OneOp

Habit Stacking
2025-01-16
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Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjQ0Nzc4NiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTY0NDc3ODYtaGFiaXQtc3RhY2tpbmcuanMlM0Zjb250YWluZXJfaWQlM0RidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjQ0Nzc4NiUyNnBsYXllciUzRHNtYWxsJTIyJTIwdHlwZSUzRCUyMnRleHQlMkZqYXZhc2NyaXB0JTIyJTIwY2hhcnNldCUzRCUyMnV0Zi04JTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGc2NyaXB0JTNF In this episode of Practicing Connection, Coral talks about Habit Stacking, a practice that can help you adopt new habits by pairing them with existing ones. Learn more about this adaptable practice that can help you change your behavior.
Resources:

“Atomic Habits” by James Clear

[music]
Jessica: Hi. Thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection podcast. I’m Jessica. My cohost Coral is here as well. Today we’ll be talking about habit stacking. Coral will be sharing a practice with us. Hi, Coral. How are you?
Coral: Hey, Jessica. I’m doing well. It was so nice to have a couple of weeks over the holiday break to decompress a little bit. I spent a good bit of that time catching up with my folks. They do live just right around the corner from me, but that pace of life just over the holidays is a little bit more relaxed. One thing I particularly enjoyed was listening to their conversations.
They’re planning an upcoming trip to Alaska for a cruise, which is really different from the way that they’ve traveled in the past, but it’s going to be their 40th wedding anniversary. Again, it’s just an interesting thing to listen in on. I’ve listened to lots of their travel conversations over the years, 40 years. My dad, these days he navigates some mobility challenges. It was a reflective space that I was in just thinking about how the way they travel has shifted over the course of their partnership.
It was really just beautiful to think about the fact that they’re still adventuring together, even though it looks different in this season of life for them. A nutshell takeaway that I’m going to bring forward into the new year is just looking at things in a different way, trying things in a different way. Even if the previous ways of doing those things don’t align with this current season, is there a different way that I can approach things or have it look a little bit differently that serves me better? Being okay with that, being joyful in that. That’s my spark for this most recent little bit of life. How about you? How are you?
Jessica: That’s wonderful. Approximately how many houses away? Is it around a corner? Is it down the street? I’m curious.
Coral: It is a 11-minute walk.
Jessica: Oh, 11-minute walk. It’s a little ways. By contrast, I live, it’s approximately four houses away from my mother-in-law’s house, but it is also around a corner. It feels like it’s a little further, but it’s really close. I wish my parents lived nearby. That’s really cool that you could witness that. My parents just had their 50th wedding anniversary. Your parents are just right around that corner as well. How cool.
I’ve actually been, I guess, inspired maybe this week by writing some nice things about myself and my work. It’s funny, but as of our recording, it’s the time of year when my organization goes through performance management. There’s a lot that I have to say, and there’s a lot that I dislike about the whole process.
I have to say, I would say that about the way performance management is conducted across many, many, many organizations,
but there’s one thing I like about this time of year, because before I meet with my supervisor, I reflect on all the things that went well and I make sure to notice the things that I felt like I knocked out of the park. I’ll write out all of the things that I accomplished, whether they were planned accomplishments that are in my performance management report that I need to report on, or whether they were surprise accomplishments.
I’m always pleasantly surprised by how many things I’ve accomplished over the year. It’s a nice way to go into the new year. Also, it makes me very uncomfortable to say nice things about myself and it’s a good exercise for me in general.
Coral: No, that’s such an important practice to celebrate our own wins. I love that you can find that sparkle in something that can be a bit of an uncomfortable process. You do amazing work. I’m really glad that you’re able to recognize that for yourself, Jess.
Jessica: Oh, thank you. We’d love to hear what’s inspiring you. Please share what’s inspiring you by clicking the “send us a text message” at the top of the description of this episode. When you click the link, your text messaging app will open and you’ll see a seven-digit number and the words “do not remove.” Type your message after that and click send. Don’t remove that number or we won’t receive your message.
To protect your privacy, we won’t see your phone number and we can’t text you back, but we’ll share your feedback on a future episode. If you’re listening on a computer, you can email us at practicingconnection@oneoff.org. Let us know what’s inspiring you right now.
[music]
Let’s learn more about habit stacking, Coral. Can you tell us a little more about the practice that you’ll be sharing and why you chose it?
Coral: Absolutely. If any of our listeners have read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, they’re probably already familiar with this practice. I personally love the practice of habit stacking because to me it’s one of the most approachable ways to find or to begin cultivating new habits. Oftentimes when we’re going about new habit formation, it can feel like we’re just a little bit lost about where to begin.
Habit stacking gives us something to anchor those new habits in. Behaviorists will refer to this as a trigger. A trigger is something that we recognize that can– Perhaps not recognize, sometimes it’s subconscious. In this case, it is conscious. Essentially, a trigger just helps us kick off another particular action.
Jessica: I feel like that was a really good teaser. I have questions, but all those questions are about how to do it. Let’s get started with that. Please walk us through how to start habit stacking.
Coral: Sure thing. First, I’m
just going to break it down and then maybe we can walk through an example afterwards to give it greater context and bring it to life. To begin habit stacking, it’s very straightforward. First, you just clearly define what habit it is that you would like to establish. The more clearly you can establish this, the better. Then next, determine how frequently this habit should happen. This is really important. Should this be daily, weekly, monthly? Also, what time of day does this need to occur if you really want to drill into it?
Next, once you’ve got those two bits, then you can identify a current habit that you already have, and this will serve as the trigger for the new habit. The key here is that you want the current habit that you have to have a similar frequency to the new habit. For instance, if your new habit is daily, you don’t want to pick something that only happens once a week. You want something that has the same frequency so you can keep it going.
Jessica: Let’s go through an example of this.
Coral: Sure thing. One practice that I’ve always hear friends and colleagues mention as an intention each new year is often mindfulness. It’s always something that can serve us well. Let’s just take mindfulness for an example. A simple mindfulness practice that we can define as a habit is one minute of breathing. Maybe you want to have a mindful minute each day, so daily. Maybe you want to begin your day with this. With all of that in mind, so we’ve got a daily habit. It’s short and something that needs to happen towards the start of the day.
For me, something that immediately comes to mind is coffee. No great day ever starts in my life without coffee. I would probably start off by stacking these two habits together. To pull all of this together, I would summarize my habit stack something like this. Again, this is going to sound very nuanced, but again, the more clearly that you can define all of this, the better.
Here’s my habit stack for this instance. When I press the start button on my morning coffee to begin brewing it, I’ll set a gentle timer on my phone for one minute and breathe slowly in my kitchen with my eyes closed. Then I’ll have my coffee.
Jessica: That’s wonderful. When you first mentioned coffee, I was thinking about that moment when you sit down with your hot cup, whether that’s coffee or tea or whatever, when you sit down with that hot cup and you pick it up and you maybe smell it, it’s usually too hot for me to drink at first. I usually need to wait a minute for it to cool down anyway, but I love to hold the hot cup. I was thinking about that moment being when I might establish a one-minute mindfulness breathing exercise. It really can be however it works for you, I think, is the point that I’m trying to make here.
Coral: Absolutely.
I love that, too, you’re bringing in other sensory aspects into this that help you ground in something that would be a mindfulness practice. I have to do it while I’m brewing my coffee. I have a two-year-old and he’s usually up and at them less than five minutes after I wake up without fail. It’s totally about finding how this blends into your life and works with the flow rather than going against the grain and friction. It’s all about flow and helping things just go into the fold more seamlessly than not.
Jessica: It’s a super simple practice. I feel like it has so much leeway for you to decide what’s going to work best for you, which I think is really important because I think there’s a lot of advice out there about how you should set up your mornings, how you should set up your evenings, all the different things that you should incorporate into your day. This is really just, no, just find one thing that you already do and tack something small onto it. Thank you so much for sharing this.
Coral: Absolutely. I’d really be curious to hear what our listeners, if they’re employing this, what you’re using habit stacking for to incorporate into your new year.
Jessica: That’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We’ll be back next week with a practice for incorporating the one-minute agreement. Until then, keep practicing.
[music]
Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2023-48770-41333.
[music]
[00:11:06] [END OF AUDIO]

Easy Priority Setting with the Wheel of Life
2025-01-09
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjQwNDcyOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTY0MDQ3MjgtZWFzeS1wcmlvcml0eS1zZXR0aW5nLXdpdGgtdGhlLXdoZWVsLW9mLWxpZmUuanMlM0Zjb250YWluZXJfaWQlM0RidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjQwNDcyOCUyNnBsYXllciUzRHNtYWxsJTIyJTIwdHlwZSUzRCUyMnRleHQlMkZqYXZhc2NyaXB0JTIyJTIwY2hhcnNldCUzRCUyMnV0Zi04JTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGc2NyaXB0JTNF In this episode of Practicing Connection, Jessica introduces the Wheel of Life as a simple tool to help set priorities and find balance by identifying areas that need attention. Discover how this practice encourages intentionality, making it easier to focus on what matters most to you each month. Coral Owen: Hi there, thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Coral. My co-host Jessica is here today as well. Today we’ll be talking about setting priorities with ease using the Wheel of Life, and Jessica will be sharing a practice with us. Hi Jess, how are you?
Jessica Beckendorf: I’m doing pretty great today. This time of year, things slow down in the meeting department, so I’m able to spend a little time cleaning my office. Actually, I’ve been inspired this week weirdly by the simple act of cleaning my office. I use copious amounts of Post-it notes for my note taking. As I go through all these tiny Post-it notes and I recycle some old papers that I don’t need anymore and actually start to see my desk and floor again, it’s really been having an effect on me. I want more, and I’m not even the person that needs to have a neat workspace in order to like feel productive or get things done.
It’s also been fun to be inspired by myself in a lot of ways, which sounds really weird to say it that way. I find notes with ideas on them that I wasn’t able to pursue yet, but then I’m reinvigorated by those ideas. I’m like, “Oh yes, that’s right. I remember I thought of that one day, and maybe I can like put that back into the hopper.” Along with that has been the realization that while I have a lot of really good ideas and intentions, there really is limited time to tackle them. I’ve had to remind myself that it’s not a failure that I didn’t get to do all of the things that I intended to or that I had ideas for this year. It was really just a matter of priority. When I think back, I feel like I did tackle the right priorities most of the time this year. I feel pretty good about that too.
Coral: That is awesome. I have a friend. She also lives that sticky notes life. She will from time to time do that deep cleaning, and she has just– it’s an actual basket. She calls it the percolator. She drops the sticky notes in there. She’s like, “This is a great idea, but for a later time.” She just sticks them in there. I really like the idea of being kind with yourself and realizing that we do have limited time in the day, in the week, in our lives to do all of the things that hit our brain and they might feel magical and they probably are, but that there needs to be prioritization and intentionality so that we can still also be ourselves. That’s great. Thanks for sharing that, Jessica. I love that percolator idea and I might copy that.
It’s funny that you mentioned– I don’t know, I think a lot of times people will share things, when you ask them, “Oh, what’s inspired you?” People tend to think about what they’re reading or whatnot. In a similar vein, I oddly have found inspiration in my kitchen. This was a little peek into my life outside the podcast realm, but I’ve gotten into fermenting and pickling in this past year. It’s just something that has piqued my interest, but it’s also been really intimidating for me for some time because, I don’t know, it’s science-y and, I don’t know, has always seemed a little less straightforward than a recipe and you measure and bake and it just turns out if it turns out.
For whatever reason, a couple of weeks ago, I just decided to go for it with some sauerkraut, and it turned out great. Just my inspiration or takeaway here is that sometimes I just need to trust the process, not overthink it and just let things do their thing. Yes, whatever the ‘it’ is, it can turn out okay if you just let things do what they do.
Jessica: That sounds like great advice for so many things. Also I just love that you can find inspiration in sauerkraut because as a person who really hates pickled anything and fermented things like sauerkraut, I guess it warms my heart. Plus sauerkraut actually has a special place in my family’s heart, even though I hate it. My family comes from an area where there’s a big sauerkraut factory and they all have worked there at one point or another. It’s interesting that I hate it so much, great advice for trust the sauerkraut process.
Coral: There you go. We should make a bumper sticker. We would also love to hearing what’s inspiring our listeners. Please share what’s inspiring you. You can click the message, send us a text at the top of the description of this episode. When you click the link, your text messaging app will open and you’ll see a seven digit number and the words “Do not remove,” don’t remove them. You can type your message after that and click send. Don’t remove that number. We just won’t see your message. Also to protect your privacy, we won’t see your phone number and we can’t text you back, unfortunately, but we’ll share your feedback on a future episode.
Also if you’re listening on a computer, you can just shoot us an email as well, practicingconnection@oneop.org. Let us know what is inspiring you right now. All right. Jessica, let’s learn more about the Wheel of Life and how it can help us set priorities. Can you tell us a little bit more about the practice you’ll be sharing it and also why you chose it?
Jessica: Absolutely. I am super excited about this because the Wheel of Life is one of my favorite practices. It’s used a lot in coaching, but I first came to it through a planner. The planner had a monthly review that included, among other things, a Wheel of Life and instructions on how to use the Wheel of Life. We’ll go into the details of how to use the tool in a moment, but it’s basically a pie chart that’s broken out into six or eight or more domains of life, like financial, social, intellectual. You assess how well each of those domains are going for you. Really, just how you feel about how they’re going for you, and you assign a value to it. Usually it’s from 1 to 10 with 1 being you’re not feeling fulfilled in that domain of life and 10 being like you’re super fulfilled in that domain of life.
Typically you’ll color in the spaces or you’ll draw from point to point on the pie chart, and then the diagram that results from that helps you very quickly see the domains of life that might need your attention. I immediately took to this practice partly because it was super easy because they provided the framework, and then on top of that, it was really powerful because in this planner they chose domains of life that would work for– they worked for me anyway. I don’t know if they would work for most people. I guess I’m assuming that they would work for most people.
It was super easy and it was really powerful. Every single month I was able to quickly assess which areas of my life were feeling successful and which areas were not. Then I could set some intentions around that. Just the tracking itself was really helpful for noticing the little impromptu moments that were actually helping me with one of my goals, partly because I was so aware of the areas of life that were feeling successful and then the areas of life that weren’t feeling successful for me, that in the moment I started to notice like, “Oh, this social interaction I’m having right now is helping me with my intention that I set that I wanted to have more social interactions.” I would notice it more. It improved my noticing skills in a way. Just tracking it was really helpful.
Over time, I started to write in my own domains of life where it made sense. If you write in your own domains to get started, I would recommend using some sort of framework out there that has been tested a little bit just to get started. After a while, when you’ve been doing it, you start to recognize maybe where the framework isn’t working for you as well, but you could use something like the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Eight Domains of Wellness or Health.mil’s Total Force Fitness, or whatever is important to you right now. We’ll have links to both of those resources in the show notes. Overall, this activity, partly because I was practicing it monthly and partly because it is such a powerful tool, I really was able to make decisions about the upcoming month and what I felt like I needed to do in that upcoming month to just find a little bit of balance in my life. That’s why I chose it.
Coral: I love that so much. My background is in health education, and one of the things that we would often talk about is the multifaceted composition of identity and the habits that support health and well-being from a multitude of angles. I just love that this practice so accurately reflects how we can cultivate wellness and well-being and health in all of those different scopes and how they feed together. I would love to hear more about how we can actually do this thing. Could you guide us through some steps, Jessica?
Jessica: Yes, absolutely. We’re going to have a resource that you can download where you can fill out your own Wheel of Life. We’ll have an example that has the domains of life filled in for you, and then we’ll have a blank one available as well. You’ll be able to draw this in. You’ll want to start then with a template with the domains of life already identified, or you of course can also identify your own. If you identify your own, I would just reiterate that you might want to use something like SAMHSA’s Eight Domains of Wellness or Health.mil’s Total Force Fitness.
Then you’re going to go through looking at those domains and you’re going to rate your current level of satisfaction in each domain. Don’t worry about accuracy. If you can, just go with your gut feeling or think about for each of the domains, you could also think about what parameters would make you feel successful in that area. In my case, I was able to go with my gut, but I know that may not work for everyone.
You are going to go through each one. You’re going to say to yourself, “Do I feel like this area rates a 1, which is low, or a 10, which is high, or somewhere in between?” Plot it out on the wheel. You can choose to color each section in, or you can place dots and draw a line connecting those dots from domain to domain.
Then step back. You don’t have to literally step back. Take a look at the results. Look at the shape of your diagram. Are there some areas that feel like they need attention? I want to mention that the goal here isn’t so that you work toward having all of those domains of life at a 10. It’s not so that you’re maxing them all out. This is really about how do you feel about each of those domains? Maybe there are some domains where you feel really successful at a 5, and that’s okay. This is really about how do you feel about how things are going.
Once you take a look at that, if you feel like there’s an area that needs attention, maybe it’s relationships. You think about, well, what relationships in the coming month, if I were able to do something about this domain of life, which relationships would help me do that? What would help me create some balance in that domain? You can set a few intentions for the coming month. I do like a monthly basis, but you can also do this annually if you prefer.
Then you set some goals and some intentions around the domains that you feel like could use a little work. You’re not striving for perfection here. You’re just striving for a tiny bit more balance. If you felt like that relationships area was super low, and you’re not satisfied, and you can think of 10 things that you could do to change that, you don’t have to do all 10 of those things. Just do a couple, and you will already have started to make that area more successful. I love this practice of intentionality and also being able to do it throughout the year.
Coral: Thanks for guiding us through, Jessica.
Jessica: Oh, absolutely. This has been hugely helpful. I’ll admit I have been out of practice with this and just doing this episode has made me pull out my old diagrams, and I’m going to get going on it again because it really is a great exercise.
Coral: Great. I think I may actually leverage it for myself and we can check in with each other around the first of the month.
Jessica: Love that. Yes, let’s do that.
Coral: Wonderful. That’s it for this episode. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend or a colleague. We’ll be back next week with a practice for habit stacking. Until then, keep practicing.
[music]
Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, U.S. Department of Defense under award number 2023-48770-41333. you
[00:14:05] [END OF AUDIO]

New Year, New Co-host
2025-01-02
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Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjM2OTQ4MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTYzNjk0ODMtbmV3LXllYXItbmV3LWNvLWhvc3QuanMlM0Zjb250YWluZXJfaWQlM0RidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjM2OTQ4MyUyNnBsYXllciUzRHNtYWxsJTIyJTIwdHlwZSUzRCUyMnRleHQlMkZqYXZhc2NyaXB0JTIyJTIwY2hhcnNldCUzRCUyMnV0Zi04JTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGc2NyaXB0JTNF In this episode, Jessica Beckendorf introduces Coral Owen as the new co-host of Practicing Connection. They reflect on their journey working together, share insights into the podcast’s evolution, and discuss the importance of consistent small practices for personal and professional growth. [music]
Kalin Goble: Welcome to Practicing Connection, a podcast exploring the personal stories and collective practices that empower us to work together to improve our resilience and readiness in a rapidly changing world.
Jessica Beckendorf: Happy New Year. Thanks so much for listening to the Practicing Connection podcast. I’m Jessica. I’m super excited to introduce you all to Coral Owen, who has been doing incredible work behind the scenes on the podcast for a while. Now you all get to finally hear her voice as my new co-host. Coral, welcome.
Coral Owen: Hey, Jessica. Thanks so much for the warm welcome. It’s a little wild to be here talking with you rather than being behind the scenes, but I am certainly welcoming the change in scenery and really looking forward to being on this side of things.
Jessica: One of the things that’s gone through my mind a little bit is, when we first approached you about this, you’ve been behind the scenes for a while, and you’ve been doing wonderful work there. When we approached you about being in front of the scenes, what made you say yes?
Coral: Like you said, I have been in a production role here with the podcast, a lot of the webinars that we do on other side of the house in OneOp, but after rolling it around for a little while, the offer to join you as co-host going forward, the thing that really did hook me in is this opportunity to have a front row seat, to really intentionally dig into great practices with you. This is something that you and I have done for quite some time, just one-to-one. Just the intentionality to have these– This is sounding very self-serving going through this response. I am really looking forward to just having those conversations with you more regularly. Hopefully it also benefits our listeners as we go through and dig into these great practices and stories and conversations.
Jessica: I’m really looking forward to that too. Just in our planning meetings, as we get together and we brainstorm some future episodes and guests and things like that, it’s been the energy between us has been really fun. We’ve been able to play off of each other really well. Really, that should have been apparent to us from the first time we met because I met you before I was– probably a good– it was about six months before I became a member, a full-on, fully-fledged member of the OneOp team, which at the time was called Military Families Learning Network, because it was a long time ago that we met, and it was such a fun interaction.
Coral: It was. Yes. I remember there are a few folks, every so often, that I clearly remember meeting for the first time, and you’re one of those people. I think we were at a e-extension conference in San Antonio. I had just joined OneOp. This was almost 10 years ago. That’s wild. I just remember having just a really– Mixers to me have always been a little uncomfortable, but I remember I was like, “This guy looks so cool.” We got to chatting. I just felt so at ease and really enjoyed our conversation and learning more about you and the work that you’ve been doing. I remember being so thrilled when you joined the project. We’ve just continued to have really great conversations over the years that we’ve worked together. Here we are.
Jessica: I forgot it was a mixer that we met at. That’s fun. That was a great conference. Likewise, Coral, I never have forgotten meeting you, and then we ended up collaborating right away on a couple of articles. What are you most excited about for our work or for the podcast as we move into 2025 and beyond?
Coral: I think I already alluded to this a little bit that being in front of the mic is somewhat of a growth space for me. That’s one of the things that I’m trying to lean into a bit more intentionally this year. Getting into those growth spaces that can feel a little bit uncomfortable at first. That is not a bad thing in any sense. That is something that, just that understanding, is something that I would like to carry forward into our conversations.
The practices and stories that we’re telling throughout this year is just encouraging everyone who’s joining us in these conversations to inhabit spaces that may feel a little bit frictiony, a little uncomfortable, because that is what enables us to evolve into that next most awesome version of ourselves. Hopefully that can help foster that adventure for some other folks that are tuning in. This time of year tends to be a lot of momentum and sparking new ideas and practices. I’ve also found it to be a really beautiful time to reflect.
Something I was curious, Jessica, are there any reflections about your journey with the podcast so far? Because you all have been up to this for quite some time. As we embark on this next new season, are there any reflections or anything that you could share that you’re looking forward to in 2025?
Jessica: Yes, lots of reflections. Oh my goodness, we put so much thought before we started this podcast. We put so much thought into it. We talked to colleagues in our, at the time, Military Families Learning Network. Now it’s OneOp. We talked to all of our colleagues. We got input on like, what did they want this podcast to feel like? What kinds of things did they want the podcast to talk about? What kinds of professional development areas did they want it to focus on?
It wasn’t like we got specific topics from everyone. It was really more like the big picture. What big picture things do you want it to tackle? We started with only– I can’t remember if it was six or eight a year. Our first few seasons, there’s only six or eight episodes in a year. They were put out monthly, and then we would take a break. It was really a evolution that was interesting to me because at first we started with tackling those topics, those big picture areas that our colleagues had said might be really important for professional development.
Then we started to evolve based on other input that we were getting. For me, I’m really excited about how we’ve evolved into we have a bit of a long form episode at the top of the month. That’s a strong word to use because they’re typically only maybe 40 minutes at the longest. We have a little bit of a longer form where we try to do an interview based on input or stories that we’ve heard about that we want to highlight and lift up to show examples of the military family readiness system in action.
Then we have these little practices that we’re trying to put out there. I don’t expect that there’s anyone out there who’s listening to all of our short practicasts and practicing every single thing. It’s really about finding the thing that sparks you or that you feel like you could incorporate into your daily work and leaving the rest behind, if you’re like, “No, that’s not for me. I know that’s not for me.” What I’m excited about is that we’re giving people those options, and we’re hopefully helping them show up a little differently in the directions that they want to show up in, in their daily life and work.
Coral: One of my current favorite podcasts they talk about– it’s called Mentor Buffet. This is reminding me that this is like a practice buffet.
Jessica: Totally. Oh my gosh, I love that.
Coral: It’s been such a great journey both to listen in but also to support along the way. Thanks for sharing those reflections and also a prospective look. Jess, thanks.
Jessica: No, you’re so welcome. Along with all these practices we’ve been sharing, I know you and I are going to be sharing many practices in the year to come. Yet I’m wondering if you have something that’s supporting your development and growth right now that you can share with us all. You know it’s a tradition on this podcast with our interviewees, and you are the interviewee today, to try to share a practice, if they have one, that’s supporting them right in this moment right now.
Coral: I’m laughing because you can probably see this as we’re recording, Jessica, and all of my colleagues are probably familiar with. I’m just going to air quotes here. The big donkey calendar, it hangs right to the left of my desk. Essentially, since y’all are just listening to this and can’t see what I’m talking about, it’s a year at a glance. It’s something that I began using this past year, 2024, just to get a really quick hit look at the year as a whole, just for planning and whatnot.
That’s the original intent that I purchased and installed it with. Really, what I didn’t anticipate is that it would help me develop consistency on a couple of small practices throughout this past year. Again, this prompted, unexpectedly, a mindset shift away from executing with perfection to executing sometimes imperfectly, but on a more regular and consistent basis. What I found, now that closing out 2024, is that those small wins consistently have really added up to a much greater sum than shooting for big days less frequently and less consistently. I’ve just now installed my 2025 calendar and look forward to cultivating a couple of smaller consistent practices going forward in the new year. That’s mine. What about you? Is there something that you’re looking to leverage this coming year?
Jessica: Yes. First I want to just quick mention that if you try looking at big donkey calendar to try to emulate what Coral is practicing, you won’t find it. Just think of another word for donkey, and you’ll get there.
Coral: We’ve got to keep it professional here, Jess.
Jessica: I love that practice so much that actually I’ve got one of those calendars in my cart right now. Hopefully you’ll see one hanging next to my desk sometime soon. For me, the one that I wanted to share with you all is my team a while back has started to institute what we’re calling a five in five. It’s basically like, what are the five most important things coming up this week or next short enough to be delivered in five minutes so that we can get through our updates in a short amount of time, and then we can get on to some other things that we need to collaborate on.
It sounds like, you guys have heard me talking before, and I think I often am like, “Hey, connection before content,” which is a phrase that I enjoy from another facilitator. I really think these five in five updates have actually been really helpful to all of us as a team in how we’re able to share just a quick update so that we can get to the content with each other, and we can get to connecting with each other. I think I’m going to probably refine my five in five process because I do write a little too much about it. I’d like to shorten it to a few short bullets.
Coral: I love that. I look forward to hearing how that evolves for you over the year. Maybe we even share that as a practice sometime in the year.
Jessica: I’d be happy to put a little more sort of structure around it and share how it’s working for our team too. We have a distributed team across the state. It’s really helpful to have these short little shared pieces that anyone can go and look at. That is it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us. Coral, welcome one more time. I’m so excited that you decided to take this on as part of your journey. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app and share it with a friend. We’ll be back next week with a practice for easy priority setting with the Wheel of Life. Until then, keep practicing.
Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, U.S. Department of Defense, under award numbers 2019-48770-30366 and 2023-48770-41333.
[00:12:42] [END OF AUDIO]

