Our Story

  Open Heart was founded in January 2024 as an organization to help people navigate life circumstances amid their traumas. Because when trauma occurs, life does not stop. People who suffer from trauma still need to eat, raise their children, work, pay bills, when everything in them wants to slow down or shut down. Open Heart is not a mental health counseling program, nor is it a religious organization, and yet it recognizes that the road back to finding oneself after trauma is a spiritual journey. 

Open Heart formed because one of the developers was good friends with a woman named Mary Johnson who lost her only son, (Laramiun Byrd) to gun violence in 1996. Initially the story sounds very tragic. But Mary turned her own story from dark to light. She forgave the young man who killed her only child. His name is Oshea Israel. 

Mary and Oshea traveled around her home state of Minnesota, across the country, and internationally to tell this amazing story of forgiveness. Forgiveness of Oshea was the first part of Mary’s story. The second part was she created a program for mothers from each side of a homicide. The second part involved creating a program for mothers affected by homicide. This program supported both mothers of young adult or adult children who have committed homicide and mothers whose young adult or adult children have been victims of homicide. Mary and Oshea became closer than friends; he became part of her family. Mary called him her “spiritual son,” and Oshea has always shared their relationship was very much like mother and son. 

The two remained close friends until she passed away in March 2024. (CBS Evening News, 2024) https://youtu.be/L1F6AVCon7k?si=ACavuxCurB2bb3NY 

One of the developers of Open Heart who was friends with Mary would always chat with her about program growth, what that could look like, and how it could be implemented. Mary was always excited about the ideas and looked forward to implementing them into her program, because she wanted it to have a larger outreach. 

However, once she became ill, program growth was no longer the priority. The priority became caring for Mary, and her program was legally dissolved before her passing. 

 Open Heart is here to carry on Miss Mary’s work in a new way.  

Open Heart knows the work we do has to encompass the work Mary did with forgiveness but also broaden the focus to include trauma, more specifically unaddressed trauma. Mary always wanted the program she created to grow and assist men, women, youth, and children. Which is why helping people navigate life pieces amid their trauma is the heart of Open Heart’s work. We will help Open Heart participants with a process we call ‘Restorative Guidance’ through a practice we call ‘New Life Management.’