In this episode of Community Matters, JLG Architects’ Zach Mathern and Isaac Karley interview Michelle Erickson, Executive Director of the Abused Adult Resource Center in Bismarck, ND. Michelle shares her life’s work, the evolving gaps in the system, and how their challenges are overcome with compassion. From basic needs and beyond, she humanizes help for distressed “people;” work that now more effectively strikes the core of the issue – blurring the help lines between victim and offenders. With a criminal justice degree and 17 years of advocacy, she shares both sides of her experience, the impact of accountability and peer support, and the connection between childhood trauma and adult abuse, incarceration, and recidivism. This story isn’t about victims and abusers, it’s the story of communities surviving, learning to thrive, and finding new pathways to help people navigate the broken road they never chose to take. 

Community Matters isn’t here to justify the norm, they’re here to challenge it – amplifying the unheard, bridging diversity, and inviting everyone to speak up for what matters to their community.