Strategies for Navigating Challenging Conversations
2024-12-26
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjM0MDk4MCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTYzNDA5ODAtc3RyYXRlZ2llcy1mb3ItbmF2aWdhdGluZy1jaGFsbGVuZ2luZy1jb252ZXJzYXRpb25zLmpzJTNGY29udGFpbmVyX2lkJTNEYnV6enNwcm91dC1wbGF5ZXItMTYzNDA5ODAlMjZwbGF5ZXIlM0RzbWFsbCUyMiUyMHR5cGUlM0QlMjJ0ZXh0JTJGamF2YXNjcmlwdCUyMiUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRnNjcmlwdCUzRQ== In this encore episode of Practicing Connection, Bob and Jessica discuss the importance of navigating challenging conversations. Jessica introduces a practical activity designed to help manage emotions and foster constructive dialogue, whether in personal or professional settings. [music]
Bob: Hi, and thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Bob. My co-host Jessica is here as well. Today we’ll be talking about having challenging conversations and Jessica will be sharing a practice with us. I’m looking forward to that. Hey, Jessica. How are you?
Jessica: I am great. I’ve actually been binging a show, a very old show called Deadwood. I think it’s 20 years old at this point. Never seen it before. Had never heard of it. I’ve just been obsessed with it lately. I am by no means a history buff, and I’m not sure I should be admitting that anywhere, but honestly, every single character I’ve been looking up. Is this a real person? Then if it is a real person, I end up going down this rabbit hole, learning all about them.
This is both a testament to the quality of the show, but that’s not really what has gotten my curiosity piqued. It’s really, once I find out it’s a real person, I’m like, “Did they really do this thing? How long did they live? Did they live through Deadwood?” Because that is a pretty rough place. I’ve just been really excited to learn about a piece of our nation’s history. Again, never heard of it. This snuck up on me. I’m absolutely hooked and fascinated.
Bob: That’s awesome. First of all, I’ve not watched Deadwood, but I have been to Deadwood, South Dakota. That’s something. I get what you’re saying. I had the same experience with a show called The Great, which is much more fictionalized, it sounds like, than what you’re talking about, but deals with Catherine the Great and real characters. I was busy. I spent more time on Wikipedia trying to see what was actual and what was not accurate as I did watching the show. It was a fun two screen experience.
Jessica: Was the acting also incredible? That’s one thing I’ll say in Deadwood, the acting is incredible.
Bob: I think so. I think it’s a crazy show. Don’t turn it on and say, “Why did Bob recommend this show?” I’m not recommending it. I’m just saying I had this experience. Lately, I’ve been watching the Olympics as we’re recording this in early August 2024. It’s Olympics time in Paris. It’s been a beautiful Olympics just in terms of the camera shots and scenery, by the way, in the city of Paris, which has been really awesome. I’ve really been inspired by the stories that have highlighted community support and self-care.
We are in the US, as most of our listeners know so most of the stories that I hear are about American athletes. I wish that the coverage had more stories about athletes from around the world. Just admitting that my biased lens that I have to look through this, it’s been really inspiring to see how the athletes in gymnastics have supported each other, both in the men’s and the women’s competitions. I was watching some of the individual apparatus competitions and competitors really seem genuinely happy for each other’s success.
Again, we’re watching on TV, so everything is just seeming, but it seemed like they were just as interested in each athlete achieving the best that they are capable of as they were in terms of winning or losing. I saw a feature about American swimmer Caleb Dressel’s struggles with panic attacks and depression and how therapy and family support has helped him really change his self-talk and become better balanced. I think it just speaks to how much more we are talking about mental health and self-care that even in this ultimate competition, the best of the best, the Olympics, that we are talking to each other about how to become better balanced and more healthy.
Jessica: Wow, I love that perspective. It’s almost like the Olympics is both the original and the healthiest reality TV that we have available to us. That and The Great British Baking Show, because they also support each other.
Bob: They really do. I do love that about The Great British Baking Show. We’d love to hear what’s inspiring you. Please share what’s inspiring you by clicking the send us a text message link at the top of the description of this episode. When you click the link, your text messaging app will open. You’ll see a seven digit number and the words do not remove. Type your message after that and click send. Don’t remove the number or we won’t receive your message.
To protect your privacy, we won’t see your phone number and we can’t text you back, but we will share your feedback on a future episode. If you’re listening on a computer, you can email us with what inspires you at practicingconnectionat@oneop.org. Let us know what’s inspiring you right now. We’d love to hear from you.
[music]
Let’s learn more about having challenging conversations. Jessica, this is something as we’ve been talking about financial well-being over the last couple of weeks now. That is really important. Those are one of the most challenging conversations you can have, I think, are conversations about finances and money. Can you tell us a little bit more about the practice that you’ll be sharing today and why you chose it?
Jessica: There’s a lot of emotions that can come up around money. A lot of things can come up and there’s a lot of practices out there for starting conversations that can be uncomfortable, like conversations about money. Things like our past experiences and our upbringing and our emotions around those experiences can really cause us to go into immediate fight, flight, freeze modes, and then it just ends up being unproductive. A lot of my background is in civic engagement, and I really thought there’s some healthy practices within the civil dialogue area.
Because of my experiences with seeing them work, and because I think they provide a great foundation for talking about any challenging topic where we might find ourselves dealing with heightened emotions, I just thought it would be a really interesting place to start. This particular activity that I chose for today, it’s called Hopes and Concerns. I find it to be a really effective way to discuss our own discomfort with the act of talking about challenging topics.
Really, essentially, it’s a disarming way to begin. Collectively, either you and another person or you and the group that you’re talking with will end up with strategies for how you’re going to handle or support each other when the conversation turns challenging. The practice focuses on the conversation. It focuses on the mechanics of that conversation, not on the challenging topic itself. It also does not focus on the challenging dynamics that come up.
I got this from the Constructive Dialogue Institute, where they say that this activity can help lower tension and anxiety before it ever starts to creep up. By focusing on the mechanics of the conversation, so the things that you hope you’ll get out of the conversation and the things that you might find challenging about having a conversation, that’s what I’m talking about when I say it focuses on the mechanics of the conversation rather than digging right into the hard topics.
Bob: This sounds really exciting. It makes me think of a couple of things. I’m going to use a word that is not quite I mean. The word I’m going to use is detachment. It’s like when we’re talking about holding space, we talk about how we can be there for someone without judgment. That’s what I mean by that detachment, is that sort of maybe trying to set aside some of our core beliefs and what might trigger us. This sounds like a really great way to do it. I’m wondering if you might walk us through the practice.
Jessica: It’s actually really easy. Again, it’s called the Hopes and Concerns activity from the Constructive Dialogue Institute. We’ll include a link to the activity itself in the show notes. You can do this on your own to prepare for a conversation that you believe will be challenging or you can do this with another person or with a group of people to prepare for a shared conversation about challenging topics. I’ve modified the activity slightly from the original, but you’ll get a link to the original rather than to my modification of it. It’s really slight.
I’m going to share the activity as though you were going to do this with others. Again, you can just as easily do this on your own to prepare for a challenging conversation. First, you’re going to have everyone reflect on a conversation that did not go as well as they had wanted or hoped. You could let them know that it could be a conversation from work or with a friend or with a stranger. Have them really think about what happened, how they felt about what happened, and what they could have done differently at that moment or what they wish the other person would have done differently.
The second step is to take a moment to pause to remind everyone that the goal of this activity is not to replicate what you just had them think about. The goal is to come up with a new type of conversation. This is where we start to get into identifying the hopes and concerns that they have. As you’re taking this moment to pause, give them the two questions to ponder. Ask them to contemplate their hopes. Thinking about our group or purpose when it comes to engaging in constructive dialogue about issues that are challenging to discuss, what do you most hope for?
Then the other question is what do you worry about most when you think about these types of conversations? What do you worry about engaging in a conversation like this? The third step then is sharing. We’re past the reflection stage and now we’re going to start sharing a lot more. Have everyone use note cards or sticky notes. Instruct them to write hopes at the top of one note card or sticky note and write the word concerns on another card or sticky note.
Then just have them start brainstorming as many hopes and concerns as they want. You can either instruct them to list it on the card or you can have them have a brand new one for each card. It doesn’t matter. It’s really up to you. When they’re done, you can have them fold up their cards or sticky notes and put them into a bowl where they can take turns plucking them out one by one and discussing each of them as a group or you can have them stick or tape the notes to the wall and have everyone silently walk around reading them.
Either way, make sure that you’ve got a way of sharing where things are being equitably looked at. Then number four, discuss. How can we support each other in achieving some of these hopes? How can we support each other in mitigating or avoiding some of these concerns? The answer to these questions can be used then to guide the conversation as you get into those challenging topics. I want to just repeat those last two questions. How can we support each other in achieving some of these hopes and how can we support each other in mitigating or avoiding some of these concerns? That’s really it. It’s reflection, sharing, and discussing about the challenging conversation that you will be having as a group rather than having the conversation.
Bob: Thanks for guiding us through that, Jessica. I’m wondering if we could talk a little bit about how we might use this if we aren’t in a group. If we’re doing it to prepare for a challenging conversation and it occurs to me that maybe it’s going to require some perspective taking so that we can not just focus on our hopes for a conversation.
Jessica: I would still have you go through the steps of, so reflect on a conversation that didn’t go as well as you had wanted or hoped. What happened? How did you feel? What could you have done differently or what do you wish the other person would have done differently? Then I’d still want you to write through what your hopes are and concerns are about that. Just like we would have gone through the activity with others. When it comes to this conversation that you’re preparing for, what do you hope for?
Then when it comes to this conversation, what do you worry about the most when you think about the conversation you’re going to have? I think for the sharing, I think you could formulate your response to this. When you meet with the person, when you do get to that point of meeting with a person, you can share. I really hope for this. How does that sound to you? You can check in with them. They didn’t have the benefit of going through the other parts of the activity with you. You could also choose to take them through the first two parts.
You guys, when you get to the sharing, you could share together. I think that once it gets to the sharing, that’s where it involves other people. You could choose to share when you get into the conversation and you could check in using that. Then you could ask for their hopes and their concerns. I want to be careful that you’re not crossing a line into trying to steer a conversation in a way that you only hope for it to be. I do feel like you can still have a hope for the conversation. I think a lot of people do when they go into one. I think if you’re not going to share what that hope is, then I think just be really careful that you’re not using that to steer. I do think you could have a plan for how you’re going to support yourself through some of those concerns.
Bob: You anticipated where my mind was going about if we’re only concerned with our hopes. I love the idea of actually saying, “Here are my hopes for this conversation. What are yours?” That’s really powerful.
Jessica: I really find this activity to be helpful, especially if you’re the kind of person who has a hard time with challenging conversations. If you at least know how you’re going to support yourself through some of the concerns that you have, and if you have your hope articulated to a point where you could share them with other people and it could help take some of the tension down in the room, I think that could go a long way toward actually getting to the challenging topic.
Bob: Thank you so much again for sharing that practice.
Jessica: You’re so welcome.
Bob: That’s it for this episode. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We’ll be back next week with a practice for perspective taking. Until then, keep practicing.
Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense. Under award numbers 2019-48770-30366 and 2023-48770-41333.
[music]
[00:16:06] [END OF AUDIO]

Letting Go to Make Room for Growth
2024-12-19
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjMwODcwNCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTYzMDg3MDQtbGV0dGluZy1nby10by1tYWtlLXJvb20tZm9yLWdyb3d0aC5qcyUzRmNvbnRhaW5lcl9pZCUzRGJ1enpzcHJvdXQtcGxheWVyLTE2MzA4NzA0JTI2cGxheWVyJTNEc21hbGwlMjIlMjB0eXBlJTNEJTIydGV4dCUyRmphdmFzY3JpcHQlMjIlMjBjaGFyc2V0JTNEJTIydXRmLTglMjIlM0UlM0MlMkZzY3JpcHQlM0U= In this practicast, inspired by Heather Plett’s book The Art of Holding Space, Bob Bertsch shares a practice for letting go of something to create space for new possibilities. Our co-creator for this episode was our OneOp colleague, Kristen Jowers.
This encore episode originally aired on April 25, 2024. [music]
Kristen Jowers: New possibilities are opportunities or potential outcomes that arise from changes, innovation, or exploration, expanding the realm of what can be imagined or achieved. Hi everyone, this is Kristen Jowers, guest host for today’s practice. Welcome to this week’s Practicing Connection Practicast, where we highlight a specific practice you can use in your life and work. In this month’s practicast, we’ve been talking about different ways to hold space for others.
Holding space refers to the act of being fully present with someone else without judgment or distraction so that the person can share their experiences and perspective. Bob Bertsch will be guiding us through the practice to help us hold space for new possibilities in a few minutes, but first, let’s learn more about it. Hi, Bob. What does it mean to hold space for new possibilities?
Bob Bertsch: Hi Kristen, thank you so much for guest hosting and for giving me the opportunity to talk about this. As you mentioned before, holding space is about being present without judgment so that experiences and perspectives can be shared. Most times when we’re talking about holding space, we’re doing those things for someone else or even for ourselves. When we’re holding space for new possibilities, however, we’re focused not on people but more on the potential for change.
When there’s a potential for change, we’re in what’s called liminal space, and that’s a place of transition between where we’ve been and where we’re going or between who we are and who we’re becoming. We’re on the threshold of something new in that space, but we’re not quite there yet. Understanding liminal space is important when we’re holding space for others because that’s often the space that we’re holding for them. In her book, The Art of Holding Space, Heather Plett describes liminal space as the space where something, “Has dissolved and a new thing has not yet emerged to take its place.”
When people are experiencing some kind of loss and waiting for the next thing to emerge, we can hold that space for them or help them hold that space so they have the time and support to let that thing emerge instead of clinging to what was before or rushing forward toward things that may mitigate their pain but delay the transition. Let’s think about holding liminal space in the context of any work you’re doing or have done. There’s times when something important in our work, maybe a process we’ve used or a concept that we’ve relied on, or maybe a core value that we’ve realized is not just as important as we thought it was when that thing dissolves.
Our instinct is often to rush to replace it instead of holding that liminal space, the space that we need for new possibilities to emerge. If we can be more comfortable in that liminal space and learn to hold it, then new possibilities will have the chance to emerge. They could be possibilities that just wouldn’t have happened if we skipped over that place of uncertainty, that liminal space.
Kristen: When I hear you describe new possibilities, I think that sounds really exciting, but I like certainty and not knowing can be a really uncomfortable place for me. Why is it so hard?
Bob: It’s definitely difficult because we just don’t like uncertainty, any of us. Like our relations in the animal kingdom, humans are afraid of uncertainty. In an uncertain situation, we will try really almost anything to make things more predictable, including replacing one broken process with another so we can get out of that uncertain liminal space. If we can see liminal space as a space for creation, I think we can balance the fear of that uncertainty with hope and excitement for the possibilities of what is about to emerge.
While that’s helpful to think about those new possibilities with hope and excitement, we also need to be aware that there are cultural norms of efficiency and productivity that are constantly pushing us to move faster and skip over that liminal space. We can’t forget that we’re people as we’re operating within this liminal space. That means that on some level, we’re probably also grieving the loss of what came before. That might sound a little bit weird when we’re talking about a process, but there is going to be some sense of loss and grief even if that something that is dissolving is something that we all agree was not working.. With all of that going on, we need to counterbalance that by being very mindful and intentional about holding onto that liminal space and letting new things emerge.
Kristen: I really appreciate how you punctuate that grief process. How do you decide who holds space and who takes up the space and how do I hold space when no one else in the room is?
Bob: That’s a great question. It’s definitely a challenge to hold liminal space in a group. I don’t know if it is possible for one person alone to hold space for a whole group, like a team, for instance. First, let go of any expectation that you might be putting on yourself to hold that space alone for your whole team or organization. That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself, and I think we have to let that go.
That said, if the group as a whole is familiar with the concept of holding space and committed to holding space for each other, I think they can hold space for new possibilities even when a particular group member might want to move ahead. When that’s happening, a group can hold space for the member who’s experiencing that fear. It takes some empathy to do that and recognition that way we’re all subject to feeling that way and feeling that fear of uncertainty, and so if the group as a whole can hold space for that person, it can be really effective.
If you’re in a group that hasn’t developed that shared commitment to holding space, recognize it’s not your responsibility to hold that space for the whole group alone, but you can still hold space for new possibilities in your own mind. You can offer new directions for the group if you do it with compassion and empathy. You can point out when the group might be clinging to something that has already dissolved, and you might suggest pausing a conversation when things might be rushing toward a quick fix by just saying something like, “Hey, maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Could we take a breath and just think about what might be possible.”
If you express that you feel like something new could emerge, if the group’s willing to hold that space, it might allow the group to join with you in allowing it to do so.
Kristen: Let’s get started. Please walk us through the practice.
Bob: The practice I want to share helps us hold space for new possibilities by getting us used to letting something go and seeing something new emerge. It was inspired by Heather Plett’s personal practice of painting on the same canvas over and over again. Each time she’s covering up something that she created, something that might be beautiful or valuable to her, she’s covering that up with something new.
Heather’s practice reminded me of Austin Kleon’s blackout poetry. What Austin does with blackout poetry is he lets poems emerge from the words in newspaper articles. The practice today, we’re going to create a blackout poem, but if we do it with a newspaper, I don’t think we’re going to get the full effect because there’s no reason for us to want to cling onto a newspaper article, so we want to get that idea of letting go of something and taking some liminal space to let something new emerge.
The first step in the practice is going to be for you to find a piece of writing that has some value to you. My first thought was a page from a book that I love, but you could also use something that you wrote yourself or something that was written for you, like a letter. I think it’s best to do this with a printed copy rather than electronically because we want that little sense of loss.
A note that this is a practice, we don’t want to have really, really high stakes, at least at the start, so you might not want to choose your first edition copy of Walden Pond or the letter your great-grandpa wrote to your great-grandma during World War II. We want to choose something that you value, but something that you can bear to let go of. Now that you have your piece of writing that we’re going to use, next you’re going to need a pen or a fine-tipped marker, so we want something that we can make some fine lines with.
Then we also want a broad-tipped marker, something that we can use to black out the words. If your piece of writing has multiple pages, like a book, randomly choose a page, and then we’re going to scan the page and just note any words or short phrases that stand out to us by drawing a box around them with our pen or fine-tipped marker. Make sure that we’re scanning the page, not reading it. We’re not seeking the meaning of what’s already written. We’re trying to create something new. Once you have some words or phrases selected that stand out to you, and you’ve drawn the box around them, you can start to look for other words that might help connect them into a poem. Here’s an example. Austin Kleon’s got a blackout poem. It’s called Overheard on the Titanic. The main words and phrases that I’m guessing Austin boxed first, the ones that stood out to him was the sentence, “I mean yes, we’re sinking,” the word music, and the word exceptional. Those are the things that probably stuck out to him initially.
Then he found connecting words to turn that into a poem. The connecting words he found are but, the, and is. The poem ends up reading like this. “I mean yes, we’re sinking, but the music is exceptional.” You see how that works. We get our big words, then we can use some connecting words to tie it all together. If you’re having any trouble visualizing this, check out the show notes for this episode at oneop.org/podcast. We’ll put a link there to Austin Kleon’s video on how to do blackout poetry.
Now we’ve drawn our boxes around our main words and phrases and our connecting words. They all read the way that we want them to. We’ve connected them all together. We’ve made a little poem. The next step is to take your broad tipped marker and black out all the other words on the page so that all that remains readable are the words that you drew boxes around. This is part of like Heather’s painting over. If we just drew boxes around the words in our book, for instance, we might not have really made anything new and we really haven’t let go of that page.
We could still read that page just like we read it without the boxes around the words. Once we black out all the other words, we’re really creating something new and letting go of something old. Then once you’ve blacked out those words, that’s it. That’s your blackout poem. You’ve let go of something that you valued and held the space necessary for something new to emerge. If you’d like, take a photo of your blackout poem, share it with friends, or you can post it to the Practicing Connection community on LinkedIn, and that’ll give you an opportunity to share your experience and reflect on how it felt to hold space for new possibilities.
Kristen: That’s wonderful, Bob. Thank you for guiding us through.
Bob: You’re welcome.
Kristen: That’s it for this episode. Thanks for joining us. We hope you’ll give this practice a try and share your experience, as Bob said, in the Practicing Connection LinkedIn group where people supporting military families practice the skills that empower us to work together so that we can positively impact our communities and help families thrive. You’ll find that link to the group on our website at oneop.org/practicingconnection. We’ll be back next week with an in-depth episode discussing how to watch for opportunities to think big, one of the eight ways of cultivating community resilience that we identified in our Connecting Communities in Asset Based Community Recovery project. Until then, keep practicing.
Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of One Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense, under award numbers 2019-48770-30366 and 2023-48770-41333.
[music]
[00:14:00] [END OF AUDIO]

2024 Personal Finance Year in Review
2024-12-18 11:00 - 12:30 (America/New_York)
The tenth annual OneOp Personal Finance Year in Review webinar highlights legislation and events that impacted military personal finances during 2024. Join this annual review webinar to explore the findings of noteworthy personal finance research studies published this year, financial events with military-specific implications, and preview upcoming changes for 2025.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this webinar, attendees will be able to:

Identify legislation and events that have impacted military personal finances during 2024.
Increase knowledge of personal finance research studies published in 2024.
Prepare for anticipated changes impacting military personal financial counselors in 2025.

Dr. Barbara O’Neill, CFP®, AFC writes, speaks, and reviews content about personal finance. A Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University, after 41 years of service as a Rutgers Cooperative Extension educator and personal finance specialist, she has written over 190 articles for academic publications and received over 35 national awards and over $1.2 million in grants to support her financial education programs and research. Dr. O’Neill is a past President of the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education (AFCPE), a recipient of the AFCPE Distinguished Fellow Award, and a Next Gen Personal Finance fellow.

Accredited Financial Counselors (AFC): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits by the Association for Financial Counseling & Planning Education (AFCPE). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/18/26
Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/18/26
Certified Personal and Family Finance Educator (CPFFE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/18/26
Certified Personal Finance Counselors (CPFC): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from The Center for Financial Certifications (FinCert.org). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/18/27
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/18/27
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Webinar Slides Photo Credit: Pcess609 / Adobe Stock

Financial Abuse is Domestic Abuse: Equipping Service Providers to Support Victims
2024-12-12 11:00 - 12:30
Many professionals work with victims of abuse every day, but just may not know it. Domestic abuse presents in many forms, such as emotional, physical, and financial abuse. Understanding the financial considerations for domestic abuse is essential for service providers across the spectrum of family readiness coordinating care for abuse victims.
The webinar covers the demographics of the military community with a focus on recent Department of Defense data on domestic abuse and child abuse and neglect. Light will be shed on the perspectives and experiences of victims of abuse. Benefits of collaborating with the Family Advocacy Program (FAP) to best support victims will be covered. The briefing will wrap up providing clarity on what resources are available and how to connect a victim to these resources.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this webinar, attendees will be able to:

Describe the Family Advocacy Program’s (FAP) vision and mission
Understand the Department of Defense (DOD) definition of domestic abuse and its connection to financial abuse
Identify the DOD’s child abuse and neglect statistics and identify client risk factors
Learn the benefits of collaborating with FAP and how to connect clients with FAP resources through a multidisciplinary approach

Lisa Eaffaldano has over 20 years of experience working in prevention and response in the fields of domestic violence and child abuse. Her experience ranges from providing medical and non-medical counseling to victims, alleged abusers, and youth impacted and exhibiting problematic sexual behaviors to writing policy, testifying to Congress, and managing large-scale programs.
In March 2022, Ms. Eaffaldano joined the Military and Community Advocacy Directorate (MCA) at the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Family Advocacy Program (FAP) as the Associate Director where she has direct oversight of the team responsible for prevention and response to domestic abuse and child abuse, and neglect.
Prior to joining OSD FAP, Ms. Eaffaldano dedicated 15 years to working for the Marine Corps with her most recent billet being the Prevention and Clinical Services Assistant Branch Head for Headquarters Marine Corps (HQMC), Marine and Family Programs Division, Behavioral Programs, Quantico, VA. She also worked in the FAP at Camp Lejeune in multiple roles from 2007-2017.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/12/26
Certified Personal and Family Finance Educator (CPFFE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/12/26
Accredited Financial Counselors (AFC): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits by the Association for Financial Counseling & Planning Education (AFCPE). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/12/27
Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/12/26
Sexual Assault Response Coordinators (SARC) and Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) Victim Advocates (VA): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from D-SAACP Credentialing. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/12/27
Certified Personal Finance Counselors (CPFC): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from The Center for Financial Certifications (FinCert.org). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/12/27
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/12/27
Domestic Abuse Victim Advocates: This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Advocate Credentialing Program (NACP). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/12/27
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/12/26
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Photo Credit: By Pormezz from Adobe Stock, file #: 791825956

The Power of Connection, Reflection, and Evolution with Bob Bertsch
2024-12-12
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjI2MTgxMyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTYyNjE4MTMtdGhlLXBvd2VyLW9mLWNvbm5lY3Rpb24tcmVmbGVjdGlvbi1hbmQtZXZvbHV0aW9uLXdpdGgtYm9iLWJlcnRzY2guanMlM0Zjb250YWluZXJfaWQlM0RidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjI2MTgxMyUyNnBsYXllciUzRHNtYWxsJTIyJTIwdHlwZSUzRCUyMnRleHQlMkZqYXZhc2NyaXB0JTIyJTIwY2hhcnNldCUzRCUyMnV0Zi04JTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGc2NyaXB0JTNF In this episode, Jessica Beckendorf and Bob Bertsch reflect on Bob’s time as co-host and his transition to a new role as national project leader for OneOp. Together, they revisit key moments from the Practicing Connection podcast, share insights from their collaboration, and explore practices that support personal and professional growth. [music]
Kalin Goble: Welcome to Practicing Connection, a podcast exploring the personal stories and collective practices that empower us to work together to improve our resilience and readiness in a rapidly changing world. Here to start the conversation are Jessica Beckendorf and Bob Bertsch.
Jessica Beckendorf: Hi, thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection podcast. I’m Jessica Beckendorf. Today’s a special episode as we bid farewell to my co-host, Bob Bertsch, who’s transitioning into his new role as the national project leader for OneOp. It’s not really goodbye so much as a, “See you later.” This isn’t the last time your voice will be on this podcast.
I’m super excited about that. I’m really excited about and happy for you in this new role as well. We’re going to focus today on the journey of this podcast and Bob’s experiences within that. Basically, this is like our interview. We’re doing an interview of Bob this time instead of Bob doing the interviewing. He’s also going to share a practice with us. Hi, Bob. How are you?
Bob Bertsch: I’m good, Jessica. I didn’t know if I was prepared for thinking about that, like the end of the podcast. This really is, like I said, maybe not the last time that my voice will be here. My last significant contribution for a while anyway, so I’m okay until you made me sad. No, I’m kidding. No, I’m good. I’m good. Thank you.
Jessica: [laughs] We did try to talk you into, I think, a January or February episode. We had an idea on that. You set a pretty good boundary, which we do talk about on this podcast.
Bob: That’s right. Check out episode number– No, just search oneop.org for boundaries. I’m sure you’ll find at least a couple of practicasts.
Jessica: Yes, exactly. Well, this has really been an incredible journey. We’ve been working together for a long time. I think you’re way better at this than I am, but I’m pretty sure it’s been nine years, about.
Bob: Yes.
Jessica: It’s actually about to be 10 because I think I started my journey with OneOp in 2015. Yes, it’s about to be 10 years. We’ve been doing this podcast for five of those nine years. We started with just a few episodes a year and then we grew it into many more episodes. This has been really an incredible journey. We’ve done tons of iterating. As we reflect on your time here, I want to dive into some of the highlights and I guess lessons learned. Can you share a few highlights from the last several years in your role and on the podcast? As you look back at your time on this role on our team and co-hosting the Practicing Connection podcast, what are some of the most memorable moments or episodes that stood out to you and why?
Bob: The first thing that came to mind, Jessica, and thank you for this question, is our first attempts at podcasting. This is before we even had a thing called Practicing Connection podcast or even the Practicing Connection in a Complex World podcast, which was the original name of the podcast. This was like–
Jessica: They can’t see me, but I’m laughing right now because I know what you’re about to say. Go ahead. Sorry.
Bob: Our first attempts, they were just very organic and exploratory and improvisational. We turned on the microphone and saw what happened. It was great. I think that helped us learn about what we were together as a team in those initial attempts. We knew each other. We had done some work together, but what does it really mean for the two of us to combine?
It makes me think of one of our early episodes of what was then called the Practicing Connection in a Complex World podcast, the actual podcast, not these burgeoning attempts I’m talking about, but an actual episode we did on transformational relationships. We talked about the idea that people can connect with each other in a way that causes something new to come, not just one idea or thing, but this third entity.
That is the relationship, right? It’s like the space between the two people that emerges. It’s not just a combination of each person’s qualities or ideas or personalities. It’s more than that. I think when that happens and, obviously, I think that happened for us, and I think when that happens, the relationship transforms each person definitely, for sure. It also creates the possibility and the potential for that relationship to transform other people and things that are just outside of the relationship.
I think that happened with us, not just because we created the podcast and shared it with others. Obviously, that was an intentional act of doing that. I think it just happened and can happen for people because you’re both willing to be transformed by the experience and the things that emerge through the relationship. That’s definitely one thing that I think of a lot when I’m talking about moments that I remember.
Jessica: Yes, thank you for reminding me of that. I really enjoyed that as well. We’ve talked about this before, but we’ve both read the book Emergent Strategy. One of the themes in that book is change happening in fractals. I have said before and I don’t know if this came from that book or not or if it came from somewhere else, but I feel like what you just described is the evidence of change happening one conversation at a time, right?
Bob: That’s brilliant, yes. That is a much better way of putting it than I was putting it. No, that’s what it felt like, right? That’s what those first attempts were. Change was happening, like you said, in those conversations. It’s continued as we’ve refined it. It’s continued to create change, I think, not just for the two of us, but hopefully for anyone who’s listening to the podcast now.
Jessica: I’m smiling really big again because I remember some of our first before we started the podcast itself. When we were doing those other one-off projects, there were so many ums and ahs. I know that this is such a small thing. We were both so conscious of all of that that sometimes our trying to speak was really stilted anyway. That’s just a skill versus a big growth and change comment. That was really funny and then us trying to talk about trying not to do as many ums and ahs.
Bob: Which made us more self-conscious.
Jessica: Yes, that was funny.
[laughter]
Bob: The other thing that comes to mind when you pose this question is just that there was a moment where we were able to find the connection between the work that we wanted to do together and military family readiness. What OneOp is about is about supporting military family readiness through the support of military family service providers. I don’t want to go into too much history, but I’ll just say that the history of the team that we were on was a rollercoaster ride. We were doing one thing and then we were doing another thing.
Then there was this moment where you and I started working together and we were trying to find our way. We were in Fargo, North Dakota. That’s where I am right now, folks, with our colleagues, Steve Judd and Bridget Scott. We’re drawing on big sheets of paper and ideating and trying to find our way. Bridget started talking about the Military Family Readiness System. It’s a DOD-defined system that is defined in policy. There was just a spark, right?
Our interests in networks and community and collaboration and leadership all started to mesh with this idea of the Military Family Readiness System that is described in policy as a complex, adaptive system, which combines all of these resources and people and opportunities to support military families, whether that system of resources isn’t just in DOD or just in the branch services or just on installations. Envisioning it that way really helped us figure out how we were going to help service providers thrive as part of that system. It was like one of those moments of clarity where you’re just like, you feel lost in the woods. [chuckles] Suddenly, there’s an opening and the sun is shining through. That’s another one that sticks in my head.
Jessica: Oh, I remember that meeting really well. I’ll never forget that. It’s like it all suddenly made sense, right? We knew we had a place and we were really struggling to get our feet under us with it. Then suddenly, we were like, “Oh this. Yes, this is exactly it.” To me, the funny thing was that I think that that’s the direction that we had been talking around for a long time. It’s just that this clarity that happened during that meeting really brought it together. Now, I have to ask and I know you don’t like to play favorites, [chuckles] neither do I because I really do love every interview we do. I love every episode we do, but I’m going to still ask you. Is there an episode, achievement, or moment that you feel particularly proud of and why?
Bob: Yes, [chuckles] similar feelings. Yes, I love them all. That’s probably not true. I think there’s some that were a little bit challenging. As I thought about this, ones that came to mind right away were our interview view with Heather Plett about holding space, and then a two-part episode that we did with Bjørn Peterson around creativity and change. The reason those, I think, came to mind is because we like to push at the edges a little bit around here on Practicing Connection.
We like to push the envelope a little bit, maybe challenge ourselves definitely, and maybe challenge the thinking of folks who are listening to see how does this fit, right? We have this frame of military family readiness and the Military Family Readiness System and our work as service providers or extension educators or however you’re contributing to that system. It might not always make sense, how holding space matters or how we might be able to use art or poetry or songs in our work. Those were two episodes that stuck out. Of course, Bjørn especially because you and I had an opportunity to sit down, have dinner with him in person, which is a rare occurrence for us in terms of podcast guests.
Jessica: Lovely.
Bob: We happened to be in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Bjørn was able to join us there. That was really great. He’s still a good friend, I think, to both of us. Any of those episodes that showed the MFRS, the Military Family Readiness System, in action. Food Security Hawaii Working Group, which Arletta and Kina and Lorna. Arletta works on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. Lorna works for the Hawaii National Guard and Kina works for Hawaii Foodbank, I think it is called.
They joined us together and they were part of this Food Security Hawaii Working Group. We got to hear about the unique challenges that they have in terms of food security on the island. We also got to hear how they’re collaborating, how they’re working together across these silos, boundaries, whatever you want to call them, to address the problem through collective action.
I think that’s what we’ve always been about. There’s lots of other episodes that come to mind on that one, but that one was really affecting. I think we came away being able to feel how much those three people cared about that issue and about the people that they were serving. That comes through on all the interviews, but it was visceral to me after getting done talking with them. That one really sticks out.
Jessica: I’m really enjoying being reminded of all these. I think I’m going to go back and listen to some of them. Let’s put the focus a little bit on your own growth. How has your experience with the podcast and your role so far at OneOp influenced your personal and professional growth? Are there any particular lessons or insights that you’ve gained?
Bob: It’s definitely changed my career remarkably. Just recently had a chance to have some conversations with some of our colleagues and especially Dr. Kyle Kostelecky, who’s the PI and project director for OneOp. We are both talking about like, “Oh, my gosh. If this person hadn’t talked to this person or if this person hadn’t ever told me about this or if I had never met so-and-so, how do we get from–” For Kyle, it’s been a little bit longer, but for me, it’s been about 15 years now. How did I get from 15 years ago to here?
A lot of it has been the opportunity that OneOp has presented, I think, to everybody who has worked on the project and also that what is now called the Extension Foundation. In the olden days when I got involved, it was called the E-Extension. Both of those organizations really helped me and I think others build a national network. For me, it was important because it went beyond the confines of my specific role at my university.
My job for most of the time I’ve been with OneOp at NDSU was web technology specialist. My interest went beyond that into adult education and community development and network science and in places that I wasn’t able to necessarily– even though I tried [chuckles] in my role and probably pushed the edges of my role at NDSU as well, but I wasn’t able to fully embrace those things. OneOp was the way for me to pursue those interests and do the kind of work that I wanted to do.
The podcast has been the place where we have those conversations about those things, right? Those things that I think you and I both care about. I hope everybody who listens cares about at least some of those things. Then we could find the intersections between those different ideas and explore what those ideas would mean in the context of military family readiness for service providers and adult educators and really forge a path towards applying it to family readiness and well-being.
That’s been transformational for me from a personal and professional growth standpoint. I don’t know if I have a particular insight or lesson. They’re innumerable. Just the opportunities to sit in rooms with such talented people, knowledgeable people who come. What our listeners might not know about the unique thing about our project is that the project involves so many people from all over the country.
From right now, I think we’re at nine different colleges or universities around the country, all from different disciplines, all around family and human development, but from different aspects of that, all to sit in the same room and share ideas with each other, talk to each other, collaborate with each other and create programming that we hope supports military family service providers in their work as part of the Military Family Readiness System. That’s been awesome. All the times we’ve been in rooms and just had an idea come out that’s totally transformed how we think about things. I’m remembering Steve Judd handing me a book one time. I can’t remember the name of it. You probably have it on your shelf.
Jessica: Connecting to Change the World. Yes, I’m looking back on my shelf right now.
Bob: Right. Steve’s like, “You should read Connecting to Change the World.” From reading that, we’re like, “Okay, our team’s going to do something completely different now.” [chuckles] We met with the national project leader at the time. We’re just like, “Hey, we’re going to do something completely different because we read this book.” It’s just an example of how that shared brainpower. The connection and collaboration can just, like I said, make change. I think that’s what we’ve always been talking about is like, how do we connect with each other so that we can make positive change in the world? That has just happened so many times this project. I can’t count them.
Jessica: If I could add one thing even though this question was directed at you and I’m curious if you feel the same way. For me, the podcast also offered an opportunity to practice some of the things, the new thinking, and the new things that I’ve been learning. Right down to the way we were planning each episode at the beginning where we use the chaordic stepping stones, which was a facilitation planning technique that we learned in a class. It was this beautiful incubator to allow some different ways of thinking and working to take hold. I don’t know if you’ve had a similar feeling.
Bob: No, I’m so glad you brought that up. Yes, it hasn’t just been all public-facing programming where those moments have happened. It’s also just learning how we do the work together, which for us, like you said– I’m just repeating what you said, but the incubator aspect of it, it’s one of the great things about working in the space that you and I have worked in through these many years is we get to do relationship while we’re talking about relationship. We get to do collaboration while we’re talking about collaboration, right?
Jessica: No meta.
Bob: Yes, right. It’s very meta.
[laughter]
Bob: It’s really been awesome. Yes, I agree with that.
Jessica: Well, now, as you’re transitioning into your new role as the national project leader for OneOp, what are some of your hopes and visions for the future of Practicing Connection podcast and the OneOp community?
Bob: I definitely have some. My first thought was like, “That’s not my problem now. That’s on you and Coral Owen, co-producer, to figure that out.” I’m super excited to see where you guys take things. I thought about, it’s just a fact. In fact, Brigitte Scott, our former national project leader, said this to Jessica and I before. She’s like, “The work you’re doing is really important to OneOp.” We’re like, “Eh.” I like self-deprecating Midwesterns.
Jessica: “It’s not really important.” [laughs]
Bob: Yes, right. Now that I have a different perspective on it, I’m like, “Oh yes, it is.” The podcast and the Practicing Connection community are really critical to OneOp, working towards our vision to facilitate the connections and shared knowledge required of providers to advance the Military Family Readiness System. I hope that we can see that work continue as Practicing Connection, to continue to grow as a space for connection and sharing.
One of our recent episodes, as we were talking to Amy Rodick, who’s the director for the Office of Military Family Readiness and Policy at Department of Defense. We talked about how the podcast and OneOp’s PowerUp magazine have been telling the stories of the MFRS in action. Ms. Rodick called on service providers to start sharing their stories as well and then was like, “How should they do that?” I’m like, “Well, they should email you guys, right?” [chuckles] that kind of thing.
I was like, “Yes, that makes sense.” I think that is a great opportunity and I’d love to see that happening, not just on the podcast but on the Practicing Connection community on LinkedIn, continue to be a place and grow as a place for those stories of successes and failures to be told and a place for people to ask questions of their colleagues and share their experiences and their frustrations and their hope for the future and to just connect and be a part of that.
I think the podcast is a formal way of doing that, of telling those stories. The community on LinkedIn, I really hope that becomes a place where folks can talk directly to their colleagues, service providers, extension educators, and other folks who are supporting our military families across the nation and around the world. Shout out, Germany.
Jessica: [chuckles] Yes.
Bob: Jessica keeps track of the geography, where listeners are coming from.
Jessica: Looks like we’ve got some regulars from Germany.
Bob: Right, we can’t shout out everybody. Sorry. Apologies across the nation, but Germany, I know you’re listening.
Jessica: [chuckles] There are literally lots of cities. We’ve had downloads from six out of seven continents. We’re looking at you next, Antarctica. [laughs]
Bob: Right, yes, and that’s important work, right? Different contexts to be outside the continental United States. As we say, OCONUS, use some jargon for you. That’s a whole different thing in terms of supporting our military families outside of the United States. Thanks for the work that you guys are doing there. I’m happy for the chance to shout out Germany and everywhere else that folks are doing work to support our military families.
Jessica: Well, I can’t tell you enough how much I appreciate the collaboration we’ve had, the leadership you’ve provided on the podcast and all of our programming here, and also just our friendship. This is an amazing experience for me. I’m excited to take the next leg, but I’m really excited to see your work change as well. Let’s maybe end here with, again, not a final practice that we’re asking for from you because you’ll be back on here as a guest. Could you share a practice or strategy that’s currently supporting your personal and professional development and share a little bit about how this practice has helped you navigate your role and responsibilities?
Bob: All right. I warned Jessica before we started recording. I’m going to talk about meditation again. Some of you have probably heard me talk about it many times before, but it is my practice. Literally, it is my practice. It’s supportive in so many ways. Primarily, it helps me be mindful, which makes sense. That’s what meditation is about, but it’s so important to be able to direct my attention and to notice things. My new role is a role where there’s lots of moving parts.
Like I said, there’s nine different partner universities, lots of programming happening. Check out our webinars on oneop.org. Podcasts, there’s blogs, there’s lots of stuff happening. Honing the ability to notice is really important. Notice when I’m talking too much, which might be happening right now. Notice when the room changes, even the virtual room. Jessica and I both have done a lot of facilitation. There’s that feeling in the physical room. You’re like, “They’re not getting it or they’re not picking up what we’re putting down or that kind of thing.
Jessica: Or they’re hating what we’re putting down. [laughs]
Bob: They’re hating what we’re putting down, right? Noticing that is really an important part of facilitation. My meditation practice helps me with that. Noticing facial expressions and tones of voice and noticing what I’m feeling like when my emotions are popping up and how my body is feeling and how that might be affecting whatever’s happening in that moment, whatever conversation is happening in that moment. That’s just one part of it. We’ve talked about equanimity on a practicast before. That’s another thing that meditation practice brings to me like an even-mindedness. My colleagues might not think I’m very even-minded, but you should see me when I’m not meditating, folks, right?
[laughter]
Bob: Just that ability to disrupt the automatic reactions that we have and being able to do that when I need to and not get caught up in what I’m feeling but lean into the experience that I’m having and that helps. That helps. I think in a leadership role, it helps you to not cut off conversations and to allow the conditions for change to emerge and let things happen. It’s the hardest thing.
I think over the years, I’ve counseled leaders and sometimes preached at leaders. It’s like, you can’t steer the ship all the time, but it is our instinct to want to. Being aware of that instinct and being balanced about a practicing equanimity has been really important. Another thing that we practice in meditation practice is acceptance of what’s happening even if it’s unpleasant or pleasant to accept that.
That’s really helped me with my patients. As Jessica knows, change doesn’t happen fast enough for me a lot of times. That acceptance to what’s happening has really been important. I meditate daily and, yes, I think it’s changed who I am and informs everything that I do. Meditating is important. Finding quiet time, that can be very helpful. I would suggest, seeking out teachers and seeing if you can find guided meditations that can help you cultivate some of the skills, the different skills.
Just being quiet and listening can cultivate a lot of those skills, especially mindfulness. If you really want to get into some of the other ones, guided meditation is the practice that I do. I encourage you to give it a try. If you ever have questions about it or want to reach out, join the Practicing Connection community on LinkedIn and post a question about it. Someone will get it to me if I don’t see it. I’d be happy to have a conversation about it.
Jessica: Well, that sounds like it’s been a beautifully transformational practice for you. Thank you so much for sharing. Yes, go ahead.
Bob: I have you to thank for that. I have Jessica to thank for that. Pandemic days, she recommended an app to me that got me started meditating and, yes, it’s been a great journey.
[music]
Jessica: That’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the Share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. Thanks also to our incredible team, co-producer Coral Owen, announcer Kalin Goble, Joyce Vaughn and Maggie Lucas from OneOp’s marketing team, and Nathan Grimm who composed and performed all the music you hear on the podcast. We hope you’ll join us next time. In the meantime, keep practicing.
[music]
Kalin: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award numbers 2019-48770-30366 and 2023-48770-41333.
[00:28:03] [END OF AUDIO]

