“If we build a society based on honoring the earth, we build a society which is sustainable, and has the capacity to support all life forms.”
– Winona LaDuke
“We must get more passionate about healing than we are about punishing.”
– adrienne maree brown
“The healing centered approach comes from the idea that people are not harmed in a vacuum, and well-being comes from participating in transforming the root causes of harm within institutions.”
– Dr. Shawn Ginwright
We hold in our hearts the deep conviction that healing work is inextricably linked to anti-oppression and equity work, knowing that the nuances of who gets to heal, who gets access to practices and spaces of well-being, and who remains unsupported in navigating the murky waters of trauma, is intimately tied to structures of power and privilege that shape the whole of our society. We see food and environmental justice, equitable access to holistic and alternative health care, and the cultivation of joy as integral to the health and wellness of the mind, body, and spirit of whole people and communities.
With this knowledge in our hearts, we look to the work of scholar practitioners like Dr. Shawn Ginwright, and community activists and healers like Cara Page, Prentis Hemphill, and adrienne maree brown, and movement organizations like The Black Lives Matter Network, the Movement for Black Lives, BYP 100, and others in Black Liberation work, who have lead in forging a healing-centered path toward resolving unjust trauma. We look to their transformational conceptions of how to create and hold healing justice spaces, knowing that their voices set forth a visionary paradigm for healing and well-being as being inextricably linked with justice work. Necessarily, we orient our work within a critical healing justice framework, applying this framework as a compass to show the way toward movement-based and politicized healing-centered practices.
