overwhelmed by something they've experienced, and that is something I think we have to normalize and talk about. And then that's the core how do we equally go on our own individual healing journeys Whatever that means for us, right, cause I think it's unique to every individual and maintain a space that is healthy and not re-traumatizing for people?

Shen Chefalo: 14:37

And so very often I get calls from human service organizations, right, people working with the homeless or veterans or foster kids, or court systems or health and hospital systems or food banks, right, and they say shall come train us and our staff so we can take better care of our patients, our clients, the people we serve. And it's a beautiful sentiment, right, it's wonderful. And I have to spend 99% of my time convincing them that it has nothing to do with the people they serve and everything to do with the people they work with, like it's inside out work. And if we don't get it right internally within us, or then when we begin thinking about systems work, if internally your staff don't love each other, don't support each other, don't communicate in trauma-informed ways, that will translate to the people that you serve.

Shen Chefalo: 15:36

It's really easy for us to have empathy for kids. It's really easy to have empathy for the people that we came to this work to help, right. But something happens in the human brain where it's hard to extend that sometimes to our colleagues and realize that sometimes our colleagues are going through the same things as the people who are coming into our, whatever it is we do for services. And so for me, that community piece is about beginning to talk about power structures and power dynamics and level the playing field, that we're all the same and that we have to extend that to everyone around us and it really starts with us, because if we can't get into our executive functioning there's, we're only gonna cause harm when we're responding from our own fight. Flight freeze appease place.

Ann Price: 16:30

You know what I was thinking about when you said well, you know, it's easy to serve, right, it's easy to provide food, it's easy to provide shelter. I actually sometimes don't think it's easy when I'm out in communities and we're having conversations about root causes. It's a lot of I try, it's a lot of, like, you know, victim blaming. Well, they right, Like when you and I were talking about like you still get asked about well, what did you do to get into the system, right?

Ann Price: 17:04

So we make a lot of assumptions about where people are and why they are struggling. We're not struggling, but they're struggling right, and I think a lot of it. Sometimes it is because we haven't done that individual work, so we can't really be, you know, empathetic with somebody else. We're doing this out of the goodness of our heart or because I'm so much better than they are right, and I don't know if that resonates with you at all, but that's kind of what I was thinking of. And if COVID did one thing for a lot of my communities, it made them a lot more empathetic about the families that were struggling and why.

Shen Chefalo: 17:43

Yeah, I mean, it's the adage, right, if the bear is chasing me, first, I can't think about what my two-year plan is or what I'm gonna be doing next year if the bear is chasing me. But furthermore, if the bear is chasing me, I can't be worried about the bear chasing you. And that's what I think we deny is that when we're in this, fake it till you make it, or pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Or gee, ann, you went to college and you have a job. You, your life must be perfect, right, when we get into those spaces and places, it really not only damages us but damages the people around us.

Shen Chefalo: 18:26

How many times I've heard leaders say like you gotta just show up and it's like wait, wait, wait. Are you sure, when we ask people to show up when they're not in a space, that they can fully be present? The amount of harm that can come from that is innumerable, and so I think it's a really important one to say we have to make space, that it doesn't always have to be okay and that's okay right.

Shen Chefalo: 18:57

That two things can be true. I say this all the time. We gotta embrace the paradox. Two things can be true at the same time, and I think that's hard and some people probably won't like this. I think that's hard in the United States specifically, where we're driven to perfection, to always go, to always be on, to always be giving 200% right, Like 100% isn't even good enough anymore. You gotta be giving 200%. I hear people say this all the time. I'm like that's not even a thing. You can't give 200%.

Ann Price: 19:35

That's, that's, that's bad, that's bad math yeah like that doesn't even exist.

Shen Chefalo: 19:42

I'm even sure you can give 100%, like you need to breathe. Wake up, like, write this whole idea that we should be giving more, doing more, be all these things. To me, what's wrong with just being who we are and embracing that, that I'm perfect, you're perfect. Everyone is doing the best that they can, and that was a big piece of my own healing was coming to undoing the best that I can, and today's best will probably look drastically different from tomorrow's and it looks drastically different from yesterday's, but I also assume that everybody else is doing their best Right and that place.

