Episode 46: Surviving a Tragedy with Manya Chylinski, Part Two

00;00;07;18 – 00;01;27;12
Rick Hoaglund
Today we’re continuing our conversation with Manya Chylinski, a survivor of the tragic Boston Marathon bombing. Manya was there on that fateful day and in the aftermath, she found herself dealing with the emotional and psychological impact of witnessing such a horrific event. But Manya didn’t let that day define her. Instead, she transformed her experience into a powerful message of resilience, trauma awareness and mental health advocacy. As a speaker, writer and advocate. Manya is on a mission to help others understand the profound effects of trauma and the importance of mental health support. Welcome to On Topic with Empathia. I’m your host, Rick Hoaglund. Join us as we dive into Manya’s story of survival, recovery, and empowerment. Get ready for an episode filled with incredible strength of the human spirit. Using her experience during a terrible event and making changes to ensure a better outcome for future trauma victims. So let’s talk about the post event life. So you’ve got, and let’s take it past the event. So quite a ways past the event. But your life is different now and while you can’t say this defined you, it did help you find a path, right?

00;01;27;14 – 00;01;29;06
Manya Chylinski
Absolutely.

00;01;29;08 – 00;01;52;02
Rick Hoaglund
And so tell me about your path. What are you doing now? What’s different in your life? I know you’ve been an advocate. We’ll talk a little bit about that in a minute. But tell me about, like, I’m going to ask because you were in a meeting immediately following your return to your apartment, and the next day you had a meeting. Are you still doing that kind of thing? Are you still with that office?

00;01;52;04 – 00;09;03;28
Manya Chylinski
I am mostly not doing that kind of work anymore. So I am a consultant these days, and what I focus on is compassionate leadership in organizations. And the underlying foundation of that is building a trauma informed organization. So being one where we make it welcoming and inclusive for individuals who have experienced trauma or who are going through difficult life experiences that perhaps don’t, don’t get defined as trauma because there are so many of us out there. I happen to have this big newsworthy thing that happened to me. A lot of people experienced trauma that doesn’t make it on the news, and a lot of people experience trauma where the mental and emotional side is dismissed. And or we’re told you should suck it up. So my path has has brought me to this place where I’m working with organizations to help them become more compassionate leaders and build organizations where we’re truly supporting people who are going through difficult times. And we’re not just checking a box to say we’ve got mental health coverage, but actually building a culture that is supportive and culture change is hard. But I know that we, we each, we each have compassion for somebody in our lives. And I want trying to find a way to tap into that as we look at our organizational selves as well. And it’s probably a pretty big jump from the marketing and writing work that I was doing that day to today. You know, the journey makes sense. And, and looking backwards, the journey makes complete sense in my mind. I got so angry that the mental health side was not a major, a more significant part of the response that I couldn’t find anything that the city was talking about on the mental health side, although they did. I’ve learned since. But it was not a major piece. It was not something that was talked about in the, news conferences. The privately funded victim compensation fund specifically said they aren’t going to help people who have mental health wounds. So I started to get really angry and started to knock on doors and write letters and ask people, why aren’t you paying attention to people like me? And I started to realize, you know, it’s not just the Boston bombing, it’s other things where people are not being paid attention to. So I started having this realization, and then a friend asked me, I think it was a year and a half after the bombing. If I would share my story at a presentation for our communications group. So he pulled together a panel. I told my piece and I realized there were two really big benefits to that for me. One, I was getting the word out about the mental health wounds. So that’s helping, you know, validate the experience, help get people understand it’s normal, and sharing that story and talking about it and having people see me actually being visible was beneficial to my own mental health to realize, okay, so I was invisible to the city, but I’m visible to this group in this hotel conference room that I’m talking to right now. And so I started doing more speaking, and, I got an agent who really appreciated my mission, and she started pitching me for conferences, first responders and emergency management and homeland security. And she got me in at South by Southwest. And the more I was able to share my experience, the more I was able to realize that I might have changed one person’s behavior or one person’s thought process. And so the next time something bad happens, they’re going to think about this. You know, this first responder is going to remember this or this Homeland Security professional as they’re planning X, Y and Z. It’s going to remember. Well what about the psychological wounds. So I started to feel like I don’t know what kind of a difference I’m making, but I bet that at least one person in every room that I’m in and that’s, you know, I don’t want anybody to feel the way that I felt, which was invisible after the worst day of my life. So I really enjoyed this speaking, and I didn’t have time to be afraid that I was speaking in front of these really large audiences because the message was so important to me, and it was I just so early on, especially, just desperately wanted people to understand that I didn’t have time to worry about how many people are in the audience and if I stumble over my words because I just have to get the message out. And, you know, looking back, I, I don’t know, I was I certainly was still traumatized in the early days when I was speaking. And people have all sorts of opinions about talking about your trauma before you’re fully or you’re healed enough. So I look back and I wonder about that. But, you know, I think my path was, I like the path that I’ve taken and then lost a little momentum in Covid. And then I started to realize, you know, my focus so much on the system and our organizations. I fully believe in personal responsibility, and I fully appreciate that I need to take ownership of my own emotions and my own actions and my own feelings. But I exist in a world where organizations make decisions about me. They make decisions about whether we’re going to care about the mental health of the, we’re going to count these people as survivors or not. So I’m interacting with this system that is kind of quashing my resiliency and all of these things in my head. I started to realize, I want to work with organizations to help them be more supportive. And prior to working for myself, I was corporate all the way. And so it kind of connected you know what I want to talk to, to workplaces and organizations where if they make a change, it’s gonna make a real difference in people’s lives. If we can change the way a particular organization addresses trauma or difficult life experiences. And that’s where we are today.

