BREAKING THE CYCLE OF TRAUMA

Tulsa nonprofit Soaring Eagles helps families heal from intergenerational wounds.

By age 12, Delashay Lawrence seemed primed to become a statistic. Her mother was frequently absent. Lawrence and her siblings were raised in poverty in Tulsa by a father who struggled with alcohol. Both of her parents had dropped out of high school. Oklahoma has some of the nation's highest teen pregnancy and incarceration rates for women. To Lawrence, those outcomes felt like the path of least resistance.

That year, Lawrence attended the Girls’ Teen Summit sponsored by Soaring Eagles Youth and Family Services. SEYFS is a nonprofit dedicated to breaking the cycle of intergenerational family trauma and empowering students and families to pursue choice-filled lives. The two-day conference offered workshops in mental health, college and career readiness and financial planning. The girls also bonded through “electives” such as dance, fashion design, cooking, and basketball.

Premadonna Braddick (right) is founder of Soaring Eagles Youth and Family Services. The nonprofit dedicated to breaking the cycle of intergenerational family trauma.

For Lawrence, the compassionate adult guidance and the camaraderie she found among her peers was transformative. Over the next four years, she and her father received support through a range of Soaring Eagles’ youth and parent programs. SEYFS founder Premadonna Braddick personally mentored Lawrence. Lawrence joined the organization’s weekly Real Life, Real Talk group, which cultivates positive relationships, character development and academic skills.

At 16, with Braddick’s encouragement, Lawrence applied to a summer program at Harvard University. “She met students from China, the Middle East and Africa. It changed the trajectory of her life,” Braddick says. Lawrence went on to win a full academic scholarship to the University of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where she is now a junior majoring in international business.

Soaring Eagles hosts Girls’ Teen Summit for middle and high schoolers across Oklahoma and in Alabama to support social-emotional learning for teenage students.

“I saw so much potential in Delashay. But she told me she was ‘a ticking time bomb.’ She thought she would end up in jail,” recalls Braddick. “I couldn’t let that become her story.”

Braddick’s own story is the driving force behind Soaring Eagles’ mission. “Both of my parents were drug addicts,” says Braddick, who grew up in east Oakland, California. “There was intergenerational trauma.” Placed in foster care at age two, Braddick bounced between homes, enduring sexual, physical and verbal abuse. She had a severe speech impediment and didn’t learn to read until she was 11.

When she aged out of foster care at 18, she began taking classes at San Jose University but felt alone and deeply depressed. Braddick credits her pastor and mentor, Dr. Vanessa Weatherspoon, with pulling her out of “the darkest, most broken place in my life. She held my hand. I needed to know what a healed person looks like—that everybody’s not out to get you.”

Over the last decade, Soaring Eagles has served more than 2,000 students and families across Oklahoma.

Braddick later moved to Tulsa to pursue a double master’s degree in marriage and family counseling at Oral Roberts University. She founded Soaring Eagles in 2013 to offer Tulsa teens the same life-changing care and guidance she had received from her mentor. The organization hosts two annual youth conferences.

The Girls’ Teen Summit and Rise Up Young Men run weekly social-emotional learning groups for middle and high schoolers across the state. (This summer, Braddick plans to expand the Dreaming with Your Eyes Wide Open: Girls’ Teen Summit to Birmingham, Alabama and East Oakland, California, where she was raised.) “The greatest impact of Soaring Eagles is that we consistently show up,” she says.

“The greatest impact of Soaring Eagles is that we consistently show up,” says founder Premadonna Braddick.

Soaring Eagles also offers financial literacy classes and mental health counseling for caregivers and families, and the organization provides mentorship to young adults in need of college, job or life skills assistance. Over the last decade, Soaring Eagles has served more than 2,000 students and families across Oklahoma.

Soaring Eagles relies on about 20 volunteers to run its programs. It also counts myriad community groups and schools as vital partners, including Tulsa Public Schools, New Life Interventions Counseling and Coaching Services, and the Tulsa Dream Center, a faith-based community center that hosts the annual summits. “Our community partners help us expand our reach, with counseling, coaching and mentorship to youth and families,” Braddick says.

Teenage students participate in a fashion and design workshop during a Girls’ Teen Summit in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The key to Soaring Eagles community impact is their sustained, wraparound approach. “On average, we work with our families for around three years,” Braddick says. “When you work with the whole family, there’s a greater chance of bringing healing. We want to help them cope and heal from intergenerational trauma and poverty so they have a better chance at becoming a healthy, successful family unit.”