NAPD 2026 Recruit, Retain, Sustain

I am pleased to invite you to a transformative one-hour session on Self-Care: Shifting the Mindset and Adding Structure and Purpose. In this session, we will used the work of Carol Dweck as outlined in her book discussing Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets, and explore how these concepts can be applied to enhance our self-care practices.

• Understanding Mindsets: Gain clarity on the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, and learn why adopting the latter is crucial for personal development.
• Self-Care with Purpose: Discover how to integrate purposeful activities into your self-care routine, ensuring that every action is aligned with your personal growth goals.
• Structured Self-Care Regimens: Learn how to design a self-care plan that adds structure to your day-to-day life, making your wellness practices more consistent and effective.
• Practical Strategies: Receive practical tips and strategies for maintaining resilience and motivation, especially when facing challenges or setbacks.
• Interactive Discussion: Participate in an engaging discussion to share experiences, insights, and gain new perspectives from others on the same journey towards better self-care.

Lunch is on your own, however this is an optional mindful practice that you can drop have your lunch break.

The goal of this exercise is to maintain the intentionality of the morning’s sessions through lunch, while connecting to your food, where it comes from, and how it nourishes you.

With your lunch ready and prepared, and with full awareness of your hand moving toward your mouth, place the food into your mouth without chewing or swallowing it. Simply allow it to be in your mouth, roll it around to different parts of your mouth and tongue. Pay attention to the flavor and texture, as well as physical sensations within your body, especially your mouth and your gut. Continue to breathe as you explore the sensation of having this item in your mouth.

Now, take only one bite and notice the flavor, as well as the change of texture. Then very slowly begin chewing this piece of food and think about the parts of your mouth that are involved in chewing. Feel the sound and movement of chewing, as you continue experiencing the sensations and flavor.

When you are ready, swallow this food and notice the path that it follows from your mouth and throat into your stomach. Notice the sensation and taste that may linger in your mouth. Connect again to your body and your breath and feel through your experience of the moment. Take notice of the ways in which the food nourishes you. Send thoughts of gratitude for those who cultivated and prepared your food.

Burnout is commonly framed as an individual issue necessitating individualized solutions. Using activist Vikki Reynolds' framework called the "Zone of Balance," this workshop offers a transformative shift towards understanding burnout as relational. This workshop will discuss this new framework for maintaining balance by staying true to ethical, client-centered practice.

As public defender leaders committed to transforming public defense, we inevitably face challenges.  Change is necessary, and difficult, and we need to learn from each other in order to move towards a more sustainable defender culture.  In this facilitated discussion, we will share strategies for navigating the challenging waters of culture change in public defense.  

As public defenders, we work with the people we represent at some of the most difficult times of their lives.  Often, our work involves managing moments of crisis both individually and as teams of defenders in different roles.  As social worker and trauma exposure researcher Laura van Dernoot Lipsky reminds us, it is critical to "metabolize all that we are experiencing" in the course of our work.   In this session, we will discuss a model for bringing structured "crisis debriefings" into public defender offices as one way to metabolize our experiences and learn from managing moments of crisis.