Supporting Military Youth with Disabilities in Transition to Adult Life
2024-12-10 11:00 - 12:30
Join us for an insightful webinar presented by experts from the U.S. Department of Education, featuring specialists from the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) and partner organizations. This session will provide valuable resources to support youth with disabilities and their families as they navigate the transition from Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) services to post-secondary life. Participants will learn about essential tools and guidance designed to help youth with disabilities succeed in education, employment, and independent living after aging out of IDEA services. Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with resources that can empower families and service providers to ensure successful transitions for youth with disabilities.
Learning Objectives:
In this webinar, participants will:

Review key resources to assist youth with disabilities, their families, and service providers in making informed decisions about post-secondary education and career options.
Identify specific supports and services needed for transition-aged youth with disabilities and their families, particularly during a permanent change of duty station.
Gain strategies for empowering youth, families, and service providers to navigate post-secondary planning and transitions, whether in military or civilian contexts.

Associate Division Director
Office of Special Education Programs
US Department of Education
Carmen Sánchez is an Associate Division Director in the Office of Special Education Programs at the US Department of Education. She is the program lead for the Parent Training and Information Center Program, which is comprised of parent training and information centers, community parent resource centers, and parent technical assistance centers, including the Center for Parent Information and Resources (CPIR). She is also provides federal oversight for the Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution in Special Education (CADRE). Prior to joining the Federal government 16 years ago, Carmen worked for local county government providing information and referral on disability issues across the lifespan and as the Family Resource Coordinator in its early intervention program. Carmen has been active in special education as a volunteer, serving on numerous workgroups including the local and state special education advisory committees. Carmen is also the proud parent of two children, including a young adult, who happens to have cerebral palsy and completed a graduate program to support people with disabilities find the appropriate assistive technology they need.

Education Program Specialist
Office of Special Education Programs
US Department of Education
Marjorie Thompson is an Education Program Specialist in the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) at the US Department of Education. She is the State Lead for two Part B programs and two Part C programs, and she also is a member of the Differentiated Monitoring System (DMS 2.0) Implementation Team. Her role on the DMS 2.0 implementation team is to lead in the area of Dispute Resolution for her team. She also acts as the lead area expert for Military Families and supports the Department’s mission in supporting military connected children. Prior to joining OSEP in 2021, Marjorie worked for local county government serving as Supervisor for the second largest early intervention program in the State. She has also served as the Program Manager for the EFMP Respite Care program for the Navy and the Air Force, as well as taught in Part B Special Education classroom. She has been in the Special Education field sine 2008 and is passionate about providing opportunities for all learners.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/10/26
Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/10/26
Board Certified Case Managers: This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) clock hours from the Commission for Case Manager Certification (CCMC). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/10/25
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/10/27
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/10/26
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Webinar slides and resources will be added the day prior to the live session.

Presentation Slides

Photo Credit: iStock

Reflections on Connection, Collaboration, and Finding Inspiration
2024-12-05
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjIyMzQzNCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTYyMjM0MzQtcmVmbGVjdGlvbnMtb24tY29ubmVjdGlvbi1jb2xsYWJvcmF0aW9uLWFuZC1maW5kaW5nLWluc3BpcmF0aW9uLmpzJTNGY29udGFpbmVyX2lkJTNEYnV6enNwcm91dC1wbGF5ZXItMTYyMjM0MzQlMjZwbGF5ZXIlM0RzbWFsbCUyMiUyMHR5cGUlM0QlMjJ0ZXh0JTJGamF2YXNjcmlwdCUyMiUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRnNjcmlwdCUzRQ== This is our annual Reflections episode, where we invite some of our podcast collaborators from the past year to share their reflections with us. At the heart of meaningful connection, communication, and collaboration is the ongoing journey of self-awareness, learning, and growth. Regular reflection helps us stay grounded, inspired, and ready for the challenges ahead.
In this episode, co-hosts Jessica Beckendorf and Bob Bertsch reflect on the year that’s passed, highlighting the importance of finding inspiration in the midst of everyday moments and in collective efforts to support others. We also hear from two special guests who share their reflections on resilience, collaboration, and the power of community:

Nicola Winkel, Project Director, Arizona Coalition for Military Families
Kristen Jowers, Program Coordinator, OneOp (University of Kentucky)

Tune in as they share how they’ve found inspiration through difficult work, the beauty of small moments, and the strength of community connection during challenging times. Speaker 1: Welcome to Practicing Connection, a podcast exploring the personal stories and collective practices that empower us to work together to improve our resilience and readiness in a rapidly changing world. Here to start the conversation are Jessica Beckendorf and Bob Bertsch.
Jessica Beckendorf: Welcome to our Annual Reflections episode. Each year we invite some of our podcast collaborators in the past year to share a reflection with us. One of the things we talk about a lot on this podcast is how connection and communication and collaboration with others requires knowing yourself, learning, and growing. Regular reflection practice can help with that.
Bob Bertsch: This year the Practicing Connection podcast experienced some milestones and new ways of working and collaborating. We maintained a schedule of weekly episodes with the addition of the Practicasts. We’ve grown the new Practicing Connection community on LinkedIn. With so much going on, we’ve been inspired by our collaborations with our guests, so we invited our collaborators to share their reflections on what’s been inspiring them this year. We’ll hear from a couple of our guests as they share their reflections on what’s inspiring them, and Jessica and I will share our reflections as well.
Jessica: Our first reflection is from Nicola Winkel. Nicola joined us earlier this season on an ecosystem of military family support to talk about collective impact and collaboration. Nicola is the project director at the Arizona Coalition for Military Families, a nationally recognized public-private partnership focused on building Arizona’s capacity to care for and support all service members, veterans, their families, and communities. That’s a lot.
She has worked for more than 20 years in the nonprofit community, specializing in program development and implementation, bringing a mix of planning, project management, communication, team coordination, and problem-solving skills that drive execution of complex projects and build sustainability. Nicola was awarded the Adjutant General Medal by Major General Hugo Salazar for her efforts in implementing the coalition and strengthening support for Arizona’s military veteran and family population. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Illinois and a systems thinking certificate from Cornell University.
Nicola Winkel: Hello, Practicing Connection listeners. This is Nicola Winkel, project director for the Arizona Coalition for Military Families. As we close out 2024, which I know has been a challenging year for many, I’m glad to have the opportunity to reflect on the inspiration in my life and work. For many of us, the work we do is so complex, long-term, and in many cases has an element of loss and tragedy that can be heartbreaking. Here in Arizona, our partners are working to decrease the disparity in veteran suicide. It’s a problem with no simple solutions and the need to continually find the inspiration to keep moving forward.
Earlier this year, the secretary of the VA shared what one advocate told him, that even if the numbers suck, you have to keep going. I appreciated the sentiment and the bluntness because with these complex problems, sometimes you can feel like such a small force against such a huge challenge. The biggest source of my inspiration this year has been the dedication of our team and our partners. I have seen time and time again how people coming to the table with the right attitude, skills, knowledge, and collaborative spirit can make all the difference in how we are collectively inspired to move forward. As the backbone team for our collective impact initiative in Arizona, I see our job as setting the table for the partners to come together, but the inspiration and the clarity about how to move forward comes from us working together.
Conversely, we have all seen how one or more people or organizations can make those efforts go sideways. Those situations are challenging because you can clearly see how this detracts from the work and the mission. This just inspires me to do everything I can to create the best table for us to gather around and to build the relationships needed to fulfill our common mission. I am thankful and inspired by our team and partners who bring their commitment and belief that together we can make a positive difference in the community to our collective table. That keeps me going on the challenging days. As we head into 2025, I wish you inspiration in your work and your life.
Bob: Thanks to Nicola for that great reflection. I so enjoyed talking to Nicola when we had a chance to interview her earlier this year. I’m not surprised she talked about collaboration. They really are about collaboration with the coalition. I love that she talked about that and about creating a place for people to gather and work together. Because I think that leaning on each other, that is a big part of finding the strength to keep going, especially when you’re doing the difficult work that Nicola and her colleagues are doing.
Jessica: Yes. That resonated with me as well. One of the things within her reflection is a concept that we’ve talked about before. The dedication she talked about is similar to the idea of committing to working together, even when we sometimes don’t want to be working together. We’re all humans. Those moments arise and those challenges will arise.
Bob: Jess, would you mind sharing your reflection with us?
Jessica: Absolutely. Actually, this reflection was really a tough one for me this year. I think you and I have chatted several times about how I’ve been feeling generally uninspired. That’s hard because I’m normally someone who’s– I can find inspiration in so many things. As I prepared this reflection, I realized that I just this year wasn’t in that place. I wasn’t maybe as open to the things that usually inspire me, like things I read, workshops, conferences, classes that I’m taking.
What has gotten my attention this year are the little moments. In some of our Practicast episodes, I’ve talked about things like picking rocks in my landscaping beds, playing with my dog. He’s such a joyful little guy and I just run around the house with him and chasing him, pretending to try to get the toy, unplugging even, and especially small conversations I’ve had and reconnections. This year was really a year of reconnecting with several people that I haven’t talked to in a while.
A really great example of this idea of those small moments was when I went away for a weekend visiting friends. We stayed at my friend’s parents’ house, which sounds like I’m 16. I’m pretty sure that they live in this magical land, this little plot of land that they own, is completely magical because they created the magic there. There were these gigantic mathematical shapes, huge dodecahedrons and other mathematical shapes that I don’t remember because I’m not huge into math, all over their property. Her dad built them. I just found so much joy in seeing these shapes and in talking to him about how he made them and why he made them. Turns out he was a math professor, but that’s a whole other– His story is very interesting. That’s very different.
This weekend in general though, it started with this magical place we were staying, and there are all these cool things happening at the property. Just in general, we didn’t take ourselves seriously. We took a nap in a park, which is really interesting because we went to Devil’s Lake State Park in Wisconsin, which is in the Midwest, I think is fairly well known. It’s this gorgeous place that has tons of beautiful hiking opportunities and we all like to hike, but instead we took a nap. We didn’t hike even a little bit.
Those little moments were really important to me throughout the year. This one weekend, I think did a good job of encapsulating some of that. One of those moments of this weekend was that we silently walked a labyrinth lined with lavender. I had an opportunity to share my limited knowledge of the history of labyrinths as tools of reflection that go back more than 3000 years. I did have to look that up while we were still standing at the entrance because I couldn’t remember. I was so excited about the labyrinth and I told them like, “No, no. This is a thing. It’s a real thing you guys,” but I had to look it up.
I shared it with them. It was a really beautiful thing to just– My experience of the labyrinth was one thing, but then also seeing my two friends experience the labyrinth and take it very seriously and have them go through it was just this beautiful little moment. When I think back on this year, I am reminded of Heather Plett’s Spiral of Authenticity. We’ve had Heather Plett on this podcast before. We’ve talked about her work, but the Spiral of Authenticity starts with an inward journey, which goes through several stages from awakening to healing and opening. At the center is an open heart. Then the outward journey, from the center, out is one of emerging, connecting, and offering among other stages. Those are just a beginning, middle, and end stage of the outward journey. Heather Plett often connects the Spiral of Authenticity to a labyrinth. I feel like I’m in or near the center of the labyrinth right now, just in general, and near the center is opening, or if you’re at the center, that’s the open heart where you’re pausing for a while. I feel like I’m just there this year, right now.
Things are quiet here. It makes me a tiny bit anxious to not feel big moments of inspiration because I always feel like I can see it everywhere. That’s been really challenging this year, but I’ve accepted these little moments as my inspiration, and I’ll hang out in the middle of the labyrinth for a bit until I’m ready to emerge. I feel like I’m getting close to that, but it was really eye-opening to do this reflection and to realize this connection to the labyrinth, and that I literally walked a labyrinth this year. It was pretty cool.
Bob: That’s awesome. Beautiful, really. Thank you so much for sharing it. It’s like one of those moments for me. It all makes sense now. Earlier in the year when we were talking about the rocks and the rabbits and all the things, all the beautiful little things you were paying so much attention to. It’s like it all came together. It’s your open heart. What more open thing can you do than take a nap in a public state park? That’s a great demonstration of how open you’ve been this year. I’m glad that you’ve been able to do some sense-making around that, and it’s all come together in this beautiful moment in this Reflections episode.
Jessica: Oh, thank you so much. I don’t know if you recall how stressed I was that there were these stupid little things, and I’m not being inspired by these big aha moments from reading and intellectual things. I was really stressed about how picking rocks was and watching the rabbits in my yard. It’s funny that it was stressful. Now I don’t just see it, I feel that I am in the middle of that labyrinth right now. Thank you.
Bob: Thanks again for sharing that. Our next reflection is from Kristen Jowers. Kristen joined us earlier this year to collaborate on three episodes, where we focused on practices related to holding space, Holding Space for Difference, Holding Space for Grief, and Holding Space for New Possibilities. These episodes were such a joy to produce with Kristen, who joined the OneOp team in 2023 as a program coordinator and uses her background in psychology, child development, and marriage and family therapy to enhance her work at the University of Kentucky. Here’s Kristen’s Reflection.
Kristen Jowers: Hello, Practicing Connection listeners. I look forward to the Reflection episode of Practicing Connection every year. I’m excited to share about what’s been inspiring me. It’s been a really hard year. I feel like I’ve been saying that for a couple years, but it really has been a challenging couple of months. I appreciated being asked what’s been inspiring because then I could do some reflecting. I went to book club, and it was almost like I was primed for being inspired. I joined the book club a couple of years ago when I started working remotely.
I think I was just looking for some in-person engagement. It’s why I love conferencing so much. It’s nice to my neighbors and meet other folks who live in my community. Our book club hasn’t met for a couple of months because of the severe weather and hurricanes that have impacted our area over the past few months. I live in Valdosta, Georgia. That’s about 15 miles north of the Florida-Georgia line. It’s also where Moody Air Force Base is. Our area was impacted by several hurricanes in the past year. My book club has turned into a little bit of a hurricane support group.
When we met most recently, normally we have one book to talk about. At this most recent book club, there were a lot of books to talk about because, I guess folks have been doing a lot of reading. That’s something I didn’t expect. I thought, “Maybe we’ll go and talk and nobody will have read anything, or maybe they read a book from three months ago.” I was surprised a lot of folks were sharing that they read a lot. It’s interesting to see how people fill the space and the time when they don’t have power and school’s out, and they don’t have internet. Some folks were saying, “My kid picked up a book for the first time in a while,” or, “I read a book for fun,” or, “My spouse started reading again.”
Folks were just sharing about how they shared a book that they’ve just finished with a neighbor, or they found themselves talking more about books with people that they hadn’t talked to about reading before. Book club’s been a really safe space for me, just to practice connecting, if you will. We’re a lot of stories shared at book club that were really inspiring stories of neighbors who were helping each other clear roads and clear driveways and neighbors who did have power or the equipment to cook. We had a lot of folks breaking bread together that maybe otherwise wouldn’t have, a lot of outreach and organizations that have come from outside of our area into the area to provide resources and support.
It’s just been really inspiring for hearing how folks that had so many impacts from trees being down, having religious organization from Alabama shows up and just completely cleans up their yard for them. There’s just been a lot of stories of glimmers or sparkly moments during this really, really difficult season. I found myself just appreciating having people who get it. We talked about normal and what even is normal anymore. I think during COVID there was conversation around getting back to normal. Then now we’re redefining a new normal as a community post-COVID, post-Hurricane Idalia, post-Hurricane Debby, post-Hurricane Helene, and Milton. It’s been an interesting time schools have been closed.
School counselor who shared that on their first day back to school after more than three and a half weeks of school being closed, on their first day back they asked if any students would be interested in a hurricane support group. It’s a really small school, but more than 100 students actually signed up and said that they would be interested. I think that this shows that these type of events impact us all and in different ways. One of the poignant conversations that stuck with me, folks talking about resilience and strength.
I know that this was the conversation on a previous episode, a conversation surrounding what it means to be resilient right now as a community, as a school. It’s just always important to remember that a lot of folks are grieving right now and processing, and that it’s going to take time. I so appreciate the opportunity to reflect about what’s been inspiring me, what’s been motivating and impacting, not just my work life and professional life, but also personally. Thank you for holding space for me today.
Jessica: Thanks so much to Kristen for her reflection. I can’t imagine going through one hurricane, and that area has experienced several in this year alone. One of the things that really resonated with me and Kristen’s reflection is that you have a constant zooming in and zooming out. You’ve got this huge thing, these hurricanes that are happening, and yet you’re zooming into reading for pleasure when the power is out. You’re zooming out to the bigger impacts of sharing about books that people have read and the stories they’re sharing of kids picking up books for the first time in a while. Then you’re zooming into a person’s home being affected by a fallen tree. You’re zooming out to people coming together to help and to 100 students signing up for some support. I thought it was just really beautiful. I really, really appreciate Kristen sharing her experience of that. Bob, would you share your reflection with us?
Bob: Yes, I’d be happy to. Thanks for the invitation, Jess. In October of this year, 190 wildfires swept through Northwestern North Dakota. Sorry to be on the natural disaster thing again after we heard Kristen’s reflection.
Jessica: Sorry, Bob. This is your reflection. I didn’t even hear about that, probably because there was so much attention about the hurricanes. Anyway, I’m sorry. Please go on.
Bob: The number and range of the fires were definitely unusual for us. They were fueled by dry conditions, high winds, and grasses that had actually grown really long and thick during a rainy early summer. It was those conditions all coming together. The impacts of the fires were really devastating. More than 125,000 acres were burned. Homes, outbuildings, entire farm businesses were destroyed. Hundreds of head of livestock were killed, and many of those herds are still suffering health issues related to the fire, and livestock deaths are still happening as a consequence of the fires.
While these fires were still burning, I joined a Zoom call and listened to some of our NDSU Extension agents and specialists here at North Dakota State University, talk about how they were helping people document their losses, treat injured animals, and probably most importantly, deal with the trauma they had experienced. As I was listening, as we heard in Kristen’s reflection, similar situations at that very time were playing out in North Carolina and Florida and other states in the Southeast as Extension professionals and other service providers helped people impacted by Hurricane Helene. Then later after this Zoom call, the other hurricanes that came up through the early fall there.
I often think about the wider reaching work aimed at preventing disasters or mitigating the impact of disasters when they happen, or supporting people, families, and communities to become more resilient, that zoomed out work. Jess, we were talking about zooming out and zooming in. That’s really important work, but it’s so much different than standing in front of someone who has lost so much and trying to help them answer the question, what’s next? The service providers who stand with those families in the face of such profound loss are my inspiration this year.
Just the other day, a colleague talked to me about how difficult it was to see the impact the wildfires had on people. Honestly, my colleague is still feeling that. I could see it in her face and hear it in her voice. It’s inspiring to know our Extension professionals and our military family service providers are willing to stand with families experiencing tragedy, even though they know how secondary trauma can affect them as the professional provider. It makes me grateful for doing the work that I get to do, work that supports those that support families in need. It motivates and inspires me to keep going and doing that work.
Jessica: Wow. I should not have interrupted you earlier to say that I haven’t heard about this happening, but thank you so much for sharing that. That is really inspiring. The service providers that are in the middle of it, in the thick of it, and some of them may also be affected, or they may have family members who are affected, and that they can continue on and help others continue on is amazing. It is inspiring. Thank you so much for sharing that.
Bob: We’d love to hear what’s inspiring you. Please share what’s inspiring you by clicking the Send Us a Text Message link at the top of the description of this episode. When you click that link, your text messaging app will open and you’ll see a seven digit number and the words, Do Not Remove. Type your message after that and click send. Don’t remove that number or we won’t receive your message. To protect your privacy, we won’t see your phone number and we can’t text you back, but we’d be happy to share your feedback on a future episode. If you’re listening on a computer, you can email us what’s inspiring you at practicingconnection@oneop.org. Let us know what’s inspiring you right now.
[music]
Jessica: That’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the Share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. Thanks again to our collaborators on this episode, Kristen Jowers and Nicola Winkel. Finally, thanks to our incredible team, co-producer Cora Owen, announcer Kaelin Goebel, Joyce Fallon and Maggie Lucas from OneOp’s marketing team, and Nathan Grimm who composed and performed all the music you hear on the podcast. The season is not over yet. We have a special episode coming your way next week. We hope you’ll join us then. In the meantime, keep practicing.
[music]
Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp, and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense, under award numbers 2019-48770-30366 and 2023-48770-41333.
[00:25:46] [END OF AUDIO]

Risk Factors and Reasons for Food Insecurity Among Service Members
2024-12-04 11:00 - 12:00
The prevalence of food insecurity in the U.S. military is 25% compared to only 10% in the civilian sector. Substantial research has been done since 2018 to determine the risk factors and reasons for food insecurity as well as the subsequent consequences of food insecurity in the military. This presentation will review the published research on food insecurity in the military and discuss strategies to minimize food insecurity in the Armed Forces, including an example from the field at Joint Base San Antonio.
Learning Objectives:

Define food insecurity and its different severity levels (high, medium, and low).
Detail the rate of food insecurity and how it compares to a similar civilian population.
Outline the risk factors for food insecurity for the U.S. military.
Identify at least three installation resources or programs working to alleviate food insecurity.

Matthew serves as a Statistician for the Defense Centers for Public Health-Aberdeen within the U.S. Department of Defense. His research focuses on behavioral, mental, and social health and demographic disparities in the U.S. military. He is interested in the extent, causes, and consequences of food insecurity in both active-duty and veteran populations. Mary is a Chef and Instructor of Culinary Health and Resiliency at the U.S. Army North Vogel Resiliency Center at Fort Sam Houston. She is a classically trained chef and graduate of the Culinary Institute of San Antonio, where she received her BS in Culinary Management. Mary is also the liaison and coordinator for the food insecurity project at Joint Base San Antonio with the San Antonio Food Bank. Joanna is a Public Health Nutritionist for the Defense Centers for Public Health-Aberdeen. She serves as Chair of the Dietary Supplements and Self-Care Products subcommittee, coordinating dietary supplement education and strategic efforts. She supports the Total Force Fitness Nutrition Domain by focusing on DoD nutrition strategies in partnership with the Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Marines.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS) Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/4/26
Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator (CNWE): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS) Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/4/26
Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RD/RDN) and Nutrition and Dietetics Technicians, Registered (NDTR): This webinar awards 1.0 CPEU in accordance with the Commission on Dietetic Registration’s CPEU Prior Approval Program Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/4/27
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education credit from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC) Eligibility for CE credit will close on 12/4/26
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Webinar Slides Photo Credit: M_a_y_a/iStock.com This series will cover programs that address nutrition and food security as it affects service members and their families. Discover the Nutrition and Food Security series today.

