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Healing, Resilience, and Thriving

Module Purpose

In this module, we will explore a framework for healing, resilience, and thriving following our four guiding commitments: 

  • Start with ourselves by reflecting on our beliefs and mindsets and checking our stress responses.  

  • Provide responsive services by shifting our frame and promoting healing and well-being.

  • Build relational capacity by fostering hope and nurturing caring relationships and opportunities to participate and contribute. 

  • Create conditions for all to thrive by taking action to solve systemic inequities and supporting collective healing, resilience, and thriving.

 

Resilience > Thriving Framework

Photo Credit: Monika Aichele, New York Times

Photo Credit: Monika Aichele, New York Times

Before we start, we wanted to share how we are thinking and talking about the term “resilience”. Resilience is often defined as our ability to “bounce back” from experiences of adversity and about building our capacities to overcome serious hardships. Sometimes resilience is thought of as an individual trait. We are not referring to resilience as being “tough” or “capable” or putting responsibility on the individual to get through hard times or solve issues that are a collective or civic responsibility. We are also not referring to resilience as an individual trait. When we refer to resilience in these ways, it can place the burden on people to make their way regardless of access to resources or opportunities. See this article for more thoughts on this.

We instead are referring to resilience as an ongoing process, rather than something an individual has or as a solitary experience. We are using an expanded notion of resilience in which:

Together we can strengthen the resources and relational contexts in peoples’ lives to support healing in ways that help us go on together and even thrive. 

In this module, we are working towards a vision of resilience and thriving for all people. In this vision, the following is happening:

  • people’s healing and well-being is supported, 

  • people's sense of agency, voice, participation and contribution are acknowledged, valued and engaged, and 

  • barriers and inequities that people experience in their daily lives and in accessing services and support are removed. 

The following roadmap will guide us as we move through this module on how we can collectively do this work.

 
 
 
 

Reflect on Our Beliefs and Examine Our Mindsets

We can start with ourselves by reflecting on our beliefs about resilience and examine our mindsets and expectations.

Sara Truebridge (she/her) reminds us—resilience begins with beliefs. Fostering resilience begins by believing that all individuals (organizations, communities) have the capacity for resilience (1). 

Sara guides us to: 

This also helps to spark curiosity and create a space for others to share their own stories of resilience. Click here for a guided visualization exercise to help explore how the messages we heard and important relationships and opportunities contributed to our experiences.

For example, Positive Youth Development is an approach with the underlying belief that ‘all young people can develop positively when connected to the right mix of opportunities, supports, positive roles, and relationships’ (2).

Doing strengths assessments in juvenile justice reflects this shift in beliefs by assuming strengths are present and accessible if given the opportunity to activate them (3).

“We tend to ask them about what [crime] they did – deficit based – the Youth Competency Assessment tool gives a good way to change this. Seeing people as people, not a charge” (4).

This module is based on a strengths-based view that helps shift from defining children, youth, families, and communities as a problem to focusing on how a system can better support the creative strengths, resources, and relationships that already exist to help address problems. Within this shift to a strengths-based view, strengths, relationships, and resources are critical assets for addressing the challenges that people and communities face (5). 

A positive view of the strengths of individuals, families, and communities does not ignore problems or difficulties they may face. The key assumption of a strengths-based approach is that individuals, families, and communities are defined not by their difficulty, but rather by their multiple strengths.

What we believe about resilience frames our expectations of ourselves and others. It is thus also important to reflect on our mindsets and expectations. 

Here is a story that illustrates the power of a strengths-based view of communities.

Image by Islam Elsedoudi, licensed under Creative Commons.

Image by Islam Elsedoudi, licensed under Creative Commons.

A group of six neighbors called the Matchmakers was born after Naomi Alessio witnessed a simple act of kindness: A friendly, older neighbor named Mr. Thompson invited her son Theron into the metal-working shop in his garage and taught him how to fashion a few pieces. Naomi and the Matchmakers wanted to pair up other like-minded members of the community and began taking stock of their neighbors’ various talents. Click here to read more (6).

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We can work together to uproot limitations created by expectations, biases, and labels and see possibilities and potential—“when the glue that makes labels stick dissolves in our processes of relating” (7).

 

Sources:

  1. Sara Truebridge (2013) Resilience Begins with Beliefs: Building on Student Strengths for Success in School. Teachers College Press.

  2. Butts, J., G. Bazemore, and A. Meroe (2010) Positive Youth Justice—Framing Justice Interventions Using the Concepts of Positive Youth Development. Washington, DC: Coalition for Juvenile Justice.

