During my ten years as an educator, I often felt “wired and tired.” I’d go from going a mile a minute, never checking in with myself or body throughout the day to getting home and feeling like I couldn’t do one more thing. Often feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, and deeply struggling to manage my emotions and when I found the practices that I teach now, I felt a sense of lightness and hope I had never experienced before. I continued to learn about trauma, the brain, body, and the hope of neuroplasticity and resilience. I completed a 200-hour yoga and social justice teacher training with a trauma-informed focus. I volunteered teaching yoga for traumatic brain injury recovery patiences, educators, people in substance use recovery and saw the incredible impact it was having on others. At the same time, I became certified in the internationally used wellness skill model called the Community Resiliency Model® and began offering workshops to my community. The response from participants was incredible and I knew it worked and it was so powerful to hear the feedback from people for how they would immediately be integrating it and sharing it with their families and those they worked with. I’ve had the opportunity to be part of Community Resiliency Model Teacher Trainings for people in Ukraine during the war, nurses after the pandemic, educators, social workers and and offer workshops for parents and foster parents. I often say the Community Resiliency Model® is my heart and it really is and I’m ready to share my heart (this model) with the world even if my knees are knocking as I do it. My mission is to teach and offer these workshops to caregivers, to support their well-being, the well-being of their families, and all those they serve. These skills have been a life-jacket for me in some of my darkest, most challenging moments of my life and have also helped me feel more alive, more connected, and more empowered than I even thought was possible. I will keep working toward this mission because those who care for others deserve to have skills and tools to deeply care for themselves during stressful times and to live a life feeling grounded, connected, and empowered. 

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                                         Founder, Kelly Purcell

 

             Kelly Purcell has a Masters Degree in Teaching with 10 years of experience as an educator with experience as a classroom teacher and an instructional coach. She is a certified Community Resiliency Model® teacher and a certified trauma-informed yoga instructor and has a certification in crystal singing bowl sound healing. Kelly started a well-being company called Ground. Connect. Empower. LLC that offers workshops, trauma-informed yoga, and sound healing. She got certified as a CRM teacher in 2019, and since then Kelly has taught CRM workshops for educators, social workers, Guardian ad Litem volunteers and staff, foster parents and grandparents, community leaders, and community members. Kelly has also presented the CRM at the Darkness to Light National Prevention Conference and the Regional Medical Assistants Conference in Wilmington, NC. She has been a facilitator with the Trauma Resource Institute to support the Teacher Training for the model and was part of a team to provide a CRM teacher training for leaders in Ukraine during the war. 

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              Kelly is also currently working with a team of people to improve the health and well-being of children/youth, their families, and caregivers in the foster care system. She is working in six counties to provide CRM workshops for those caring for children/youth in the foster care system and is supporting the local resiliency initiatives in the six counties in North Carolina to create awareness and resources about Adverse Childhood Experience (ACEs). 

 

                Kelly is deeply passionate about not only teaching people the CRM skills to help themselves regulate their nervous system but to impact their families and the wider community. She is deeply passionate about holistic healing practices of yoga and sound healing and the very practical biology-based wellness skills of CRM to help people rebalance, reconnect, and re-engage to feel like themselves again.

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