Dr. Rosenna Bakari recently launched a new We2 mission to bring survivors and listeners together. The mission asks people to identify themselves as listeners to help break the silence of survivors. One survivor plus one listener equals two people; thus, We2 is the mission.

Her 2018 memoir marks her fourth book, each of which addresses women's issue. She wrote Self-Love: Developing and Maintaining Self-Esteem for the Black Woman in 1994 while she was a stay-at-home mother. Her recent books, Tree Leaves: Breaking the Fall of the Loud Silence, and Original Sin: Understanding the Movement Toward Female Agency highlight the destruction of sexual assault to the human spirit and supports the resilience of survivors, most of which are females.

Rosenna has been survivors since 2010 when she founded Talking Trees, an empowerment organization that supports survivors no matter where they are on the healing path, but encourages survivors of childhood sexual abuse to live openly to heal. She also established April 15 as Safe Space Day, a day to recognize and celebrate the resilience of survivors.

Rosenna is "shifting the paradigm and changing the narrative" to empower survivors to live boldly, without shame. She sees herself as a role-model for women whose life experiences have been steeped in challenges of oppression, including race, gender, and sexual violence and dedicates her life to helping them find and build resilience.

Writing and publishing empowering literature is a major platform for her. Saying that survivors matter with our mouth is not enough. We must say it with our time and money. We can all invest $15 in a mission so that survivors can be heard. We can also recognize a real-life hero in Rosenna by making sure a ton of books gets sold. Everyone can do something, buying a book is an excellent place to start to make a difference.

Rosenna Bakari earned her Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Northern Colorado, an M.S. in counseling from the State University of New York, and a B.S. in psychology from Cornell University. She has taught psychology at community college, private and state universities. She consults with businesses and organizations about creating safe space for a functional work environment. She also accepts speaking engagements to discuss her book or perform poetry. She holds an unpublished poetry collection of over 150 poems and is a spoken word artist. She lives in Colorado Springs with her husband.