On Collective Healing
I have spent a good deal of time trying to be a “good” white person. I read tons of books, did tons of trainings, got lots of therapy, joined lots of racial justice organizing and action.
(And this was important - not perfect, I have 100% messed up a ton and will continue to - but still important and part of the journey and the work of anti-racism.)
But it wasn’t until I was in spaces with other white folks doing healing around internalized white supremacy, and what it meant to be healing that in and through our bodies, leaning into embodied anti-racist white identities, that I actually started to feel… well, feel more, period, for one.
And, I was more able to stand in my dignity and worth as a white person, facing into accountability and harm and impact related to racism, while also showing up with more of my unique and needed contribution instead of feeling like I needed to stay small and not take up too much (any!?) space.
In other words, through being in these collective spaces with other white folks, I actually started to experience another level of transformation.
It was through being in these collective spaces, and getting to see and feel and be with other white people in a similar process, that some collective healing was able to move. I was able to feel myself more fully as part of this bigger pattern.
Collective Trauma Therefore Collective Healing
So much of our trauma is collective, so there is profound healing available just through seeing that others share a similar experience, through having resonance and shared reality.
(Resonance and shared reality are in fact universal human needs - so yes, healing does happen when they get more met!)
It’s so easy to get lost in our own pain and trauma, thinking we are alone and responsible for fixing it all by ourselves. We might be tempted to believe a problem is unique to me and therefore all my fault.
But when we can see that there are incredibly similar experiences across, for example, white-bodied people, or queer people (I name these two because they are some of the pieces of my own identity that I have more deeply excavated and been in collective healing around), we may feel less alone.
We may be able to learn and grow and transform through hearing the stories and witnessing the transformation of others. We may find new resource and support through these relationships.
Through being in embodied healing space with other white folks committed to racial justice, I was able to hear others articulate so clearer experiences I had really internalized as personal failings:
Feeling paralyzed and unable to act out of fear of doing it wrong again, doing harm again. Perfectionism playing out so strongly to the point of paralyzation. Getting stuck in my guilt and shame and not knowing how to do it right/best/perfect so getting paralyzed. And on and on!
Seeing the Systemic as a Path to Healing
And, when we see the collective nature of our trauma, we can see more clearly the systemic and structural roots of the violence that harmed us in the first place.
Through seeing that some of these common experiences were shared by many white people, it became clearer to me how these were actually part of the mechanism of white supremacy, functioning to keep me small and silent and therefore still in service to its violence.
Seeing others in this narrative, gratefully also meant seeing others struggling to turn it on its head and fight for a different story - one that invites us all in as needed participants in collective liberation.
Or, another example I’ve connected to as a queer person is a deep and old wound around belonging.
It’s not actually because of some personal failing that you (and me!) struggle to trust your belonging, for example.
It’s actually because as a queer person (or fill in the blank with a marginalized/disenfranchised identity you hold), you’ve been told by society over and over again, implicitly and explicitly, that your very existence is wrong, abhorrent even, that who you are is not ok, not acceptable, not worthy of belonging.
No wonder it’s easy to keep feeling alienated even in situations where the possibility of welcome and belonging might actually now be available to you!
But something different is possible.
Practicing Belonging
I had a loved one once challenge me to try on believing that everyone I met liked me 10 times more than I was projecting that they did. It was a challenging thought experiment, but as I’ve been in the practice over some years, I’ve realized that 1.) they were generally right - people do like me a lot more than I think! And 2.) it gets easier to believe and trust and lean into that belonging the more I practice!
A few years later, one of my somatics teachers invited me to try on taking in the belonging that was already available to me. This invitation would have been much less meaningful if it wouldn’t have been offered in the context of a learning community, where I got to feel real live belonging from other participants. It would have been different for a therapist to say that to me, and then send me off on my own to explore it.
So what am I trying to say here?
We Need Each Other To Heal
Yes, we need each other to heal! We heal more deeply and fully in community!
Healing is not an individual project. Healing is most liberatory when it is collectivized.
Otherwise, it’s easy for healing to become a commodified, individualized, personal thing, most accessible to those with access to expensive retreats, out-of-pocket fancy therapists, robust wholistic healthcare/insurance, organic food, etc.
Don’t get me wrong - I want all of this for all of us. And I think individualized, personalized healing spaces, (like therapy) with trained and experienced practitioners are really important.
But I also want more for us, and, believe there’s so much available to us right now, already (even when many of us don’t have access to lots of the above).
I don’t want to invisibilize or minimize the ways in which we can harm and retraumatize each other either. This is real and painful. Trauma is cyclical and intergenerational and we don’t always interrupt this despite our best intentions. Being in community, and being in the collective does involve risk.
And yet sometimes we can and do break those cycles of trauma and harm and find healing instead!
Putting It Into Practice
What does collective healing actually mean and look like, you might be wondering?!
Well I’m so glad you asked! :) Honestly I’m wondering, too, and do I have a few starting thoughts for us to explore.
There are so many ways to practice collective healing, and by necessity, we need a multiplicity of approaches that we are iterating and experimenting with all the time!
Figuring out how to heal in community I think will be a life long, multi-generational project - we are reweaving the fabric of collective care, and digging deep for new/ancient stores of resilience and resistance.
Here are some things you could try:
Consensual physical contact with another person, for example, this somatic containment hold
Invite a loved one into a listening trade - try out this simple guide!
Sing together - how about this one?
Spend time in nature, do some sharing/feelings time, see what emerges
Gather with an affinity group around some identity. This doesn’t have to be fancy - just a handful of people with some thread of shared experience and shared intention.
Explore My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem with a group, especially the somatic practices
What other experiments of collective healing might you like to be in?
What becomes more possible when you lean into vulnerability, and let yourself be seen and held by others?
What can transform as you connect your own personal struggle/hurt/trauma to patterns of systemic and structural violence?
How might collectivizing healing resource us to show up more resilient and connected to our movements for life and liberation?