Shen Chefalo: 20:22

You know it's not always pretty.

Ann Price: 20:26

Yeah, yeah, I do a lot of work with coalitions and one of the things that I often talk about with them is you know, conflict happens, that's just a normal part of life. But, assuming goodwill, assume that people are coming from a good place or a place and it's a similar place to your place, right? So can we assume goodwill, can we? You know, people have said over the last couple years well, we should give each other grace. I actually think that's really true. We should definitely give each other grace. Yeah, I work. Check our assumptions.

Shen Chefalo: 21:03

Yeah, I work in. I do a lot of workplace culture work right Like.

Shen Chefalo: 21:06

OK, let's talk about all the stuff, and part of that journey is talking about what we call the trauma ghost. So I often say, like you know, if you're an individual and you go to therapy or you're doing your own work, part of that is revisiting the things of your past that are impacting your today. What we don't often talk about in systems and in communities and organizations when we're doing this, is the stuff that has happened in those systems, those organizations and communities that have left an impact today, right, and so I refer to those as the trauma ghost. It's like they're floating around, but you don't see them or name them, right. They just kind of are there impacting, and so we have to do that work.

Shen Chefalo: 21:54

But I tell people all the time that, to your point, this idea is that we can begin telling ourselves a story, even in the most toxic workplaces. Like you know, I've seen some really bad leaders in my time, but I've never seen a leader who's sitting in their office saying how can I make every employee hate me today? Yes, that's true, Right, yeah, that's very true. But we can forget that when we're on the receiving end of some bad leadership. Right, it's like what is someone really intending to be this mean, this terrible, this horrible, and that's that grace that you think about. It's like.

Shen Chefalo: 22:36

Can I stop and say what's really going on here? Well, is this really about me, Right? Or is it really about some other things? And I think that's a big question of that's hard. This is the paradigm shift I talk about all the time, like moving from what's wrong with you to what's happened to you, which Dr Bruce Perry and Oprah write the beautiful book what's happened to you. And I always say that's the cautionary step for me, because what's happening to you, but what's strong in you is really where I'm trying to get people. How do we move from what's wrong to what's strong?

Ann Price: 23:16

Oh, I like that. What's strong with you. I love that. It's also very Star Wars.

Shen Chefalo: 23:23

But it's that shift of what if we start seeing people not from deficit-based but from asset-based right?

Ann Price: 23:31

Yes.

Shen Chefalo: 23:32

I do this exercise with groups because often I'm with teachers, I'm with people and they say, oh, we have this client, with this patient, and they'll give you the list of all the bad attributes, right, and you're just listening. And then I say, can you introduce them to me Like they're your best friend, because we all know our best friend's worst traits right, yes.

Shen Chefalo: 23:54

But if you were to introduce them to me and you wouldn't be like hey, this is my friend Susie, and she's really terrible at returning calls, like no, you would say you would tell me all the wonderful things about Susie and then we'd eventually get to maybe some of the issues that Susie's worked on.

Shen Chefalo: 24:12

And when you ask people to do that, it's really astonishing to watch what shifts when this person that they've been complaining about they have to tell you some good things about, and then they begin to see that initial problem through a different lens. And for me that's the shift of like don't just tell me what's wrong, tell me what's strong.

Ann Price: 24:35

You know, I interviewed Catherine Cote about her empathy project and she takes people who are on opposite ends of the spectrum, so a Black Lives Matter activist and a police officer I mean that's one example, right, right, people who have very different perspectives. She comes from a theater background. That was fabulous, right, and she and they learn each other's story and that, as part of this performance, tell each other's story. It's really kind of that's. My brain is going on all sorts of places and I'm thinking about not just seeing the good right in folks, but also when we understand our trauma, we can recognize I'm operating from a trauma response, like for me it would be hands sweating, I feel it in my gut, I feel anxious, right. Then that tells me this is that?

Shen Chefalo: 25:36

what did you say? A ghost, yeah, trauma, ghost yeah the trauma ghost.

