About This Event
A refusal of violence requires us to change the narratives we tell ourselves: our assumptions about God, our internalized narratives, and our ways of relating to ourselves and others. To move toward Jesus’ way of peace, justice, and liberation, we must undertake the difficult work of addressing the stories we carry about our own worth, how God sees us, and what Christianity expects from us.
To become people who can embody a different way of being in the world, practices centered on trauma healing, resilience, spiritual formation, and self-awareness can help move us toward an inner peace that enables us to confront injustice and move toward liberation for all.
Join our conversation with Amber Oda and licensed trauma therapist Mirela Popaja-Hadžić on healing as a form of peacebuilding. This 90-minute dialogue will include space for reflection and encourage opportunities for participation.
MEET THE PANEL
Mirela Popaja-Hadžić
Born in Sarajevo in the 1980’s, Mirela had a front row seat to the breakup of Yugoslavia and the siege of Sarajevo. In her twenties, Mirela realized that the war impacted her more deeply than she had previously acknowledged, and this realization launched her into an introspective journey to grapple with and heal from her own trauma. It also catalyzed a process of theological and philosophical reflection about how to lament and embrace the hardships of life. Her own unaddressed grief and trauma came to the surface, and she came to understand the importance of grief as part of the process of healing and reconciliation.
As a Bosniak Protestant from a Muslim background, Mirela had prejudice toward Serbs and Croats despite the fact that she grew up with them. Dealing with her own grief helped her become open to and connect with people across ethnic divisions, so that she saw their grief, wounds, and stories as similar to her own.
This individual healing process clarified her sense of personal calling and mission: to work for individual and collective healing through mental health and peacebuilding work. She has over 10 years of experience working in both for-profit and non-profit sectors in project coordination, program management, training, facilitation, and translation. She is a licensed Gestalt psychotherapist with experience supporting clients navigating breast cancer, unresolved trauma, anxiety, addiction, grief, anger, and patterns of victimhood. Drawing on both therapeutic and creative approaches, she incorporates artistic practices such as Kintsugi to help individuals process pain, embrace brokenness with compassion, and move toward healing and restoration. She is also an affiliate trainer with Trauma Free World and holds a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Sarajevo.
Amber Oda
Amber Oda is a peacebuilding and trauma healing practitioner, facilitator, and life-long learner currently living and practicing in Kekionga, “the Blackberry Patch”: the sacred homeland of the Miami people, also known as Fort Wayne, Indiana. Rooted in the values of community, simple living, hospitality, and integrity, Amber draws upon the wells of wisdom of her family (biological, chosen, and gifted) and an abundance of teachers and guides along her journey.
Amber brings to Peace Catalyst two decades of experience partnering with communities impacted by violence and oppression to heal from trauma and collaborate to change the conditions of their struggles. The desire to collaborate on healing and justice initiatives has led Amber to work with refugee communities and survivors of human trafficking in Uganda, with immigrants at Jubilee Partners, a Christian intentional community in Georgia, USA, and with youth in a nonviolent leadership program in Ft. Wayne. Currently, she partners with local peacebuilders who are re-imagining responses to harm, integrating healing practices on personal and collective levels, and cultivating abundant, thriving communities.
Amber has a masters degree in Transformational Leadership from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. She is married to Mohamed, who is Sudanese and a peacebuilder at heart, and they share four children: Nadeem, Amaya, Rumi, and Nijayma. Amber and Mohamed have a deep desire to continue finding ways to collaborate with Sudanese communities on healing and rebuilding communities impacted by war and genocide in Sudan and around the world.
About This Event
A refusal of violence requires us to change the narratives we tell ourselves: our assumptions about God, our internalized narratives, and our ways of relating to ourselves and others. To move toward Jesus’ way of peace, justice, and liberation, we must undertake the difficult work of addressing the stories we carry about our own worth, how God sees us, and what Christianity expects from us.
To become people who can embody a different way of being in the world, practices centered on trauma healing, resilience, spiritual formation, and self-awareness can help move us toward an inner peace that enables us to confront injustice and move toward liberation for all.
Join our conversation with Amber Oda and licensed trauma therapist Mirela Popaja-Hadžić on healing as a form of peacebuilding. This 90-minute dialogue will include space for reflection and encourage opportunities for participation.
MEET THE PANEL
Mirela Popaja-Hadžić
Born in Sarajevo in the 1980’s, Mirela had a front row seat to the breakup of Yugoslavia and the siege of Sarajevo. In her twenties, Mirela realized that the war impacted her more deeply than she had previously acknowledged, and this realization launched her into an introspective journey to grapple with and heal from her own trauma. It also catalyzed a process of theological and philosophical reflection about how to lament and embrace the hardships of life. Her own unaddressed grief and trauma came to the surface, and she came to understand the importance of grief as part of the process of healing and reconciliation.
As a Bosniak Protestant from a Muslim background, Mirela had prejudice toward Serbs and Croats despite the fact that she grew up with them. Dealing with her own grief helped her become open to and connect with people across ethnic divisions, so that she saw their grief, wounds, and stories as similar to her own.
This individual healing process clarified her sense of personal calling and mission: to work for individual and collective healing through mental health and peacebuilding work. She has over 10 years of experience working in both for-profit and non-profit sectors in project coordination, program management, training, facilitation, and translation. She is a licensed Gestalt psychotherapist with experience supporting clients navigating breast cancer, unresolved trauma, anxiety, addiction, grief, anger, and patterns of victimhood. Drawing on both therapeutic and creative approaches, she incorporates artistic practices such as Kintsugi to help individuals process pain, embrace brokenness with compassion, and move toward healing and restoration. She is also an affiliate trainer with Trauma Free World and holds a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Sarajevo.
Amber Oda
Amber Oda is a peacebuilding and trauma healing practitioner, facilitator, and life-long learner currently living and practicing in Kekionga, “the Blackberry Patch”: the sacred homeland of the Miami people, also known as Fort Wayne, Indiana. Rooted in the values of community, simple living, hospitality, and integrity, Amber draws upon the wells of wisdom of her family (biological, chosen, and gifted) and an abundance of teachers and guides along her journey.
Amber brings to Peace Catalyst two decades of experience partnering with communities impacted by violence and oppression to heal from trauma and collaborate to change the conditions of their struggles. The desire to collaborate on healing and justice initiatives has led Amber to work with refugee communities and survivors of human trafficking in Uganda, with immigrants at Jubilee Partners, a Christian intentional community in Georgia, USA, and with youth in a nonviolent leadership program in Ft. Wayne. Currently, she partners with local peacebuilders who are re-imagining responses to harm, integrating healing practices on personal and collective levels, and cultivating abundant, thriving communities.
Amber has a masters degree in Transformational Leadership from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. She is married to Mohamed, who is Sudanese and a peacebuilder at heart, and they share four children: Nadeem, Amaya, Rumi, and Nijayma. Amber and Mohamed have a deep desire to continue finding ways to collaborate with Sudanese communities on healing and rebuilding communities impacted by war and genocide in Sudan and around the world.