Our mother died when I was born. My brother Charles and I did our best to hold on to each other.
LIZ WALKER
Before she created the Can We Talk Program for Community Healing Liz Walker was the pastor of Roxbury Presbyterian Church in Roxbury, Massachusetts, a humanitarian focusing on women’s education in South Sudan, and a television journalist, the first Black weeknight news anchor in Boston. As Founding Director of the Can We Talk…Network, Rev. Walker has expanded her Roxbury-based model of transformative, healing trauma support to 15 replication sites in New England and around the country. Most recently, she traveled to the Middle East to train Christian leaders in creating a Can We Talk healing model in Palestine.
An avid cyclist and rowing enthusiast, Liz, the mother of three and grandmother of two, spends her private time between Boston and Sarasota, Florida.
MY STORY
Back in the day children were seen and not heard, even at birthday parties. Like deer in the headlights, we were still and silent.
At Little Rock Central High School, I discovered Journalism and the power of my voice.
In 1980 I became Boston’s first Black weeknight television news anchor.
My television news career was full of glamor.
It was exciting to meet famous people.
Most importantly, I was humbled to be considered a role model for a generation of local television viewers.
Most people were surprised when I left television, graduating from seminary and entering ordained ministry.
I was thrilled and humbled to answer God’s call.
My father, a Congregational pastor, was my greatest hero.
I had no idea all the demands and gifts of church ministry.
In 2001 I traveled on a church mission to South Sudan.
Our group spent ten years witnessing incredible suffering and helped to build a girls’ school there.
I was surprised to discover so much suffering closer to home in the neighborhood around our Roxbury church.
Debra Fitzpatrick represents scores of courageous families who suffered great loss in neighborhood violence.
Losing her son Cory almost destroyed Debra. But the more she learned to talk about her pain, the more she began to heal.
The Can We Talk program was created when our community learned to share and listen to each other’s pain and struggles.
Taking care of mind, body, and spirit in community, heals all over the world. Can We Talk has changed my life.
MY STORY
I started writing as a child, a way to escape loneliness and self-doubt. I suppose all children go through that period of loneliness, but after my father died when I was twelve, reading was not enough. My own words grew into fast friends, secret companions willing to dress up and become whoever and whatever I wanted, what I needed.
In high school I joined the Little Rock Central High newspaper staff, the Tiger, and finally found a place where I fit, when Charles Lance, my slightly bent, very white, pencil thin journalism teacher, with the most southern of drawls I’d ever heard, proudly affirmed me in a slow rolling but incredulous twang, “Walker, y’all can write!” …the first time a white teacher in any classroom, ever complimented me on anything. And writing became the way, my way to shed light on all the dark places I encountered in my world, first in school, then in my career as a television journalist.
Years would pass before I considered writing a book, this story about stories. And it came only after we started journaling sessions as part of Can We Talk…. The idea of writing as balm, a healing action, a way of letting go, led to my decision to write the story of our community gatherings and my own trauma. It remains my everyday path to healing.
ORDER NO ONE LEFT ALONE AT BOOKSTORES EVERYWHERE AND LOCATIONS BELOW.
Buy at bookstores everywhere and the locations below.
