You hear the term “work” thrown about all the time in social justice and racial healing spaces.
Countless times over the decades, people have asked me, “What do you mean by ‘do your work?’”
How often have you used or heard the word “work” and made assumptions that we have a shared definition? Yeah. Me too.
Even after 30 years I don’t always take the time, slow down, and share what this means to me personally and why I am called to this work as both my purpose and the core mission at LJIST.
For me “work” means healing.
Work is the ongoing, self-reflective, structured practice of transforming ourselves through intimate and vulnerable truth-telling, deep listening, and emotional release.
Connection is at the heart of this profound process of re-becoming and transformation. “Work” is what we do through the healing practice I introduced in our new mini-course Stepping into Solidarity.
My approach to “the work” invites:
- Close Connection. We do this by showing up vulnerably and authentically, building trust and offering non-judgment, being willing to be undefended in creating beloved and cherished community.
- Deep Listening. We offer this as an equal exchange of time and loving attention between humans, recognizing we all need both to be listened to and are transformed by being listener to others.
- Emotional Release. We experience this as a spontaneous embodied discharge which usually takes the form of crying, yawning, shaking, talking, laughing, and sweating. It’s not an intellectual or analytical experience which talks about feelings; it’s a release of the feelings themselves.
You can’t oppress people without hurting them. Oppression is happening collectively, systemically, and societally-sanctioned. Our healing is most effective when it happens the same way–collectively, systemically, and societally-sanctioned.
People want to heal.
You and I have been trying to heal in all kinds of ways—some more effective than others. Sometimes in wildly inappropriate ways. (Yes, I’ve made those messes, too.)
None of us wants to be stuck in old hurts, and replaying our pain.
It’s not your fault and there is another way.
What if we were all more skillful in addressing our own and each other’s hurts from oppression?
What would become possible if releasing emotions became part of what we do together? Not to believe the feelings or be misguided into action by them, but to heal them?
My approach to healing re-centers the release of human emotion from oppression as a path toward ending oppression.
