Partners in Healing

By: James S. Gordon, MD

Before I tell you about my third trip to Ukraine, in October 2022, I want to note how important it is to have people vouching for the success of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s trauma healing work, and to thank Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative for their support, and the opportunities they have given me to meet potential partners.

The first photo here shows Secretary Clinton publicly honoring CMBM’s work after hurricanes and earthquakes in Puerto Rico at a CGI meeting there. “We have to,” she said, “bring this work to the world.”

The next two pictures were taken at the CGI Annual Meeting in New York in September 2022, where CGI staff facilitated an introduction to someone I hadn’t seen in several years.

The old acquaintance, whom I was so happy to see again, is Petra Nemcova, a former Czech supermodel, who, having survived the 2004 tsunami in Thailand, has devoted herself, via All Hands and Hearts, the nonprofit she co-founded, to healing trauma and rebuilding education in communities devastated by climate change and war. You can see Petra and me happy to be reunited.

Petra, in turn, introduced me to Mykola Kuleba, the Founder and CEO of Save Ukraine Rescue Network, an extraordinary organization which, since the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2014, has brought 100,000 of the most vulnerable civilians out of the combat zones in which their homes were destroyed and their lives threatened.

When, a month later, I go to Ukraine, Mykola, who is sitting with me here, hosts me in Kyiv, and we explore how CMBM can best serve the internally displaced people for whom he and his staff and volunteers are caring in shelters and social service programs across the country.

More on Mykola and Save Ukraine, and who I met, and what I learned and did, in the entries to follow.