Many of you remember Liz Walker as the dynamic Channel 4 WBZ-TV evening news anchor. But did you know she is also an author, minister, and activist who co-founded the Cory Johnson Program for Post-Traumatic Healing at Roxbury Presbyterian Church, a highly successful program for community storytelling, collective grieving, and joy?
On Tuesday May 6th, Liz Walker shared the story of this program and her personal story of “how I got to where I am” for an audience of over 80 people at the Acton Senior Center. This event was sponsored by the Friends of the Acton Council on Aging (FACOA) through the Honoring Excellence Fund, a very generous gift from late FACOA board members Tom Crowdis, Jr. and Beverly Davis. Copies of Walker’s newly published book, No One Left Alone: A Story of How Community Helps Us Heal were available for sale after the talk. Proceeds from this sale went to the community healing program Can We Talk . . . ®, offered through the Cory Johnson Program for Post-Traumatic Healing.
Walker began by describing her work in the 80s as a journalist and news anchor.  Back then, she thought she would stay in journalism forever: “I liked to write and bring light to dark places in the world.”  Boston was a tough place to live, and Walker’s work brought her into the thick of it. But she learned later that as a reporter, she only saw a superficial side of the story—there was more going on than she thought.
In 2001, she was invited to go to South Sudan with a group of Bostonians, including two pastors she knew well, Reverend Gloria and Pastor Ray, to investigate allegations of slavery. This was a transformative experience for Walker: “I became obsessed by what I saw and wanted to do something about it.” Together with Reverend Gloria, this first trip turned into an eleven-year journey back and forth, culminating in building a girls’ school in Sudan and Walker’s decision to leave her WBZ job and become a minister.  She began in the Methodist tradition, and later, when she was invited to lead Roxbury Presbyterian Church, became a Presbyterian pastor.
Before long, she discovered that in Roxbury, “One percent wreaked havoc on the rest of the neighborhood,” and that the community was in the midst of a gang war. Sirens were going off constantly, and daylight shootings occurred right outside the church. The year before Walker arrived, one of the families at the church had lost their son, Cory Johnson, to a shooting.  As she got to know people in the community, she came to understand that it was not what was wrong—gang violence—that was most important, it was what had happened to community members, their enormous trauma and grief.
Walker was asked to do a memorial service for Cory and his family.  During this celebration of his life, she could sense the underlying pain. Working together with a mental health clinician, Colleen Sharka, she asked Cory’s mom, Debra Johnson, if she and her family could get together with other families who were suffering.  And that was how the Cory Johnson Program for Post Traumatic Healing was born.
For their first meeting, Walker and Sharka put a sign on the church, “Come, talk about your pain, have a meal with us,” and 75 people showed up!  After much discussion, they decided to call this program Can We Talk . . . ®, ending with an ellipsis and not a question, suggesting that this is not a place where people focus on questions—it is a place for sharing personal stories, deep listening, and mutual respect. As Walker says, “Listening closely, that’s where the magic happens.”  Musicians and artists show up to start things off with saxophone playing and dancing, and then the bylines are read, ensuring that everyone knows the rules to maintain a focus on listening and keep things emotionally safe.  As Walker explains, not everyone has to tell their story: “Just listening is participating, no one is observing.”
Since it started officially in 2014, the response to Can We Talk . . . ® has been huge. Initially, Walker and Sharka thought they would meet once a month—but this quickly changed to weekly meetings. Now, they meet every Thursday: two Thursdays a month are in person, the other two are on Zoom. Can we talk . . . ® has now expanded to 20 sites nationwide and will be developing a curriculum available this coming June to help communities create their own post-traumatic healing programs based on this model. In Walker’s words, “A lot more people are hurting in this society than we know. People are hurting from loneliness, isolation, not just old people—young people, too. What do we do? I think we form these little communities where people can talk.”
And for this day in Acton, too, Walker brought community members with her: Cory Johnson’s mom, Debra Johnson, who also serves as community companion coordinator; Florence Huffman, the administrator at Roxbury Presbyterian Church; Colleen Sharka, the clinician and co-creator of Can We Talk . . . ®, and Shondell Davis, community trauma healing specialist.  Both Johnson and Davis shared their stories of losing their sons to gun violence and how this program had helped them heal.
At the beginning of her talk, Walker joked that the church administrator—Florence Huffman —not only runs the church, but still runs her life—even though she retired as the minister of Roxbury Presbyterian in 2021. So we’ll let Huffman have the last say: “One word I’ve learned that makes me feel so much better.  Each of us has trauma in some way or some form. The word I would use is being a companion to each and every person who comes through our door. Abide with someone. When you do that, you are doing something to help them heal the process of trauma.”
More information about Can We Talk . . . ®, including how to start this program in your own community, is available here: CANWETALKNETWORK.ORG