Episode summary

What happens when trauma, military culture, family stress, and children’s mental health all intersect? In this episode of the Children’s Mental Health series, Andrew speaks with Dr. Cheri Sotelo about trauma, veterans, military families, and the role emotional intelligence can play in prevention and healing. Cheri shares the experiences that shaped her work, why emotional vocabulary matters so deeply for children, how military stress affects the whole family, and why hope begins with small, consistent steps toward awareness, regulation, and support.

About Cheri

Dr. Cheri Sotelo is a psychotherapist, trauma specialist, and global impact strategist with more than 20 years of experience serving vulnerable and underserved communities. As founder and executive director of Face of Illness Co-Op, she leads initiatives supporting veterans, military families, and youth through integrated mental health, education, and whole-person wellness models. Her work also includes community development projects such as Cadence Communities for veteran reintegration.

In this episode

• Cheri reflects on the experiences that shaped her path, including growing up as the daughter of an immigrant, living with chronic illness, and working with foster care, adoptive care, and homeless veterans with untreated mental health needs.
• She explains why working with combat veterans experiencing homelessness was such a defining part of her journey, especially seeing people return from service emotionally shut down and unsupported.
• Cheri shares a core principle of her work: trauma is not just an event, but a pattern that affects stress, neurobiology, and the environments people continue to live in.
• The conversation explores how attitudes to mental health support have shifted since the pandemic, which Cheri sees as a turning point in global awareness.
• Cheri discusses children’s mental health, highlighting suicide as one of the most painful realities and noting that in Las Vegas it is the number one cause of death in children.
• She describes why Nevada and Clark County are especially challenged, pointing to provider shortages, long waitlists, family instability, low-income households, and a transient environment that can make it hard for children to build stable friendships and support.
• A major focus of the episode is emotional intelligence: Cheri argues that when children are helped early to name and express what they feel, it changes how they communicate, cope, and ask for what they need.
• She explains how EQ supports resilience by reducing internal confusion, improving family communication, and helping children advocate for themselves in safer ways.
• Cheri also shares the story behind Face of Illness, which began as a photography series designed to challenge the idea that illness only looks like pain, defeat, and hopelessness.
• The episode explores the specific pressures on veterans and military families, including relocation, deployment, emotional numbing, difficult reunifications, and the impact this can have on children and partners.
• Andrew and Cheri discuss Cadence Communities and the EQJOY partnership, with Cheri emphasising the need for valid, reliable, evidence-based tools that help children and families build emotional awareness and regulation.

Key takeaways

• Healing is possible, even after long periods of stress, illness, or instability.
• Emotional intelligence is foundational because children need language for what they feel before they can regulate it or ask for help.
• Military and veteran families face unique emotional pressures that affect not only service members, but also spouses and children.
• Real change requires whole-system support, not isolated services.
• Hope lives in small steps: naming emotions, practising regulation, seeking support, and building connection over time.

Memorable lines

“Healing is possible.”

“Emotional awareness is learned. It’s not inherited.”