Our Approach To Healing
In the wake of persisting disconnection and violence, providers, teachers, artists and loved ones respond. We honor the incredible waves of rage and grief washing over the nation as social service agencies of all kinds are being defunded, as our communities are being criminalized, and we see those among us silenced for expressing care for the most vulnerable (Crenshaw,1991, Page & Woodland, 2023). This is our response.
In Our Power Resource Collection
This collection of resources has been built to honor the heavy emotional burdens carried by the care workers and providers that meet survivors where they are every day as they navigate systemic and interpersonal violence. This resource has been developed to hold the wisdom, creative interventions, and provocations of these incredibly important people working to honor their own humanity and the humanity of survivors. We honor the labor of providers “mapping out the margins” to fill the gaps left by the silencing and punishing policies that impact women, girls and femme survivors who are black, brown, indigenous, immigrant, LGBTQIA +, and disabled. We invite you to practice alongside us as we work to make sense of the very real threats facing our communities and the world at this moment.
Dear Provider,
How are you really?
What are you holding today?
What is your body telling you?
How do you process all that you are bearing witness to?
Violence at all levels, whether systemic or interpersonal, severs connection with self and others and requires a lifetime of healing (Sweet & Escalante, 2017, Page & Woodland, 2023). This healing resource is made to help us to remember, reclaim, protect, and nurture the many parts that make us whole (Sharpe, 2016). We look to the metaphor of Kintsugi, a method of repairing a broken bowl with gold to showcase the potential beauty possible after rupture. Our creative/care work is the process of learning how to better heal ourselves after every break.
What is healing?
Healing is a non-linear, intergenerational process. Therefore, autonomy is essential as everyone’s journey is different. For healers, much like creatives, we bear witness, listen, and offer tools that may assist in the healing/creative process. At this moment, self and community care is both an act of refusal, and an act of creativity. We imagine and develop routes for life that refuse the harm of dominant systems of power. This is why Audre Lorde (1984) wrote that “Poetry Is Not a Luxury.” Care work is creative work. Creative acts are revolutionary. They help us to remember our power and reclaim our humanity in the face of violence, silencing, and erasure. Thus, this resource unearths the knowledge living in the “dark”, “ancient and hidden” places in our psyches. Care workers sit alongside survivors as they explore these brave spaces. We honor the generations of women, girls and femmes whose creative acts and caring responses continue to support our lives in the face of unimaginable violence.
Our center is non-western diasporic wisdom traditions that ground us in a balanced relationship between the human and non-human world. Global indigenous communities guide us with the wellness wheel. It was developed to heal and find connection back to the cycles of the natural world within. Engaging in the creative process returns us to our power.
“healing is an act of communion” - bell hooks
Indigenous global communities developed knowledge systems to uplift the importance of reciprocity in relationship and respect for human diversity and biodiversity. This knowledge echoes in our commitment to curiosity and a willingness to understand that which is different from us. It is the work of honoring the way difference allows for a more expansive view of ourselves and the world.
Why is listening so important?
Survivors navigate intersecting forms of oppression, visible and unseen, and we offer this as a space to encourage you to actively engage in listening across mediums. Listening can be both difficult, heavy, exhausting, and can be liberating and deeply healing. Listening is the first step to healing. By listening deeply, both to themselves and others, feminist scholars and creatives of color have historically responded to violence by making the experiences of those silenced visible. The work to slow down and understand the different dynamics affecting ourselves and the points of connection between those that we serve provides an essential space for collective resistance and empowerment. Listening is what transforms everyday talk into consciousness raising circles. We listen at the kitchen table, the coffee shops and craft circles just as our ancestral women and femmes gathered to speak about the truths of their lives.
In Our Power Guide
We invite you to use the creative process to transform pain into power. This guide is composed of a collection of creative practices curated for healing. It is an offering by black, brown, indigenous, immigrant, LGBTQIA +, disabled women, girls and femmes. These brilliant heart/mind scholars, thinkers, feelers, artists, and educators have made careers out of returning to the places of pain to transform it.
This is a reminder to breathe deeply. To rest.
To hold yourself with care.
This is a call for you to protect your joy
as we shift from surviving to thriving
It is in our ability to feel
It is in our ability to transform
that another world becomes possible.
Footnotes
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299.
hooks, b. (1999). All about love: New visions. William Morrow.
Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions.
Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Crossing Press.
Page, C., & Woodland, E. (Eds.). (2023). Healing justice lineages: Dreaming at the crossroads of liberation, collective care & safety. North Atlantic Books.
Sharpe, C. (2016). In the wake: On Blackness and being. Duke University Press.Sweet, E. L., & Ortiz Escalante, S. (2017). Engaging territorio cuerpo-tierra through body and community mapping: A methodology for making communities safer. Gender, Place & Culture, 24(4), 594–606. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2016.1219325