00;09;04;00 – 00;09;21;15
Rick Hoaglund
Well, and you actually did more than that. So I’m going to bring it up. So you helped with legislation. You helped with something that, the name has changed and the format has changed. But it was originally called the Post-Disaster Mental Health Response Act. Tell me a little bit about that.

00;09;21;18 – 00;17;17;25
Manya Chylinski
Well, I mentioned that I got really angry and I started knocking on doors and saying to people, you know, why aren’t you paying attention to the mental health wounds? And at some point, I realized that stomping my foot and saying, you’re supposed to do this isn’t probably particularly productive. So I started thinking a little more strategically who can I be talking to? I gave up on talking to the city. It was very clear that they had decided what they were going to do. And successive administrations have decided they’re going to just stick with the way things are. So then I thought, okay, I can’t make a difference for Boston and Boston survivors. Can I make a difference in another way? At the time, my congressional representative was Ayanna Pressley and I, She has explained to me that I am a constituent for life, even though I have been redistricted. And I knew that trauma was an issue she particularly cared about. At the time I picked up the phone and called her office, she had just recently had a hearing about trauma in Congress, and she had been on the Boston City Council at the time of the bombing, and her office was one of the ones I had originally reached out to early on to say, what’s going on with the city? So I knew it was something she cared about, and I picked up the phone and started talking to one of her policy folks, and I went into her district office and met with her policy folks and chatted about it. And it was, yes, this is, this is important. Let’s try to figure out a way to do something. Now, I had gone to them without any idea of what does a solution look like. And I am one of those people who, early on in my corporate life, was taught by my boss that you come to somebody with at least an idea of a solution. You don’t just say, I have this problem here, you fix it. And yet, that is what I did with my congresswoman. I said, I have this problem. I don’t know how to fix it. Do something. It took a little while, the initial policy person that I spoke to left, got reconnected to the new policy person. And in our first conversation with this new person, I said, you know, repeated the story. This is my concern, and I was honest, I don’t know what I think you can do about this, but I know that the congresswoman cares about this. And they said, okay, I’m going to go think about this. If you don’t hear from me in a month, call back and we’ll, we’ll connect. About a month later, I heard, oh, we’ve got this new legislation. We’ve, we’ve come up with this legislation and we, we want you to be part of it. And I said, wow. And can you send me the text of the legislation so I can understand it? I want to, you know, I want to really know what I’m putting my muscle behind here. It’s two sentences. The first sentence, I think, is this act will be called the Post-Disaster Mental Health Response Act. And the second sentence is all english words, but they made no sense to me, so I had to have them explain it to me. And the legislation changes the Stafford Act, which, as you know Rick, is the act where a governor can declare a state of emergency or declare a major disaster. And that’s what brings FEMA support and, and federal support in. So it turns out at that time if you, if a major disaster was declared, so I think 9/11, probably Katrina. I think it’s a, I think it’s a financial designation that actually categorizes that. Then in the response you were eligible for crisis counseling support. That was not true for a situation that was declared an emergency. Think of wildfires in California and out west. You know, a lot of tornadoes. A lot of those things were declared emergencies, but not disasters, meaning that those individuals were not eligible to get that federal support for crisis counseling. This act, the Post-disaster Mental Health Response Act, effectively just fixed that and changed it so that now whether you declare an emergency or disaster, you are eligible for that crisis counseling support and that mental health support and I helped the congresswoman with doing interviews, press interviews to talk about the, my experience and why this was so important. I helped by reaching out to organizations that I was connected with to get them to officially endorse the legislation, and then they did all the rest of the work, which is quite a lot of work, which is building coalitions, finding co-sponsors, finding people on both sides of the aisle to support. And so many people in this process, I heard say versions of, “well, we never approved changes to the Stafford Act, but this just makes sense. So we’re going to endorse this”. And I think, I can’t speak for the congresswoman and her team, but I think that when they reached out to people to say, come on board, please co-sponsor this, please help us with this, that it was the same kind of thing like, oh, this is a technical fix that we just need to make. This is an important change. And another important piece of it is, because it was a change to an existing law, there didn’t need to be special appropriations. There’s not a special budget for it. It just is part of the existing budget. So that wasn’t going to be a stumbling block. Now, if you go online and you look up the post-disaster Mental Health Response Act, you may think that it has not passed, but it is now the law of the land. In 2022 as part of the process, in addition to being its own bill, the congresswoman was able to add it to the National Defense Authorization Act as a addendum or as an additional piece. And that is a way that some legislators are able to pass some laws that are not controversial and just put them on the back of this legislation. And so that passed in December 2022, and Joe Biden signed it into law. And it is now the law of the land, and it’s part of the Stafford Act. So if a governor declares a state of emergency for a wildfire, that community is eligible for mental health support. Now, I’m going to be honest with you. FEMA is really confusing and, Rick, maybe you understand. I don’t fully understand what that means. If it’s automatic or the community has to request it. What I do know is that we are not kind of discriminating based on whether we think your disaster was important enough. We are simply saying mental health is important, and we recognize that after a disaster or mass violence, there are going to be mental health impacts and people are going to need support.