Ann Price: 25:40

I know it's a trauma ghost, right. And if we only kind of could have that knowledge about ourselves and then have skills to communicate with other people, to recognize because I think when you do grow up in a chaotic environment, I don't know if you can recognize this I think we have really good spidey senses, right. We know when the environment is not safe, we know when something's touching our buttons, even if we don't really kind of understand it, right. But if I can recognize that I'm operating in some kind of trauma response, there's a ghost here, Chances are that's also being triggered and I don't like that word triggered but the person I'm having the issue with or the team I'm having the issue with is also got something going on. I don't know if that makes any sense to you at all?

Shen Chefalo: 26:26

No, it does, because I think it sets us up for this piece of reenactments, right, where it's like wait, the same thing keeps happening over and, over and over again. And I'll use a different example, which is like every time there's a mass shooting in the United States, right, so it's a tragedy, but what I began noticing is the reenactment of, like, what happens afterwards Everyone's concerned for the people involved right, we have a lot of concern thoughts and priorities, thoughts and prayers.

Shen Chefalo: 26:56

Right, the whole thing. Hey, let's have a conversation about legislative changes, right? Whatever that means for you. And then nothing, right. And then we go through a piece of like it seems like nothing's happening. And then we get another one. It's a reenactment. And when we talk about that reenactment triangle, it's the victim, which you kind of brought up before. I'm the victim, there's nothing I can do here. I'm not a legislator, I don't have any control of this. There's nothing I can do as just a normal citizen. There's the rescuer, the let me fix this, I must fix this for everybody which I run into. Lots of rescuers, and I know you do too, because we work with organizations that care and they wanna fix it for people. Right, Let me how can I bring a meal? Tell me what I can do right, how can I?

Shen Chefalo: 27:49

fix this and then it's the persecutor. Ah, you just don't take responsibility if somebody else's fault, right Like you, you, you, if you would have done this, if the community would have done that, and we just fall into these roles and we can move in that triangle and never get out of it. And the question is is how do we move to empowerment? So the only person you can fix in a reenactment is yourself. So if you're the victim, how do you move to the driver? If you're the rescuer, how do you move to supporter? If you're the persecutor, how do you move to coach? And that's to me the fundamental of what you're saying is like, if I can recognize I'm in this with you, how do I remove myself? Because by removing myself, the ripple for everything else changes. Yeah, right, like that impacts differently.

Shen Chefalo: 28:43

But the brain to me is fascinating, right, Because how quickly, even for myself, who does this work every day, I can see myself like nope, here I am right. But complaining about the same thing over and, over and over again, that's the reenactment, right? When we just fall into those rituals and routines and recognizing them could be really, really hard.

Ann Price: 29:09

So this is part of what you do you go in two organizations and help them make this shift in mindset, yes, but also culture, right. It's a big culture shift, right.

Shen Chefalo: 29:22

Yeah, trying to get some tools around like how do we resolve conflict in a trauma-informed way? How do you become a safe organization? What is safety? Even I hear that all the time like this isn't safe, I'm not safe, and it's like what does that mean? What would safety even look like? Which are some big questions that some of us haven't asked ourselves. But when you get it and when you see it right Because I say all the time, it's not destination work, it's journey work. We never arrive, we just get to be on this journey to be better today than yesterday.

Ann Price: 30:01

Yeah. So let's imagine we have trauma-informed organizations, trauma-informed systems. And because you and I are both passionate about the foster care system, let's talk about the foster care system. Let's imagine we could get all the department of family and children's services across the whole country trained, like I know. In Georgia, at any given time, we have 13,000 kids in foster care. I think there's around 400 plus somewhere maybe in the United States. You probably know that number better than I do.

Shen Chefalo: 30:37

It's cracking up to almost a half a million now.

Ann Price: 30:40

Geez Louise. So what would a trauma-informed foster care system look like?

Shen Chefalo: 30:47

I think it's such a-. Is that a big question? Sorry? Well, of course it's such a huge question, and my first inclination is that makes an assumption, and a really big assumption Okay, that we get rid of the myth that what kids need doesn't already exist, which is the family system and trusting the family system. Because I think we live in such a culture and I meet so many people who are like, yeah, but there's kids whose parents just aren't equipped to take care of them, but that's in a few cases, right, in a really small percentage of cases. But that myth really persists in this nation, that it's a much bigger problem than it is.