  3. Laura Burney Nissen (2006) Bringing Strength-based Philosophy to Life https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Bringing-Strength-Based-Philosophy-to-Life-in-Nissen/a748ab713e133ec91bc2a1e6db95fc09341c3f92/figure/0

  4. Burton & Butts (2008) Building on Strength: Positive Youth Development in Juvenile Justice Programs https://jeffreybutts.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/building.pdf

  5. Maton, Schellenbach, Leadbeater & Solarz (2004). Investing in children, youth, families, and communities: Strengths-based research and policy (p. 7). Washington, DC: APA Books. 

  6. Margret Aldrich (2011). A Functional Family, Just Outside Your Door. UTNE Reader. https://www.utne.com/mind-and-body/functional-neighborhood-family

  7. Sara Truebridge, 2013, p. 69

 
 
 

Check Our Stress Responses and Practice Self-Care

We can also start with ourselves by checking our own stress responses and collectively practicing self-care in order to strengthen relationships that promote resilience.

Sometimes, we may not be aware when we are responding from a self-protective place in response to stress. A good place for us to raise our awareness is to learn about our brains and what can happen when we experience stress.

Daniel Siegel (he/him) created this ‘handy’ model that uses our hands to represent these various parts of our brain and provides a tool to understand what happens when we experience challenges in managing our stress response and ‘flip our lid’ (1).

brain

Make a fist with your own hand and see if you can identify the parts of the brain from the “handy model” and how it connects to the illustration to the right.

When we feel high levels of stress or feel “triggered”, we can remember this model to better understand what is happening in our physiology.

When we develop a practice of checking (and managing) our own stress responses, we can work to prevent flipping our lid. 

  • Noticing and naming the emotion we’re experiencing is the first step to bringing our upper part of our brain back online. “Name it to tame it!”

Checking our stress responses helps promote healthy relationships

Healthy relationships are the most important protective factor for promoting resilience. Checking our own stress responses and self-regulating promotes healthy relationships and resilience through:

  1. Providing social buffering and helping another person’s brain regulate their stress response (2).

  2. Fostering safety and support through building trust and physical and emotional safety.

  3. Supporting positive interactions by offering calming strategies when people are triggered.  

Reflection: Think of a time that happened when working with another person who was upset, and they were able to calm themselves down and re-engage.

  1. What happened between you and this other person - when they were able to calm themselves down when they were upset? 

  2. What role did your own stress response play in helping them to calm themselves? 

  3. What might it look like (feel like) if this happened more often? What is possible? 

  4. What is the smallest thing that we can do to build on what worked in this story?

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Tool: The Trauma Resource Institute offers an online and android/IOS app called iChill for practicing skills to help our nervous system stay in what Elaine Miller-Karas calls the resilience zone. http://www.ichillapp.com/

Practicing self-care helps care for ourselves and each other

We are supported in this practice by also collectively taking care of ourselves and each other, which is a critical aspect of resilience. You can dig into this topic more in the Collectively Taking Care module. 

Illustration by Lia Kantrowitz

Illustration by Lia Kantrowitz

Click here to read Angie Jaime (she/her) story in which she shares her journey to self-care:

“Many western notions of good health are not reflected— mentally or physically—in Indigenous communities, or by people who see their own health as inextricable from that of a community. Caring for myself was built on caring for others, for all living things, in an interdependent relationship that our communities had maintained for generations.”

 

Sources:

  1. Daniel J. Siegel (2015). The Whole-Brain Child. Mind Your Brain, Inc.

  2. Bezdek & Telzer (2017. Have No Fear, the Brain is Here! How the Brain Responds to Stress. Frontiers for Young Minds. https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2017.00071#KC7

 
 
 

Shift Our Frame and Change the Lens

We have looked at how starting with ourselves by reflecting on our beliefs and expectations and checking our stress responses can help create relationships that promote resilience. Providing responsive services is the next level of our roadmap.

Responsive services can be thought of in different protective environments such as community services, medical services, education system, justice system, workplaces, communities, neighborhoods, and other environments.

The first step is to create responses that promote safety and healing. It is important to avoid responses that may cause harm. We can start by shifting our frame and changing the lens in which we do our work — then work to promote healing and foster well-being in all that we do.

Nadine Burke Harris (she/her) proposes we shift our frame with an understanding that trauma, toxic stress, and/or other adversities are: 

  1. highly prevalent, and 

  2. can significantly impact lifelong health and interconnected social issues (1).  

Recognizing the prevalence of adverse experiences, we can incorporate a lens of a healing-centered approach that builds empathy and takes a collective view of healing. Shawn Ginwright (he/him) shares the following elements of a healing-centered approach (2):  

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A resilience-oriented and healing-centered frame opens up ways for all people to define their experiences and identities in a more humanizing and dignified way. 

When we view young people and their behaviors as “the problem” we neglect to see them in the context of their lived experiences and unique paths to creating powerful identities, meaning, and well-being (3). When we are able to shift our frame and change the lens, we can work together to promote healing and well-being.

