Episode 34: The Tenacity of Showing Up for Yourself and Others featuring Tabitha Mpamira

Tabitha Mpamira is a therapist, activist, motivational speaker, and consultant on sexual and gender-based violence with a long working history in the mental healthcare industry. In 2015, Tabitha founded EDJA to provide free medical, legal, and mental health services to survivors of sexual assault in East Africa. EDJA, now a program offered by an organization in Uganda, has sparked rapid change in rural Uganda by supporting hundreds of survivors and bringing perpetrators to justice.

Tabitha’s work in this area has been widely recognized and vividly depicted in the documentary Victors: Singing to the Lions, which has been screened globally, including at the United Nations Association of New York. She was recognized by Global Citizen in 2018 when she won the People’s Choice Waislitz Award. Tabitha has been invited to speak across the globe; recent examples include her speech at the Vatican about the urgency of working to end sexual violence and her widely viewed TEDx Talk on the transforming or transferring of trauma. Tabitha is currently pursuing a doctorate in clinical psychology with a specialization in sexual trauma.

In this episode Tabitha journeys us through how she came to be the work while also doing the work. This work as she notes was far greater than being a student and clinician; it also included being real about her own pain and healing. Drawn to psychology in high school and a fan of Law & Order SVU (like myself), Tabitha came to a pivotal awakening in her work in 2015. We learn about the moments that inspired the development of EDJA and what sparked her to be more intentional about engaging with clients with the heart in mind. In her ever-evolving journey towards healing, Tabitha notes importance and value of representative mental health professionals. As we share, the go-to's need a go-to as well. Tabitha also offers up her thoughts on how we can move to more action against sexual assault, what's needed to break intergenerational trauma while also maintaining our individual peace. 

We show up for ourselves and commit to healing as we share Forward 4O’s platform with this phenomenal WOC in the nonprofit and social enterprise sector.

Stay connected to Tabitha on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Follow the work of EDJA on Twitter and the Nyaka website.

 

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