EDRM’s Kaylee Walstad and Mary Mack were honored to participate in our Guardian Partner, Relativity’s annual Relativity Fest celebration with our friends at Stellar Women, Mary Rechtoris, senior producer, brand programs and Blair Heidenreich, senior copywriter. Joining the group were Emma Clark, Partner, Keystone Law and Patricia Diaz-Rodriguez, e-Discovery Consultant & Senior Director, Ankura and EDRM Global Advisory Council Leader.
Mary Rechtoris recapped the Relativity Fest Stellar Women workshop on the Relativity Blog.
The conversation, a workshop building on the Stellar Women/EDRM crossover podcasts held throughout the pandemic, focused on mental health and creating boundaries as the pandemic ebbs and flows.
Topics ranged from setting personal boundaries to setting boundaries with co-workers, clients and managers, with full engagement from the hundreds of women on the line.
Emma Clark introduced the concept of vicarious trauma to the group, and applied it to our legal community, a community often serving people and organizations in crisis, with the corresponding impact on those serving. The original trauma does not impact the legal people, and witnessing and serving creates an unexpected vicarious trauma. The definition is:
Vicarious trauma is a transformation in the self of a trauma worker or helper that results from empathic engagement with traumatized clients and their reports of traumatic experience. Experts have traditionally associated this term with those working in the medical, fire, emergency, or law enforcement fields.
Mary Rechtoris,Senior Producer, Brand Programs, Relativity
The participants in the workshop gathered in breakout sessions after the main session to network and share strategies with each other.
Relativity has generously opened the recorded sessions for a short time on a complimentary basis for those who would like to listen.