Shen Chefalo: 31:36

And what we know is that, basically, foster care has criminalized and penalized poverty, right, mm-hmm, and those two systems are really intertwined. And so to have the conversation about the foster care system, you have to have the conversation about social economics, yes, united States, right? Yeah, we can't un-twist those two pieces. And the other thing is is assuming that because a family is poor I'm just gonna use that generic language that somehow kids are being harmed instead of wrapping around. And so the question that I often ask back is what would whole family foster care look like? Oh, what if we didn't talk about removing kids. But what if we talked about wrapping around whole families and keeping families intact? What does that look like? Why don't we drop the word foster Me?

Shen Chefalo: 32:34

That's a much bigger, of course, question, and we can talk about all the what ifs. Yeah, and people say to me all the time but safety, if we leave a kid in a situation and they're harmed or even killed, then what? Well, if we're gonna make all of our decisions based solely on that, then I think we have to ask the opposite question, as if you remove a kid and they're harmed or killed, then what? Because we know kids are harmed in the foster care system. Kids are physically abused, sexually abused, kids are killed within the foster care system as well, and so if our only reason for removing children is we're afraid something bad might happen when we remove kids, something bad does happen, right, we know that the removal itself is lifelong I'm telling you that as a survivor and it can't be undone, and I sometimes think we take that way too lightly.

Ann Price: 33:40

You know this brings so much up to me. You know it always boggles my mind that we maybe this sounds harsher than I mean it to be that we pay strangers to take care of children rather than using that money to help keep families together and be on a stronger footing so that they can take care of their kids. Like you're saying, we're kind of assuming that because people are poor, they don't love their children, which makes no or end that their children don't love them. That makes no sense to me.

Shen Chefalo: 34:17

Well, and when we know what we know about developmental trauma, right, we know that from the moment of conceptions, babies are beginning to be wired and tied into the person carrying them, right, that they can recognize things. We know that the cortisol level of the pregnant person can transfer to the fetus, like, we know all of these things scientifically. So to assume that that connection and bond is not strong to me is irrational, right, like it doesn't make any sense in any kind of level. And then you talk about, like well, even in hospitals where they talk about skin on skin contact and kind of all of these things, right, and you're like, and then you just think you can suffer it with no right, even if, well, the baby doesn't remember, yes, it does. The body keeps the score, right, like, I mean, castle Bander-Caulke told us that the body keeps the score and I think we all significantly agree that he's right.

Shen Chefalo: 35:20

So if that's true, why do we put emotional safety, psychological safety, above physical safety? Why is that a thing? Why does that have no consideration and why are we so afraid to acknowledge it? I mean, we have decades of data, decades of survivors who are telling you this did damage to me, and I know survivors who had great foster families, great adopted families. They would tell you, and they'll still tell you, about the harm that they're overcoming from being taken from their families, and this is from people who were taken as infants. People, in my case, who are maybe taken later in life.

Shen Chefalo: 36:13

It does something to you and that desire to know where you come from and to be with your people is deep and we have to acknowledge that. And if I'm honest, dan and many people will probably feel like I'm being too harsh to your point, but I think that's why we're in the crisis society-wise that we are is that we haven't admitted you know, you talk about 400 to 500,000 kids in care every year for the last at least 20 to 30 years that I'm aware of we can look at the numbers prior to that who are now adults of this world functioning, moving around society. It's not hard to see why we're having the mental health crisis that we're having and we're not taking any responsibility for our role in that.

Ann Price: 37:04

And those folks are having children of their own right?

Shen Chefalo: 37:08

Yes, and so if we know it doesn't work, why do we insist on keep doing it? Why are we fighting to keep doing something that we know doesn't work, both just emotionally from our heart standpoint, but from the money standpoint? I mean, we know right. Like many people, have done social impact studies, my friends at Aliyah Innovations and Ecotone did a report and I don't remember the numbers exactly, but roughly that for every dollar we spent.

