Editor’s note: The Sun Journal asked victim advocates at the Maine Resiliency Center how they work to remain personally resilient, so they can remain physically and emotionally healthy as they do their trauma work. This story is a result of that conversation. 

LEWISTON — Danielle Parent is not a hugger. Or, she wasn’t before Oct. 25 last year.

“I didn’t know the power of hugs,” she said, “That seems like such a wild thing to say,” but her work as director of the Maine Resiliency Center taught her that power. She didn’t know she needed hugs to support her resiliency as both a human being and a victims’ advocate, but now that she does know, she’ll hug absolutely anyone who is receptive.

It’s one of the things that has most surprised her peers at the center, that this self-described “skunkupine” has become a bear hugger to all. Human touch, human caring, careful listening and sharing tears have all become part of the work to build resilience in a broad community devastated by tragedy.

The Maine Resiliency Center, which opened three weeks after the mass shooting, is now a haven overlooking the busy downtown intersection at Main and Lisbon streets.

Sometimes people will come in simply to sit with a cup of coffee and watch that traffic. Once, someone came in to nap on a yoga mat because they needed sleep and it was the only place they felt safe.

Hundreds come in each month for programs and still more come in to meet one-on-one with victim advocates who are always ready to listen.

Parent said it’s been valuable to see that “grief and pain can coexist with joy.” And that victims and survivors have established friendships with one another, building a community of hope and caring at the heart of their grief and pain.

On July 4, knowing that a number of victims and survivors of the mass shooting would struggle hearing the sound of fireworks, advocates organized a dinner and fireworks watch party at the center. They had no idea how many people would attend and were surprised to see 300 people arrive to share a meal, watch the fireworks or just stay inside and be among friends in a quiet, safe space.

According to Monica Linder, one of the MRC advocates, she and her peers have dedicated themselves to creating the kind of space where people feel safe, “which is a drastic difference from how they feel in the outside world.”

For some people, Ashley Lawrence, the center’s events manager, said, the shooting “feels like yesterday and 10 years ago all at the same time. Every day is a different day and how you feel that day is going to be different, and you don’t know what things along the way are going to bother you.”

The kinds of support services the community needs and how they might be delivered was something designed in real time.

In the days immediately after the shooting the staff of Community Concepts, along with many others, found a space and the Maine Resiliency Center — specifically named to steer clear of the word “healing” — was established.

We were in a rapid “let’s build this house” mode, Ruby Bean, director of resource development for Community Concepts, said, researching other resiliency centers, learning how to make the space sign language friendly, figuring out communications, furnishing the place and ramping up staffing.

The center opened Nov. 13, with eight people seeking services that day. Four days later, 60 people walked in, including Joanna Stokinger, a former victim advocate with the Attorney General’s Office and a grandmother whose infant grandson was murdered in 2021. Stokinger had also worked as a domestic violence victim advocate and thought her background, both as a family member of a victim and a professional advocate, could be helpful.

She had already worked for weeks with four families who lost loved ones in the mass shooting and found herself falling back into her former role as a homicide victim advocate. When the MRC opened, even though she had retired from full-time advocacy work, Stokinger said she felt compelled to volunteer there every day. She now works at the center full time, serving as the lead advocate navigator.

“I’ve done victim services since 2002,” Stokinger said, “and intellectually knew I was trauma informed, but I don’t think I ever understood it until I became a survivor myself.”

“But,” she said, “I didn’t really know in my heart what victims needed because it wasn’t like, here’s a list of what a victim needs.”

She said that much of her early work talking with victims and survivors was coaching them on what to say to well-meaning people, that the standard response when someone tells you they’re sorry this happened to you is “it’s OK.” Well, she said, it’s not OK and people should not feel compelled to say that it is. Instead, it’s perfectly reasonable to say simply “thank you for that” to acknowledge the sentiment without admitting everything is OK.

It’s been a hard lesson for her to learn for herself, she said. At the MRC, “here, this team, they actually care that I’m OK and I’m not burning myself out. It’s taken me a 23-year career to learn that I can’t take care of others if I don’t take care of myself.”

Every once in a while, when a peer notices Stokinger hasn’t eaten in hours, someone will hold a banana in front of her face and just say “banana.” She eats it, and gets right back to work.

According to Parent, “trust is a big thing in a trauma environment. We were traumatized as providers, but that’s not the whole of it. There is this kind of pressure. We are the response to the victims and survivors. There’s innate pressure to that, like drinking from a fire hose.”

For her, she said, and for all the advocates, it’s important that they feel safe to do their work. “You need to be able to show up and cry if you’re crying, so that you can be prepared to help others.”

“It’s all so high risk,” she said, to make things right rather than causing more harm.

Parent pointed specifically to Meredith Stack, the center’s manager of programming and outreach, as being able to make her feel safe. The two have known each other for more than a decade and innately understand each other.

Stack said she felt very connected to resiliency work and when Parent called to see if Stack wanted to join the center, there was no hesitation.

“This was a very important undertaking,” she said, and was “an area we don’t have a good support system for people, there’s a lack of service for victims of crime, and it’s been a real big learning experience.” The most important thing they do is be “present” for people, she said, “meeting people where they are” in their grieving process.