00;17;17;28 – 00;17;27;13
Rick Hoaglund
So I have two final questions. First one, do you have any advice for someone that has gone through a trauma like you’ve gone through?

00;17;27;15 – 00;18;55;21
Manya Chylinski
The first thing I say to someone who has gone through a trauma is whatever you are feeling is normal, and it’s normal to be distressed. It’s normal to be numb. It’s normal to not know what this means. It’s normal to be angry. Certainly, anger has been a huge part of my last 11 years. So I would, first of all, want to validate that their experience is real and that I believe them and that what they’re experiencing is normal. And then I guess in terms of advice. I would recommend. First of all, to be easy on yourself. It is difficult and the emotions may be all over the place. And even though you want to feel better two weeks later, you might not and that’s okay. And just be patient with yourself. And I would encourage people to find their community so friends, family members, clergy, coworkers, somebody that you trust to just maybe share your story and maybe talk about it, maybe not, but just have someone who is there when you’re feeling rough and you need some help.

00;18;55;23 – 00;19;01;15
Rick Hoaglund
So my last question, have you been back to the marathon?

00;19;01;17 – 00;19;47;23
Manya Chylinski
I went back in 2014, so the next year. Specifically because I wanted to be able to go back and I got tickets for the bleachers again. And I will tell you, I actually spent the longest I ever spent at the marathon in 2014. I got there right when it started, and I saw all of the finishers, the elite runners, everybody, and then somebody that I knew was running and I was tracking them on my phone, and they finished around 5:15. So I saw them go by and I have never been back since then, and I have no desire to go back.

00;19;47;25 – 00;19;53;08
Rick Hoaglund
Is there anything you’d like to add that I haven’t asked you?

00;19;53;10 – 00;20;40;02
Manya Chylinski
I think we covered a tremendous amount of ground, Rick. I would just repeat something I just said, which is: it is absolutely normal to be distressed when something awful happens to you. And I just want us as individuals and as a society to be more willing to admit that, to be talking about the mental health side and recognize that there’s a lot of trauma out there and it’s okay and it’s okay to talk about. I think that’s what I would say.

00;20;40;04 – 00;20;55;09
Rick Hoaglund
Thank you so much. You don’t understand how important your story is, how important your life has become and how important you are, you know, you’re sharing of this knowledge is for our listeners. Thank you so much, Manya. I really, really appreciate it.

00;20;55;11 – 00;21;04;16
Manya Chylinski
Oh thank you Rick, it was a pleasure to talk with you and to share my story. And I know that it will help someone and I hope that it does.

00;21;04;18 – 00;21;38;13
Rick Hoaglund
Thank you again. If you would like to learn more about Manya, or if you’d like to have her speak at one of your events, visit her website manyachylinski.com. That is manyachylinski.com. To hear other episodes of On Topic with Empathia, visit our website empathia.com. Follow us on social media @empathia and subscribe to On Topic with Empathia to hear new episodes as soon as they go live. I’m Rick Hoaglund, thanks for listening to On Topic with Empathia.