Inviting Innovation Through Creative Destruction
2024-11-28
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Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjE4NjQyOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTYxODY0MjgtaW52aXRpbmctaW5ub3ZhdGlvbi10aHJvdWdoLWNyZWF0aXZlLWRlc3RydWN0aW9uLmpzJTNGY29udGFpbmVyX2lkJTNEYnV6enNwcm91dC1wbGF5ZXItMTYxODY0MjglMjZwbGF5ZXIlM0RzbWFsbCUyMiUyMHR5cGUlM0QlMjJ0ZXh0JTJGamF2YXNjcmlwdCUyMiUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRnNjcmlwdCUzRQ== Explore how inviting creative destruction can pave the way for innovation. In this practicast, Jessica shares a fun and insightful practice inspired by the Liberating Structures TRIZ activity, guiding listeners to identify and eliminate counterproductive behaviors to make space for new ideas and better outcomes. [music]
Bob: Hi, thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Bob. My co-host Jessica is here as well. Today we’ll be talking about one of the principles of Liberating Structures, invite creative destruction to encourage innovation. Jessica will be sharing a practice with us based on that idea, that principle. Hey, Jessica, how are you doing?
Jessica: I’m doing pretty great today. It’s been a while since I’ve had a day almost completely free from meetings. Today is that day, and I’ve been able to catch up on reading and being a content consumer versus just someone who– well, not just someone who creates content, but that’s a good thing, too. I enjoy that very much. What’s really been the culprit lately is being a meeting participant. They’re all important meetings, and I enjoy many of them, but today has been just wonderful. I’m doing great. Thanks for asking.
Actually, one of those things I read was I recently discovered Cassandra Worthy’s Change Enthusiast Mindset. I wanted to share a passage from her website that inspired me from a piece called Anthem of a Change Enthusiast, and I’ve chosen a section from the middle of the piece that was particularly energizing for me. I’ve had change champion in my LinkedIn description for a long time, and I feel like this really describes what I mean by that. It starts with, “But we are change enthusiasts. We embrace the frustration, aggravation, isolation, and stress as signals. Signals that we are sitting in a moment of opportunity.
In this embrace, we are able to step back and view them objectively. In doing so, we first allow these feelings to exist, then inspire. To inspire us to the choice that will bring about a better feeling, to inspire us to the choice that will begin to slowly shift our reality from overwhelmed to anxious, from anxious to confused, from confused to clear, from clear to creative, from creative to excited, from excited to bliss. We are change enthusiasts. We use the feels of change to make conscious choice toward better feeling. We don’t ignore the feels, pretending they don’t exist in a blinding haze of optimism. We recognize the feels of change as guideposts leading us through the opportunity to choose our best, for we are change enthusiasts.”
Bob: That is really great. I love that. Thank you for sharing it.
Jessica: You’re welcome. I really have been enjoying reading all of Cassandra Worthy’s stuff.
Bob: I have an author to share as well that I’ve been inspired by for really going on maybe a year or more now. Daniel Halter has a substack called Sounding Slightly Off. Daniel is great. He’s a facilitator and a very talented writer. He works at AF CyberWorx, the US Air Force’s innovation hub. Daniel’s essays just always make me think he does a lot of work around complexity and systems thinking, things that, Jessica, you and I are interested in as well.
His posts, his essays usually include a book or a resource that I haven’t come across before, and I’ve shared some of those on this podcast before, like the book Unflattening and yes, so it’s just inspiring to read him. I just want to give him a shout-out. If you are interested, check out Daniel Halter’s Sounding Slightly Off.
Jessica: We’d love to hear what’s inspiring you, so please share what’s inspiring you by clicking the “send us a text message” at the top of the description of this episode. When you click the link, your text messaging app will open and you’ll see a seven-digit number and the words “Do not remove”. Type your message after that and click “Send”. Don’t remove that number or we won’t receive your message. To protect your privacy, we won’t see your phone number, and we can’t text you back, but we’ll share your feedback on a future episode. If you’re listening on a computer, you can email us at practicingconnection@oneop.org. Let us know what’s inspiring you right now.
[music]
Bob: I’m anxious to learn more about inviting creative destruction to encourage innovation. Jessica, can you tell us a little bit more about the practice you’ll be sharing and why you chose it?
Jessica: Absolutely. I chose the TRIZ activity. That’s T-R-I-Z from Liberating Structures, and that principle of inviting creative destruction to encourage innovation is also from Liberating Structures. This version of the practice was developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless. It promotes the idea of creative destruction by revealing where you might be getting in your own way as a collaborative team, which then makes way for new ways of working and being together. That’s the innovation part of it.
It encourages people to envision a better future together in a really fun way. TRIZ actually stands for– and I haven’t figured out exactly how it stands for this, but it stands for Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, which does not spell T-R-I-Z, but that’s okay. A Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, and its origin is from Russian engineering. Perhaps that’s where the acronym comes into play. It’s a systematic methodology for addressing complex problems and encouraging innovation. It’s been widely adopted across many different industries like aerospace, electronics, and automotive.
The activity that I’m going to be sharing today only represents a small piece of the overall TRIZ structure. There are TRIZ certifications and even a TRIZ fest. There’s a lot more to TRIZ than this one activity, but this one activity can be an effective tool for organizational and community change and problem-solving. I’ve actually used variations of this activity with a community that was considering raising their tax levy and a small nonprofit that was undergoing a huge turnover in their board.
I’ve seen this tool be really, really effective. Besides its effectiveness, I also chose this activity for its playfulness. I’ve seen groups have fun with it. You can also do it on your own and I guess just chuckle to yourself when it gets a little silly.
Bob: This sounds really exciting. Can you walk us through the practice? I’m anxious to hear more about it.
Jessica: Yes. I want to make a note that on this podcast, we typically try to stay on the positive side, not toxically so, but we try to stay on the strengths-based side. I would say that this strays from that a little bit, but it does it in a really fun way. It’s meant to give you insight to how you might be blocking your strengths from shining through. I do think it’s connected to a strengths-based approach. You’re going to start first with a goal that you or your collaborators have defined. I want you to think about that goal. I want you to think about the worst possible outcomes and list any action that you can think of. This is a brainstorming part.
List any action you can think of that would ensure the worst possible outcome for your goal. It could help you to start by listing out a few of the worst possible outcomes. Then from there, listing the different actions that would ensure those outcomes. This is the part that it can actually be really fun, even though it sounds like the big bummer part. I would say list everything, even the things that seem just a bit ridiculous. That’s the part where people start to have a little bit of fun because they can’t imagine that anyone’s actually doing that action that would bring about that worst possible outcome.
I want you, though, to remember to keep this about process, policies, and actions, not about people. Okay. The next step is to identify which of these actions. Take a look at that action. All of those actions that would bring about the worst possible outcome, take a look at those and start to identify the ones that you are actually currently doing. Remember, I said that some of these might get a little bit ridiculous. It doesn’t mean that you’re doing that exact ridiculous thing, but you might look at that and say, “Oh, we’re doing a variation of that, or we’re doing a small snippet of that.”
I want you to imagine all the ways, shapes, and forms that you’re doing the things that fit with your worst possible outcomes list. It might end up being a variation. For example, if you listed not communicating with senior leadership at all as an action that would get you the worst possible outcome, you might list as an action that you’re currently doing, well, we don’t communicate with senior leadership until the last minute, which is a variation of not communicating with them at al.
Then the last one is find ways to stop these counterproductive behaviors. You’re going to review the list of things that you do that are counterproductive, and you’re going to decide on some steps to take or different processes to employ to stop these behaviors and make space for innovation. Because when you can stop those behaviors, you can then imagine what else is possible and what else could we be doing that’s different that will help us move forward differently than we are right now. We’ll provide a link to the full instructions of this activity in our show notes, but that’s the practice for today.
Bob: I like it. It reminds me a little bit of the future backwards process.
Jessica: I don’t know that.
Bob: Oh, so future backwards is a process that developed with no endorsement from me, by the way, the way that police interview witnesses and suspects because they find that if you start at the end of the story instead of– and make people go backwards, you get a more accurate account than if you have them go forwards because we’re used to telling stories. The idea is in strategic planning to think of the future state first and then work your way back and say what actions would have led to this future state. It’s similar.
Usually, I think we’re trying to do it with getting the positive outcome, but I love the idea of starting with the worst possible outcome and then just changing up the actions. Let’s not do that then.
Jessica: Yes, right. How do we avoid this worst possible outcome? Oh, don’t do these things that we’re doing.
Bob: Yes. Awesome. Thanks so much for guiding us through that, Jessica.
Jessica: Oh, you’re welcome. I love it.
Bob: That’s it for this episode. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We’ll be back next week with one of our favorite things to do. It’s our annual reflections episode. Hope you’ll tune in for that. Until then, keep practicing.
Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2023-48770-41333.
[music]
[00:12:16] [END OF AUDIO]

The Power of Listening to Cultivate Deep Respect for People
2024-11-21
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Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjE0NjU2MCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTYxNDY1NjAtdGhlLXBvd2VyLW9mLWxpc3RlbmluZy10by1jdWx0aXZhdGUtZGVlcC1yZXNwZWN0LWZvci1wZW9wbGUuanMlM0Zjb250YWluZXJfaWQlM0RidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjE0NjU2MCUyNnBsYXllciUzRHNtYWxsJTIyJTIwdHlwZSUzRCUyMnRleHQlMkZqYXZhc2NyaXB0JTIyJTIwY2hhcnNldCUzRCUyMnV0Zi04JTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGc2NyaXB0JTNF
Explore practical ways to cultivate deep respect in your personal and professional interactions. This practicast introduces “1-2-4-All,” a practice rooted in community development principles, designed to amplify every voice and promote meaningful collaboration. Learn how genuine listening and collective reflection can empower individuals and create stronger connections within groups.
[music]
Bob Bertsch: Hi, thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Bob. My co-host, Jessica, is here as well, and today we’ll be talking about active listening and the concept of deep respect. Jessica will be sharing a practice with us around that topic. Hey, Jessica, how are you today?
Jessica Beckendorf: I’m doing all right. It’s been sunny here all day, which has been really nice. It’s especially interesting because everything in our yard looks very strange right now, because our neighbor had this huge, gigantic old willow that they just had to take down, unfortunately, because of a storm. It had split all the way down the middle. It was really weird to see a tree that strong, or seemingly that strong. I know willows aren’t the strongest trees, but it was so weird to see it just split all the way down the trunk. Now it has completely changed the landscape of our backyard.
I love to look at stars at night, so there’s been a great opportunity there. I love seeing the sky just in general, but it has been weird, too. What it’s really made me think about, that and as I shared with you before we started recording, we lost one of our cats recently as well. Both of those things, while my cat was in hospice, at home hospice for the last couple of weeks, and as we saw the feel and look of our entire yard change, I just really started to think a lot about those changes that we have no control over at all. There are lots of changes that we have zero control over.
I know that intuitively, but I think as someone who is a proponent of people working together toward change, and I think in my LinkedIn I even have something like change champion, it’s really frustrating when you are faced with these things that you have no influence even, over. I think those are the times that community support are really needed. Thinking about that has made me ponder, well, what about the times when there are issues that anyone in the community, or everyone in the community, can have influence over? That’s really, I think, when community action is needed. These are things that I know, but I was really forced to do some deep thoughts over.
Bob: Thanks for sharing that. Sorry for your loss, both of your losses. I’m glad you brought up community action and us banding together, because something that I just stumbled across recently speaks to that a little bit. It was a Harvard Business Review article from 2023. It’s called Four Phases That Build a Culture of Curiosity, by Scott Shigeoka. The four phrases that Scott shares are, I don’t know, tell me more, I understand that you’re more than your job, and who else? I’m going to focus on that last one. That last phrase just reminded me of something that you said in a conversation we had in September, in the episode Applying Systems Thinking to Local Issues.
You shared a practice in that episode, and you asked us to ask ourselves this question. Is there someone whose experience needs articulation, but who is currently not present? Who is that? That question from the article, who else, seem to take your question and apply it to, I guess, a little different situation than I had been thinking of it in, just in everyday life and work, when can we ask ourselves, who else could we ask about this? Who else is our decision that we’re making impacting? Who else could help us with this? Maybe that speaks a little bit to what you were talking about with people rallying together.
Jessica: Yes, I love that. I love that you listen so closely to me. [laughs] Actually, I just want to give the credit where credit is due. That question, is there someone whose experience needs articulation, but who is currently not present, actually came from our mutual acquaintance, Bjørn Peterson, in his work. It’s one of my favorite questions. I’m glad that it sounds like I’ve incorporated it so much into who I am as a person, that [chuckles] it sounds like it came from me, but it definitely came from his work. I think it’s just absolutely profound.
Bob: We’d love to hear what’s inspiring you, so please share what you’re inspired by, by clicking the send us a text message link at the top of the description of this episode. When you click that link, your text messaging app will open and you’ll see a seven digit number and the words, do not remove. Type your message after that, and click send. Don’t remove that number or we won’t receive your message. To protect your privacy, we won’t see your phone number, so we can’t text you back, but we will share your feedback on a future episode. If you’re listening on a computer, you can email us at practicingconnection@oneop.org. Let us know what’s inspiring you right now.
[music]
Bob: Let’s learn more about deep respect and how to cultivate it. Jessica, can you tell us a little bit more about the practice you’ll be sharing and why you chose it?
Jessica: Yes, of course. The concept of deep respect is rooted in frameworks like the asset-based community development that we’ve talked about before, or you might have heard us refer to it as ABCD, and the principles from liberating structures, which we just talked about in a previous episode. These approaches remind us that communities are filled with untapped potential and knowledge. When we genuinely listen, and we engage with the local voices who are part of that untapped potential and knowledge, we not only honor their experiences, but we also facilitate their own empowerment to create solutions that work best for their unique context.
I chose this activity because I’ve used it a lot. This is like one of my go to activities I use in groups, or I’ve used in meetings, right? Even a simple meeting, you can use this in. I think it does a really good job of honoring the different ways that people prefer to communicate and share, which really maximizes the chances that everyone’s voices will be included and heard. That’s crucial for practicing deep respect. Think about a time when you felt deeply respected in a conversation. What made that experience meaningful? For me, it has always involved feeling heard, and like I’m making a meaningful contribution.
Of course, I hope I make others feel just as respected and heard. This idea of when you felt deeply respected, and what made that meaningful, and how you might be able to bring that forward, these two questions on their own, I think would be a great practice for deep respect. Just asking yourself to recall a time you felt deeply respected in a conversation, and identifying what made that experience meaningful to you, and then asking, how can you replicate that feeling for others? Even that alone would be a great practice. Before you go into a meeting where you’re trying to get everyone’s voice to feel heard.
Bob: Yes, that’s awesome. I really appreciate it because we’re digging a little bit deeper here. We’re going beyond just getting people into the room and practicing inclusion. This seems to be really speaking to practicing belonging as well. I’d love to hear the practice you have around this. Would you walk us through it?
Jessica: Yes. The practice is called 1-2-4-All. It involves active listening. We’ve talked about listening on the podcast before, but I would say that most of the time we were talking about the nuts and bolts of one-on-one communication, or how you can practice the listening. I want to remind everyone though, that this isn’t just about hearing words, it’s about seeking understanding and truly understanding and valuing what someone is sharing. Engaging in genuine active listening can have the effect of increasing psychological safety during change efforts, which is really important for change efforts.
To put this into practice during a group or community change effort, you could use this 1-2-4-All activity to allow individuals to reflect individually before discussing then in pairs, and then groups of four, and then sharing with a larger group. This structure ensures that everyone has a chance to contribute their thoughts. We’ll share a link to all of the notes for carrying out this activity in the show notes, but here are the basic instructions. You would begin with silent self-reflection by the individuals in the room on a shared challenge.
You’d want to frame that shared challenge as a question. For example, what opportunities do you see for making progress on this challenge? How would you handle this situation? What ideas or actions do you recommend? Give them some time to self-reflect. Then you’re going to have everyone find a partner and generate ideas in pairs. You’re going to give them the instruction to build on the ideas that they came up with from the self-reflection. Start with those ideas you came up with in self-reflection, and then generate ideas together based on that. Then they will pair up with another pair and share and develop ideas in the foursome.
Same thing that they did before, they’re going to share the ideas they came up with as a pair, and then with the other two people, they will come up with more ideas. This isn’t about the quantity of ideas, it is really about making sure that everyone’s ideas are still represented at the end, but it also encourages the listening and the respect of incorporation of people’s ideas. At the end, everyone will come back together to the full group, and you’ll ask them, “What is one idea that stood out in your conversation?” Then they’ll share one important idea.
Now, does this mean that the other ideas go away? No, it doesn’t. This is for the overall share out. They could share all of their ideas. You can really do this activity any way you want to. The key here is getting everyone to the point where they see themselves in the project that they’ve meaningfully contributed.
Bob: I love that practice. Thank you so much for sharing it. That’s it for this episode. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We’ll be back next week with a practice for finding what is important and meaningful to you and to others. Until then, keep practicing.
[music]
Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of OneOp, and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, U.S. Department of Defense under Award Number 2023-48770-41333.
[music]
[00:12:41] [END OF AUDIO]

The Welcome Wagon: Cultivating a Welcoming Environment
2024-11-14
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjEwMzMxNCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTYxMDMzMTQtdGhlLXdlbGNvbWUtd2Fnb24tY3VsdGl2YXRpbmctYS13ZWxjb21pbmctZW52aXJvbm1lbnQuanMlM0Zjb250YWluZXJfaWQlM0RidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjEwMzMxNCUyNnBsYXllciUzRHNtYWxsJTIyJTIwdHlwZSUzRCUyMnRleHQlMkZqYXZhc2NyaXB0JTIyJTIwY2hhcnNldCUzRCUyMnV0Zi04JTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGc2NyaXB0JTNF Discover practical ways to create more welcoming environments in your personal and professional life. This practicast introduces “The Welcome Wagon,” a simple practice inspired by community development principles, offering steps for personal reflection and group collaboration to foster a culture of belonging. Explore insights on the power of connection and small actions that can lead to meaningful change. [music]
Bob: Hi, and thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection podcast. I’m Bob. My co-host Jessica is here as well. In a little bit, we’ll be talking about practicing being more welcoming. It might not be something that we think about practicing, but Jessica is going to share a practice with us to help us be a little bit better at that. Jessica, how are you today?
Jessica: I’m great. This has been a great week of inspiration. I’m going to break the fourth wall here for a second by saying that I looked ahead at your notes, and I had to say that because I’ve actually been inspired by very similar things. I intentionally wanted to bring it up in a different way than you plan to. I’ve been working on putting together a large project that has prompted many conversations and all kinds of connection inspiring. It’s been really fulfilling to even scratch the surface of how many people are interested in working together toward this common goal.
One of the most interesting things to me was that one agency thought to put out a survey asking if organizations were interested in collaborating on a particular topic. They wanted us to identify how we’d like to collaborate and what we hope to accomplish. This prompted a lot of ideas and emails and possible real agreements to collaborate where we all just would have gone off doing our own thing and we all still would have been working toward that same common goal. Now, what can we do together?
Bob: Yes, that’s awesome. As you mentioned, I’m thinking and been inspired along similar lines. I’ve been thinking a lot about Stephen B Johnson’s idea of the adjacent possible, which is this idea that there are possibilities, doorways, if you want to think of them as physical things, that exist, but that we can’t see alone. We need multiple perspectives to see them, more than one perspective to open up that adjacent possible. That’s been something I’ve been thinking about, just because I had a couple of opportunities, one to connect a couple of colleagues who are working in different states, but they’re doing very similar work.
One colleague was talking to me about their work, and I was like, that sounds similar to this person’s work. Maybe, if you’re not in the right mindset, you might let that just go. Like, “Oh, that’s interesting. I know somebody else who does similar work.” With the adjacent possible in mind, I took the time to introduce these two people to each other. It’s a pretty low risk, low effort thing to do, to just loop a couple of people together on an email and say, “This is why I think you guys would be interested in talking to each other, but I leave the rest to you.” You don’t have to facilitate it. You don’t have to tend the relationship for the rest of your life or anything like that.
Just make a connection and you can and let them take it where it’s going to lead. Hopefully, that has opened up some adjacent possibilities for those two colleagues. I had another opportunity where a funding opportunity I found out about, sparked in my head. Again, a couple of colleagues might be interested in this and taking the time to send that with some context. This is something that John Stepper has talked about.
We’ve talked about on the podcast before, Jessica, when we talked about working out loud and how to do introductions of people, that context is really important. It makes me think that part of this is opening up your aperture, to use a photography example. Jessica’s the photographer among the two of us, but I’ll borrow some words from her, to open up your aperture a little bit and include people beyond yourself and your own interests and think about possibilities that are beyond maybe what’s right in front of you, those adjacent possibilities that Stephen Johnson talks about.
Jessica: I love that. It also reminds me of applied improv concept of widening your awareness and being aware of what’s around you. I think that’s where those connections are possible. This might be the first time this has happened where we’re thinking pretty much around the same thing. We’ve been inspired by the same thing this week. We did not plan this. We didn’t call each other ahead of time.
Bob: Our outfits match but that we did arrange. This inspiration thing it’s just complete coincidence. We’d love to hear what is inspiring you. To share that with us, click “send us a text message” at the top of this episode’s description. Your text app will open with a seven-digit number. Please don’t remove it. Type your message after the number and click “send”. We won’t see your phone number or text you back to protect your privacy, but we will share your feedback in a future episode if you let us know what’s inspiring you right now. If you’re listening on a computer, you can email us at practicingconnection@oneop.org. Let us know what’s inspiring you right now.
[music]
Let’s learn more about how to be more welcoming. Jessica, can you tell us a little bit more about the practice you’ll be sharing and why you chose it?
Jessica: Yes. I want to start by saying that like anything we do in these Practicasts, this is just one small thing that you can do. There’s definitely more things that you can and should think about doing to be more welcoming, but I think that this is a really great, simple start. It’s a very simple practice. I’m calling it the Welcome Wagon. At its core, it’s really a decision to work on being more welcoming. You can personally make this decision, or a group can discuss and decide together to employ some continuous improvement on becoming more welcoming. Basically, you’re deciding to establish a growth mindset about it, whether you’re doing that personally or in a group.
You’re deciding to get some grit about it and dig in and keep getting better at it. You’re deciding to be intentional about it. I chose this after reading about the principles of the liberating structures. Liberating structures are a series of activities online. It’s more than that. It’s so much deeper and so much better than that description gave it. Liberating structures as a facilitator, I’ve used them over and over again. The principle that I was looking at is called Include and Unleash Everyone, which also happens to be the website’s tagline. We’ll include a link to the website in our show notes. Include and Unleash Everyone.
We talk about this with some regularity on this podcast, maybe just using different words that if there’s a group effort, we need to lean into the strengths in the room. With all the voices and strengths and personalities and interests, things can get complex pretty fast. Reading a little about that principle reminded me of all the things we do, usually unintentionally, to silence people, even when our intention might be to encourage sharing and connection. I’ve seen, for example, a few members of a small group engage in a discussion about a sport they all play. Nothing wrong with that.
It turned out that they had been playing that sport together just the past weekend before the meeting and used that as an opportunity to make some decisions about the direction for that meeting. The other two people in the room sat there silently listening to the conversation about the sport, not having anything to contribute to that conversation, and then just went along with what had been decided. I’ll admit I was one of those two people in the room. I was much younger at the time. Now I probably would have said something, pushed back a little bit, invited some more discussion. I’ve also seen small groups, like at a networking event, maybe just a few people huddled around a small table.
Everyone’s feeling awkward and weird. I’ve seen them though, close their shoulders to others who are awkwardly trying to engage from the outside. Look, again, I want to say, I don’t think people are doing this intentionally. Then there’s the example of saying, let’s brainstorm. I love brainstorming, but just saying let’s brainstorm can silence some people for several reasons. Things like power differentials in the room, things like communication preferences in the same way, only allowing people to write in silence on Post-it notes without allowing any discussion can silence others. Again, I don’t think there’s any malicious intent in these examples.
The brainstorm example is clearly an attempt to honor the voices at the table. These are examples of things we do that can silence some people. One of the things that I like the most about the liberating structures activities, and I think there’s something like 33 of them and they’re freely available on their website. One of the things I like the most is that they come from a beautiful mix of insights from complexity theory, organizational development, applied improvisation, and user experience.
I have used them and adapted them frequently in my facilitation work because they shake things up a little and invite sharing and interaction in ways we aren’t used to. I also chose this practice because, should we choose this assignment, this can really make a difference in our personal lives. It can really make a difference within the groups we belong to and in the activities, we do in our daily lives, whether it’s a club like a Lions Club or a VFW meeting, a neighborhood group, a coalition we serve on, a meeting at work, bowling league night. It can really be employed everywhere.
Bob: That sounds awesome and I’m excited to hear more about the practice itself. Can you walk us through it now?
Jessica: Yes, absolutely. This is actually not one of the liberating structures that I was just talking about, but the liberating structures were my inspiration for choosing this activity. I got the idea for it from the Asset-Based Community Development Toolkit, ABCD Toolkit, called Creating Welcoming Places Workbook by Bruce Anderson from Community Activators. I’ve modified it for the Practicast and we’re going to give it to you in two ways. First, how you can practice this on your own, and second, how you can practice this in a group setting. First, on your own, like many of the things we do, you’re going to start with some reflection.
I want you to reflect on all the ways you think you already exhibit a welcoming attitude to anyone who crosses your path. Where are you already successful with this? What body language do you use when a new person approaches you? Is that one way that you’re already successful? What about your facial expressions? Do you ask people questions? Do you learn their name? Do you show interest in them? Do you share your interests with them? Then think of someone whose welcoming skills you admire. What do they do that’s similar to you? What do they do that’s different? What might you employ? What might you lean into more when you take a look at your list, if you decide to make this as a physical list?
When you think about your list and this list of someone whose welcoming skills you admire, what might you be able to employ and lean into more? Then, simply make a commitment to getting a fraction better at being a welcome wagon. Start small. Maybe just decide to make sure you’re going to ask a question of somebody, or maybe you’ll decide to just be aware of your surroundings and who’s in the room with you more. Remember that closing shoulders example I gave before. Maybe you’ll decide to open your shoulders to make sure that if there’s someone standing on the outskirts, you’re going to invite them in with your body language. That’s on your own. Two simple steps. Reflect. Make a small commitment.
In a group, the goal of the practice for the group is to formally decide to become more welcoming, to create an environment where all people feel valued and included, including newcomers. This is also a very simple process. It starts with someone in the group, probably you if you’re listening right now, initiating the discussion. Set aside time during a regular meeting to bring up the topic of welcoming. Encourage open dialogue about what being welcoming means to each member. Basically, define also what being welcoming means. Then vote on that commitment. After you discuss it and you’ve defined it as a group, what welcoming is going to mean for your group, hold a vote to formally decide.
This step can really help everyone in the group to feel empowered to contribute to the group’s culture, because that’s what you’re doing here. You’re trying to build a welcoming culture. The third thing is share personal experiences. Allow the members to share their stories about their first experiences with the group. This can deepen some understanding and empathy among the members. The next is planning for improvement. Knowing what the experiences of members have been and how you guys have defined a welcoming environment. What can you learn from those two things to create some specific actions the group can take to make small improvements and enhancements in your welcoming practices?
For instance, this is something I think that comes up a lot but consider adding welcoming initiatives to the group’s mission and strategic plan. Consider adding a welcome section and activities to every agenda or to an annual meeting agenda. Then the last step is regular check-ins. Make it a point to periodically revisit the topic, like I said, maybe at meetings or at an annual meeting. Really simply it’s someone needs to initiate the discussion. You need to define as a group what being more welcoming is going to mean to you. Allow people to share some of their personal experiences and then use your definition and the personal experiences to plan for improvement and then find a way to have regular check-ins about it.
Bob: Thanks so much for guiding us through that, Jessica. That’s it for this episode. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the “share” button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We’ll be back next week with a practice for cultivating deep respect for people and local solutions. Until then, keep practicing.
[music]
Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense, under award number 2023-48770-41333.
[00:16:22] [END OF AUDIO]

