{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Embodying change: Transforming power, culture and well-being for people in aid","title":" 67. Learning how to carry what happened with Silvia Risi","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3145,"description":"What do you do when your professional world turns upside down? Maybe it’s burnout, harassment, a role abolished, or something else.  An identity shaken. Humanitarian workers are trained to carry other people’s suffering. But what happens when we are the ones carrying something heavy? In Episode 67 of Embodying Change, Melissa Pitotti sits down with Silvia Risi, former humanitarian aid worker turned mental health peer supporter, to explore one powerful idea: recovery is learning how to carry what happened without letting it define or disable your life. After more than 16 years working in conflict and post-conflict contexts, Silvia reached a breaking point that led her to step away from the field. What followed was not an immediate reinvention. It was grief. Identity loss. Slowness. Reconstruction. This conversation explores what it means to pivot, not by erasing what happened, but by integrating it.\nIn this episode, we explore:\n\n• Why losing a job can feel like losing yourself\n• The difference between therapy, coaching, and mental health peer support\n• What “Nothing about us without us” means in recovery work\n• Why peer support is horizontal and rooted in lived experience\n• How hope can be practiced, not just promised\n• Why \"Pivoting Well\" starts with grieving well\n• How humanitarian skills translate into unexpected new chapters\nSilvia shares how reconnecting with her values, practicing daily self-kindness, and finding peers who understood the humanitarian context became central to her healing.\nBecause sometimes the goal is not to \"move on.\"\nSometimes the goal is to learn how to carry what happened with strength, dignity, and support.\nAbout Silvia Risi\n\nSilvia Risi worked for over 16 years in humanitarian operations, primarily in conflict and post-conflict settings. Following burnout and workplace psychological harassment, she began a recovery journey that led her toward coaching, professional training in mental health peer support, and a new way of serving the...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/uFSdFlFuEElscNdIvJdBMv5_S5x37dqgu89IcXLzSs4/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/Lzk3NTMvMTcwOTEx/MzY2Ni1hcnR3b3Jr/LmpwZw.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}