Beyond “I’m Here for You”: Trauma-Informed Care l A YWA Speaks Evening
About this Event
You're the one everyone calls.
When something falls apart in your family, your friend group, or your team, your phone rings first. You're good at it. You show up, you stay, and you follow up.
And still, when someone you love is in the middle of the worst thing that has ever happened to them, you type the message three times and delete it every time. What comes out is "I'm here for you," or "let me know if you need anything," and then you set the phone down and hope it landed.
Join the Young Women's Alliance for an evening with Giselle Reinhardt Gillis, LMSW, Program Director at Magdalene House of Austin, on how to close the gap between wanting to help and knowing how.
Giselle does this every day. She'll walk through what trauma does to a person, why the instinct to fix, advise, or reassure so often lands wrong even when it is deeply well meant, and how support has to change shape over months rather than days. Because the hardest stretch usually isn't the first week, when the texts are pouring in and someone drops off a casserole. It's month eight, when everyone else has gone home and she is still in it.
You'll leave with language you can actually use. Not theory, not a framework, but sentences you can say out loud to a person you love.
Fair warning about the other thing that tends to happen in a room like this. Trauma-informed care is built on safety, trust, and choice, and once you've heard how those work, it gets hard not to notice where you don't extend them to yourself. Women who are excellent at carrying other people are usually the last to ask who is carrying them.
What "trauma-informed" means
It starts from the idea that what looks like overreacting, shutting down, or going back to a bad situation is usually a survival response doing its job. So instead of asking what is wrong with someone, you ask what happened to her, and you build safety, trust, and choice into how you respond, so that trying to help doesn't accidentally cause more harm. It's a way of showing up, not a credential. Anyone can learn it.
About the speaker
Giselle Reinhardt Gillis is a licensed master social worker and Program Director at Magdalene House of Austin, where she has spent the last three years designing and evaluating the organization's trauma-informed programming, running groups, and training the staff, volunteers, and interns who carry it out. This is her daily work, not a topic she prepared for us.
About Magdalene House of Austin
A survivor-led therapeutic community for women who have experienced sex trafficking, and the only long-term program of its kind in Central Texas. Their two-year residential program provides housing, healthcare, counseling, and education and career development at no cost, so that women have the time and stability to heal rather than just survive. Two years rather than two weeks, which turns out to be the whole point of the evening.
What the night looks like
You'll check in, come upstairs for light and drinks, and have time to network with others in the community who show up for the people around them.
6:30 to 7:00 PM · Arrival, food and drinks, resource cards around the room
7:00 to 7:10 PM · YWA welcome and announcements
7:10 to 7:50 · Featured talk with Giselle Reinhardt Gillis, LMSW
7:50 to 8:00 PM · Q&A and a warm wrap-up
Details
📅 Wednesday, August 19
🕡 6:30 to 8:00 PM
📍 KMFA 89.5, Austin (free onsite parking)
🍽 Light bites and sips
🎟️ $15 for guests. YWA members attend free.
Your $15 doesn't just get you in the door. Guest ticket net proceeds go to YWA's Future Women Leaders Fund, which funds scholarships for young women heading to college and leadership development for the women inside our alliance. Showing up for someone is the whole theme of the night. This is one more way to do it.
A note on content: The evening includes discussion of trauma, abuse, and sex trafficking. Step out any time, for any reason, and no explanation is needed. A quiet space will be marked at check-in, and every guest receives a resource card at the door, so nobody has to be seen picking one up.
About YWA
The Young Women's Alliance is a nonprofit devoted to the professional and personal development of women leaders in Central Texas. For more than 30 years, YWA has been a staple of the Austin community, driven by our four pillars: lead, educate, network, and serve. Not a member? Guests are always welcome at YWA Speaks.
Bring the friend you'd want in the room if it were you.
Where is it happening?
USD 15.00
