The Alma Center (2821 N. Fourth St.) has been working for nearly 12 years to break the cycle of domestic violence by changing physically and/or psychologically abusive men through trauma-informed healing. Founder and executive director Terri Strodthoff spoke with Off the Cuff about the center’s evolution, methodology and the need to walk the talk.
Tell me about the Alma Center’s approach and how it has developed over time.
We have worked to understand trauma and that the men we are working with were the little boys that grew up in families that have a lot of trauma themselves. A lot of the men that come here are also involved in the criminal justice system and they have experienced horrific levels of trauma. About a third have witnessed a homicide. Sixty percent have friends or family who were shot. Close to 30% were victims of sexual abuse as children.
We found we needed to do comprehensive wrap-around programming that paid attention to the reality of men’s lives and helped them in a way that was about trying to understand the root causes so that we could help them move through that to better functioning in life. The Alma Center began as that experiment. Over the years, my understanding of trauma continued to grow. Little boys and girls experience trauma and express the impact of that trauma in very different ways. Research has shown conclusively that girls and women tend to express it with more internal focus, the types of behaviors and understandings that appear to be all about low self esteem and getting yourself into dangerous situations and repeating the trauma. Boys and men tend to express the impact of trauma in rage and violence.
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If our goal is really about ending violence, about breaking the cycle, then we have to have interventions that actually deal with the reality of where it’s coming from. Punishment and shame don’t work for changing the behavior. Healing, compassion, understanding and accountability do. We say to people: “I believe that you can change. You have the capacity. I know that the truth of who you are is not what you’re manifesting right now and I believe that you know that as well. We can help you restore the person who you are.”
Can you tell me about your programs and the influences that helped shape them? For instance, I learned Wisdom Walk to Self Mastery employs indigenous healing techniques.
In about 2008 I was talking to a colleague and saying we needed to do programming that is much more focused on soul. What we’re talking about in trauma is that people have wounds to their psyche—to their psychology, to their emotions, to their soul. Jojopah [Nsoroma, developer of Wisdom Walk] is a shaman. She apprenticed with the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso, West Africa. That practice is really about helping people get to an understanding of their purpose in this world, their purpose in the community and understanding things that happen along the way as evolutionary teaching for you to step fully into your role in the community and into who you need to be. And indigenous wisdom is much more about rituals that help us get access to our heart and to our soul, so that we’re not just focusing on our mind and learning new ideas about how to move forward, we’re actually healing what has happened to us in our heart and in our soul.
Our staff goes through the Wisdom Walk together so we have the experience of what we’re asking the men who come to us to do and we really believe that we can only hold space for other people to transform and change if we’re doing our own work. We really have to be responsible for our own emotional wellness and hold each other accountable for that, otherwise we can’t possibly be authentic in holding the space for the men who come here. And we can’t expect them to do it because people who’ve gone through trauma can read disingenuousness in a second. They might comply with the programming or legal expectations of them but they’re not going to have a trusting relationship to do their work because, why would they? You don’t go to a friend who you sort of maybe trust when you’re processing something really deep about yourself. You want to go to a person who you believe in, who you trust, who you believe walks their talk. So we have to be doing that in order to support people in their process of change.
To learn more about the Alma Center, call 414-265-0100 or visit almacenter.org.
