The Best of Us: Being Human in Sarasota

Episode 9: The Best of Us: August 17 2025 with Paul and Kristina Abernathy (On Nourishment: Part 2)

This episode focuses on Trauma-Informed Community Development, a framework developed by the Neighborhood Resilience Project. Based in Pittsburgh, the Orthodox ministry is dedicated to addressing community trauma. Their work is rooted in the Gospel and teaching of the Orthodox Church and inspired by the American Civil Rights Movement.  Father Paul Abernathy is the Pastor of St. Moses the Black Orthodox Church in Pittsburgh, a Priest with the Antiochian Archdiocese, the author of The Prayer of a Broken Heart: An Orthodox Christian Reflection on African American Spirituality [https://store.ancientfaith.com/the-prayer-of-a-broken-heart/], and the founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Neighborhood Resilience Project. He is married to Presbytera Kristina Abernathy, who is the Chief Growth Officer for the project. While working in a predominantly Black underserved community in Pittsburgh, Father Abernathy was regularly interacting with men, women, and children who had repeatedly experienced multiple forms of trauma, such as hunger, abuse, homelessness, racism, violence, and a lack of opportunity or health care. He began to ask the question: How do you heal an entire community that has been inundated with trauma for generations? Their vision is to inspire a movement in which suffering people are raised up from the ashes of trauma in unconditional love to become empowered healers, community builders, and positive change makers. They recently hosted a community training workshop here in Sarasota. Find out more about Father Paul and Presbytera Kristina’s work at neighborhoodresilience.org [http://neighborhoodresilience.org].

Episode 8: The Best of Us: August 3 2025 with Greg Cruz (On Nourishment: Part 1)

This episode features a conversation with Greg Cruz, the founder and executive director of Streets of Paradise. An organization that fights homelessness with dignity and grace. His deep connection to the work is rooted in lived experience and a lifelong commitment to ensuring no one is left behind. He talks about his newest project, Love Act Repeat. Greg brings a hands-on, human-centered approach to everything Streets of Paradise does—from furnishing homes to responding in times of crisis. Under his leadership, Streets of Paradise has grown from a grassroots effort into a trusted, action-based organization serving hundreds of individuals and families every year. In 2017, they served full holiday dinners in public parks, meals shared by neighbors, housed and unhoused alike. These gatherings reminded them that real nourishment comes from the community food creates. What they didn't expect was how much the volunteers needed it too. Today, working with hundreds of partners, they've served tens of thousands of meals and have shown up after every storm. They remain flexible, grassroots, community-led, and powered by the same spirit: love, action, and showing up again tomorrow, blue skies or gray. Find out more about Greg’s work and the Love Act Repeat Resiliency Hub at streetsofparadise.org [http://streetsofparadise.org].

Episode 7: The Best of Us: June 15 2025 with Peg Shanley (Father's Day Special)

“The Best of Us: Being Human in Sarasota” explores our town’s growing resilience-driven culture. For each episode, we hear from a guest who is part of this emerging culture in our region and another beyond our area. But this episode is a little bit different. For Father’s Day we hear from folks in the community who called in to offer a reflection for this day. Also, Peg Shanley joins her daughter-in-law, host Bethany Ritz, to share a reflection about her own father.

Episode 6: The Best of Us: June 1 2025 with Johana Kuemerle-Pinillos

This episode delves right into the topic that underlies all the discussions so far on this show: trauma. We focus on one local guest’s expertise for the full episode. Dr. Johana Kuemerle-Pinillos is a trauma specialist and clinical practitioner. She is bilingual-bicultural, Spanish-English, PhD Level Clinician, Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), researcher, advocate, coach and veteran. Beginning as a Mental Health Technician in the United States Air Force, she has been in the mental health field for over 23 years, serving individuals, couples and families in different settings, including inpatient treatment, intensive outpatient substance abuse treatment, intensive at-home family therapy, and outpatient individual and couples therapy. She has presented to general audiences, as well as global conferences and groups on the topics of communication, building healthy relationships, family cohesiveness, conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, mindfulness and more. Find out more about her work at drkpurposefuljourney.com [https://drkpurposefuljourney.com].

Episode 5: The Best of Us: May 18 2025 with Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder

This episode’s topic is on The Love of the Land explored in two parts. For part one, which aired on WSLR on May 4, Jon Thaxton discussed land preservation and stewardship as a practical, spiritual, and vitalizing life-long practice. For part two, which aired on May 18, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder discusses her new book, Mother, Creature, Kin: What We Learn from Nature's Mothers in a Time of Unraveling. Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder grew up in the Great Plains of Nebraska and Oklahoma. After receiving her Master's of Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School, her writing became focused on the confluence of relationship to place with experiences of the sacred. From 2017 to 2022, she worked as a staff writer and editor for Emergence Magazine [https://emergencemagazine.org/], an online and print publication exploring the intersection of culture, ecology, and spirituality. Her writing can also be found in publications such as The Atlantic, The Common, The Slowdown, Crannóg Magazine, EcoTheo Review, From the Ground Up, as well as in the edited poetry collection Writing the Land, and in Katie Holten's book The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape.