We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bella J. Rockman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Bella J., thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
That’s a loaded question for me. In many ways, I feel like I was born in resilient. I was born into some complex inter-generational trauma that came with adversity, so early on, I think I adopted a sink or swim mindset. I can sit in it and sink, or learn from it, overcome it and swim!
I would always find the light at the end of the tunnel, the silver lining to the cloud and the rainbow after a storm,
I’ve had this belief that no matter what comes my way, if I am still here, my story is not yet done.
And if something that I’ve experienced in my life can impact another person positively, the challenges that I have walk-through will not be wasted or in vein. I think that’s where my resilience comes from.
Also deeply leaning and looking within to draw from the well of inner strength, creativity and wisdom that resides within us all. I do that often, as a daily practice aligned with leaning into my faith and my sense of purpose in this world.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am a Social Scientist and Humanitarian at heart. Human behavior has fascinated me since kindergarten! And human rights is something I feel very passionate and compassionate about as well.
I express these interest through my work in Mental Healthcare as a Neuropsychotherapist, focusing on Brain-based treatment for clients patients and families. Also in my Mental Healthcare correspondence work on CBS and NPR radio.
The public policy work that I get to do on Capitol Hill advocating for the rights and mental healthcare resources and funding for others is so rewarding. Being able to work to change policies that reflect the protections and access to care for others is simply priceless.
We are offering an online psycho-educational Book Club this Fall again! One of the book clubs is on the “Abandonment Recovery” Workbook, which is really exciting, because many people have experienced some type of abandonment at some point in their lives rather major or minor relationally. And the other virtual bookclub is on relationship green flags, which helps us to understand and recognize healthy patterns and friendships, work and dating.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I think one of the most useful things I did early on in my career was try different internships, externships, paid and unpaid work opportunities to really immerse myself within different industries to get clear on what sparked the most passion and joy for me.
This was also helpful because it really helped me to get clear about what I absolutely would not want to do as a field of work for the rest of my life. Sometimes we have to start by identifying our absolute no’s before we can get clear on what we say yes to.
I did internships in healthcare, in law, and in television. Those helped shape the work that I do today and provide a blueprint for me to integrate them all into one meaningful career. The other internships in interior design, and architecture and the work I did running camps at the YMCA while in undergrad, Oh my goodness, they were important as well, because it really helped me to understand the fields that I was not well-suited for or that felt laborious, draining, or unrewarding.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
I am a book geek, so that’s a difficult question to narrow down to one! I would say the two that come to my mind immediately are “The Body Keeps the Score”, by Dr. Bessel Vanderkolk and “It Didn’t Start With You”, by Mark Wolyn. Both address, the role that trauma can play on our thinking, behavioral patterns, and how it gets locked or stored in our bodies and even passed on intergenerationally. This is important to me as a Clinician and it’s also important to me for my personal development and healing work. What I’ve learned is that trauma is intergenerational, but so is healing! And while it looks a little different for rach person, there is definitely a blueprint we can follow to create healing and joy in our lives.
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