 

Sources:

  1. Nadine Burke Harris (2018). The Deepest Well. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  2. Shawn Ginwright (2018). The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement. https://medium.com/@ginwright/the-future-of-healing-shifting-from-trauma-informed-care-to-healing-centered-engagement-634f557ce69c

  3. Kristin Bodiford (2012). Choppin' it Up: Youth-led dialogues for positive change.  

 
 
 

Promote Healing and Well-being

Once we have shifted the frame and changed the lens we can respond with services that promote healing and well-being. Establishing safety, physical and psychological, for all people is a critical step in providing services that promote healing.

A trauma-informed approach (as defined by SAMHSA) is one that (1):

 
 

Trauma-Informed Practices for Early Childhood Providers Train the Trainer 

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Example: The initiative cultivated a team of trainers to expand awareness, increase knowledge, and develop trauma-informed practices with early childhood providers in Contra Costa County. It emphasizes the importance of caring, invested relationships and providing safety and support. This is achieved through routines, predictability, and self-regulated adults who understand how to reduce triggering and calm young children’s central nervous systems. There is a central focus on building skills and capacities in young children and the adults who care for them.

In addition to providing safety for healing, it is critical to ensure people’s basic needs are being met—such as food and shelter. Having people we can count on for concrete help and feeling socially and emotionally supported are important aspects of meeting our basic needs. The CDC also recommends strengthening economic supports for families.

A quarter (25%) of children in Contra Costa County face 2 or more hardships. A hardship was defined by as: basic needs not met, parental drinking or drug problem, parental legal trouble or incarceration, parental divorce or separation, family hunger, relocation due to problems paying rent or mortgage, foster care placement. 

 
 

Strengthening Families recommend the following protective factors for families in meeting basic needs (3).

  • Access to health care

  • Stable housing

  • Economic stability–ability to earn a livable wage

  • Social support–connections to family and friends

When parents are connected to the resources they need, they are more prepared to be nurturing and facilitate the growth and development of their children. 

  • Supporting a caregiver/parent’s safety, mental health, and well-being is critical to provide an environment of safety and to support a child’s experience of resilience.

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris also prescribes sleep, exercise, nutrition, mindfulness and a nurturing environment to reduce stress hormones and help the brain to recover from stress (2).

For example, the Black Infant Health Program works to improve African-American infant and maternal health and to decrease Black:White health disparities for women and infants, in Contra Costa County. In a group approach, women develop life skills, learn strategies for reducing stress, and build social support in the context of a life-course perspective. Participants access their own strengths and set health-promoting goals for themselves and their babies. Click here to learn more about the Black Infant Health Program. 

 

Sources:

  1. SAMHSA’s Trauma and Justice Strategic Initiative (2014). SAMHSA’s Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach. https://ncsacw.samhsa.gov/userfiles/files/SAMHSA_Trauma.pdf

  2. Nadine Burke Harris (2018). The Deepest Well. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  3. Center for the Study of Social Policy: Protective Factors: Action Sheets https://cssp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/ProtectiveFactorsActionSheets.pdf

 
 
 

 Foster Possibility and Hope

Moving along the roadmap, we enter our commitment to build relational capacities. We will start with fostering possibility and hope. Shawn Ginwright urges us to also foster possibility in addition to the treatment of “symptoms” through the restoration of peoples’ well-being (1).

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Just like the absence of disease doesn’t constitute health, nor the absence of violence constitute peace, the reduction pathology (anxiety, anger, fear, sadness, distrust, triggers) doesn’t constitute well-being (hope, happiness, imagination, aspirations, trust). 

Shawn Ginwright

Storytelling can be a powerful way to shift from a deficit-based mental health model and expand possibilities and restore well-being.

Click here for questions that can be used in storytelling to make meaning of experiences that have been traumatic. 

Young people who witness or experience violence often experience stress, depression, and anxiety which can breed meaninglessness and hopelessness (3).

Youth development and civic engagement strategies designed to engage America’s most disconnected young people will only be successful to the extent that they address hopelessness. Shawn Ginwright

There have been traditional approaches to supporting youth who face system inequities, stressful environments, or difficult social conditions. However, these approaches have been ineffective in combating the deep and multi-layered levels of stress and trauma that these young people experience (4). 

Shawn advocates for a vision of healing and love rather than hopelessness and fatalism. 

RYSE conducted a listening campaign to listen to young people as they shared their experiences of trauma, violence, coping, and healing.

Listening to Heal, RYSE Youth Participatory Action Research Project (YPAR)

Reflection:

  • What impact do the conditions young people experience have on their sense of hope? 

