Helping Future Leaders Navigate Trauma Shaped Environments With Confidence & Compassion

CARA HARMS

Welcome. I’m Cara Harms.

For 34 years, my life was defined by service — first in the U.S. Army Military Police, then within the Missouri Department of Corrections.

Across those decades, I stood in the middle of moments most people only read about. I witnessed people at their breaking points, their darkest hours, and their most vulnerable truths. I saw the impact of violence, the weight of trauma, and the quiet devastation that follows both.

There are things you cannot unsee, and I carried them all. For years, I believed the way forward was to push it down, stay strong, and keep moving. I thought endurance was leadership — that proving I could handle anything was the path to growth.

And for a long time, it worked. Until the day it didn’t.

What I didn’t understand then was that every experience — the ones from my career and the ones from my own life — were stacking, layer upon layer, inside my nervous system. Eventually, those layers became so heavy, so tangled, that I no longer recognized the person I had become.

That unraveling became the beginning of my rebuilding — and the foundation of the work I do now.