The nervous system of democracy is burned out. Let’s rewire together.

Kate Woodsome

Trauma-Democracy Scholar
& Resilience Strategist

Anxiety, loneliness, polarization and violence aren't separate problems. They’re symptoms of collective trauma typically misdiagnosed by the media and mistreated by political leaders. Without addressing how pain, scarcity and fear shape our systems and dampen civic engagement, well-intentioned repair efforts often perpetuate the very cycles of harm they seek to break.

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and resilience strategist Kate Woodsome explores the ties between mental health and democracy in her research and writing on the Invisible Threads Substack. And she is now building a media and leadership lab to strengthen our understanding and response to both. It’s a bold experiment to equip leaders, changemakers and journalists with trauma-informed approaches to inquiry and communication, neuroscience-backed resilience skills and systemic repair strategies.

Her work builds on a simple but urgent truth: our inner wellbeing and collective wellbeing are inseparable — and the systems we uphold must be reimagined if either is to endure.

Workshops. Coaching. Strategy.

About Kate Woodsome

Covering the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack.

A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and resilience strategist, Kate Woodsome works at the intersection of narrative, nervous system regulation, and organizational psychology — helping leaders, journalists, and changemakers uncover the roots of complex challenges to restore integrity, transform stress into strategy, and cultivate wellbeing across generations.

For more than 20 years, Kate reported and led global news teams through political unrest, public health crises, and social transformation — from Cambodia to Cuba, Hong Kong to Washington, D.C. At The Washington Post, she helped cover the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, a moment that won the newsroom the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and left her with something more complex: a reckoning with trauma, burnout, and moral injury.

That experience inspired her to step away from the daily news cycle and into a deeper mission: examining the systemic drivers of distress and building pathways for healing and repair. She became a certified Resilience Toolkit coach and strategist, launched Invisible Threads as a weekly newsletter, and began developing tools that empower individuals and organizations to transform how stress shapes their bodies, minds, relationships, and politics.

Kate is a visiting affiliate scholar at Georgetown University’s Psychology Department and a senior fellow at the university’s Red House research and design unit, where she co-developed the Red House Journey Framework — a trauma-informed, strengths-based model for transforming harm into healing at the individual, community, and institutional levels.

In a world where old ways of thinking no longer serve us, Kate believes we must know better to do better to feel better. By honoring the body’s wisdom and confronting the far-reaching effects of stress, she is working to build the resilient systems our future requires.

Interviewing Bessel Van Der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score.

The signal is breaking through.

  • Invisible Threads on Substack

    A weekly multi-media newsletter about the ties between mental health and democracy — what shapes our relationships with ourselves and others.

    Subscribe

  • Seen & Heard

    Media coverage and public appearances that amplify a simple truth: How we feel shapes how we live, vote, relate and lead.

    Discover

  • Storytelling for Systems Change

    Documentary films, multi-media features and social videos about what makes us human, what tests us, and how we keep going.

    Watch

  • Awards & Recognition

    From the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service to the Ben Bradlee Award for Courage in Journalism, these honors reflect a belief that uncomfortable truths are more essential than ever.

    Learn more

What people are saying.

  • “Recently I heard you on 1A with Jenn White. Thank you. Your compassion, generosity of spirit, and courage gives me hope which is so hard to find these days...Your work to nurture democracy by attending to our collective mental health speaks so powerfully to me. With so many of our current students struggling with anxiety and depression, you speak a quiet but undeniable truth, and you suggest a positive path of transformation.”

    Beth Ingle, Rock Valley College, Illinois

  • "Kate, I applaud your principled and values-based approach to going upstream to uncover and describe the systemic and structural issues that we must address to achieve greater health and wellbeing for the greatest number of people. Thank you for your grit and courage. When I read your work, I am taken back to Margaret Mead who said, 'Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed citizens to change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.' Thank you."

    Dr. Kathleen M. Pike, CEO, One Mind

  • "Kate Woodsome was surrounded by about ten rioters at the Capitol steps... She stayed calm, stayed put, and continued to do her job..."

    Martin Baron, Former Washington Post executive editor and author of “Collision of Power”

  • "Few journalists are covering mental health issues with the kind of deep insight and sourcing as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kate Woodsome. I had the good fortune to work with her for years at Post Opinions covering stories of real human trauma, including my own."

    Jason Rezaian, Director, Washington Post Press Freedom Initiatives

  • "As is always the case, Kate Woodsome’s writing on how we do (or do not) take care of one another’s mental health should come with a trigger warning along the lines of: ‘Complacent reading not available here.’ Engagement is ok; action is better; raising all our expectations is best. Ask not whether you’re already doing a darn good job. Ask what you need to double-down on and what you ought to stop doing. Get accountable. Thanks, Kate Woodsome for your relentlessness.”

    Joe Feldman, Founder, CoverMyMentalHealth.Org, Illinois

  • “I certainly will try to do my part in a more constructive way by reaching out to my Congressmen in hopes for the truth. I’m carrying a lot of anger , because I love my country and I want to see it working more towards Democracy by following the Constitution. After hearing this conversation I will take back my power, and try to be more open minded to others views. I will also be more gentle with myself in the process. Thank you for this very meaningful conversation.”

    Jane Good, Maine

  • “I am encouraged, inspired, and weirdly, reassured by this reporting. You put your body and your mind on the line to demonstrate healing from trauma, as you note. And this ends up being exposure therapy in action, too, for your viewers … especially those of us safely tucked away in blue corners of the northeastern part of the United States. Thank you for this valiant use of privilege.”

    Elle, “Northeastern United States”

  • “How can an individual working on their own healing influence communal healing and well-being through the library, a community garden and public mosaic art in a small southern Maine town? Never realized such a clear way of framing what I’ve been working on for years until listening to you here, Kate. Thank you.”

    Brigit McCallum, Maine

  • "Kate... it is only the Master Weaver that is able to weave with invisible thread. This invisible thread is the light and spark each of us were born with and as we grow and create more walls around ourselves and our lives, we loose the connections that should carry us through life.Through "your words and your voice", you permit us to shine "

    Bahareh Amidi Shargi, Washington, DC

Kate Woodsome empowers individuals and organizations to build the resilience needed to address complex challenges and create meaningful change. Sound like you? Get in touch:

kate@katewoodsome.com

The burgeoning Invisible Threads media and leadership lab is fiscally sponsored as a 501(c)(3) non-profit by Georgetown University’s Community Research Group. To strengthen civic wellbeing by healing the ties between mental health and democracy, please reach out to support this work.