Shen Chefalo: 37:46

When we did foster care really, really well, which was in less than 1% of cases, for every dollar we spent we lost something like $3.50. And then the 90% to 99% of other cases. When we did it, for every dollar we spent we lost just shy of $10. It's like, well, if we were building widgets in a factory and those were the numbers we wouldn't be in business very long right, and so it's a numbers game, it's a heart thing, like it's not the right thing. Any way you cut it.

Ann Price: 38:19

Yeah, that's very true, right. So for those people who just need a financial argument, there's your financial argument. For people who need other argument, there is no. I can't think of a single outcome, whether that be educated you talked about like all the different schools that you were in before and then after foster care. Right, because kids in foster care are I know that from a study that I did right, that they're shuffled from school to school to school. If services are not available in their county or there's no foster care, they're on the other end of the state. Right, so they're not just ripped from their families, they're ripped from their schools, their teachers, their community, their church, all of the things. So the educational outcomes are poor. They're more likely to fill in the blank be on the street, be trafficked, get pregnant, all of the things. Right, yeah.

Shen Chefalo: 39:14

And I mean I get frustrated enough thinking about it, but to me it's the only thing I can say is we keep doing it because it's a business and that's really hard for me to say because my own personal lens right, but I had to come to that in my healing process of like, we move kids from the foster care system to the prison system and in this nation we privatize both of them. And when we privatized them you'd be people in those beds to make money. And that's the only thing I can tell myself about why we keep on this path, and that's heartbreaking for me, but I can't find it. I'm willing to listen to someone, to share a different kind of truth with me, but I haven't been able to ferret out any other reason why we keep on this path. Because all the data, all the research, the jest keeping kids at home is better for everybody.

Ann Price: 40:17

Well, if we go back to that socio-ecological model that you alluded to earlier, that's exactly right. If we were really to look at all of the systems, right? So the family system, the community system, the state, all of the systems and how that, like Russian stacking dolls, right? If you were really willing to look at how that's all interconnected, we would see that piece that we apparently are not willing to look at or enough people are not talking about. That's why, even if it does sound things you're talking about, two things can be true simultaneously it can sound harsh and be true at the same time. That's right.

Shen Chefalo: 41:02

And then that doesn't even get us into dismantling bias and communities of color and what's happened in communities of color and why certain things have happened and how do I get to say that, as a white person in the system, and people say to me all the time like Shen, how can you even say you have white privilege? This is something that I've heard quite a bit, given the way that I grew up, and it's super easy, and I often point to one of my times in care as the primary example of this is that I was in a residential facility and in the residential facility, I don't know, there was eight to 12 of us girls in this particular facility and I was the only white person. I think we had one Latin, hispanic person and the rest were black girls. And when our monthly cycles would come, it was very difficult to get pads, but when I requested them, I could get them without problems.

Shen Chefalo: 42:16

Well, we didn't really have white privilege language at the time. That wasn't what we were thinking, to be really clear. But what we knew is like if Shen requested them, we got stuff. Now, I was 14 at the time and, to be perfectly honest, in my own trauma, I did not want to be requesting pads for everybody in this facility. I actually found it quite frustrating and aggravating and annoying.

Shen Chefalo: 42:41

But it happened, and if people didn't get the supplies they needed, they were punished when they bled through onto sheets and soiled clothing, like there was a punishment that came with that. And so we have this internal system, but that's even though I was part of the system. That was still my white privilege within that same system, experiencing things as other people, and that's a big part of this work, too, that we can't forget and that we have to name and that we have to talk about, and that we have been. As a good friend of mine says, the system sometimes works exactly the way the system was intended to work.

Ann Price: 43:28

Yeah, and looking at that intent is not something that we're quite ready to do yet. But if you could change things so it worked better for families and children, If you had a magic wand, what would you do differently?

Shen Chefalo: 43:43

I would take our multi-billion dollar child welfare budget and spend it to keep families and to wrap around families and be more supportive, which I think makes us have conversations about what does our nation need as a whole? Right, because that impacts the conversations we have around healthcare and what's covered by healthcare and national healthcare. That comes around having equal access to education, and not just public schools, but public schools that function at a certain level and some schools that function at really great levels and some schools that don't. That's just okay. And how do we even some of those playing fields so we can keep more kids at home in what we know works, which is families?

Ann Price: 44:41

Yeah, Can we add substance abuse treatment to things that could be?