Strengthening Military Community Connections with Amy Rodick
2024-11-07
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNjA2MjczNyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTYwNjI3Mzctc3RyZW5ndGhlbmluZy1taWxpdGFyeS1jb21tdW5pdHktY29ubmVjdGlvbnMtd2l0aC1hbXktcm9kaWNrLmpzJTNGY29udGFpbmVyX2lkJTNEYnV6enNwcm91dC1wbGF5ZXItMTYwNjI3MzclMjZwbGF5ZXIlM0RzbWFsbCUyMiUyMHR5cGUlM0QlMjJ0ZXh0JTJGamF2YXNjcmlwdCUyMiUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRnNjcmlwdCUzRQ== Amy Rodick, Director of the Office of Military Family Readiness and Policy for the Department of Defense, joins the podcast to discuss the importance of community connections and how service providers and families can contribute to a stronger Military Family Readiness System.
As an Army veteran and military spouse, Amy brings a unique perspective, sharing real-world strategies for service providers to successfully engage with the Military Family Readiness System at the local level. [theme music]
Kalin Goble: Welcome to Practicing Connection, a podcast exploring the personal stories and collective practices that empower us to work together to improve our resilience and readiness in a rapidly changing world. Here to start the conversation are Jessica Beckendorf and Bob Bertsch.
Jessica Beckendorf: Hi, welcome to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Jessica Beckendorf.
Bob Bertsch: I’m Bob Bertsch.
Jessica: Our guest today is Ms. Amy Rodick, Director of the Office of Military Family Readiness and Policy for the Department of Defense. As Director, Amy is responsible for leadership, management, and oversight of programs affecting military families, including military spouse career advancement, military family life learning, and the Office of Special Needs. Hi, Amy. Thank you so much for joining us on Practicing Connection.
Amy Rodick: Hello.
Jessica: What has the Office of Military Family Readiness and Policy been working on since we last talked in the spring?
Amy: I’m not even sure really where to start. There’s really been a lot across our deputate, which is Military Community and Family Policy. Probably the most recent and probably the most impactful is the new publication of the Secretary of Defense’s Taking Care of People memo, which came out 13 September of this year. Of course, it goes across those various areas, such as enhancing economic security, making moves easier, supporting military spouse careers, which is in my portfolio, quality housing and facilities, strengthening family support, and improving the overall quality of life. Really excited to be a part of that and the team has done a lot to try to advance military spouse career and education opportunities through the My Career Advancement Account Scholarship. That’s how we fit into that memo.
Jessica: What are you most looking forward to as an outcome from that?
Amy: That’s a great question. I would love to hear the testimonials from family members and service members that this policy, which has those different spokes, has impacted because I really do feel like the Department is putting in a lot of effort to try to enhance the quality of life of service members and their families. To get those anecdotal testimonies, I think, would be amazing.
If you’re listening to this, and you’re impacted by the most recent Taking Care of People memo, please reach out to your local family center and give us a plug. We’d love to hear about your experience and how it’s made a positive impact on your life and/or if there’s something else the Department can do to enhance your quality of life.
Bob: Amy, November is National Veterans and Military Families Month. I’m wondering how service providers out on installations in the communities can use this opportunity to connect with their families.
Amy: I’m super excited about celebrating National Veterans and Military Families Month. I had the opportunity this year to help shape the messaging behind this campaign. Yes, we’re focused on military service members and their families, but we’re also really focusing on those transitioning veterans and their families as well. This campaign is not only marketed to them but also to those community-based service providers, commanders, leaders who can help us direct military family members and service members to these resources.
What we try to do, which I hope is, again, impactful, is we try to focus on four carriers [unintelligible 00:03:50] throughout the month, right, and the first one being transitions. What resources on Military OneSource are directly related to military family transitions? We’ll give a spotlight on that. The second focus area was relationships. You’ll see, week two in November, how we try to pull up and elevate the Military OneSource content that’s focused on relationships. The third one is work-life balance. I’m not sure there’s ever a way to really balance those things.
Jessica: Can you please define that? What is that?
Amy: I have no idea.
[laughter]
Amy: I have no idea, but you’re always seeking equilibrium, but it never really quite presents itself, right? I like to think of it more of a ratio.
Jessica: Maybe the reward is the journey of seeking the equilibrium, right?
[laughter]
Amy: That’s one outlook. Sure. [chuckles] Yes, but so the third week will focus on work-life balance and how you can look at other opportunities to try to maybe add a little bit more life in your work-life balance. Again, I think of it more of a ratio. Then the last being financial security and economic security, which, as you know, was the focus of this year’s Military Family Readiness Academy, which, we partner with the USDA through the OneOp Cooperative Agreement, and that was a huge success just based on the early reports of that.
Jessica: It seems like, especially with some of the examples you gave, National Veterans and Military Families Month might also be an opportunity to engage with other organizations and service providers. Are there ways that service providers can use this month to start conversations in the community?
Amy: Absolutely. I would argue, don’t wait for November to go ahead and do that. [chuckles] It should be–
Jessica: Good point.
Amy: Yes. It’s like when you’re preparing for an inspection. It’s like an inspection is a process, it’s not an event, right? The same thing should be about providing support really to all people, but support for some of our military-connected families as well, because it can feel like an island of one out there, but knowing that the community does support you pays huge dividends in the prevention space and just supporting those military families and service members in your community.
I say, why wait? You don’t have to wait. Get out there. Think of ways that you can connect to military-connected people. Building strong relationships and partnerships doesn’t always just make sense half the time because of efficiency, but it’s necessary. We really do look to our local communities to provide that social support around our service members and families.
Jessica: It reminds me of, there’s a couple of different layers or levels that you might be connecting. One of them might be out in the community as part of a coalition where you’re working together with others to talk about things like a local housing crisis, which affects military families, from our point of view, and from the rest of the coalition members’ points of view, it might be just sort of an overall housing crisis. Having those relationships maybe before the military families that you’re working with need them, connecting on the one level, like maybe part of a coalition, but also, of course, connecting out in the community with the families themselves. It just makes me think of those different layers.
Amy: Yes, and I think the last time we sort of talked about the formal and informal networks, and so yes, coalitions are one way to really formalize those networks, but I feel like sometimes the less formal and those informal connections sometimes are– have bigger payoffs than one might believe.
Jessica: Oh, definitely. Definitely.
Amy: Yes.
Bob: We have been coming across stories like that, both formal and informal, as we’ve done our work on the podcast and with OneOp’s PowerUp Magazine, and it’s like seeing the Military Family Readiness System really in action. We talked with Monica Bassett, who is a military Spouse of the Year who started her own food pantry out of Fort Leavenworth, and talked with folks at Malmstrom Air Force Base. Lisa Sapp, shout out to Lisa and James who talked with us about what they’re doing to partner for early education in Great Falls, Montana. Those are just a couple of examples. There’s a lot of others. How do you feel about what’s happening on the ground to strengthen the Military Family Readiness System and build those relationships that we’re talking about to support military families?
Amy: That’s a great question. I feel optimistic, I feel enthusiastic, and I feel grateful. I feel grateful that communities are willing to extend themselves to our military-connected families and really try to be that family away from family for when they need it. You see this a lot of times in our OCONUS locations. You see very strong communities in some of our remote and isolated locations as well, but yes, I’m enthusiastic, proud, but I think most of all grateful, to be honest.
Although we have great examples, it’s again, one of those things like, man, we’d really like to hear from communities about those success stories. Please keep doing the great work that you’re doing to try to get those stories, highlight those, and let people know, hey, here are some ways that even something small can grow into something bigger. It’s that snowball effect, right? It will roll downhill, it will get speed, it will get traction, it will get support. From the Department’s perspective, we would like to recognize those communities who are supportive of the Military Family Readiness System.
Also in November, by chance, and some by planning, we’re planning to host a Health of the Military Family Readiness Center roundtable with the service leads and the Manpower and Reserve Affair leads, and we hope to engage in those discussions about how can we create stronger communities. Although it would be centered around the family support centers themselves, it will lend itself externally outside those installation-based centers. I’m really excited about those conversations that we’re going to have.
Bob: We talked about people just telling their stories and there’s obviously a lot that happens on social media. What role do service providers play in making sure that at the level in the Pentagon that you’re aware and the DASDs and the Secretary are aware of sort of these great things that are happening and also, things that might be challenges?
Amy: Yes, I think that’s something that we have to figure out, right? We have to develop the communication path for those great news stories to get up here. Because oftentimes they are highlighted at the local level, maybe even regionally they’re recognized, but they stay within that region or in that state. We have our defense state liaison officers who represent multiple states within certain regions. It’d be helpful if we can get good news stories brought up through those channels. We owe that to our community-based stakeholders, a path for those good news stories to get from the local level, through the regional, up to the Department of Defense that we can spotlight those. I’ll take that as a do-out. [chuckles]
Jessica: I love that.
Bob: I didn’t mean to assign you anything.
Amy: That is, I guess, my call to action for myself. [laughs]
Jessica: No, I really love that. I’ve attended a couple of my state’s ISFAC meetings and I have found those and the stories that are shared during those to be really impactful as well. Hey, if I hear of anything too, it would only be from one state, but.
Amy: That’s okay. You know what, once other states hear about what others are doing, it’s amazing how good news stories can spread like wildfire and it’s a good wildfire, right? It’s exciting, it’s movement, it’s encouraging.
Jessica: Yes, and I would say anyone listening to this podcast, you can also email us at practicingconnection@oneop.org and we would be happy to pass that information on to Amy as well.
Amy: I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Practicing Connections LinkedIn group, right?
Jessica: Yes.
Amy: That’s another opportunity where if you can paste your good news story, we will pull it, we will package it and we will spotlight that for you. Just, I’m going to try to create a path on the fly right now, but I think that that’s one, also one possible pathway for folks, not only to get linked into that but to also share those stories. There’s purpose and intent behind joining.
Bob: Amy, I think that it’s helpful to keep hearing about some of the changes that are happening sort of at the Department level because a lot has happened around taking care of our people and maybe not everybody is aware. You did mention some of the stuff with spouse employment, but is there anything else that sort of comes top of mind as, this is something that is new, whether it’s policy or program or service that you really want service providers to be aware of?
Amy: I think, again, as a military spouse, as somebody who’s worked this on the civilian side, but not so much on the military side, one of the, I think, more progressive outcomes of that Taking Care of People memo is allowing service members to access the healthcare flexible spending accounts. What does that mean? If you’re a dependent, you often have these co-pays associated with your healthcare.
As an example, I paid $89 to go to the dentist for my child. Now I can withhold taxable income through that healthcare flexible spending account and apply those out-of-pocket costs against this non-taxable income. What it hopefully does is it lowers your tax bracket, also puts that little cushion away for you to use in the event you do have a healthcare out-of-pocket expense, which, again, is becoming more and more prevalent just based on the healthcare system right now.
I really want not only service members and family members to be aware of that, but community members to also be aware and to inform folks that, hey, you know this opportunity is open to you. Go ahead on fsafeds.gov and register for a count and make your election. That typically opens up, once again, like in that November timeframe, they’ll have that open window where you can go in, register, elect your withholding amounts per year, and then you go ahead and it starts to just automatically deducting it from your paycheck. That’s probably, I think, one of the more progressive ones. Then, of course, the BAH and the BAS increases, which I know, again, as a spouse of a service member, that that was greatly appreciated, [chuckles] and we thank Congress for that.
Jessica: There’s been a lot happening, it sounds like. We are very curious. We love asking this question. What has been inspiring you lately?
Amy: Yesterday I attended the Association of the United States of the Army’s annual meeting at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. It was the first time in a long time, because I worked for Army before, that I was able to sit in the audience and just listen as a dependent, as a military family member, and also from the perspective of the DOD.
I’ll tell you what I’m inspired by is the commitment, the level of commitment and support that leaders are really willing to put themselves out there for the sake of recruitment and retention for all-volunteer force. It really is inspiring. It’s very easy to get set in your ways and just say, no, this is how the Army works, but you’re seeing a transformation and a cultural change across our services that is becoming more family-centric, that is putting not only the warfighter at the forefront of things but also the family members. To me, that’s inspiring.
Bob: Thanks so much for sharing that, Amy. Thanks for all the work you do in supporting our service members and their families. It’s greatly appreciated. We appreciate the time that you spent with us to share the message today.
Amy: Thank you for having me. If I had to have just one last closing comment, I would just ask everybody to think about what you can do in your local community to support and to strengthen your own Military Family Readiness System as small or as big as it can be. I’d also, once again, welcome you to share those testimonies, those good news stories through the Practicing Connections LinkedIn group. Yes, we want to hear from you and the feedback is so valuable.
I have never seen a group of leaders who are more committed to the quality of life of service members and their families than we have right now. I hope that continues and I encourage everybody to help encourage them to stay focused on, again, increasing that quality of life and providing that system of support around the men and women who are serving this great country.
Jessica: That was beautiful. That is also it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We’d love to hear what you’ve been thinking about and what’s inspiring you. You can share that with us by clicking the send us a text message at the top of the description of this episode. If you’re listening on a computer, you can email us at practicingconnection@oneop.org. You can also find us in the Practicing Connection LinkedIn group. We can’t wait to hear from you.
We’d like to thank our co-producer, Coral Owen, our announcer, Kalin Goble, Maggie Lucas, and Joyce Vaughn for their help with marketing, and Nathan Grimm who composed and performed all the music you hear on the podcast. We hope you’ll listen again soon. Until then, keep practicing.
[theme music]
Kalin: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award numbers 2019-48770-30366 and 2023-48770-41333.
[00:19:02] [END OF AUDIO]

Medicare 101: Simplifying Enrollment and Benefits
2024-10-30 11:00 - 12:00
For almost 60 years, Medicare has provided health coverage for adults over age 65 and individuals with qualifying medical conditions. Though it’s a household name, many people shudder at the thought of trying to understand the Medicare program or navigate the ins and outs of their benefits. But understanding and utilizing Medicare benefits can be as easy as AB(C)D!
During this session, participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of Medicare basics, including its history and the key differences between Medicare and Medicaid. They will learn about the enrollment process and timing to ensure they are properly covered. The session will also cover the various benefits available under Medicare’s different parts, helping participants to maximize their healthcare coverage. Additionally, there will be a focus on coordinating care between Medicare and other programs such as Tricare for Life and Veterans Affairs benefits, ensuring seamless integration and optimized care for all eligible participants.
Learning Objectives:

Discover the fundamentals of Medicare.
Review Medicare enrollment process.
Explore various benefits available under Medicare.
Identify care coordination between Medicare and other programs.

Senior Extension Program Specialist, Gerontology and Health
Family and Community Health
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service
As Extension Program Specialist – Gerontology and Health at Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, Andy Crocker’s focus is the health and well-being of older adults. His main role is to support the County Extension Agents for Family and Community Health in their efforts to educate older adults, caregivers, and the professionals who serve them. Since joining AgriLife Extension in 2003, Mr. Crocker has worked to develop resources to help older adults improve their health literacy through communication with their health provider and better medication management; navigate the Internet and access reliable health information; and provide information and referral to grandparents rearing their grandchildren.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/30/26
Certified Personal and Family Finance Educator (CPFFE): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/30/26
Accredited Financial Counselors (AFC): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits by the Association for Financial Counseling & Planning Education (AFCPE). Eligibility for CE Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/30/27
Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/30/26
Board Certified Case Managers: This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) clock hours from the Commission for Case Manager Certification (CCMC). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/30/25
Certified Personal Finance Counselors (CPFC): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from The Center for Financial Certifications (FinCert.org). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/30/26
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/30/27
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/30/26
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Webinar Slides (PDF)
Securing Tomorrow: Navigating Social Security Retirement & Survivor Benefits
The ABCs of Disability Benefits: Your Guide to SSDI & SSI in 2024
Medicaid’s Role in Military Family Well-Being & Economic Security

Photo Credit: iStockphoto, andreswd

Drug Trends in Military Adults: Essential Insights for Mental Health Professionals
2024-10-17 11:00 - 12:30
This webinar provides a broad overview of the most recent data on emerging drug trends among adult populations in the United States. Topics covered include the status of the opioid/fentanyl epidemic, changes in cocaine and methamphetamine use and consequences, and alcohol and vaping product trends, specifically marijuana and synthetic cannabinoids. Over-the-counter drugs that are currently being sold for recreational use are discussed.
The webinar explores why the military community needs to be aware of the most recent data on drug trends. This session also examines the importance of naloxone and its timely administration in reversing overdose deaths.
Learning Objectives:

Identify drugs that are considered emerging health threats and the impact these drugs are having on military communities
Demonstrate knowledge regarding drug paraphernalia, methods of use, and new technology being used in the drug culture
Discover at least one Over the Counter (OTC) product that is commonly abused for recreational purposes

John Haenes holds a master’s of science in social work and is an internationally certified prevention specialist with 32 years of experience in the field of substance use disorders, juvenile delinquency, trauma, and child welfare. Mr. Haenes is a recognized expert in addiction and adolescent brain development. He currently serves as the Chief Operations Officer of Challenge of Tarrant County, a non-profit agency whose mission is to confront substance abuse by identifying needs, educating the community, mobilizing resources, promoting collaborations, and advocating for sound public policy.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/17/26
Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar is approved for 1.5 CE contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/17/26
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 CE credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/17/27
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar is approved for 1.5 CE credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/17/26
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Webinar Slides Handout
Blog Post (written by webinar presenter John Haenes), Substance Use Disorders, Stigma, and the Military: Breaking the Silence
Military OneSource, MilLife Guide: Substance Abuse and Addiction
This is the first webinar with presenter John Haenes around drug trends. We also recommend watching the second webinar, Drug Trends and Impacts on Military Adults: Practical Suggestions for Mental Health Professionals.

This webinar is a part of the Substance Use, Stigma, and Recovery: Trends in Military Contexts series. Photo Credit: Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

Maximizing the Use of 529 Plans for Military Families
2024-10-15 11:00 - 12:30
529 plans can be a savings tool for more than just college expenses; they can be used for K-12 tuition payments, to repay student loans, and to purchase computers or other related educational expenses. This webinar covers how 529 education savings plans can be leveraged to provide tax-advantaged savings for future educational expenses. Gain the knowledge and tools you need to effectively support military families in planning for their children’s education, including qualifying expenses, Roth rollovers, private 529 plans, and ABLE accounts.
Learning objectives:
By the end of this webinar, learners will be able to:

Identify the 2024 changes to 529 college savings plans including the option to rollover unused funds.
Understand the tax implications for 529 contributions and withdrawals, including gift tax exclusions.
Describe qualifying expenses covered under 529 plans.
Distinguish between the 529 plan and 529A (ABLE accounts).

Andrew is the Program Chair and an Associate Teaching Professor for the Personal Financial Planning program in the Division of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Missouri and an Adjunct Professor at The American College.

Accredited Financial Counselors (AFC): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits by the Association for Financial Counseling & Planning Education (AFCPE). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/15/27
Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/15/26
Certified Personal and Family Finance Educator (CPFFE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/15/26
Certified Personal Finance Counselors (CPFC): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from The Center for Financial Certifications (FinCert.org). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/15/27
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/15/27
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Webinar Slides
College Savings Calculators (FINRED) Photo Credit: gohgah / Adobe Stock

Empowering Military Spouses to Maintain Employment: A Review of the Resources for Holistic Support
2024-10-09 11:00 - 12:30
In the United States, one in five military spouses who want to work remain unemployed, a statistic that has persisted for nearly a decade (Defense Personnel Analytics Center, 2021). This ongoing employment crisis affects not only economic and financial security but also health and well-being. In response, numerous innovative employment initiatives have emerged in both corporate and nonprofit sectors.
This presentation employs a socio-ecological framework to explore the who, what, when, where, and why of cutting-edge military spouse recruitment and retention programs. It will highlight how these programs address the multiple intersecting barriers to employment faced by military spouses. Attendees will gain valuable insights and tools to better support twenty-first-century military spouse job seekers in accessing and maintaining employment throughout the military family life cycle.
Learning Objectives:

Understand current research on how military spouse un- and underemployment influences military family financial, physical, and social health.
Apply a socio-ecological framework to diagnosis barriers to maintaining employment through the military family life cycle.
Learn new Department of Defense, employer and non-profit resources that address holistic military spouse employment needs.

Carrie is a mixed-methods researcher and career advisor who specializes in military family career development. She supports employers and nonprofits with evaluating and improving their professional development programs to meet the needs of military families. She is an active-duty Army spouse and enjoys volunteering in her local military-based community.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar has been approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/9/26
Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar has been approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/9/26
Board Certified Case Managers: This webinar has been approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) clock hours from the Commission for Case Manager Certification (CCMC). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/9/25
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar has been approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/9/27
Human Resource Professionals: This webinar has been approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credit from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/9/26
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar has been approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 10/9/26
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Photo Credit: fizkes | Adobe Stock – 211160599

Enhancing Military Family Well-Being: Understanding and Nurturing Economic Security
2024-09-24 11:00 - 12:00
During the 2024 Military Family Readiness Academy, we will explore the connection between economic security and family well-being and how to address disparities and challenges. We’ll look beyond achieving and sustaining positive personal and family financial outcomes by exploring how various conditions affect overall economic security. We’ll delve into underlying factors relating to social dynamics, environmental influences, and community characteristics. We’ll give special focus to how these factors relate to health and wellness as a foundation of economic security. This webinar will help to empower service providers to leverage their knowledge, skills, and available resources to effectively promote health and well-being.
Learning Objectives:

Review the various factors, often called the “social drivers of health,” or SDOH, that influence health and well-being.
Promote a mindset that empowers providers to focus on understanding the root causes of health and wellness challenges and to be change agents for positive outcomes.
Recognize that such a mindset requires a holistic or ecological approach to understanding how underlying contextual factors, individual circumstances, institutions, and programs interact with each other.
Examine how various organizations and institutions are fostering efforts to encourage awareness and action to address health disparities and to promote well-being – with a special focus on the U.S. military and the Cooperative Extension system.
Identify various state and federal programs that can contribute to military family health and wellness, with a special focus on TRICARE, VA health benefits, Medicaid, and Medicare.
Consider possible new programs and policy developments relevant to military family health and well-being.

This webinar is part of the 2024 Military Family Readiness Academy, Economic Readiness and Military Family Well-Being. With a new series and focus area each year, the Academy takes a multidisciplinary approach to a complex issue faced by family service providers in their work. Join other programming opportunities in this series: https://oneop.org/series/2024mfra/
A case story is used throughout the course and webinars in the 2024 Military Family Readiness Academy. This case story provides an opportunity to examine resources and services within the Military Family Readiness System. This family’s example asks service providers to consider the skills they need to support family well-being through the lens of economic security. Read the case story here. Christopher Plein, Ph.D. works with the Lifespan Caregiving and Leadership Team for OneOp. He is an Eberly Family Professor for Outstanding Public Service Emeritus at West Virginia University. He served as chair of the Department of Public Administration from 2004 until 2011 and also served as an Assistant and Associate Dean for West Virginia University’s Eberly College of Arts & Sciences from 2005 to 2013. Keith G. Tidball, Ph.D. is the Family Transitions Principal Investigator for OneOp. Dr. Tidball is an environmental anthropologist and naturalist who serves as the Assistant Director of Environment and Natural Resources for Cornell Cooperative Extension, while also serving on the faculty of the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at Cornell University. Keith served in uniform with the Army National Guard as both an enlisted person and as an officer. He served in the the Army Reserves and the New York Guard as an officer.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/24/26
Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator (CNWE): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/24/26
Certified Personal and Family Finance Educator (CPFFE): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/24/26
Accredited Financial Counselors (AFC): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit by the Association for Financial Counseling & Planning Education (AFCPE). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/24/27
Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) contact hour by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/24/26
Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RD/RDN) and Nutrition and Dietetics Technicians, Registered (NDTR): This webinar awards 1.0 CPEU in accordance with the Commission on Dietetic Registration’s CPEU Prior Approval Program. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/24/27
Certified Personal Finance Counselors (CPFC): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from The Center for Financial Certifications (FinCert.org). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/24/27
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/24/27
Human Resource Professionals: This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/24/26
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/24/26
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education credit from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/24/26
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

MFRA Case Story: Meet the Howard Family

Photo Credit: iStock

Balancing the Big Picture with the Small
2024-09-19
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNTY4ODAyMyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRjE1Njg4MDIzLWJhbGFuY2luZy10aGUtYmlnLXBpY3R1cmUtd2l0aC10aGUtc21hbGwuanMlM0Zjb250YWluZXJfaWQlM0RidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNTY4ODAyMyUyNnBsYXllciUzRHNtYWxsJTIyJTIwdHlwZSUzRCUyMnRleHQlMkZqYXZhc2NyaXB0JTIyJTIwY2hhcnNldCUzRCUyMnV0Zi04JTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGc2NyaXB0JTNF In this episode of the Practicing Connection podcast, hosts Jessica and Bob explore the concept of balancing the “big picture” with “small actions” in their work and personal lives.
The episode delves into a practice inspired by adrienne maree brown’s book Emergent Strategy, focusing on how simple, individual actions contribute to larger systemic changes over time. Bob guides listeners through a reflection on the interconnectedness of issues and the role each person plays in creating change, no matter how small their actions might seem. The discussion highlights the importance of patience and acceptance in the face of complex challenges, encouraging listeners to embrace both their being and creating in the journey toward collective progress.
Links

Worksheet: Applying the Community Capitals Framework (CCF) with Military Families
2024 MFRA: Economic Readiness and Military Family Well-Being
Emergent Strategy

[music]
Jessica: Hello, and thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection podcast. I’m Jessica. My co-host, Bob, is here as well. Today, we’re going to be talking about balancing the big picture with the small. Bob’s going to share a practice with us. Hi, Bob, how are you?
Bob: I’m doing really well, Jessica. Thanks so much for asking. Earlier this week, I was able to attend a retreat for NDSU Extension Family and Community Wellness Specialists, which I fall in that bucket actually at NDSU, and it really has me energized. I work remotely 99% of the time, so I don’t get many chances to meet with colleagues in person and discuss the work that we’re all doing. I had so many interesting conversations at the retreat. It was really fun. We were able, I think, to spend more time just sharing about our work and lives.
It’s amazing how much deeper conversations can get when they’re not restricted by time. I mentioned the remote thing, but in regular meetings, whether they’re in person or online, I think we all have that time constraint somewhere in our mind. Obviously, we might have a next meeting coming up or something that we want to work on after this thing is over, and it’s scheduled for a certain amount of time.
Vampire Weekend has a song where they talk about the slow click of a ticking clock, and I always think of that lyric when I find myself obsessed by time. At the retreat, we had a couple of days. Our director was responsible for the schedule, not for us. There was a schedule, but I think we all felt freed from that time constraint. That really deepened the conversations. It was really amazing. I’m doing great. How about you? How are you doing?
Jessica: I’m doing good. I’ve been in [unintelligible 00:01:52] Purgatory. I’m not Catholic. I don’t know anything about Purgatory, but it feels like this might be it. [laughs] That quote you shared with Vampire Weekend, I think you said the slow click of a ticking clock, reminds me of something I heard recently about– It’s been stuck in my mind about how the days are long, but the years are short. I don’t remember where I heard that from, but it’s in reference to the slow click of a ticking clock, even though we constantly feel a little bit rushed, but it’s easy to ignore certain things like relationship building or one of my favorite quotes from Chad Littlefield, connection before content.
It’s easy to forget that connection part because we have the clock ticking, but the days are long, and the years are short. If we keep ignoring day to day that bit of connection, I think that years later, you find that, when you’re trying to collaborate with these people or whatever, it could be a little bit more difficult because you’ve never really established those relationship. One of my favorite things to do, which is thought partnering with somebody, somebody just contacts you in your network and says, “I just need to think through something. Will you help me do that?” I get so energized by that. I got to do that this week.
I’m helping a colleague out with a project that they’re working on that involves lots of public input and I just really enjoyed spending that time partnering with them on that. Every time I was sharing something, I’m like, “I’m so sorry, I’m making this more complex.” They’re like, “That’s great.” I love complexity. I don’t like complications, but I love complexity. It was just fun. It doesn’t bother me if they don’t use any of my ideas, but they’re very enthusiastic about them. That’s all I need. I just need an ego boost a little, I guess. I also know that when I need a thought partner, I can call them, too. I get really excited about that and inspired by it.
Bob: That’s awesome. You’re a great thought partner. I can speak from experience. I said that to someone recently, too. We were talking about something. I’m like, “I’m sorry. I just keep making this more complex.”
[laughter]
Bob: Maybe that is helpful in thought partnering sometimes anyway. Maybe it’s also helpful if someone tells you, “What I need right now from you, thought partner, is to simplify things a little bit and provide some focus.”
Jessica: Then I’m like, “You came to the wrong thought partner.”
Bob: Exactly. “We’ll find someone else for you.”
Jessica: We’d love to hear what’s inspiring our listeners. Please share what’s inspiring you by clicking the Send Us a Text message at the top of the description of this episode. When you click the link, your text messaging app will open, and you’ll see a seven-digit number and the words Do Not Remove. Type your message after that and click send. Don’t remove that number, or we won’t receive your message.
To protect your privacy, we won’t see your phone number, and we can’t text you back, but we’ll share your feedback on a future episode. If you’re listening on a computer, you can email us at practicingconnectionatoneop.org. Let us know what’s inspiring you now.
[music]
Jessica: All right, let’s learn more about balancing the big picture and the small. Bob, can you tell us a little more about the practice you’ll be sharing, and why you chose it?
Bob: Sure. As we’re recording this, we’re in the midst of the 2024 OneOp Military Family Readiness Academy, which is titled Economic Readiness and Military Family Well-being. In the self-paced course and in the live events that we’ve had as part of the Academy, we’ve been learning a lot about some of the frameworks that can help us understand economic readiness.
The social ecological model or frameworks can really help us understand the complex interplay between individuals and their environment, which is very helpful. They remind us that everything is connected, that economic readiness, for example, is not just about an individual’s financial knowledge or behavior. There are various interconnected factors at the individual interpersonal community and societal level that influence financial readiness and all kinds of other issues. I would say almost all human issues are influenced by a lot of complex factors. These frameworks are definitely important, but they also can make us feel a little helpless.
Recognizing the complexity of an issue can make it difficult to see how we might make any difference at all or make any change at all. With all of these factors at play, we might just start to think, how can my actions have an impact on this huge issue? I think it can take some reflection and practice to find the balance in the big picture and the small, to acknowledge that an issue is complex and understand that and bring that to our work, but still sustain the belief that we can make a difference.
Jessica: Yes, you and I have dedicated our careers to being in both the big picture and the small. I’ll say that when I was in school for my master’s program, I had a really hard time understanding that I couldn’t save the world with my master’s thesis, that I could only take the tiniest little biteable bite out of understanding the issue. It took me a bit to get that. When you’re ready for action, and you’re fired up, you really want to make a difference. It can feel a little disheartening to know that it’s a much bigger, more complex issue. Let’s get started. You have some insights and questions to share that can help us balance the big picture with the small. Please walk us through that.
Bob: I’d love to. First of all, much of what I know about finding the balance between the big picture and the small, between complexity and individual action comes from Adrienne Maree Brown’s book Emergent Strategy. I highly recommend reading it, first of all. Adrienne draws on the work of Octavia Butler and Grace Lee Boggs and Margaret Wheatley and others to write about how the idea of emergence can inform our individual and collective action to address the issues we face in our communities and in the world. I’m going to talk about emergence for a second, but I also want to say a lot of this is out there and in the ether.
What Adrienne is able to do is to express it in a way that we can put it into practice through emergent strategy. What is emergence? Nick Obolensky defines emergence as the way complex systems and patterns arise out of the multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Short-order, complex systems arise out of lots of different stuff that is related, lots of different actions that are all related. I find that definition alone helpful in trying to find balance between the big and the small because it connects those two things, the systems and the interactions.
If complex systems arise from simple interactions, changing those simple interactions will change the system. Maybe that change will not be detectable in the short term, the medium term, or even in the span of a human life. In the framework of emergence, it will make a difference by definition. That reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Devine Carama, who said, “It is hubris to expect to see the benefits of our leadership within our lifetime or the impact of our leadership within our lifetime.”
That speaks to that. We are making change all the time through our actions, but I think what affects our ability to see the balance is that we want to see the system, the big change happen too fast. We might not be able to see that. Accepting that I think is really important. Here’s a passage from Adrienne Maree Brown’s book, Emergent Strategy, that I find really helpful to meditate on. If you have a meditation practice, you could repeat it to yourself when you meditate. If not, you could put it on a Post-it, use it as a prompt in your journal, or just think about it when you’re feeling maybe a little overwhelmed or helpless in the face of complexity.
Here’s the quote. “Nothing is required of me more than being and creating, simultaneously being present with who I am, who we are as a species and creating who we must become, and within that, who I must become.” I’m going to repeat that. “Nothing is required of me more than being and creating, simultaneously being present with who I am, who we are as a species and creating who we must become, and within that, who I must become.” If this feels too big for you, you can shorten it to something like, “Nothing is required of me more than being and creating who I must become.”
The key here is to take time to reflect on both the complexity and the interconnectedness of the issues we face, and on yourself as the creator of the simple interactions that give rise to that complexity and interconnectedness. You can zoom out to see the community, the species, the universe that you are a part of, and you can zoom in to see yourself, the difference you’re making, and even the multitude of cells that make up your body and the microorganisms that live in you and on you. I hope you’ll take time to reflect on that, and I hope it helps.
Bob: Thank you so much for guiding us through that. It reminds me a little bit, and it makes sense. You mentioned that some of the work comes from Margaret Wheatley’s influence as well, but it reminds me of the islands of sanity that Margaret Wheatley talks about, how we can create our own islands of sanity in the middle of the complexities. Thanks so much for guiding us through that. I love that. I will definitely go back and listen and think about it and meditate on it.
Jessica: Thanks for the opportunity to share it.
Bob: That’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We’ll be back next week with a practice for applying systems thinking to local efforts. Until then, keep practicing.
[music]
Speaker: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, U.S. Department of Defense, under award number 2023-48770-41333.
[music]
[00:13:48] [END OF AUDIO]

Balancing Military Spouse Employment with Family Economic Well-Being
2024-09-12 11:00 - 12:00
Military family members are an integral part of a service member’s support system, but the challenges faced by military spouses in maintaining employment are often overlooked. The Department of Defense provides an array of support services, resources, community networks, programs, and initiatives to assist military spouses in pursuing their career goals while ensuring their family’s well-being.
This webinar addresses the ways in which the Department of Defense endeavors to positively influence the career trajectories of military spouses, contributing to their families’ economic stability and overall well-being. Join us as we work towards creating a more supportive and inclusive environment for those who sacrifice alongside our service members!
Learning Objectives:

Identify the unique challenges military spouses face in balancing employment responsibilities with the demands of military life, including frequent relocations and deployments, and how these challenges affect family well-being.
Describe what the Department of Defense has implemented to collectively address the barriers around military spouse employment in support of military readiness and retention.
Recognize the correlation between military family systems of support and their economic well-being.

This webinar is part of the 2024 Military Family Readiness Academy, Economic Readiness and Military Family Well-Being. With a new series and focus area each year, the Academy takes a multidisciplinary approach to a complex issue faced by family service providers in their work. Join other programming opportunities in this series: https://oneop.org/series/2024mfra/
A case story is used throughout the course and webinars in the 2024 Military Family Readiness Academy. This case story provides an opportunity to examine resources and services within the Military Family Readiness System. This family’s example asks service providers to consider the skills they need to support family well-being through the lens of economic security. Read the case story here.

Eddy brings more than 27 years of personal and professional experience in supporting military families through a variety of roles across the Department of Defense (DoD) and Federal Government. As associate director in the DoD’s Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, he is responsible for management of the family readiness and well-being policies and programs.

Josie is the program manager for the Spouse Education and Career Opportunities (SECO) program, supporting and empowering more than 1.1 million military spouses through career exploration, education, training, and employer connections. She has 15 years of experience serving communities through the nonprofit and public sectors, mostly serving military families.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/12/26
Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator (CNWE): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/12/26
Certified Personal and Family Finance Educator (CPFFE): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/12/26
Accredited Financial Counselors (AFC): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit by the Association for Financial Counseling & Planning Education (AFCPE). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/12/27
Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) contact hour by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/12/26
Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RD/RDN) and Nutrition and Dietetics Technicians, Registered (NDTR): This webinar awards 1.0 CPEU in accordance with the Commission on Dietetic Registration’s CPEU Prior Approval Program. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/12/27
Certified Personal Finance Counselors (CPFC): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from The Center for Financial Certifications (FinCert.org). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/12/27
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/12/27
Human Resource Professionals: This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/12/26
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/12/26
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education credit from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 9/12/26
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Webinar Slides
MFRA Case Story: Meet the Howard Family

Photo Credit: iStock 1420097514

Strengthening Health, Wellness, and Financial Security Through Total Force Fitness
2024-08-29 11:00 - 12:00
Total Force Fitness focuses on the service member’s entire health throughout their career. Total Force Fitness focuses on enhancing eight dimensions of wellness for service members. This webinar discusses the financial fitness dimension and how economic insecurity can affect the other wellness dimensions including nutritional fitness. This webinar will also highlight initiatives to support financial fitness and food security.

Learning Objectives:

Define the eight dimensions of wellness in the Total Force Fitness concept.
Describe how the eight dimensions of wellness affect each other.
Outline the risk factors for food insecurity for the U.S. military
Describe methods for identifying and assisting economic and/or food-insecure service members.

