Get to Know Sara, NAOMI Community Director
Throughout the month of March, we are celebrating women’s contributions to the richness of our community. Sara Cardwell, NAOMI’s Community Director, researches, trains and leads by example as she invests in the lives of her family and the NAOMI community — both staff and community members. Below, she reflects on her journey over the past 10 years.
I had spent over a decade working with families before joining an organization where my Creator would call me to learn how to love women deeply and show me my desperate need to be loved. When I began my journey at NAOMI, our only child (a son) was three years old. During the next 10 years while serving at NAOMI, I carried and gave birth to three little girls. Staying in a commitment to journey with other women who are healing while learning how to heal in my own life was never part of my plan. Learning how to raise three women in my own family while doing so often seems impossible.
Sara and her four children
Daily I feel my limitations as a woman, mother, wife, friend and Community Director. I doubt my capacity to keep moving forward and often drown in overwhelm at the number of roles I carry. My experience isn’t unique. Women everywhere struggle to figure out how to navigate what life demands of them. Every day.
What makes the difference for me is the incredible community I am surrounded by both at NAOMI and in my personal life.
The honor I have to care for my family and invest in the women and children of NAOMI is because of the tremendous amount of support I receive. My Creator walks with me by providing me with the community love I need. It’s the collective joining of hands of women and men in my life that makes it possible for me to be clothed with strength and dignity as I carry out the work that has been placed in my hands. A decade of love being poured into my life so I can pour it back out is my truest accomplishment of joy.
To choose to receive and give grace upon grace is the rhythm of womanhood that I hope my daughters and NAOMI sisters learn to live well.
Sara’s educational videos available on YouTube
Sara has created a series of videos explaining what trauma does to the brain and how it heals. You can watch those on our YouTube channel.