Shen Chefalo: 44:46

covered under our healthcare system right, like that would be part of just our healthcare system.

Ann Price: 44:52

Yeah, because a lot of people will say well, you know their parents. You can probably relate to that. You know well their parents are drug abusers, so they shouldn't have their kids, right?

Shen Chefalo: 45:01

Yeah, that's another one that gets, but there is no kindergarten or lane. In his bed, dreaming about what he's going to be as an adult, saying I'm going to grow up to be a heroin addict. Yeah, yeah. Which I try to remind people like nobody's, that's no.

Shen Chefalo: 45:19

That is nobody's dream and I just know so many people in recovery, and recovery is a beautiful thing, it's an amazing thing, it's a hard thing, but it's because I kind of remind people who maybe don't have anybody in their life or who've never had to deal with substance abuse in their realm, which is, how much pain do you need to be in that? That makes you feel better, which is the question I asked, ouch.

Ann Price: 45:54

Ouch, yeah, boy, that made me think. So I wanted to ask you and I know we're running up on time, there's, there's. I knew this was going to go this way. There's so many things I want to talk to you about. So how so, speaking of pain, how can people recognize I was telling you like I know what, what my things are like in my body? Can you give some things, some tips for people to think about that they might be in that trauma place, even if they think well, I didn't grow up with an alcoholic, you know, parent, or I didn't, I wasn't a foster care. So this doesn't apply to me, but you and I both know it applies to everybody. So what are some of those things that people could?

Ann Price: 46:39

oh, that's what's going on with me.

Shen Chefalo: 46:42

The easiest thing for me to think of, especially when we're here. Maybe people are just listening via audio, right? Which is think about the last time you had your buttons pushed.

Ann Price: 46:54

You mean like when somebody made you mad.

Shen Chefalo: 46:57

Yeah, Like you just felt it right. How did you feel it? What was that? How do you know your buttons were pushed Right. I think sometimes, when we relate it that way, it's like and I just talk about like I used to have a lot of real feelings. I used to have a lot of road rage. It's something that I've actually worked on because it was easier, oh, good to know. Right, because it's like oh, my buttons get pushed when people cut me off in traffic or when people don't use their blinker. What's that about Right? Like, as you know, I like and I know I think you're like down in the Atlanta area, right?

Ann Price: 47:32

Uh huh.

Shen Chefalo: 47:32

Yep Atlanta traffic I think is kind of known right.

Shen Chefalo: 47:37

Nobody is like laying in their bed thinking, um, you know the first blue Honda Accord I see today I'm just going to make their lives miserable, right, like nobody is like out to get you on the road. And usually when we we start to think about it, it's like we all know we've cut people off in traffic, or there's been times where we haven't properly used our blinker or we've, you know, been accidentally going under the speed limit or over the speed limit you know, just not being conscious or not being fully aware of what we're doing, right, but yet when someone does it to us, we tend to get really, really upset, as if they've personally done that to us.

Shen Chefalo: 48:18

But the thing that it makes you do whether you're heart races or you begin to sweat, or I'm a clincher, right, I can feel it in my back and and I often like clinching something with my fist that's the recognition that we have left executive functioning and we've gone to that fight, flight, freeze, appease. And we know when we're in fight, flight, freeze, appease we don't have logic, right, that's? That's something you get in your executive functioning. It's harder to make decisions, we're not being thoughtful, and so those things are red flags to you that you're leaving. And so what can you do? This is why conversations around mindfulness come up.

Shen Chefalo: 49:02

What can you do to get yourself back to have rational thought, right? What? Because when that bears chasing you, you're not thinking about what you're going to have for dinner tonight. You're thinking how can I survive this situation? But sometimes survival isn't what you're trying to do in day to day communications. When someone pushes your button, right, you don't. It's put you to that reptilian part of your brain, but it might not be what you actually need. Sometimes you need to take a step back and give space and you know I used to tell people write a letter you won't send.