This webinar is part of the 2024 Military Family Readiness Academy, Economic Readiness and Military Family Well-Being. With a new series and focus area each year, the Academy takes a multidisciplinary approach to a complex issue faced by family service providers in their work. Join other programming opportunities in this series: https://oneop.org/series/2024mfra/
A case story is used throughout the course and webinars in the 2024 Military Family Readiness Academy. This case story provides an opportunity to examine resources and services within the Military Family Readiness System. This family’s example asks service providers to consider the skills they need to support family well-being through the lens of economic security. Read the case story here. Joanna Reagan is a Public Health Nutritionist with the Defense Center Public Health. She serves as Chair of the Dietary Supplements and Self-Care Products subcommittee, coordinating dietary supplement education and strategic efforts. She supports the Total Force Fitness Nutrition Domain by focusing on DoD nutrition strategies in partnership with the Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Marines. Dr. Theresa Jackson Santo is the Senior Public Health Scientist and Deputy Director for Health Promotion and Wellness within the Defense Health Agency Public Health Directorate. Her team seeks to champion a culture of health, wellness, and readiness that strategically assesses, develops, integrates, standardizes, and evaluates health promotion and wellness capabilities and effectiveness in support of military communities and the Total Force. Since 2011, Dr. Santo has been an advocate of evidence informed health promotion practice in support of Total Force Fitness and is a recognized subject matter expert in public health program evaluation. As the Army Headquarters, Deputy Chief of Staff, G-9’s Financial Education Program Manager, Ms. Mroszczyk is responsible for oversight, development, coordination, and evaluation in support of execution of the Army Financial Literacy Training and Readiness Program, for Active, Guard, and Reserve Components. She monitors program performance, develops recommendations and problem-solving techniques to ensure optimum program achievements that are consistent with Army standards to enable mission accomplishment. Ms. Mroszczyk’s priorities are to develop, manage, and monitor a comprehensive financial education to meet the requirements of the financial literacy training and readiness program for Soldiers and Families. As the proud spouse of an active-duty Army Soldier, for over 20 years, she has a vested interest in ensuring the overall financial well-being of the Total Force. Ms. Mroszczyk works remotely from Joint Base Lewis-McChord. This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit for many different professionals accredited through the credentialing agencies listed below.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/29/26
Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator (CNWE): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/29/26
Certified Personal and Family Finance Educator (CPFFE): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/29/26
Accredited Financial Counselors (AFC): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit by the Association for Financial Counseling & Planning Education (AFCPE). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/29/27
Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) contact hour by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/29/26
Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RD/RDN) and Nutrition and Dietetics Technicians, Registered (NDTR): This webinar awards 1.0 CPEU in accordance with the Commission on Dietetic Registration’s Prior Approval Program Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/29/27
Certified Personal Finance Counselors (CPFC): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from The Center for Financial Certifications (FinCert.org). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/29/27
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/29/27
Human Resource Professionals: This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 7/31/26
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/29/26
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education credit from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/29/27
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Webinar Slides
MFRA Case Story: Meet the Howard Family

Photo Credit: iStock Whether you are a new or seasoned service provider, the Powerful Provider collection will enhance your awareness and knowledge of programs and services designed to promote military family well-being.

Medicaid’s Role in Military Family Well-Being & Economic Security
2024-08-14 11:00 - 12:00
This webinar will explore Medicaid’s role in contributing to the well-being and economic security of military families. For some military families, Medicaid provides additional support not otherwise provided under TRICARE and other military and community-based services. Participants will learn about Medicaid’s role in providing health insurance coverage for eligible individuals and families. They will also learn about recent developments in Medicaid policy that are intended to address underlying threats to economic security (such as housing and food access). Because Medicaid benefits are not always fully understood or utilized, this webinar will also focus on approaches to access to care.
Learning Objectives

Discuss the broad policy purposes and history of the Medicaid program, with special focus given to variability across the states in benefits, eligibility, and services.
Highlight how Medicaid is relevant to caregiving across various stages of individual and family lifespans.
Review Medicaid and TRICARE health benefits for “dually eligible” military families.
Examine obstacles to accessing Medicaid and other programs due to factors associated with the social drivers of health (SDOH).
Explore recent Medicaid services and initiatives focused on health, wellness, and economic security, as well as identify possible future developments in the Medicaid program.

Professor of Public Administration
Eberly Family Professor for Outstanding Public Service
West Virginia University
Christopher Plein, Ph.D. is a Professor of Public Administration and Eberly Family Professor for Outstanding Public Service at West Virginia University. His academic research on health and social policy has been published in such journals as Health Affairs, the Journal of Health and Human Services Administration, and The Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Uninsured. His expertise on Medicaid and health policy has led to invited presentations at the state and national level, presentations to the West Virginia Legislature, and interviews with state and national media. Dr. Plein is also part of the OneOp team.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/14/26
Accredited Financial Counselors (AFC): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit by the Association for Financial Counseling & Planning Education (AFCPE). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/14/27
Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) contact hour by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/14/26
Certified Personal Finance Counselors (CPFC): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from The Center for Financial Certifications (FinCert.org). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/14/27
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/14/27
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credit from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 8/14/27
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Economic Readiness and Military Family Well-Being Series
Medicare 101: Simplifying Enrollment and Benefits Webinar
Navigating TRICARE’s Autism Care Demonstration Webinar

Photo Credit: iStockphoto; Drazen Zigic

Improve Your Feedback with Gratitude and Vulnerability
2024-08-08
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNTM1MjMyNiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRjE1MzUyMzI2LWltcHJvdmUteW91ci1mZWVkYmFjay13aXRoLWdyYXRpdHVkZS1hbmQtdnVsbmVyYWJpbGl0eS5qcyUzRmNvbnRhaW5lcl9pZCUzRGJ1enpzcHJvdXQtcGxheWVyLTE1MzUyMzI2JTI2cGxheWVyJTNEc21hbGwlMjIlMjB0eXBlJTNEJTIydGV4dCUyRmphdmFzY3JpcHQlMjIlMjBjaGFyc2V0JTNEJTIydXRmLTglMjIlM0UlM0MlMkZzY3JpcHQlM0U= Discover the transformative power of feedback. Hosts Bob Bertsch and Jessica Beckendorf explore the nuances of giving and receiving feedback, emphasizing its role in personal and professional growth. Jessica shares a practical readiness checklist, offering valuable insights for enhancing feedback practices.
Links

Dare to Lead: The Engaged Feedback Checklist

Listening for Strengths and Values (S.5, Ep.2)

[music]
Bob: When done well, feedback can energize, engage, and positively motivate both the giver and the receiver. It’s an act of gratitude and vulnerability. Hi everyone. This is Bob. Welcome to this week’s Practicing Connection practicast, where we highlight a specific practice you can use in your personal and professional growth.
This week’s practice is focused on giving and receiving feedback. My Practicing Connection co-host, Jessica Beckendorf, is going to be guiding us through a practice in a few minutes, but first, let’s talk more about this giving and receiving feedback. Hi, Jessica. I’d like to know why you think we need practice giving and receiving feedback.
Jessica: Giving and receiving feedback can be really difficult because it involves vulnerability. Researcher Brené Brown has been quoted as saying that, “Feedback should be as vulnerable for the person giving it as it is for the person receiving it.” I think that’s a really interesting way to think about it because when you are going to be giving feedback, you often have been thinking about it for a long time, right? Sometimes the person who’s receiving the feedback is sort of getting a little blindsided.
When you have this in mind, this idea that the feedback should be as vulnerable for the person giving it as it is for the person receiving it, I think it puts you in the right headspace for giving the feedback. When you give feedback, you are communicating what you value and any boundaries associated with that value or those values. That’s why it is also vulnerable for the person giving feedback. It’s one of the reasons why.
Likewise, of course, the person receiving feedback is in a vulnerable position. I think it’s really common, I’ve been guilty of this to sugarcoat or even skip feedback for a lot of reasons. It feels difficult. We assume that what we want to say, even if our heart is in the best place and we really want to see this person grow, and that’s why we have the feedback, but we’re afraid that they’re going to receive it as criticism. Maybe we like the person and we’re afraid the feedback will hurt their feelings.
We might resist or avoid getting feedback because it can feel like straight up criticism, or it can be triggering for us, or because we have maybe a fear of failure or a fear of letting people down, or because it can touch on some deeper stories that we tell ourselves about who we are and our worth in society. Because we need healthy relationships to live and work in this world, getting better at giving and receiving feedback is a really crucial skill to develop, I think.
Bob: You alluded to this hurting people’s feelings. I’m wondering how we can keep our feedback from doing that, from becoming personal or from, on the other side of it, taking our feedback personally.
Jessica: Yes, there’s so much here. I’ll bring Brené Brown’s work into this conversation again because I think that a crucial first step is one that she suggests in her book, Dare to Lead. We need to have a certain level of readiness before we engage in giving feedback. Being able to talk about the issue from our values and from our integrity is key here. Don’t rush into it.
Keep the feedback focused on the actions or behavior and how it has affected you, versus a flaw or weakness that you perceive the other person has. Then as far as receiving feedback goes, Brené Brown has some good advice here also. One of those pieces of advice is to have a bit of helpful self-talk that you can use to help you in the moment. She likes to structure hers around a strength that she has, so she’ll say something like, “I’m brave enough to listen.” Courage is one of her values, I should say, not strength. It’s probably a strength of hers as well.
Mine is, let’s find what I can yes and in what’s being said to me, staying present and practicing reflecting back what you’re hearing. I think a lot of times our brains are going haywire when we’re getting feedback and they’re like, “Run away, run away, run away.” Try to stay present. Avoid being defensive, which can be really, really hard. You want to defend yourself. Maybe you disagree with what’s being said to you.
I advise you to just refrain from that and maybe at the end you can say, “Hey, I need a moment to think about this. I’m going to get back to you and let’s pick up the conversation another time.” That said, you can also give yourself permission to take a break. I know that in not all situations do you feel like you have the power to do that. You can in a lot of situations acknowledge that, “Wow, you’ve given me a lot to think about. I could use a little bit of time here to just absorb it and get back to you. I would definitely like to pick up the conversation again to talk through it.”
Within the topic of giving and receiving feedback, I think a lot of attention is placed on when we have some negative or constructive feedback that we need to deliver. I think it’s equally important for a person’s growth for us to learn to give and receive positive feedback. I used to have a really hard time with positive feedback and once in a while I still do. I’ve learned to just say thank you. Sometimes internally I’m like, “Oh, do I actually deserve that feedback?”
I have a hard time like giving feedback. It’s not that it’s hard for me to say the words, it’s that I’m not always noticing when I might need to say them, or I’m not always noticing the things that I should be giving positive feedback for. It’s sometimes harder for us to notice the good things because we’re so wired to just notice when something isn’t going right. Nobody has time for anything else. We just wait till something goes wrong and then we’re like, “Oh, whose fault is it?” We can train ourselves to notice the good things.
Strength spotting, which we’ve talked about on this podcast before is one way that we can provide and practice positive feedback, and sharing our gratitude for someone’s contributions is another way. Thinking about what are we grateful? Think about that person, what am I grateful for about this person’s contributions and then go tell them. [laughs]
Bob: That’s really great advice. Thanks for that, Jessica. I think when we think about giving or receiving feedback, the picture that we get in our head is a supervisor-employee relationship or a manager-employee relationship. I’m wondering how giving and receiving feedback works in situations where there isn’t necessarily a hierarchy, like in a team situation or a collaborative situation.
Jessica: Yes, I really love this question because I think you’re right. The default that we think about is the supervisor-employee scenario where there’s a different power differential. I think in a situation like a team or collaborative effort, feedback can be built into your group culture, and it can be built into your supervisor-employee relationship as well.
Since you asked about teams or collaborations, I think there’s some specific things you can do like establishing group principles that are focused on open, high trust relationship building, and having some norms around how you bring new people into a group so that they can get accustomed to those group principles. I think even building feedback directly into regular processes like your meeting agendas, you could leave space for regular kudos, or you could leave space regularly to discuss what’s working well and what isn’t working as well.
Again, I recommend keeping the feedback focused on processes and actions, not on individuals and who’s pulling their weight more than others. Not that anyone speaks directly like that, but the way we talk about and the way we give feedback and the way we talk about it, it can damage relationships. The beauty here in the situation of a team or collaboration is that the group can decide together how you’ll work together and handle feedback and conflicts. You guys can also hold each other accountable for that.
The more you open conversation you have about things like how we’ll do feedback in this group, the better your group will be. Frankly, I think it’ll build the individual skills as well for people to go back to other situations in their lives and be able to give feedback and receive feedback better as well.
Bob: All right. You have some advice and a practice to walk us through, and I’d love to hear more about how I can start doing this better, honestly.
Jessica: I hope this helps. The practice I have today for giving constructive feedback is actually a readiness checklist from Brené Brown. Today is a Brené Brown day for our podcast. You can download it, the checklist from the Dare to Lead website. We’ll put the link in the show notes for you.
You can use this checklist anytime before you’re going to give feedback. Each question’s a series of 10 questions. Each question is a simple yes, no. Well, simple is maybe going to be up to you to decide. For the purpose of this practicast, I think it’d be really good as you’re listening right now to think about a situation for which you need to provide feedback to a person. If you’re not in a situation like that right now, think about a situation from the past where you needed to give feedback. As I go through this list, I want you to notice if you answered no to any of the questions. Ask yourself why and what you need in order to make that answer a yes. The first question, I know I’m ready to give feedback when I’m ready to sit next to you rather than across from you. I’m ready to give feedback when I’m willing to put the problem in front of us rather than between us. This is the difference between blaming someone and focusing on the fact that something needs to change instead.
I know I’m ready to give feedback when I’m ready to listen, ask questions, and accept that I may not fully understand the issue. I think that last part is really key; accept that I may not fully understand the issue. I think we really want to make our guesses and put people in boxes. I know I’m ready to give feedback when I’m ready to acknowledge what you do well instead of just picking apart your mistakes. I know I’m ready to give feedback when I recognize your strengths and how you can use them to address your challenges.
I know I’m ready to give feedback when I can hold you accountable without shaming or blaming you. I know I’m ready to give feedback when I’m open to owning my part. I want to acknowledge that that’s another hard one, I think. I know I’m ready to give feedback when I can genuinely thank someone for efforts rather than just criticizing them for their failings.
I know I’m ready to give feedback when I can talk about how resolving these challenges will lead to growth and opportunity. I know I’m ready to give feedback when I can model the vulnerability and openness that I expect to see from you. These are all, I think, really helpful to slow yourself down to.
If we’re in a situation where we need to give some constructive feedback, I think sometimes we’re ready to rush in and just point out all the things that we need changed. This will help slow down, help you slow down just a little bit, think through it and help you become better at giving feedback. I just wanted to point out one more time, for learning to notice and share positive feedback, I recommend strength spotting from our Listening for Strengths and Values episode, season five, episode two.
Bob: Yes. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes for this episode as well. Thanks so much for guiding us through that, Jessica.
Jessica: You’re so welcome. This is a topic that I think is really hard for most of us. The more we can help people in this area, I think the better all of our relationships will be.
Bob: That’s it for this episode. Thanks for joining us. We hope you’ll give this practice a try, and share your experience in the Practicing Connection LinkedIn group where people supporting military families practice the skills that empower us to work together so that we can positively impact our communities and help families thrive. You’ll find the link to the group on our website at oneop.org/practicingconnection.
Next week, we’ll be back with an in-depth episode. We’ll be discussing Share the Work and Love, one of the eight ways of cultivating community resilience that we identified in our Connecting Communities in Asset-Based Community Recovery project. Until then, keep practicing.
Speaker: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp, and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award numbers 2019-48770-30366 and 2023-48770-41333.
[music]
[00:14:29] [END OF AUDIO]

Feeding Military Families with Stronghold Food Pantry CEO Monica Bassett
2024-08-01
Join us in the “Practicing Connection” community. When you sign up you’ll receive a monthly email focused on practicing connection. The email will help us establish a shared rhythm and some shared experiences in our community. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNTM1MjI4NyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRjE1MzUyMjg3LWZlZWRpbmctbWlsaXRhcnktZmFtaWxpZXMtd2l0aC1zdHJvbmdob2xkLWZvb2QtcGFudHJ5LWNlby1tb25pY2EtYmFzc2V0dC5qcyUzRmNvbnRhaW5lcl9pZCUzRGJ1enpzcHJvdXQtcGxheWVyLTE1MzUyMjg3JTI2cGxheWVyJTNEc21hbGwlMjIlMjB0eXBlJTNEJTIydGV4dCUyRmphdmFzY3JpcHQlMjIlMjBjaGFyc2V0JTNEJTIydXRmLTglMjIlM0UlM0MlMkZzY3JpcHQlM0U= In this episode, co-hosts Jessica Beckendorf and Bob Bertsch talk with Monica Bassett, founder and CEO of Stronghold Food Pantry, a resource for military families on Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Monica talks about how she started a food pantry on Fort Riley, KS and how she launched Stronghold, highlighting the role military spouses, like Monica, can play in supporting military families.
Links