The advocates have heard about fears from some families that their loved ones will be forgotten, and they’ve heard frustrations about dozens of people who were injured on Oct. 25 but who were not shot, so those people are not included in the official numbers of 18 deceased and 13 injured. There were many more than “18 and 13,” Parent said, who were physically injured, and the emotional and mental injuries for others is incalculable and very, very real.

The centered opened with hours available five days a week, but Parent said it became apparent very quickly that they had to open at night to serve people who were available only after work hours. Every day for the staff became a learning experience.

One night, when a support group was meeting, “someone was really struggling and they ran out of the building,” Parent said. “I had to intercede because they weren’t in a state to be driving.” It was Linder, who is a therapist, who convinced that person to return to group.

That situation convinced Parent that every person who worked and volunteered at the center had to be trauma informed to do interventions if needed. “We had to make sure we’re not causing harm, that people aren’t leaving here in a state where their needs aren’t being met.”

Elizabeth Rogers, who is a program director and an advocate who works directly with individuals at the center, now also works the front desk. Bean said that reception work is “not just getting names. People come in sobbing. It’s really triaging,” and Rogers’ mental health background is the right skillset to recognize how to welcome people in.

Months after the center was operational, Parent said center staff finally became very intentional about their own self-care. “I’m not going to say we’re great at it,” she said, but the center has been shut down on occasion specifically for staff training “to really understand how this work is impacting us.”

“Some days people come in here and are excited to do an activity that we had planned. Other times people come in here and are hit pretty hard by the day because grief has no timeline,” and staff is ready for those responses and more.

Even people within the same families, Stokinger said, “they all lost the same person in this event, but they feel different. When traumatic things happen you either come together or you fall apart.” She said, “It’s helpful when we say to them, ‘you’re safe to say these things,’” knowing that Stokinger is going to support each individual person with what they need. “People get that. People appreciate it,” she said.

What the staff has recognized with clarity in these past months is that victims and their families do not feel seen or heard.

Parent said, in many circumstances, people don’t ask victims how they are because they don’t know how to ask. “We ask them here. I genuinely care and want to know. It’s lonely to be in families and in your workplace and in your community and not be asked. The hardest thing I see, and what I consider the success of the MRC,” is that these questions are asked by advocates.

But, what’s asked is also answered and the staff has absorbed a lot of pain through this work.

“It’s really hard for people who are helpers to turn our phones off and take care of ourselves. We know that about ourselves,” Parent said, but they also know that unless they take care of themselves and each other, they’re not as effective in working to take care of others.

And, they’re seeing progress.

“It’s not lost of me that most of these people who are directly impacted, who were there, whose family was killed, they were there doing their regular activities,” Parent said. “So when I think about success I think about people engaging in their community again. People back to playing cornhole again. Back to bowling. We did a lot to support that process.”

She said much of the work was done by victims who welcomed advocates into their families and community circles. “They have embraced us in the setting that they enjoy and where their community comes together. It’s just such a beautiful thing to see that come together. To see wellness for them,” she said, which helps keep advocates resilient enough to continue the work.

“We also serve providers,” Parent said, with wellness workshops and other programs. The LA Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce “has taken on roles that are not normal for chambers. We also serve first responders, and that’s a place where I don’t think we’ve done what I think we need to because we don’t really have a person to be that point of contact and build those trusted relationships.” That’s an area, she said, “as we look to the future that we need to create and be more supportive of them in their community.”

The positive impact for victims has been so great, it is the MRC staff’s intention to look at what long-term sustainability of the center itself looks like, and to find a way to create a permanent hub-and-spoke model in Maine that originates from the MRC to allow anyone who experiences trauma and traumatic grief, and who are victims of crime and don’t have the sources to find a sense of community,” to know they are not alone and that there are services available to help people with shared experiences, Parent explained.

“We see the gap and we know the people in this community, for the people who we serve who are directly affected by Oct. 25,” the 27 months that the center is scheduled to be open, is “an arbitrary time for people to be served.”

For many who have had contact with the shelter, “the majority don’t want to rehash what was done wrong, but want to learn how we can make change for the future to make sure we’re wrapping around people with acute needs” in the years to come, Parent said.

“We’re looking at creating meaningful access and accessibility for people with access needs, like our hard-of-hearing community, and that they have improved relationships with police resources and the media. And what we can learn from this rather than what should we harp on.”

Parent said, “We’ve seen people who came early on and didn’t come for months and months and are now coming back. Moving forward in a way that is beautiful to watch, and there are people who are struggling as if it’s day one.”

And, she said, “a lot of these people know each other, too, have had friendships for decades.”

For so many, Parent explains, “grief goes beyond what people think traditionally, so when there are new births, that creates impacts and ripples that will last years and years and years and decades and decades,” for everyone. “I am forever changed by this. I will never be the same person.”

The greatest lesson in the past year for Parent, and many of the other advocates, is that building connections between people is a clear path toward resiliency. “Having people feel seen and heard is empowering in their journey of healing,” Parent said, which is something the community can help bolster by “showing up for your neighbor for a cup of coffee. That genuine connection can go so far.”

There’s a lot “we can do as a community,” Parent said, by “showing up for one another and taking that risk to make that connection.”

The Maine Resiliency Center offers walk-in hours Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 3 to 6 p.m. Appointments are also available. Reach out to the center at 207-515-3930.

For more information on services and programs, go to info@maineresiliencycenter.org.

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