Shen Chefalo: 49:39

When you have a lot of complaints, just write it out and don't even plan on sending it, Because once you just name it, in itself it tames it. And so being able to recognize that your buttons are being pushed and then be like, okay, this isn't the place I want to respond from, I got to get myself back to executive functioning and so I think it's a great tip for everybody. You have to first know what are the, what are those red flags for you, because it's different for all of us, Right? And then how do you make it so the same thing doesn't trigger that response over and over and over again. What is that really about? And that's the deep work that starts us on our real individual healing paths.

Ann Price: 50:27

Yeah, these are all great tips and I know this is part of the coaching and the counseling you do with organizations, and I want to give you an opportunity to say a little bit more about your consulting services and what you do. Yeah, so that people have an opportunity to connect with you if they would like to do that.

Shen Chefalo: 50:47

Yeah, I'm really fortunate that I get to do all kinds of trainings short term and long term right. Some of my clients I work with only one, some of my clients I've been working with for numerous years and training their staff, giving them tools. But really at the heart of what we're doing is building trauma informed frameworks so that we have healed spaces, so we can have healed places, and I get to fortunate to do that within large organizations and we're doing some amazing community work, really proud of the work that we're kicking off actually in two weeks in the Antelope Valley in California to do community wide trauma implementation. And so there's always time and space for people to join us for our free, mindful Mondays or to just come take a class, whether it's virtually or in person.

Ann Price: 51:41

I got Mindful Mondays. What is that all about?

Shen Chefalo: 51:44

Yeah, so we started Mindful Mondays about a year and a half ago really, because I started finding people who worked in organizations who maybe weren't ready to embrace trauma, informed, but they were like I can embrace my space and my interactions with people and they were looking for support from other like minded people who are like, hey, I'm facing this issue, what do we do? Help me think through this in a new way. How do we overcome this? And so we just created Mindful Mondays as a place to come and network, think through things, hear breakthroughs that other people sometimes you need the positive right like, let me hear how something good is happening in an organization or community or agency. And so we just wanted to create a space for people to network and get help and support and not having it be about dollars.

Ann Price: 52:34

Well, I love that and I've downloaded your book, so I've got that. I'm working through that. Encourage everybody to go on over to your website and I'll put links to all of that in the show notes so people can get in contact with you. But before I let you go, got to ask you when you look to the future, what community possibilities do you see?

Shen Chefalo: 52:58

for me, I've been thinking a lot about this, especially because we've kicked off a new year right, so so it's always the reflection of the past and the hope for the future. And for me, I'm really focused on growth. Growth for myself, but growth in communities. I I know longer, maybe this has something to do with my age and but I no longer looking for perfection, I'm just looking for growth and and really embracing this idea that I'm on a journey Today to be better for community members than yesterday. And those little changes add up and we sometimes can miss them in quarters, in years, but when you look back over five years, over 10 years, over 15 years, you can see how much growth and beautiful changes happen. So for me, I'm going to say growth I love it, I love it.

Ann Price: 53:52

That sounds like great questions of intention. I went with the ones I had last year focus and saver but I love, I love growth.

Shen Chefalo: 54:03

I like it. I like it. Focus is hard for me because I'm like, oh, we can do that. Okay, that doesn't work. How about this? There's always a focus can be hard, yeah, feet.

Ann Price: 54:18

Oh, me too, sister, no doubt about it. So how can people get in contact with you?

Shen Chefalo: 54:24

Yeah, absolutely. The website is great. Sheffield consulting I know you'll put a link in. You can feel free to reach out to me on social media. It's the one thing about being a Shenandoah Sheffield. There are no others. So I'm usually pretty easy to track down and people can always email or call me. I'm easy to find.

Ann Price: 54:43

Yeah well, shen, I am so grateful that I got to meet you that day. I feel like I have known you my whole life and I know our paths are going to connect again.

Shen Chefalo: 54:53

Yeah, thanks so much. I'm looking forward to our new friendship.

Ann Price: 54:56

All right, thank you so much. Hi everybody, I am so glad you joined me on this episode of community possibilities. You know reviews and ratings are the lifeblood of podcasts these days. So if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, can you do me a solid? Can you go on over to Apple podcasts and leave a review? That would be so helpful. You know it's been a skinny minute since I've had a rating or review, so would love it if you do me that favor. Thanks, everybody, and I'll see you next time. You.