Stronghold Food Pantry

Stronghold on Facebook
Stronghold on Instagram

[music]
Kalin Goble: Welcome to Practicing Connection, a podcast exploring the personal stories and collective practices that empower us to work together to improve our resilience and readiness in a rapidly changing world. Here to start the conversation are Jessica Beckendorf and Bob Bertsch.
Bob Bertsch: Hi, and welcome to the Practicing Connection podcast. I’m Bob Bertsch.
Jessica Beckendorf: I’m Jessica Beckendorf. This year our team at OneOp has been focusing on food security for military families. We came across a news article about Stronghold Food Pantry Founder and CEO, Monica Bassett.
Bob: Monica’s a military spouse and advocate for the underprivileged in the military community. Through her personal experience with food insecurity as a child and by connecting with military families facing the same struggles, she’s made it her mission to ease the burden of food insecurity and shine a light on undernourishment of families. She founded Stronghold Food Pantry on Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to respectfully supply resources to families.
Provide actionable solutions and educate others on the crisis of food insecurity in the military. Monica was named the Armed Forces Insurance Army Spouse of the Year in 2022 because of her commitment to alleviating food insecurity, and we are so very excited to have her join us for the podcast and for today’s conversation. Welcome to Practicing Connection, Monica. Thanks so much for joining us.
Monica Bassett: Thank you. I appreciate y’all having me on.
Jessica: Monica, I’m really curious what led you to your work on food security.
Monica: It really just started over COVID. Military families were stuck in a predicament where children were being sent home, school was out, spouses had to either quit their job, try to find remote work. Things got really tight. I was in an installation Fort Riley, Kansas at the time, and we were also very highly deployable that soldiers were always gone. I started seeing the increased need and call to action of families needing help. They weren’t asking for money. They weren’t asking for rides. They weren’t asking for big-ticket items. They were asking for help stocking their refrigerator, their pantries. I just started it from my garage.
I started with our funds buying food. What I actually did was bringing it back to something that you guys mentioned in your last podcast, community resilience. I really identified the gap– I just sort did it backwards. I identified the gap. I started with my own resources, my family. Then the community came and they found ways that they could contribute. I had neighbors whaling down in wagons foods to stock up so that I could feed more military families, and it became a coast-wide initiative. After that it grew to civilians wanting to contribute, and the community wanted to take part in this initiative to help its military families. That’s really how it started.
Jessica: Wow. You started to touch on this, but how did you know where to start? Tell me more about how you knew where to start.
Monica: I didn’t. [laughter]
Jessica: That is what pretty much every caring community volunteer has probably ever said, “I really didn’t know where to start. I just started doing stuff.” Tell me more about that, Monica.
Monica: It was a gut punch. It wasn’t something all-inspiring. It was a gut punch to have military spouses like myself asking for assistance. Asking for help in the most humble of ways. It really was something that either was going to bring you into action or face you to put the rose-colored goggles on and look the other way. Me and my family opted to just dive into it, and it really just started with knowing what I could do personally to help.
After that, being that person that was in the forefront led others to say, “I want to join you,” and then the initiative grew. When I left Fort Riley, I knew I needed to lead this program with someone who I couldn’t trust because my mission was never to start something and let it die. It has to continue and has to continue helping families. I left it with the Spouses Club there at Fort Riley and that program is still continuing now.
Jessica: Wow. One of the cool things I’m noticing in your story is that sometimes even when we start alone in something like this, we’re not alone, people will start to notice. We all have what’s in our circle of control the things that we actually can do ourselves. We all have a circle of influence, but sometimes we might not know who’s in that circle of influence.
As people start to see what we’re doing, that circle of influence might start to come to you, which sounds like what happened to you, Monica. In that same vein, I’m really interested to know what your collaborations were like both on installation and in the community. Did you collaborate with people who were out in the community as well as on installation? If so, tell me a little bit more about how that came about and what that was like.
Monica: Yes, absolutely. I think it’s very important to build bridges with our civilian community. I think that that is how military installations and military communities thrive. Because we contribute to our outside civilian installation by shopping there, living there, paying taxes, buying vehicles. They want to also tie back into us. When you can build that bridge and let them be helpful to military families in the installation, things can be very successful. What I started there, first initially I researched all the food pantries that were civilian food pantries around the installation, around several counties.
I started talking to their executive directors, I started volunteering. I started bringing groups of military spouses to come volunteer with me so that we could see the climate, the dynamic, how they operate, how they service. After that, I started bringing in our local command team. We had command spouses come out and want to see for themselves what was happening in these outside communities. How they were servicing civilians, and possibly military personnel that also attended there. I think it’s very important to tie and to build those bridges with our outside community.
Even now fast forward two years and Stronghold as a nonprofit, we are bringing in organizations from civilian communities, Kansas City, Wichita, Missouri, that want to help military families, but don’t have a tie into the military community. They’re like, “We don’t even service your county, we don’t even service that, will you be an agency we can partner with?” Absolutely. If that means that I can alleviate a burden to a military family somehow, absolutely. Let’s try to figure out how to make this work.
Jessica: Do you have a sense for how they didn’t have a tie-in to the military community?
Monica: In the military, we are personified by the notion of we take care of our own. That is a lot of what civilian organizations, hospital, agencies that help a civilian community with diapers, and formula, and food. Those are the notions that they have. We didn’t know this was happening in the military community. A big part of what I do as the Founder and CEO of Stronghold is get myself out into the civilian community and educate those individuals.
Because they had no idea that military families were living with 24% of food insecurity, or that they do not qualify for SNAP benefits because after 6 hours and 27 minutes of me personally waiting on hold to apply we don’t qualify. Because from the get-go we’re disqualified because of the way our earnings statement is read. Which is shocking because this same federally funded program of WIC runs a completely different way with regulations and guidelines and military families do qualify for that.
What I am seeing within Stronghold and with different food pantries that run and help military installations, it’s that our highest demographic of military families needing assistance are not E1Z, 2Z3s. They are E6s, E7s who already have grown children in the household, which makes sense they’re eating more. They’re more hungry. They’re living in a more active lifestyle. What they’re being able to get for their money in a grocery store is not sustaining that active lifestyle, which in turn equals food insecurity.
Jessica: When my dad was E67, I was a teenager and I needed money for the movies. [laughs]
Monica: It’s sad. What you just noted right there is hard because if families do don’t have the funds for groceries, sadly they also don’t have the funds for any actual fun that the family might have, and activities that you would really love your children to enjoy. All those extra perks. Currently, Stronghold is doing Pack the Backpack event next week for families because PCS season is one of the largest factors in what tilts military families into food insecurity. When you compound those expenses with a $200 back-to-school supply bill, that it’s sometimes doubled and tripled, that’s a huge burden. I always try to think of that. If military families don’t have the financial means to really supply that adequate food, there are many other things that are going by the wayside as well.
Bob: Monica, can you tell us a little bit more about how Stronghold got founded after you left Fort Riley?
Monica: Yes. It still moves me now because who would’ve thought that something that just started in a garage an agency, a large organization? Armed Forces Insurance approached me when I moved to our next installation, Fort Leavenworth. They had read about some of the things that I had done at Fort Riley. They wanted to help military families, and they wanted to tie into what we were doing.
They became a founding sponsor by giving me space. I have zero overhead. Stronghold has space completely donated by Armed Forces Insurance and that includes utilities and anything in their facility that I might need. That is tremendously generous and that really to me shows their dedication to want to help the military community.
Bob: Is that space on installation?
Monica: It is. We are on Fort Leavenworth in their building, just right around the corner from the local hospital.
Bob: How have you seen military families adapt to that or come to Stronghold? Do you have a sense of where folks who needed help at Fort Leavenworth were going previously?
Monica: Yes. Military families here– first and foremost, Fort Leavenworth is typically known as a very officer-heavy installation because we have the academy here. You have a lot of officers come in, transitioning from captain to major. However, we also hold the barracks prison on the other side of the installation, and we hold over 800 junior enlisted soldiers and families here. That is very predominant in this installation.
They used to service. They used to attend services at outside organization, Salvation Army, Catholic charities, things of that nature. There is always those fear of repercussions of who’s going to report me because a lot of outside food pantries they require to take in earning statements income in order to get state and federal grants. Anytime they have to identify who they are, put down their information.
The first question that the director at Catholic charity shared with me was– or that they say, “Are you going to share this with our commanders? Are you going to share this with the installation?” She’s like, “I always have to reassure them that we will not.” Where Stronghold stands in the gap is the fact that to reassure them to make sure that we do service and help all military families. Because as I noted earlier, our families do not qualify for SNAP.
Even if we did require them to apply, they would not qualify for our services if we required that. By standing in the gap Stronghold requires no earning statements. If you say that you need assistance, if you can get past the stigma, if you can get past the fear of repercussions and the embarrassment and you say you need assistance. Then we’re going to service you, no questions asked. That’s truly where we stand in the gap because we are not a DOD facility.
We do not run the numbers up. We do not take units, information, rank, any of that information, and pass it along in the chain. We do not make them qualify by an earning statement. We are truly very unique in the space where we do fall into that gap. We have seen that in the course of five months our patrons, and it’s bittersweet because you never want someone to need this assistance. It’s also at the same time exciting that the word is getting out that they can trust you.
The more names that come on and the more relationships that we build with our patrons they’re like, “My friend told me you guys were safe. They were never reported, so we really need some help.” Then you have families coming in saying, “We have an emergency request because my spouse needed to leave or deploy TDY and now we have all these expenses.” The fact that they can trust you and that word of mouth is getting out there is very special to Stronghold because it means that we’re doing something right.
Bob: You talked a little bit about the stigma and I just– in the introduction, I mentioned that Stronghold tries to respectfully provide these things. What does that mean to you and to Stronghold Food Pantry to respectfully provide this service to our military families?
Monica: That is probably one of my biggest notions or something I keep in the forefront for me in my mission, and it’s in the mission statement as well. Because it just means so much protecting a service member and their families anonymity and our culture is huge. This is why they don’t report that they are having issues. It is noted from the Department of Defense that one of the largest issues that military service members, why they do not report having food insecurity, financial difficulty, mental health issues, any of that is always fear of repercussions and stigma.
The way that Stronghold tries to protect their anonymity is they always reserve appointment times that they can have one-on-one time. They have a sanctioned time where they can come in, they can shop, have personal attention, and have someone that they can talk to. Because a lot of the times they open up about various different items that are affecting their life or what brought them to this situation.
For instance, an E-2 that came in, he and his spouse were leaving a bad situation at home after high school and they join the service. He then brought on his little brother, who is also a teenager, became his legal guardian, and as an E-2 you don’t have the pay to sustain another body, much less a teenage body. These individuals were trying to be better global citizens.
They were trying to do better for themselves, enroll in higher education paid by the military, and they were willing to bring on someone else so they wouldn’t become a statistic. These are the stories at that personalized time, that anonymity that we protect. They bring out these stories in these people. They bring out the trust and you start building these relationships. We do privatize time slots for military families to come in.
They can shop and they leave without bumping into a neighbor, bumping into their NCO, bumping into an officer or anyone else. I also do not allow any people in uniform personnel in our area, and that includes my spouse who tries to deliver food sometimes to me. I yell at him, “No, no one’s allowed in here. You’re not going to spook any of my patriots because this is what’s important to them. This is how we build trust.”
Bob: What have been some of the biggest challenges in either experience on Fort Riley or Fort Leavenworth with running a food pantry on installation?
Monica: Especially at Leavenworth because we were getting a whole operational warehouse and it’s the obstacles of weight. You’re not actually sanctioned by the Department of Defense. You’re not ACS, MWR, a chaplain, you are not these entities. We are a complete outside nonprofit organization run volunteered by military spouses. That was probably the biggest thing after people started noticing that we were assisting and we were doing good.
We were providing services that are not provided. People are coming around. That was probably the biggest obstacle at this installation at Fort Leavenworth because we do have a warehouse. Fort Riley was a complete different beast. We did have some really phenomenal leadership there who just jumped in and said, “What is the issue? How can we help? Let’s see this for ourselves.” “Hey, Monica, Come work with me and develop a task force to try to help our military families.” “Hey, Monica, come sit with my aide and run through this list and let’s give out some resource sheets to all our soldiers.” It really depends. Just like any organization, whether you’re for-profit or non-profit, whether you’re civilian or military. It always depends on the climate of your environment, and it depends on who is working that environment.
It’s very different. It’s not what happened for Stronghold at Fort Leavenworth or what happened for me at Fort Riley before Stronghold was actually a nonprofit. Could be very different than what could happen for someone at Whiteman Air Force Base or in Misawa. It would be very different. It just really depends on your climate, your environment, and honestly your volunteers and your leadership.
Bob: You have advice for folks. Having said that context matters, the climate matters, what advice would you have for somebody who was interested in whether it’s working on food insecurity or another issue for military families as a military spouse?
Monica: Yes. Recently, within the last few months, my email has been getting inundated with emails from various spouses. I mentioned a few of those from Misawa, Spangdahlem Air Force Base, Whiteman Air Force Base, Coast Guard West Coast, on how can you help me get through this? What are your best practices? One of the most in-depth that I helped was Spangdahlem Air Force Base. We had several Zoom conversations on here are my best practices and here’s where I would start.
It always starts with, first, get a feel for your climate because we all want to help. Military spouses we are in this community to do whatever we can for our neighbors, but the biggest thing is– the way I mentioned at Fort Riley, I started involving myself with outside community organizations. I started asking questions of executive directors, what’s your percentage, how many military families? Let me get a feel for how you run. That is always my first step for when people ask me, how do you start this, is you have to learn your climate.
You can’t just say, “Well, I saw five posts of families needing help, or I need help.” I’m going do this whole pantry or this whole initiative. No, first research the climate, find out what resources are there, how they operate, maybe where the gaps are. Like maybe this resource is out there. However, this pantry at this chaplain’s office is really only a coat closet or a cabinet, and is only open between the hours of 8:00 and 10:00 and you have to answer the chaplain’s 30-minute questions. That already is going deter a family tenfold times.
They’re not going to want to answer the chaplain’s questions and sit there and be embarrassed and worry in the back of their head on who this is going to be reported to. Even though they know that that should be a private conversation, it’s always something that’s going to run in the back of your head. First and foremost, I always say, “Go figure out your climate. Go find out those resources. Find out where those gaps fall,” which leads back to your last podcast that I had listened to on your community resilience.
This is how you truly shape a very successful organization that can truly target and benefit your military families. After you figure out climate, after you figure out where the gaps are or where you can contribute to them. Then you can figure out, do you actually need a whole new service, or can you tap into these outside resources. After that, if then that leads you down the path of talking to garrison command and your chain command on post, then let it be that, but you are going armed with information. That is always my biggest thing. You need to be armed with the statistics, the data. That’s what drives change.
Jessica: By that time you might also be armed with a whole network of other supports that are willing to step in and help if they can.
Monica: Yes. You nailed it. Absolutely.
Jessica: That was super clear. It’s very clear that you have lots and lots of experience with this. [laughs] It is, it is, it’s very clear. Is there a specific practice that’s been really helpful in your work or to you individually that you’d be willing to share with us? Something that you practice maybe regularly?
Monica: Yes, a couple of things. As far as food pantry goes, we practice always in that space of protecting anonymity and being able to serve our military families with dignity and respect. That leads me to the practice of whether you’re a volunteer or whether you’re a staff member or part of our board. My practice of interviewing every single person who comes through that door. Even a partner, a donor, I have turned away new stations, articles being printed about Stronghold, because anonymity and protecting our service members is always first for me.
That is a practice that I will never let go of despite what happens. Like I said, I’ve turned away news stations who wanted to run stories. I’ve turned away articles because they want names, and can we be there to film when you’re giving food out? Absolutely not. That also goes to who I bring on board. Even a general volunteer, even someone that works within the pantry and the warehouse. If you are not in line with our mission and our passion, because to do this work you have to have a passion for it. Not everyone who is sitting in an office for the Department of Defense, in organizations, at the chaplain’s office who are assigned to be a chaplain’s aid.
Not everyone has a passion to serve military families, and not everyone has a passion to be embedded in these stories and help them through their dark period and to be that hand up. I am very particular in who I bring in. There has to be the practice of meeting me, of operating under me for a while before I can say, “You can fully volunteer here,” and it’s volunteer, it’s for free. I’m not going to bring in anyone who can slightly break or cause amend in that relationship with our patriots.
Jessica: I’m a huge proponent of those one-on-one conversations. I really believe that through that you can not only find where there are bridges to be built, but you can also just continue to deepen the network and deepen the supports for good work.
Bob: Hey, Monica, I have one more question for you, and that is you have accomplished so much and put so much of yourself into this and your family. What do you do for yourself in terms of practice to keep going and stay healthy and do the great work that you’re doing?
Monica: To be honest, not much. [laughs] That is what we get into a lot, but no. I will say something, my volunteer time at the pantry with like-minded individuals truly helps me get through some obstacles. When we were PCSing we were stuck in a seven-week PCS for a two-hour move. It was supposed to be door to door, but mishaps with privatized housing, all the stuff and we were homeless, PCS homeless for seven weeks. During that time I found a civilian food pantry and food drive to go to. I cannot explain how happy my heart was after that and how centered I felt. There is truly something that happens with giving work back to your community that is fulfilling.
There is data out there on what community service does to your mental sanity to help improve your wellness. From the voices of our volunteers, one in specifically has said, “I am so happy you exist. I’m so happy you allowed me to volunteer because this got me through the darkest time.” Because we’re building not only community with our patriots, but we’re building community within our volunteers. We now have friends that they didn’t have before. They now have someone they can depend on. While we’re working and stocking the shelves, a lot of the times we’re also airing our grievances and our stresses and having a therapy session within ourselves.
I honestly have to say that a lot of that– and once the kids go back to school it’ll be a lot better too. Because right now my children go to the pantry with me and that’s not very calming. Going to the pantry really does help, and aside from that we all like to talk to our community, our friends that have been with us for years and have seen me go from A to Z and all the aspects. I think communication is key to help alleviate a lot of the mental anxiety and mental stress and then like a massage.
Jessica: Yes, you got to that part at the very, very end, yes. No, wonderful. That’s awesome.
Bob: Monica, I want to thank you so much for joining us and for the work that you’re doing to support our military families in a time of need. Thank you so much for joining us and for the work that you do. It was great to talk with you.
Monica: Thank you both for having me. I really appreciate it. Thank you for shining a light on what is happening with our military families and for Stronghold.
Jessica: That’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining us. You can keep up with Practicing Connection by subscribing to the podcast in your favorite podcast app. By signing up to be a part of the Practicing Connection community at oneop.org/practicing-connection. By following us on X. Our X handle is @practicingcxn, Practicing Connection that’s @practicingcxn.
Bob: Jessica is probably mad at me for pulling back the curtain, but an awesome job adjusting to not saying the T-word for the app that is now called X.
Jessica: Thank you.
Bob: Good job. Thank you for joining us for this conversation. We’ve really enjoyed having you here. Thanks again to our guest, Monica Bassett. We’d also like to thank our co-producer Coral Owen, our announcer Kalin Goble, Hannah Hyde, Maggie Lucas, and Terry Meisenbach for their help with marketing, and Nathan Grimm, who composed and performed all the music you hear on the podcast. We hope you’ll join us again soon. In the meantime, keep practicing.
[music]
Kalin: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2019-48770-30366.
[END OF AUDIO]
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About this episode
The Food Security Hawaii Working Group is an amazing cross-sector collaboration to address food security issues military families are facing, In this episode (Season 4, Episode 6), Bob Bertsch talks with Arletta Eldridge Thompson, Health Promotion Coordinator for the 15th Medical Group for Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam; Lorna Souza with the Hawaii Air National Guard Airman and Family Readiness Program; and Kina Mahi, Director of Advocacy and Strategic Partnerships for the Hawaii Foodbank about the challenges families in Hawaii are dealing with and how people are collaborating to address them.
Transcript
Kalin Goble: Welcome to Practicing Connection, a podcast exploring the personal stories and collective practices that empower us to work together to improve our resilience and readiness in a rapidly changing world. Here to start the conversation are Jessica Beckendorf and Bob Bertsch.
Bob Bertsch: Hi, and welcome to the Practicing Connection podcast. I’m Bob Bertsch. I am really excited for this episode. We’re going to be talking about an incredible collaboration to address food insecurity among military families in Hawaii. Unfortunately, Jessica won’t be here for this conversation, but I do want to acknowledge all the work that she did to make this conversation happen. Thanks so much, Jess. Wish you were here.
This year, our team at OneOp has been focusing on food security for military families. Molly Herndon, learned about the work our guests today are doing in Hawaii. When Molly passed this information on to Jessica and me, we knew we had to find a way to get these folks on the podcast. After many emails, a couple of video calls, at least one approval process, maybe more, one that I know about, I’m really happy to welcome our guests, Kina Mahi, Lorna Souza, and Arletta Eldridge Thompson, to the Practicing Connection podcast.
Welcome, everyone. I think we’ll start with some introductions. Arletta, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?
Arletta Eldridge Thompson: Hi. Thanks for inviting us. We’re really excited to be here. I’m Arletta Eldridge Thompson. I’m the Health Promotion Coordinator for the 15th Medical Group for Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam is a joint base with Navy/Air Force. We represent the Air Force side. I’ve been working for the Air Force for about 27 years, and this is my sixth installation to work for. I’m really excited that this is taking off like it has.
Bob: Thanks, Arletta. Lorna, could you share a little bit about yourself with our listeners?
Lorna Souza: Sure. Aloha, and mahalo for having us. My name is Lorna Souza. I am actually with the Hawaii Air National Guard Airman and Family Readiness Program. We are also located on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam Hawaii, at least the main part of our Hawaii Air National Guard, so that’s why we’re part of this community. Then we also have GSUs, or Geographically Separated Units, on three of the other islands, so the island of Kauai. Also, the Hawaii Island, which is our Big Island, we have a unit there. Then Maui, so we also have a unit on Maui.
Yes, here to support any way we can and take care of our airmen. Mahalo.
Bob: Thank you, Lorna. Kina, could you introduce yourself?
Kina Mahi: Aloha. My name is Kina Mahi. Thank you so much for having us today. I’m the Director of Advocacy and Strategic Partnerships for the Hawaii Foodbank. The Hawaii Foodbank has been fighting hunger and food insecurity in Hawaii for 40 years. We’ve been lucky enough in the last year to join up with this food insecurity working group with Arletta and Lorna and several others because we believe nobody should go to bed hungry, but we also are really dedicated in ensuring our military personnel who are serving don’t have to struggle with basic fundamental rights like food, and we mean healthy food too. Mahalo.
Bob: I’m going to ask you to share with us again, because before we jump into the working group and the incredible collaboration that’s going on, I think it’s really important, when we talked earlier a couple of months ago, that we set the context a little bit for food systems and food security in Hawaii. Because it is such a special place and might have some unique benefits, challenges, just characteristics that we wouldn’t see here in the continental United States.
Kina, can you maybe start that conversation for us? What makes the food system in Hawaii so unique?
Kina: Sure. Well, at any given time, the island of Oahu has less than a week of food supply on it. 80% to 90%, depending on who you ask, of the food that we all consume is imported. At one time, our island sustained a population of a million people just within the sustainable cultivation of our āina, which is our land here. Now we have a really different food system, and as I’m sure you’ve all seen at the grocery store, wherever you are, prices have continued to go up and up and up.
We have this unique challenge of being the most isolated land mass on the planet and relying on boats that bring us our food. We have so much potential to rely more on our land to provide our food, but that’s a longer conversation. We also know how when people are moving here to serve, or when they’re assigned here, it’s a big shift to see the prices that are here compared to prices elsewhere. It’s not just on a macro level we have some food system challenges, but also on the individual family level when you’re making that adjustment, it can be really hard.
Arletta: I can say on the active duty side that it is a shock when they come here because they expect everything to be the same as it was on the mainland, and then when they transfer over here, they’re totally unprepared. One of the things that we did with our working group is figure out ways to prepare them ahead of time in trying to get them to understand that they need a financial appointment before they leave and that they can figure out what their finances are before they leave, then also start paying off as many bills as they can and start stockpiling a savings account. Because once they get here, trying to do a savings account is really difficult because it’s so expensive, and they’re going to have to rely on that because there’s a honeymoon period of about six to nine months.
Because the first thing is once they get the assignment, it’s like, oh my gosh, it’s the best assignment in the Air Force, or whatever military branch, and they don’t realize that once they get here, it’s not what they thought. I try to tell people early on, I’m like, okay, here’s what you need to think about. There are two Hawaiis. There’s tourism Hawaii that they’ve been marketed to and the beauty and all that sort of stuff, but then there’s the reality of living in Hawaii, which is the other Hawaii.
That’s what I’m trying to prepare them because they don’t have a choice. Once they get here, they can’t leave. I mean, a spouse can leave. They can send their spouse back to the mainland or their children back to the mainland, but that active duty or even that Guard member, they can’t leave. They’re here. We have to prepare them the best we can for the environment that they’re living in. Hopefully, some of the best practices that we come up with can be utilized on the mainland, or also prepping a member to go overseas.
Bob: Lorna, what kinds of challenges are your airmen facing and their families facing in the Hawaii Air National Guard regarding food security?
Lorna: Yes, so it’s the same thing for our members. It is very expensive to live here. Cost of living is high. People are leaving constantly, getting priced out of paradise and actually going to the mainland. Our local youth are starting to go to college there. Of course, they end up staying there and not coming home, and then before you know it, the parents are following them. A lot of our local people can’t afford to live here, so they’re moving to the mainland, which you called continental United States. [chuckles]
Yes, cost of living is very high here in Hawaii. We have multiple families living in one house, so we have grandparents, parents, and children. Of course, grandparents are watching the grandchildren, and then the parents are going to work. I also noticed in the last few years, we had a paradigm shift where actually now our parents are caring for our grandparents, our elderly. Not only the stress and struggles of living in Hawaii or in the paradise that we have here, but they can’t afford certain things, and food is one of them.
Anything that we can do for our families, if we can help them with the food, and then they can pay for the medical bills, they can pay for the medication that they need for their grandparents, or we call them kūpuna, it’s going to help.
Arletta: I want to hop in and piggyback off of what Lorna said. Not only are they living two- well, three, maybe four generations in a house, most everybody in the house has at least two jobs. When you’re looking at the Hawaii Air National Guard, they have their normal regular job and then a part-time job, and then the National Guard on top of that.
Bob: Yes. It sounds like very challenging context for our families to be dealing with, but the working group that you guys put together to start to address that kind of stuff, how did that all begin, Arletta? Where did this idea even spring out of and how did you get it started?
Arletta: Gosh, this was way back before the pandemic, October of 2019. Airman and Family Readiness on the Hickam active duty side noticed that– It was started with Drew [unintelligible 00:11:00]. He noticed that when people were coming in for the Air Force Aid Society, those are emergency loans and grants that people can apply for if they need money for certain things. Usually it’s a car repair or something to that effect. One of the things that he noticed when people were coming in to ask for those loans and grants was they were needing sustenance, they were needing food. Instead of asking for the grant or the loan, which I think they can only get maybe one time or it’s a limited time, he opened up a cabinet with two doors and it was a food pantry. That’s how we started.
Then once we had that food pantry, I hopped on board to help him advertise it because as a health promotion coordinator, I know that if you can get people to donate healthier items, that’ll change their diet. Then not long after that, the chaplains over at the Hawaii Air National Guard opened up the Pono Pantry. Pono in Hawaii means balance. They started theirs. It was a little shed out in their parking lot, [chuckles] and they left it open 24/7 so people could go in and get what they needed. That’s how our food pantry system opened up.
Then when we were moving forward, but Jayme Alexander, she took over the Flight Chief position at the Airman and Family Readiness Center, and she noticed the same thing Drew did, only she expanded it by like 1,600%. Instead of one cabinet; ended up being four. She noticed that there was an extreme need. This was during the pandemic, so that’s when she expanded it. Well, the working group happened because our wing commander’s wife at the time– We had expanded to the Airman’s Attic, and the Airman’s Attic is like a thrift store, it’s like a free thrift store. They noticed that people were coming in for clothing and things like that, so they set up a little cabinet at the Airman’s Attic.
The wing commander’s wife, who’s the head person over on the Air Force side, she noticed that people were taking a lot of food items from the Airman’s Attic, so she approached me and wanted healthier items. One of the things I had mentioned to her was, once you reach to the point of you’re getting food at a food pantry, healthier items are not on your list of to do. I mean, you’re just wanting to survive. That would fall to us to provide those healthier options so that they could have those. That’s how the working group started was I said, what we need is to get together as a group and be able to create that type of environment. That’s how the working group started.
It’s changed its name three times now. It was the Team Hickam Food Insecurity Working Group. Then I believe it was Laura Kay from the Hawaii Foodbank had said that we are in a unique situation on Oahu as that we have all four services plus the Coast Guard on this island. It was then that I was like, you know what? We can’t just say this is just an Air Force thing. We opened it up to all services, and we have representatives from all services that attend this working group. Recently, we just changed the name again to the Food Insecurity Working Group Hawaii because now we cover the whole state of Hawaii because as Lorna said, we have assets on outer islands and we are actually servicing those assets, so it made sense to change the name again.
How we ended up being kind of multi-service. In August of last year, I had a phone call from USARPAC, which is US Army Pacific. They asked me if I was doing anything on the food insecurity side. I’m like, well, yes. The more we got the talk, they have a– General Flynn is very, very interested in food insecurity, and so they piggyback off of us. They ended up attending the working group, back when we were Team Hickam, and now they’re like very staunch at showing up every meeting, they give a lot of input. Not only is our working group dealing with things that happen in Hawaii, but also across the Pacific we’re having impact. That’s exciting as well.
Bob: Kina, how did Hawaii Foodbank get involved?
Kina: Hawaii Foodbank has been partnering with the Armed Services YMCA for several years now. Hawaii Foodbank– The way food banks work is like a funnel. The food comes into us from retail donations from the Safeways and the Costcos in our community who have excess, and also from USDA commodities, and then also from our community member donations. We do purchase food as well, especially we like to prioritize from our local farmers and producers. The food funnels in, and then we funnel it out through a network of community partners like ASYMCA. We have three sites.
Arletta mentioned it, and I mentioned it, we really like to focus on healthy food. The number one thing people are asking for is fresh produce. That is the thing that is not affordable, that is the thing that goes away when a family is struggling. That’s the stories we hear. We partner with ASYMCA in three different locations at three different bases to do monthly distributions where we really focus on produce. We bring, and we will bring the– We have the refrigeration at the food bank, so we come out and can do a bigger distribution at a time.
We would like to do more. There’s always more to be done. I think this is where we like to partner with very creative folks like Arletta, who’s thinking about community gardens. A community garden or a family garden may never meet all of your produce and vegetable needs, but if we can start to- in addition to what we bring on a monthly or a biweekly basis from the food bank, if we can start to change mindsets and build skills and understand how we can also go back to some of the values that sustains a population here at one time, if we can go back to some of those values and practices, we do think it also makes a difference for people.
Bob: Yes, it’s really great to hear some of the systems approach to preventing food insecurity, and awesome that you guys are working on that. Lorna, what kinds of other things is the working group working on? [chuckles] The working group working on. What’s typical of a meeting of what kind of conversations come up?
Lorna: Well, I think the nice thing about this working group, it’s various organizations that are coming together, not only military. We work with the community so much, and everybody brings their little piece of what they’re doing, what’s coming up in the future, the programs that are available for our members or for our service members. That really brings us together and helps us. Then if we have an issue, we work together on how to resolve it, or how to take care of just little items that might be challenges we might be facing.
It’s a great way to come together and see what’s out there to bring these resources to our members. It’s a really giving group of people too. Arletta said about pono. Pono means righteousness and balance and doing what’s right. That’s exactly what this team does, is we’re just trying to make sure that everybody gets the information and gets the resources that they need so that they can have a better experience here in Hawaii.
Also too, what we do is we have some volunteer experiences for our members. Not everybody’s having struggles with food, but they want to help out, so we do have volunteer opportunities with the food bank. We do that monthly. Then also, we go up to a farm, Waihe’e farm. We actually go there and clean up the farm, make sure that we help them with their taro or kalo, which actually turns into poi. If you’ve been to Hawaii, you might have had some poi. That’s the root that you make poi from. It’s a big industry here and very expensive, so any way we can help to cultivate the taro or the kalo.
We go out there, and we help them with their farm and better their progress of growing this product. Then also, other products they have. They have watercress there. They have ‘ulu, which is breadfruit, and different other local fruits that we can distribute to our community.
Arletta: Actually, the reason that’s important is because if you look at the bigger picture, and this is one of the things that you have to give Hawaii credit for, is they’re trying to go back to the sustainability that they had before modern times. That’s how they sustain themselves. It also gives a hands-on view to everybody on where their food comes from. They could very easily be repeated at farm– You see these sorts of things on farms on the mainland, people going and volunteering and helping. I had a friend of mine in Missouri that just volunteered to help pick a farm that creates her CSA, her community support box that she gets. That food, because it was extra, went back to the food bank.
These are things that we can promote having people understand where their food comes from, and you’re able to have a hands-on. Hawaii just happens to be unique in the fact that it’s part of their underlying culture. We care about the āina, or the land, and so that’s something that’s really important.
Lorna: Yes. Actually, we started going to the Waihe’e farm because after COVID, they lost so many sales that they were thinking of shutting down. We got a group of volunteers together and simple things like taking the weeds out of the taro patch or the kalo patch, and just making sure that the water is flowing from the– The water is wai, so the wai is flowing from the streams, taking the weeds out of that in the streams and making sure that everything is flowing correctly. We’re able to clean up their taro patches and production has been better.
Just little things of getting people together to help out these farmers so that they can produce. It’s going to, of course, drizzle down to us and we’re going to end up getting the benefits of it. Poi, which is made from kalo, is very expensive and it’s because the lack of the product, the kalo. This way, we can actually help them and in turn, we’re helping ourselves because of reduction of price for poi, which is one of our staples.
Bob: That’s awesome. I think it’s really great to build that connection back to where your food comes from. It sounds like there’s a lot of great stuff happening and great communication happening. I’m just wondering if, when the working group was either being formed, or where you were trying to get your feet, were there challenges or barriers that you guys encountered in trying to get this set up and to get everybody at the table?
Arletta: I know for me, the big challenges was trying to get– It’s one thing to have a working group and to be able to move forward, but when you look at the big picture on the military side of the house, you have to have leadership involved. You have to have leadership understand that this is an issue. When you look at the big picture, both on the active duty side, and the Guard, and Reserve side, and the Secretary of Defense said it, food insecurity is a readiness issue.
When we look at the overall picture, if you have a military member that can’t afford or doesn’t have the resources to sustain themselves, then that puts them at risk for, A, not doing their job; B, worrying about their family; C, becoming a security risk because they become a possible target for our adversaries to offer them money for food. That’s not something that we want. We can’t tolerate that. That’s a no go. The thing for me was trying to get leadership to understand. I am partly there. Not everybody–
The first thing, and I heard this a lot, is, “Well, you make good money. I don’t understand how you are having trouble.” What we found early on was you can be food insecure at any rank. All it takes is one major life event to knock you off the fence. You can have a Lieutenant Colonel seeking food at a food pantry. This isn’t something that is just low-ranking airmen with a lot of kids, although it is a lot of that. It’s across the board, and getting leadership to understand that this stuff has been lurking in your ranks for decades.
This is not a new problem. This is something, yes, the pandemic probably aggravated a little bit, but when I first started doing research on it– The reason I started doing research was because Major Kevin Watanabe, the IMA to the PACAF, Pacific Air Force’s nutrition consultant, couldn’t go to his base in Alaska during the pandemic, so he dropped in my lap. I had him for a month, and I ask him to give me ideas for nutrition, because nutrition falls to me, I am not a dietitian, he is, and to give me nutrition ideas.
The garden was the first idea, and we’ve been sustaining that garden since October of 2020. The second or the last idea that he gave me right before he left was, “Check into SNAP and WIC. You may be looking at only low-ranking airmen with a lot of kids,” so I did. What I found out was this is like the military’s dirty little secret. It’s been happening for years. Nobody’s really been talking about it. That’s how we evolved into where we’re at is once I figured out the issue, then it’s my responsibility, because it’s readiness issue, is to bring it to leadership’s attention. Once leadership gets an idea that this is an issue, then we can move forward, and we can actually do a little bit more than what we can just by ourselves.
My medical group commander, who is in charge of our clinic, she was the first one I got on board. Then she said, I want this brief to all the group commanders, and so we were able to take that forward. We still have a lot of work to do because we only targeted a small group of our commanders. The goal is to get them all to understand. Once everybody’s on board and everybody’s aware of it, they can see those pockets where they can actually make a difference and things they can do.
That’s the big thing with leadership is you have to give them action items, things they can do that is realistic, in their wheelhouse. You can’t give them the overarching thing and say, “This is our problem,” and give them nothing to do. They operate by, “Give me the reason, tell me what’s going on, and then give me something to do.” Right now that’s probably the biggest challenge is being able to get leadership to understand. We’re getting there. It’s not perfect, but we’re a lot further than we were two years ago.
I think that with the Secretary of Defense highlighting this, that it’s made it easier for more commanders to understand. We’re seeing that on the USARPAC side, the US Army Pacific side, is they have a senior leader that’s highly engaged. I think that they can make a lot of difference just at that big level.
Bob: Lorna, did you see similar things in terms of having to get buy-in from leadership on your side of things?
Lorna: The Pono Pantry was actually started by the chaplain program during the COVID situation here in Hawaii, the pandemic. The chaplains put everything into motion. They got approval and everything. I was not part of that, but I’m telling you, with our leadership at the Hawaii Air National Guard, we have no resistance there. They all would continuously ask if we need any products in the Pono Pantry. Obviously, we have different needs on the Hawaii Air National Guard side. Rice, SPAM [unintelligible 00:30:03] diapers, stuff like that that we need, and it just flies out of our pantry, but the leadership continuously supports the program.
One thing that we do find is a challenge is having the members come out. That’s why we have it where it’s anonymous. You can come at any time. We do have hours to the open facility, but we can coordinate with them. They can come in the evening or early morning, and we’ll have the products available for them. Then we also work very closely with our first sergeants, and we have them out and about, finding out where the needs are and then trying to fulfill those needs by providing them the food source.
In the future, this– We just started hurricane season and preparedness is a big part of hurricane season. We’re making sure that we have enough supplies in there, and we’re going to, hopefully, put together some bags of starter sets with maybe a few food items, some toiletries. We just got a big donation of toiletries, so toiletries in there, and just get them started.
Arletta: Yes, Lorna brings up a really good point. I think the big piece of this that everybody misses is the disaster piece. There are two emergencies. One is the individual person’s emergency and getting a crisis, and then your goal is to get them stabilized and then help move them forward. The piece that I don’t think we’re talking about enough is the mass disaster piece. For us, it could be a hurricane. We just went through the Red Hill water crisis where we had some fuel tanks leak into the water system, and that threw us off. We learned a lot during that water crisis as to what’s going to happen during an emergency.
See, for our members, and even Lorna’s airmen during an emergency, those members have to keep on working. It’s not like they can stop and take care of their family. The mission goes on, so you have to prep them ahead of time so that they can weather that disaster. We learned a lot of lessons during the Red Hill water crisis in the fact that we’re not as ready as we could be. That’s one of the big things that our working group has actually been looking at on a big scale is, how can we prepare members for an emergency?
One of the things that you’re told when you get here is to have two weeks’ worth of food stockpiled so that in case of emergency, you can fall back on that because 90% of the food is imported here. Unfortunately, I can’t think of a single person that’s probably as prepared as they should be. That’s one of the things that we’ve been talking about. Maybe somehow educating members to prepare their kit before they leave the mainland. That way, the government will move it here, it will be in place, and they don’t have to worry about the expense once they get here.
That’s in the infancy stage, but that disaster preparedness is a huge thing. Because in a disaster, the goal is- we’re not there yet, but the goal is for the active duty or even the military in general, Guard, Reserve, to take the pressure off of the Hawaii Foodbank because in a disaster, their people are the people of Hawaii. If we can somehow self-contain and prepare those members to be able to be self-contained and to move on with their mission and not have to worry about going out and getting food, we take that pressure off of the Hawaii Foodbank and they can concentrate on the other people in Hawaii. We’re not there yet, but that’s one of our ultimate goals.
Bob: Kina, can you talk about that a little bit? I think there’s a couple things that are really striking me. Just this idea of being here on the mainland, we have the same risks, potentially, of- not the same, but similar risks of disaster and being prepared for that, but it’s such a different ask for me to be prepared and have that food in the pantry for two weeks or longer, or whatever, than it is for the people of Hawaii.
The other thing I’m interested in your comment on is just what Arletta just brought up, about this relationship between Hawaii Foodbank serving the people of Hawaii, but knowing that our military families are in need and how that gets discussed and balanced out for you guys.
Kina: Yes, those are two really big, really good questions. Let me start with the disaster piece first. If we look at what’s in our warehouse, and if we think about having to have enough food for everybody on Oahu in the event of a massive disaster, it’s a day, maybe. It’s not enough. We are talking with our Department of Emergency Management at the county level, and with our Hawaii Emergency Management at the state level. There’s a lot that we can do, both systematically and individually, to be prepared.
We have an internal plan that we’re working on at the food bank. A big part of our plan is also working with the agencies, with the ASYMCAs and with the other 200 agency partners who run food pantries and soup kitchens to make sure that they have some stockpiles, that they’re strategically placed around the island, what we’re calling precovery pods, with MREs in them, so in the event that Waianae is cut off from– Farrington Highway that goes out to Waianae often gets cut off for a car accident, let alone a disaster. That there are places that are going to be hard to reach that have at least some level of preparedness.
I think one of the things we talk about a lot is how much– If you look at the narrative, like have your emergency preparedness kit done, you might get a flyer in the mail. So much of the messaging falls on the individual person or the individual family to get prepared, but we also have to be prepared as a community and as a state. These are the conversations, I think, we’re having in the working group, how we do that. How we both encourage at the individual level, but also when a disaster strikes we’re all in it together, so how we make sure that it’s the communications and the infrastructure that’s in place to do that.
We don’t have the answers, it’s a work in progress, but it is one of the key pillars, key priorities that we’re working at, at Hawaii Foodbank. Because it’s a when. It’s not an if, and we all know that. COVID was its own disaster of sorts that we learned a lot from. I think we’re trying to apply some of those lessons- not lose those lessons and apply them to thinking about natural and weather-related disasters that we’ll hit.
On the second question, it’s a bigger and harder question around the relationship with the military in Hawaii. I’m not speaking out of turn to say it’s a complex– We are in occupied territory that was controlled by our Indigenous population, and that’s a complex relationship. On the other hand, it’s not either or. I have Hawaiian family who served in the military. Hawaiians have a history of military service back to Kalākaua’s days. It’s Hawaiian people who are serving in the Air National Guard, right, Lorna?
I think we, Hawaii Foodbank, try to get past the either/or, us/them narrative, and nobody should go to bed hungry. You can say, especially kids, especially kūpuna, elders, especially people serving our country, but it’s actually, especially no one. I think that it’s finding these intersections of partnerships where when we come together and link, we can all do better together.
I guess maybe if I could say one more thing leading from that, Arletta and Lorna talked a little bit about the challenges, but also there’s some really special things about being on an island. All the challenges we have are not unique to other places, but we’re just closer together. Lorna’s comment about the leadership being so supportive, I think we have that really in spades here in Hawaii. We are an inspiration for other places.
At the Hawaii Foodbank, we’re part of a cohort of other food banks who serve military families. Colorado, Savannah, Georgia, there’s a handful of food banks across the nation. We asked Arletta to come talk to the group about this working group because what she and her partners have done in creating this all-branch, all-collaborative, islands’, statewide organization of people is pretty tremendous, and everybody else was blown away. It gave a lot of ideas- not just concrete ideas, but inspiration and hope for what is possible.
Bob: What I’d like to do is ask each of you about advice you would give to someone who maybe is feeling the need for this on their installation, in their community, that you know there’s other people out there working on this issue, you know it’s an issue for the people that you serve.
I’ll start with Arletta and then Lorna. What advice would you give to someone who is on installation or working with Guard or Reserve and wants to engage with civilian organizations on the issue of food security for military families?
Arletta: It’s actually a partnership amongst several. I started my relationship with the Hawaii Department of Health, the public health department. That was a link that was made through Major Watanabe, but that’s how I fully understood how to deal with the food issue on the healthy side of the house. Reaching out to your public health departments, reaching out to those local food banks. I think there’s been a roadblock for a long time. It’s like we can’t talk to you because of security issues. I think that we’re all in the same business and all in the same game, and I think that we can talk to each other and share data and things like that, and I think that we can help each other.
I know on the health promotion side of the house, look at those areas that you’re reaching out to your cooperative extension. Great, great information on gardening, recipes, how to cook. Those are all skills that, on a military installation, I think that we need to teach. We need to teach about foodways, we need to teach about farmers’ markets, CSAs, all that stuff is an education piece because it all feeds into that food ecosystem. Because the goal– I know one of the goals that we have here is to try to stretch that food dollar as far as we can.
By stretching the food dollar, it’s buying local, preventing food waste, cooking with your scraps. A lot of the stuff that goes into the trash, that’s edible food, and there’s a lot of organizations across the country that are actually working on those sorts of things. I was recently, last week, at the American College of Sports Medicine meeting. I was able to wander around a Denver park that was near Union Station, and I stumbled upon the Denver Urban Garden. Which I have a garden. I got a lot of ideas from there. There are agencies in the community that can help you meet those goals.
Another thing that you might think about is encouraging breastfeeding in the workplace. That’s an education piece that a lot of people haven’t addressed, and that feeds right back into our food system as well. Reaching out to those outside partners that can help you. Every places has a little different agency, but like I said, the extension, the public health department, the local food pantries, your sister services. I’ve learned so much from the Army side, and the Army has learned so much from me. Just because you happen to reside in the same place, you’re not two different services. We’re all one Department of Defense.
That would be my advice.
Bob: Lorna, do you have advice from the National Guard perspective?
Lorna: Sure. I think you have to just set some goals. What do you want? How do you want to get there? Then talk about your ideas. You have to start having the conversation with your leadership, community organizations. You can talk to other bases. Call us. It doesn’t have to be big. You can actually start small if you wanted to.
Education is really the piece too. Of course, you want to educate the community and our leadership on some of the things that we need in our community or for our members. Schools, educate the children. [unintelligible 00:44:10]. They are the ones that are going to take it home, so tell them how you can be more sustainable, or teach them how you can save on groceries using coupons, or whatever it takes. Yes, set the goals, talk about your ideas. Then also, it does not have to be huge. Start small. It’ll always grow.
People want to help each other. In the Hawaii community, like was said earlier too, we support each other. Even we don’t only care for our kūpuna, or our elderly within our family, we actually help our neighbors. We take care of each other. We help our neighbors to make sure they’re okay. During a hurricane, we walk over to our neighbor’s house, especially if they’re elderly, and say, “Hey, are you okay? Do you need food? You need us to clean out your house?” Or whatever is needed. We make sure that they’re taken care of.
Once you start that conversation, I think everybody [unintelligible 00:45:09] and will be part of your team will gather.
Bob: Thanks, Lorna. Kina, we’ll end with you. Do you have advice for that person who might be in a community food bank or food pantry who knows there might be a need for military families and some opportunities to engage with National Guard or a military installation, do you have advice for how to get started?
Kina: I think reaching out to your local food bank is a really good start. Then I think for everybody, whether you’re at a food bank, or whether you’re in the military, or you’re a civilian, helping to reduce that culture of shame and stigma. Everybody needs help sometimes. We’ve all needed a hand up in our life, and so if we can create the kind of programs that are centered around helping each other, reciprocity, giving back.
I heard a great quote from someone in our community like, no matter how hard you have it, you can always help give blessings to other people. If we take that spirit, that connection in our community as part of the work we’re doing around food insecurity and health, then I think that goes a long way.
Bob: I want to thank you guys so much for the incredible work that you are all doing, and for sharing it with us today on the Practicing Connection podcast. Kina Mahi, Lorna Souza, Arletta Eldridge Thompson, thank you so much for joining us.
Lorna: Thank you. Mahalo.
Bob: I want to thank our listeners for joining us for this conversation as well. Thanks again to Jessica. She made this whole conversation possible with her hard work. We’d also like to thank our co-producer, Coral Owen; our announcer, Kalin Goble; Hannah Hyde, Maggie Lucas, and Terry Meisenbach for their help with marketing; and Nathan Grimm, who composed and performed all the music you hear on the podcast. We hope you’ll join us again soon. In the meantime, keep practicing.
[music]
Kalin: The Practicing Connection is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2019-48770-30366.

