About Growing Together
Growing Together is a community-centered nonprofit focused on expanding awareness, access, and understanding around stress, trauma, and well-being... both for individuals and the systems we live in.
Growing Together exists because many people are struggling without language for what they’re experiencing, without access to supportive resources, or without knowing where to begin. Some don’t identify with the word trauma at all, yet live with the effects of chronic stress, overwhelm, and disconnection. Others know something isn’t working, but haven’t been offered a framework that helps make sense of it.
We are here to educate, connect, and build awareness around stress and trauma. Our work helps people understand how these experiences shape daily life while also working to make support more accessible and systems more informed.
We don’t approach this work from a place of “knowing better.”
We approach it as people who have lived it and who believe understanding creates choice.
Our Mission
Breaking cycles of chronic stress and trauma, together.
Growing Together exists to increase understanding of chronic stress and trauma, connect people with meaningful resources and support, strengthen families, and help create more trauma-informed communities.
Our goal is not simply to respond when people are struggling. We want to help build the knowledge, relationships, and systems that make long-term resilience possible.
Our Approach
Our work is rooted in the understanding that stress and trauma impact far more than emotions. They shape how people think, relate, parent, lead, and make decisions.
We focus on:
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increasing awareness of how the brain and nervous system work
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normalizing responses to stress and adversity
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offering tools, practices, and connections that help people feel safer and more supported
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creating spaces where learning happens without shame or pressure
Our goal is not to tell people what they need. It’s to offer pathways, language, and resources so people can better understand themselves and choose what support looks like for them.
Who This Is For
Growing Together is for anyone open to the idea that stress and lived experience shape how we show up in the world, and that understanding this can lead to meaningful change.
We intentionally take a broad, inclusive approach. Trauma exists across all backgrounds, identities, and levels of privilege. While access and impact are not evenly distributed, unaddressed trauma held by parents, professionals, leaders, and systems affects everyone downstream. Supporting healing at every level is not optional. It’s preventative.
Beyond Individuals: Influencing Systems
Individual well-being does not exist in a vacuum. The way our schools, courts, workplaces, healthcare systems, and families function is shaped by the nervous systems of the people within them.
A core part of our mission is to help create more trauma-informed systems, not just trauma-aware individuals.
This includes:
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community-wide education through events like the Tuscaloosa Wellness Fest
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deeper learning opportunities such as our upcoming Stress & Trauma Conference
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resource-sharing and storytelling through the Tuscaloosa Guide to Well-Being
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early-stage collaboration with local systems, including schools and the juvenile court system
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expanding access to mindfulness-based and nervous-system-supportive practices in community, educational, and workplace settings
Some of this work is already underway. Some of it is actively being built. We are committed to learning, listening, and growing as we go.
A Broader View of Mental Health
We believe therapy is vital and that everyone who wants it should have access to it. Therapy can be life-changing—especially for people who have already experienced trauma or are working to break long-standing cycles.
At the same time, many people don’t seek therapy until they’re already overwhelmed or in crisis. Growing Together aims to support earlier awareness, education, and prevention—helping people understand their nervous systems, recognize patterns, and build capacity before things reach a breaking point.
Long-term, we hope to help reduce barriers to therapy, support trauma-informed training for professionals, and contribute to a more informed mental health landscape in our community.
Why This Matters
When people understand what’s happening inside their bodies and nervous systems, they gain more choice.
When parents feel supported, children feel safer.
When leaders are regulated, decisions change.
When systems become trauma-informed, harm decreases.
We believe this work contributes to safer, more connected communities by addressing the underlying conditions that lead to conflict, violence, and harm. When people are no longer operating in survival, they have more capacity to create, contribute, and build lives that reflect their values and desires.
Growing Forward
Growing Together is shaped by lived experience, ongoing learning, and deep respect for the complexity of healing. We are here to build awareness, offer connection, and help create conditions where people (and systems) can thrive.
When Growing Together succeeds, people won’t just say they attended an event or found a resource.
They’ll say it changed how they parent.
How they relate.
How they support others.
How they live.
And that kind of change grows outward... together.