Why the need for Remarkably Resilient?
- According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the general U.S. adult population, nearly two-thirds (63.9%) experience at least one Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE), with 17.3% reporting four or more, which significantly increases health risks. After a childhood of incest, abuse and neglect, Kathleen and her sisters discovered they had ACE scores ranging from nine to 10.
- Stress in the workplace is high, and resources to address it are low. Stressed individuals lead to stressed households and communities. A 2025 Gallup analysis of U.S. worker negative emotions found that: “To create a culture of wellbeing that employees can feel, mental health initiatives should be combined with employee engagement best practices and frequent wellbeing conversations at the team level.”
After the Harnish sisters learned to understand and address their trauma, they decided to share their experience, as well as the neuroscience knowledge and evidence-informed tools they have discovered with the world through three service lines: Remarkably Resilient Together®, Lived Experience and Trauma-Informed Education.
Check out our new Remarkably Resilient website!
We invite you to learn more about this work as we continue to grow and further our mission of “Empowering healing from trauma” striving toward our vision of “Changing the world by strengthening community resilience one person at a time.”
Remarkably ResilientCommunity Matters
In their book, “Remarkably Resilient, Community Matters,” the sisters share their stories of resilience, informed by what they have learned about the neuroscience of trauma and through their lived experience. One of the most profound insights for the sisters was uncovering the paradigm shift that the neuroscience of trauma provides: from thinking “What is wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”
This learning journey led to creating the Remarkably Resilient Together® community campaign to teach resilience, as well as a planned documentary, numerous workshops, keynote speeches, videos and more.
Now, as part of the larger Remarkably Resilient® organization, the sisters are focused on advocacy and resources for others with similar lived experiences. Their hope is to support other trauma survivors by helping them find their voices while providing information, skills and resources for healing.
Meet the Harnish Sisters
Karen Dickson, Sharon Borde, and Kathleen Harnish McKune (a co-founder and CEO of TeamTech) grew up in a small town, middle-class family with smart, hard-working parents. But their lives were far from ideal. From an early age, each was the victim of incest and abuse at the hands of their father and paternal grandfather. Each carried with them emotional, psychological and physical scars that they concealed from the rest of the world for all of their childhoods.
How the Harnish sisters have learned to live with and begin talking about those scars creates the foundation of the Remarkably Resilient workshops they lead. As they attest in the workshops and in their book—Remarkably Resilient: Community Matters—they did not embark on their journeys to recovery alone. Rather, they depended on the healthy relationships they created outside of their family. Teachers, adults in their community, even pets, offered them the love and care they needed to find resilience and a measure of hope.
Their recovery, however, has not put them on a straight path from trauma to health. Theirs is a circuitous path, with pitfalls and roadblocks along the way. Certain experiences can trigger crippling anxiety. Physical health challenges that stem from their trauma are ever present. But they have discovered that they can cope with and even grow in the face of the adversity, threats, danger, and the toxic stress they’ve experienced.
The Harnish sisters have studied recent advances in the neuroscience of trauma and resilience and use it to inform their workshops. That science has confirmed for them that recovery is possible, even as it always remains a work in progress. By telling their story, and sharing their knowledge, they aspire to give to others what has been given to them: hope and the strength to thrive.
Click here to read brief bios for Kathleen, Karen and Sharon.