Navigating TRICARE’s Autism Care Demonstration: A Guide for Providers & Military Families
2024-07-31 11:00 - 12:00
Join us for an informative webinar on the TRICARE Autism Care Demonstration, a critical program designed to support military families with members diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This session will provide an in-depth overview of the program, outlining the specific services and supports offered, eligibility criteria, and the enrollment process. Participants will gain a thorough understanding of how the Autism Care Demonstration works, including the types of treatments covered, such as Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), and the role of healthcare providers. We will also discuss the recent updates to the program, potential impacts on families, and how these changes aim to improve access and quality of care for beneficiaries.
Furthermore, this webinar will offer practical advice on navigating the system effectively, from obtaining the necessary referrals and authorizations to understanding the ongoing support and monitoring processes. Whether you are a service member, a healthcare provider, or a family member of someone with ASD, this webinar will equip you with the knowledge and tools needed to make the most of the TRICARE Autism Care Demonstration program. Join us to ensure you are fully informed about the resources available to support the unique needs of military families dealing with ASD.
Learning Objectives:

Recognize the scope and services of the TRICARE autism care demonstration.
Explore treatment options and the role of providers.
Analyze recent updates and their impact on military families.
Navigate the system for maximum benefit.

Clinical Psychologist, Medical Affairs
Complex Pediatric Clinical Community, Program Manager
Autism Care Demonstration, Clinical Lead
Clinical Communities Policy Support, Clinical Support Division Medical Affairs
Defense Health Agency
Dr. Bienia is a clinical psychologist and a senior policy analyst for the Defense Health Agency (DHA) in the Medical Affairs Directorate in Falls Church, VA. She serves as the DHA lead for the Complex Pediatric Clinical Community and is the clinical program lead supporting the TRICARE Health Plans for the rapidly evolving Autism Care Demonstration where she implements clinical expertise in program development and oversight for a program that significantly impacts overall Military readiness. Dr. Bienia has over twenty years of experience working directly with beneficiaries diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder as well as their families and other health care providers.

Social Work, LPC, LMFT: This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 7/31/26
Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 7/31/26
Certified in Family & Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 7/31/26
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 7/31/27
Association for Financial Counseling & Planning Education (AFCPE): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits by AFCPE. Eligibility for CE credit will close on 7/31/27
Certified Personal Financial Counselors (CPFC): This webinar has been approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from The Center for Financial Certifications (FinCert.org). Eligibility for CE credit will close on 7/31/27
Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Webinar Slides (PDF)
Supporting Special Needs Families: Exploring Trusts & ABLE Accounts
Medicaid’s Role in Military Family Well-Being & Economic Security

Photo Credit: iStockphoto; andreswd

Reduce Your Stress Through Core Values
2024-07-25
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Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNTM1MjI1MiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRjE1MzUyMjUyLXJlZHVjZS15b3VyLXN0cmVzcy10aHJvdWdoLWNvcmUtdmFsdWVzLmpzJTNGY29udGFpbmVyX2lkJTNEYnV6enNwcm91dC1wbGF5ZXItMTUzNTIyNTIlMjZwbGF5ZXIlM0RzbWFsbCUyMiUyMHR5cGUlM0QlMjJ0ZXh0JTJGamF2YXNjcmlwdCUyMiUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRnNjcmlwdCUzRQ== In this episode, learn how values shape emotions, decisions, and relationships, providing a roadmap for reduced stress, boosted confidence, and thriving connections. Bob Bertsch introduces practical exercises, guiding you through reflections and rapid assessments to uncover and understand your core values.
Links

Values Worksheets from the Wellness Society (PDF)

Jessica Beckendorf: Defining your core values helps you make decisions in harmony with your personal and social goals and sharing your core values can help deepen your relationships. Hi, everyone. This is Jessica and welcome to this week’s Practicing Connection Practicast, where we highlight a specific practice you can use in your life and work. This week’s practice is defining your core values. It will help you get in touch with your core values, which can reduce stress, boost your confidence, and more. My Practicing Connection co-host, Bob Bertsch, will be guiding us through the practice in a few minutes. First, let’s learn a little bit more about it. Hi Bob, can you start by talking about what are values?
Bob Bertsch: Values are beliefs that we have that have come to represent what is important to us. Shalom Schwartz, who developed the Theory of Basic Values, outlined six main features of values. First, they are beliefs that when activated, arouse our emotions. They refer to desirable goals and motivate us to pursue those goals. They transcend specific contexts and situations. Our attitudes and the norms we choose to follow might change depending on where we are and who we’re with, but our values don’t. Fourth, they serve as standards that guide our actions and our judgment of other people and their actions. This usually happens without us even being consciously aware of it.
Next, we hold our values in an order of importance. Values can come into conflict with each other, and so we organize them in a hierarchy. Again, we might not be aware of that. We don’t typically do that with our other beliefs. They’re values because we organize them in a hierarchy. Finally, the relative importance of multiple values guides our action. According to Schwartz, any attitude or behavior typically has implications for more than one value. That’s what makes up values. In the book Pro-Social, the authors describe values as expressing, “How we want to be as people and the desired qualities we would like our actions to reflect.”
Jessica: That’s a nice way of summarizing it. I think one of the things I’ve heard is that all of us like to go to MSU, making stuff up. I didn’t realize that our values also help determine what we are making up about other people and about our own stories. Thanks so much for sharing that definition. I’m really curious to know more about how values-based action benefits us in our work and maybe even our communities.
Bob: Yes. We aren’t usually conscious of how values are guiding our actions, but becoming aware of our values and the social values of the groups that we participate in can have a lot of benefits. Just taking time to reflect on your values can lower your stress response, possibly because it reminds you of what is important to you. It allows you to focus on what’s important and not get so stressed out about the other stuff. That lower stress response can boost your decision-making and your problem-solving skills. Getting in touch with your values can also increase your motivation for trying something that’s difficult.
The things that are important to you can help you overcome your inner critic. Focusing on those values lets you try new things and stuff that might be hard. Values don’t only operate on that individual level. They also operate at the group level. Shared values guide the actions of a group, just as our values guide our individual actions. When those shared values are known to everyone in the group, they can lower the instances of conflict within the group and help resolve that conflict if it does come up, right? There’s some research that indicates when your individual values align with the values of a group that you’re part of, it can just generally benefit your health and well-being.
Jessica: That’s really interesting. It makes me think about whether we should reassess our values from time to time. Does society and culture and trauma and drama affect our values or change our values in any way?
Bob: To the first question, yes, about the reassessing. Values are beliefs that have become really important to us, right? Like all of our beliefs, they’re going to be affected by our experiences and other outside forces. Big changes in your life can lead you to reassess your values because they are a belief that’s just become really important and so you might have changed a little bit about what you believe. We often hear people talk about their values changing like after a health scare or some kind of traumatic event.
Experiences like those can lead you to think about your values, either revealing a value to you that you may have held without really knowing it, being conscious of it, or just leading you to an entirely new value. Maybe even changing the hierarchy of your values. What is most important to you? Any other belief, your values can be affected, as I said, by outside forces like the people around you and the information you consume, and societal norms. Those societal norms can lead us to think we value something or pressure us to value something.
In the book, Pro-Social, I’ll bring up again, there’s a story about a nurse who initially listed compassion as one of their values. After reflection, they realized they really only wrote that down because nurses are supposed to be compassionate. I’m using finger quotes for podcast listeners there. Nurses we think should be compassionate, so they wrote compassion as one of their values just because it was that societal norm. They can definitely affect that. As a result, we might want to think about what values we think we hold, reassess them, and potentially change our values if we’re led that direction.
Jessica: We shouldn’t ever “should” all over ourselves, right? That’s one of the things that I always tell people in my workshops, don’t “should” all over yourself. Okay, so let’s get into the practice. How can we practice identifying our values?
Bob: Okay, so I’m going to share a couple of practices from the Wellness Society with you today. Both of these practices are available in a values worksheet, and we’re going to put the link to that worksheet in the show notes for this episode. These two practices work well together. My recommendation, do them both, right? We can start with a shorter practice, and this one is called reflecting your values.
The worksheet that I mentioned, you’ll see it has five reflection questions on it. I’m going to share three of those reflection questions with you right now. As I ask each question, just take a couple of beats to think about it. If it’s possible for you to do it right now, jot down some of your initial thoughts. You may want to go back and think a little bit more deeply on these later.
The first question is, what qualities do you most appreciate in others and in yourself and what does that say about what you value? Next, think about this question. What would you do if money and other people’s opinions didn’t matter? Then finally, which events in your life have been the most meaningful to you? Those three questions and the other two questions that you’ll find on the worksheet can help us start to identify what our values are by reflecting back on what’s important to us and where that might lead us in terms of defining and discovering our values.
Okay, so the second practice is called fast values. The first step in this one is to open up on your computer or your phone or print out the list of values from the values worksheet. Unfortunately, I can’t recreate this in audio for you because there’s 93 different values on the list. I’m not going to list them all for you now, but when you get the worksheet from the show notes, open that up or print it out, have it in front of you.
Jessica: We should have hired an auctioneer.
Bob: Right, exactly. They could have got them all in time. Just note, your values don’t have to be included in the list. That list is just there to start to help you brainstorm different values and sort of what’s important to you. You might come up with something that’s not part of the 93 that really resonates with you. That’s absolutely fine.
All right. Now that you’ve got that list of 93 different values in front of you, we’re going to get a timer ready and set it for two minutes. That’s it. Two minutes. That’s why it’s called fast values. Once you’re ready, start your timer and begin reviewing the values on the list. Just quickly place a checkmark next to or write down the ones that stand out to you the most. Don’t overthink it. Go with your gut. We’re looking for your just initial response to those ones that resonate with you.
When the two minutes are up, take that list of values that stood out to you and rank them from most to least important. These values may or may not be your core values. The fast values exercise is just a way to get started thinking about what your values might be. Finally, review both of these exercises. Think about what stood out to you in these exercises, what you wrote down, and use those insights to start to lead you toward your core values.
Here are three questions that might help you think about your core values. What actions have I taken recently that are in line with this value? What actions have I taken recently that are not in line with this value? What actions can I take in the future that would be in line with this value? If you find it difficult to answer these questions for one of your values or you find you’ve taken frequent actions that were not in line with one of your values, you might want to reconsider if that really is one of your core values.
Jessica: Thank you so much, Bob, for bringing us through two practices today. It’s getting two for the price of one today. No, I found them really valuable myself. I went through them myself as you were talking about them, except for the fast values one. I should say I went through one of them and it was, I actually found the answers to my questions really, really interesting. I thought about the three questions for your second activity in just different ways. I’ve done values explorations a number of times in the past, and these are two ways that I have not explored so I’m excited to finish going through them myself. Okay. Yes. Thank you.
Bob: You’re welcome. Thanks for the opportunity.
Jessica: That’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us. We hope you’ll give this practice a try and share your experience in the Practicing Connection LinkedIn group, where people supporting military families practice the skills that empower us to work together so that we can positively impact our communities and help families thrive. You’ll find the link to the group on our website at OneOp.org/Practicing Connection. We’ll be back next week with a practice for regulating your emotions. Until then, keep practicing.
Announcer: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense, under award numbers 2019-48770-30366 and 2023-48770-41333.
[00:13:08] [END OF AUDIO]

Confronting Imposter Syndrome by Sharing Your Work
2024-07-18
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNTM1MjEwNyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRjE1MzUyMTA3LWNvbmZyb250aW5nLWltcG9zdGVyLXN5bmRyb21lLWJ5LXNoYXJpbmcteW91ci13b3JrLmpzJTNGY29udGFpbmVyX2lkJTNEYnV6enNwcm91dC1wbGF5ZXItMTUzNTIxMDclMjZwbGF5ZXIlM0RzbWFsbCUyMiUyMHR5cGUlM0QlMjJ0ZXh0JTJGamF2YXNjcmlwdCUyMiUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRnNjcmlwdCUzRQ== Sharing your work, even before it is done, is a great practice for dealing with imposter syndrome. It can help you realize no one is perfect and can make your work better, make you visible to others, and lead you to a community of support and growth. In this practicast, Jessica Beckendorf and Bob Bertsch talk about the benefits of sharing your work with others and share a practice for getting started.
Links

Show Your Work by Jane Bozarth
Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon
Working Out Loud

[music]
Jessica Beckendorf: Sharing your work even before it’s done can make your work better, it can make you visible to others, and it can lead you to a community of support and growth. Hi, everyone. This is Jessica, and welcome to this week’s Practicing Connection practicast, where we highlight a specific practice you can use in your life and work. This week’s practice is about sharing your work with others. My Practicing Connection co-host, Bob Bertsch, will be guiding us through the practice in a few minutes, but first, let’s learn a little bit more about it. Hi, Bob. Can you start with sharing a little bit of background on the concept of sharing your work with others?
Bob Bertsch: Hi, Jessica. I’d be happy to. My awareness of this concept comes from back in 2014. There was a couple of books that came out then. Both of them were coincidentally titled Show Your Work, so it’s a little bit confusing. One is by Jane Bozarth, and the other is by Austin Kleon. Both books made the argument for sharing your work, especially your works in progress, as a way to connect with people. Jane Bozarth focused a little bit more on connections between people within an organization, and Austin Kleon wrote more about sharing in the open, in social media, the wild.
About a year later, John Stepper released his book called Working Out Loud. That book documented the process that John had developed to help people practice sharing their work in order to find purpose in their work and become more engaged in work. Not necessarily in their organization, if that’s not where their purpose lied, or where their engagement lie, but just in general being more connected with their work through their relationships with other people that were built through the working out loud process.
That process has been super important to our work on Practicing Connection, mostly because it includes so many practices and lessons for building relationships and networks, which is a big emphasis for us. As a concept, sharing your work or working out loud can be applied to all kinds of different contexts, from a work team to an organization or a community issue. Even though the authors that I mentioned focused on different areas, it’s really a useful tool in almost any area that involves human relationship.
Jessica: I really appreciate this history of it, for lack of a better word. It’s only back in 2014. I’m familiar with all of these books, but I didn’t realize their connections and their different specialties. Thank you for sharing that. I’m really curious to learn more about what becomes possible when we share our work. What opportunities does it create for us or for others or for our connections?
Bob: I think there are multitude, starting with some that Austin Kleon highlighted. He writes about three reasons for sharing your work. I think that these reasons are pretty practical, and you can adapt them a little bit to different situations.
First, sharing your work can improve your work. Part of the reason that does that is because it prompts you to think about and document your process. If you think about sharing something that is unfinished, whomever you’re sharing it with, you’ll need to be able to explain the stage that work is in. You’re going to have to tell somebody, hey, this is just an idea, or this is my first draft, or this is a beta version, or what stage is it at. In the process of doing that, you develop an understanding of your process, and that improves your work, and it also improves your work process because you can see how things are working.
The second thing that Austin talks about is that it makes your work visible to others without, as he puts it, “the icky feelings of self-promotion.” I can definitely relate to that.
Jessica: Same here.
Bob: If you are a longtime listener, you probably know that Jessica and I are Midwesterners, and we fit the stereotype in some ways of keeping our light under a bushel basket and not feeling super comfortable talking about ourselves. I’m sure lots of people outside of the Midwest share that as well. This is a way of getting attention, I’ll just say it that way, that helps you self-promote without self-promoting.
Then the last thing that Austin mentions is that it creates a feedback loop. The helpful feedback we receive can definitely help us improve whatever it is that we’re working on. Even unhelpful feedback can become helpful because it might lead us down new paths. Someone might make a suggestion that really isn’t relevant to what we’re working on, but that could become an idea for something else or a different project.
To add to those three things that Austin Kleon points out, I think another potential outcome of sharing your work is the idea of making yourself visible, relates to that self-promotion, but in a different way, and I think a really powerful way. When people can see what you’re working on, it gives them the opportunity to adjust to you. In a work team, showing what you’re working on can change what other team members are doing.
How that might work in the open like on social media or in an organizational sharing platform like Microsoft Teams, making your work visible could allow people to reach out to you to establish a connection. They might offer an opportunity to deepen an existing connection or even offer to collaborate. This is, I think, where the powerful part comes and where this is all going.
When people share information and connect with each other, it opens up what Steven Johnson calls the adjacent possible, and that’s the path or the door that neither person could have imagined or seen on their own. It only becomes visible when those people become visible to each other and start sharing information. Making your work visible to others opens up that adjacent possible. I think that’s a big, big benefit.
Jessica: What are then some of the things that might hold people back from sharing their work?
Bob: The main one for me is imposter syndrome. It’s that feeling that I’m not the “right person” to be sharing this idea or that I’m not an expert in the field that I’m sharing about. That can be a tough one to get over. To get past that, I try to remind myself that I am the expert in my own experience. No other person has had the exact same combination of experiences that I have had, and so I’m the expert in how a particular topic looks through my unique lens. That’s true for everybody. Everybody has their own experiences and their own lens and way of looking at things. Even though you might not be an expert in a topic, it doesn’t mean that you can’t share about it or create work in that area.
I think when we’re sharing in completely open space like social media, I know I do and a lot of us might hold back because we’re afraid of saying the wrong thing or experiencing some backlash or being made to feel less than by comments and things like that. I try to manage that feeling by just choosing how vulnerable I want to be in a particular space. Sharing with my work team, I may choose and do choose to be way more vulnerable and honest if you want to think of it that way than I would be, say, like in a private LinkedIn group.
I might be more vulnerable in a private LinkedIn group than I would be in a completely open social media platform like X or just posting on LinkedIn or Facebook. I think it’s best, no matter where you’re posting, to think about the stakes. What are the potential risks and keep those stakes low starting off so that you can build to where you are comfortable from there. I think the danger is you overshare maybe in an open space, you have a really bad experience and then it becomes such a barrier that you have trouble sharing in other venues as well. Managing that I think is a good way to get started and hopefully not fall into those things that hold us back.
Jessica: Let’s get started. If you could walk us through a practice that will help us share our work.
Bob: Sure.
Jessica: That would be great.
Bob: I’d love to. The easiest way to get ready, I think, to share your work is to start sharing what John Stepper calls the universal gifts and those gifts are attention and gratitude. These are called universal gifts because virtually, everyone enjoys them. Intentionally and authentically sharing attention and gratitude with others is a good way to practice the courage and vulnerability that it might take for us to share our work. If there’s someone you appreciate, but you haven’t told them so or if you have seen or experienced something that has benefited you, take the time to give the gifts of gratitude and/or attention. Once you’re ready to start sharing your work, start with deciding what you want to share. Here are some ideas that you could share just to get you started. You could share an idea that you have for a program or a project or just a random idea. You could share a project that’s in process that you’re working on. You could share your motivations, why do you do the work that you do? You could share a process that’s helpful for you. Maybe a process for reporting or a process for getting started on a project when you have that blank page staring at you and share that with others.
You can share something you’ve learned, or you could share a challenge that you’re facing and need some help with, or a challenge that you’re facing you’ve overcome and you’ve learned something from, and then share what you’ve learned. Once you have decided okay, this is what I’m going to share, next, think about who do I want to share this with. Who is it relevant to, who could offer supportive feedback. This goes back to earlier in our conversation when we talked about choosing a platform where you’re comfortable, where it might be low-risk, or you might get out of it what you want to get out of it while also making sure the person or people that you’re sharing with that it’s relevant to them as well.
Now that you’ve got a person or a group of people in mind, ask yourself why might they be interested. Thinking about this can really help us add context to our sharing message. For example, you might include a phrase like, I thought you would be interested in this idea because of your work on dot dot dot, or something like, I saw your post about this topic on social media so I wanted to share this with you. Why would they be interested helps you add context to that message. Thinking about why someone would be interested in what you’re sharing might also help you think of others that you could potentially share this work with.
Finally, you need to decide how you are going to share your work, like what’s the method? Are you going to send an email to just one person? Are you going to share it in a private chat like Teams or Slack? Are you going to post it in a private group or in the open on social media? Again, think about what makes you comfortable and what opportunities might be opened up by sharing your work in that particular way. If you’ve thought about all that and answered those questions, you’ve got a plan. Go ahead and share your work. If you’re having trouble or you’re not quite ready to share your work and you’d like to practice in a safe space, you can share your work with me. Just email me. My email address is robert.bertsch@ndsu.edu, and I’ll put that invitation on the show notes as well.
Jessica: What a generous invitation. Thank you so much for sharing this guide to thinking through how to share your work with others. That’s it for this episode. Thanks for joining us. We hope you’ll give this practice a try and share your experience in the Practicing Connection LinkedIn group where people supporting military families practice the skills that empower us to work together so that we can positively impact our communities and help families thrive. You’ll find the link to the group on our website at oneop.org/practicingconnection. We’ll be back next week with a new podcast episode focused on investing time in leisure, learning, and yourself. Until then, keep practicing.
Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, U.S. Department of Defense under award numbers 2019-48770-30366 and 2023-48770-41333.
[00:14:09] [END OF AUDIO]

Do Less of What Drains You
2024-07-11
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xNTM1MTk5MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRjE1MzUxOTkzLWRvLWxlc3Mtb2Ytd2hhdC1kcmFpbnMteW91LmpzJTNGY29udGFpbmVyX2lkJTNEYnV6enNwcm91dC1wbGF5ZXItMTUzNTE5OTMlMjZwbGF5ZXIlM0RzbWFsbCUyMiUyMHR5cGUlM0QlMjJ0ZXh0JTJGamF2YXNjcmlwdCUyMiUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRnNjcmlwdCUzRQ== The more you understand about yourself, the better you’ll be able to align your life with the things that are really meaningful to you. In this episode, Jessica Beckendorf shares how to do less of what drains you by using energy and engagement tracking.
Links

Energy & Engagement Tracking Activity Log
Designing Your Life (Book)

[music]
Bob Bertsch: The more you understand about yourself, the better you’ll be able to align your life with the things that are really meaningful to you. Hi, everyone. I’m Bob Bertsch. Welcome to this week’s Practicing Connection practicast, where we highlight a specific practice you can use in your personal and professional growth. This week’s practice is Energy and Engagement Tracking from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’s book Designing Your Life. Here to share her experience with the practice is my practicing connection co-host Jessica Beckendorf.
Jessica Beckendorf: I love this activity. It has helped me to understand which activities, projects, and tasks I am most connected to. I’m excited to share my slightly modified version with all of you.
Bob: Can you tell us a little bit about Energy and Engagement Tracking?
Jessica: Absolutely. Energy and Engagement Tracking is all about reflecting on the activities, projects, and tasks that make you feel energized and engaged, and inflow, or some combination of all three. The goal here isn’t to ensure that everything you do is always energizing, engaging, and puts you in flow. The goal is to understand exactly what energizes and engages you and which tasks put you into flow and then examine how much time you’re spending doing the things that make you feel energized and engaged and the amount of time you’re spending on doing things that drain you.
When you have that, I guess, figured out, from there, you can figure out how you’re going to do more of what you love and a little bit less of what drains you. I know that this can sound almost impossible if you feel like you have no control over what you do or the tasks that you have in your work or frankly at home sometimes, but you do have some agency over your career or over some bigger picture pieces.
An example that Bill Burnett and Dave Evans share where an engineer realized what he loved to do and what drained him. Prior to doing this activity, he was considering going back to school for a business degree. After doing this activity, he realized it would’ve really been a big mistake because what he discovered was that he really loved engineering, so he ended up doubling down and getting an advanced degree in engineering instead.
He concentrated on an area that allowed him to solve complex problems because that’s the thing that he loved the most, was solving complex problems and minimizing the activities that were bogging him down like administrative details. I don’t know who loves administrative details, but I know that there are probably people who do.
Bob: Some people do.
Jessica: Yes. Sorry. Obviously, that is my own self coming out there. [laughs] I don’t love administrative details. What I like about using this activity to follow what lights you up, activity you mentioned or even a values exploration, you could also use this to follow up a values exploration, is that it helps you to see what you love to do in the context of what lights you up and the things that you value and care about.
Bob: I know you’ve done this tracking yourself. How has it helped you?
Jessica: Yes, I’ve gone through this activity a few times. Usually, I’ll go through the activity when I’m feeling a little bogged down, or sometimes when I’m feeling overwhelmed, or when I’m having trouble feeling motivated. I would say that the activity has helped me a few different ways. One way it has helped me is to see patterns in what I enjoy doing.
When I realized that I’m energized and engaged when I have a microphone in my hand, which is a little embarrassing to admit. [chuckles] I have to say it’s a little embarrassing. [laughs] When I looked at my energy and engagement tracker, I realized that my current job provided me with many opportunities to have a figurative microphone in my hand, even if it’s not usually a literal one.
Facilitating, for example. It helped me to see my facilitating work differently and enjoy it even more than I already did. I already love facilitating, but there were times when I just felt very drained by it depending on the circumstance. When I realized that facilitating was one path toward that thing I really love, which is I guess in a way entertaining or performing– When I realized that that was something– it was a pathway towards something I loved, it helped me to see facilitating even in those moments where it would’ve been more draining in the past.
It helped me to see those moments as something that I love as well. Another way this activity has helped me was to point out that I was spending a lot more time on things that really drained me. While I couldn’t rid myself of all of those tasks, there were a few I was able to pinpoint to identify and negotiate for someone else to take those tasks on, like being the primary point of contact for a small program that I ran. It drained me to think that I might be a bottleneck.
If I’m being honest, it drained me to know that I was a bottleneck. I was able to negotiate with one of our administrative staff to be the primary point of contact for that program, only involving me when there was a more complex issue that required my attention. For the things that I couldn’t offload, it was still really helpful to know that those tasks drained me because I could plan to do them when I had the most energy for them or I could plan to co-work with a colleague to make it a little more fun.
Bob: When we do this practice, how are we able to tell what gives us energy or gets us engaged, or at least, how did you tell that for yourself?
Jessica: This is a really good question. I think it’s probably a lot easier for some of us to know what drains us versus what gives us energy and puts us into a flow. I bet anyone listening, and I bet you can as well, think of some things off the top of your head that you hate doing. A lot of times these are the things that you procrastinate on. They’re the things that you can’t muster the energy to do because it drains your energy so much that you don’t even want to get started on it. Those are the things that you know will drain you. I want you to track those just as much as the things that give you energy and engagement.
How I knew is when I thought about the activities that made me feel energized and engaged. It was more of a gut reaction for me. I’ll give you a couple of clues. Reflecting back on how I felt doing that activity or working on that project, so really trying to immerse myself in that moment, even though the moment has passed, and really reflect back, “How did I feel doing that? How did I feel about the people I was working with, and how did it feel to work with them?”
For me, when I thought about an activity that made me feel energized or engaged, I just felt a little lighter. I maybe even smiled a little when I thought about it. Then, I would think about, “Okay, was it energizing or engaging or a little bit of both?” Then after I figured out what level I felt like I was energized or engaged, I would think about, “Okay, was that a flow activity?” I would remember the energy I was feeling in the moment and how it felt to engage in that activity.
I remembered how focused I was on the activity task or project. Those are the two main things to think about. How did you feel like? Were you energized by the task, or the project, or the activity? How did it feel to engage in that activity? Were you highly engaged? Were you sitting back and just listening? Then, how focused were you on the activity, task, or project?
If you weren’t very focused on it at all, then it was not a flow moment. I can tell you that. [chuckles] The questions to ask yourself when you think about flow is, were you so focused that the next time you looked at your clock, it was hours later and you only looked up because you were hungry? That’s a good sign that you found an activity that puts you in flow.
I would say most of the activities that I track, anytime I do this activity, most of them are not flow activities, but tracking when you’re in flow is still a really good way to tell which activities put you in flow.
There are a few activities though that were also contextual for me. Writing is one of those activities that seems to show up as an activity that gives me energy and really engages me. It can even put me in flow, but not always. It depends on what I’m writing, what mood I’m in, whether I’m feeling rushed by other projects, or whether I’m feeling overwhelmed in general. Sometimes, an activity could be contextual. I always have been a person who felt like writing was part of my identity. When I saw that I was drained by writing, it was disappointing. I just got curious about that, and I investigated that a little more, and I realized it was contextual.
Bob: I think it’s time to give this a try, Jessica. Would you mind walking us through the steps?
Jessica: Yes, of course. It’s really a pretty easy activity. I’ll walk you through it the way I like to practice it, which is a slight modification of how Bill Burnett and Dave Evans teach it. First, you’ll want to start a page in your journal or start a note in your favorite app or you can download the worksheet at the link that we provided in the show notes. Next, you’re going to reflect on your activities over the past three to four weeks.
Now, this is the way I do it. Sometimes, getting out your calendar and looking at the same time can help. If looking back three to four weeks is too long of a time period for you, you can instead just reflect on the past week, and then you can repeat the activity for the next 2-3 weeks so that you have a little more data to work with. On the far left of your page, you’re going to list the activities, tasks, and projects that you recall doing. I’m not talking about taking out the trash, although if you want to list it, you’re very welcome to do that. I’m talking about the activities, tasks, and projects that were more significant.
Then for each item on your list, you’re going to rate your energy level on a 1-5 scale, or of course, if you’re using the downloadable, there’s a little scale that you can use. Rate your energy level on a 1-5 scale with 1 being low. You’ll then rate your engagement level on a scale of 1-5, again with 1 being low. Write the word flow next to any activity for what you feel you might have been in flow. Again, flow is the state of being so energized and focused that you might even lose track of time. Next, once you have 3-4 weeks of data, take a look at it and see if you find any patterns, trends, or new insights. Think about what specifically contributed to your energy and engagement ratings.
For example, was it the meeting itself that was energizing, or was it something that happened at the meeting or something that you contributed to the meeting that was energizing for you? Was it because you were able to dig into something with no interruptions, or was it because there was a group of people involved and everyone was building on an idea together? Be as specific as it’s helpful for you to fully understand why an activity was draining or energizing and engaging.
Finally, brainstorm some ideas on how you can make some adjustments that will allow you to do a little more of what you love and a little less of what you don’t. You can take it a little further by imagining some bigger goals if you like. For now, just even small tweaks to our current situation could go a long way when we’re coming from a place of self-knowledge and intention.
Bob: Thanks for guiding us through that, Jessica.
Jessica: You’re welcome. I really enjoy this activity because it has been so eye-opening for me in the past.
Bob: That’s it for this episode. Thanks for joining us. We hope you’ll give this practice a try and share your experience in the practicing connection community on LinkedIn, where people supporting military families practice the skills that empower us to work together so that we can positively impact our communities and help families thrive. You’ll find the link to the community on our website at oneop.org/practicingconnection. We’ll be back next week with an in-depth podcast episode sharing reflections from some of our guests from the past years on the topic of finding balance. Until then, keep practicing.
Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military, Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense, under award numbers 2019-48770-30366 and 2023-48770-41333.
[music]
[00:13:35] [END OF AUDIO]