  • How does hope promote academic achievement, civic engagement and well-being? 

  • How can we support young people with healing from trauma, stress and hopelessness?

 

Sources:

  1. Shawn Ginwright (2018). The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement. https://medium.com/@ginwright/the-future-of-healing-shifting-from-trauma-informed-care-to-healing-centered-engagement-634f557ce69c

  2. Ibid

  3. Shawn Ginwright (2016). Hope and Healing in Urban Education (p. 4). Taylor and Francis.

  4. Ibid

 
 
 

Nurture Relationships and Opportunities to Participate and Contribute

Safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments are healing. Nadine Burke Harris 

Creating and sustaining safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments can help:

  1. prevent adverse experiences, 

  2. provide a protective buffer in the context of trauma, toxic stress and/or adversity, and 

  3. help people heal and reach towards their potential (1).

The video below shares how Head Start-Trauma Smart, designed by the Crittenton Children’s Center, creates a safe stable environment for young children. It also engages all those who are in a child’s life— parents, teachers and other staff—to strengthen everyone’s ability to provide a supportive relationship.

Bonnie Bernard (she/her) reminds us that resilience research demonstrates unequivocally the power one caring adult can play in making a difference in young people’s lives. 

Sometimes it is not necessarily a parent. It can be a teacher, clergy, mentor, social worker, coach and other people in the community who play a critical supportive role to help develop the capacities that promote resilience (2).  

Watch Rita Pierson’s TedTalk on how every kid needs a champion below. 

You know, Ms. Walker, you made a difference in my life. You made it work for me. You made me feel like I was somebody, when I knew, at the bottom, I wasn’t. And I want you to just see what I’ve become (3).

Opportunities to participate and contribute our core gifts are important environmental factors that promote resilience in which people are supported to:  

  • contribute to personal power, inclusion, and self-efficacy

  • awaken the power and gifts of service, and 

  • instill responsibility, voice, and choice (4).

Oppression lingers in your psyche. One of the ways that it lingers in your psyche, is it causes you to lose touch with the power of your voice. By using our voice and sharing our experiences, we can be impactful leaders in our communities (5). Ezell Watson, III

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Example: The Black Leadership Academy offers a year-long training program that addresses personal, cultural, civic and professional needs of emerging transformative Black leaders and foster leaders who hold a lifelong commitment to fighting for racial justice and lasting change in the Black community in Portland, Oregon. 

When we act to achieve a specific goal, we foster a sense of control over our future and engagement with society. 

This sense of control over future events is perhaps one of the most important features of collective hope because it requires the community to share a vision of their future…and can facilitate positive change in the community and schools (6). Shawn Ginwright

Click here to access strategies to create safe and inclusive spaces, places, and relationships where people feel they can be themselves and build on their unique strengths and abilities.

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Example: In response to the increasing levels of trauma and stress that young people in Richmond, CA are facing, RYSE Center offered daily self-care and healing spaces (#Ilovemyself series) that center Black and Brown youth.

 

Sources:

  1. Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs): Leveraging the Best Available Evidence (2019). Division of Violence Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/preventingACES.pdf

  2. Bonnie Bernard (2004). Resiliency: What we have learned. WestEd

  3. Rita Pierson (2013). Every Kid Needs a Champion. Ted Talk. https://youtu.be/SFnMTHhKdkw

  4. Truebridge, Sara. Resilience Begins with Beliefs: Building on Student Strengths for Success in School (0) (p. 16). Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition.

  5. Bridges: African American Leadership Academy Overview. https://youtu.be/CALDQCrWirk

  6. Shawn Ginwright (2015). Hope and Healing In Urban Education (p. 23). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

 
 
 

Disentangle Intersectionalities and Solve Systemic Inequities

Direct services targeted to individuals are essential yet insufficient to address the complex impacts (and root causes) of trauma, toxic stress and/or adversity (1). 

A public health approach to violence prevention focuses on addressing root causes of violence and takes action at three levels: 

The Contra Costa County Call to Action serves as a guide for coordinated and strategic action for prevention of interpersonal violence including: 

By developing a lasting framework, we are better positioned to understand and prevent interpersonal violence. The following four goals provide the foundation for collaborative efforts.

Call to Action.png

The Call to Action recognizes that we all have a role in building healthier, more supportive, caring, systems and communities that foster safety and resilience. 

Click here for more about the Call to Action and learn more about the public health approach to violence prevention. 

We must start this work by focusing on disentangling intersectionalities and addressing system inequities. The framework of intersectionality was developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw. This framework states that interacting systems of oppression intersect in ways that create disadvantage or discrimination for certain groups. These interactions can shape social determinants of health and produce major differences in peoples’ lived experiences (2, 3). 

Lisa De La Rue advocates for explicit inclusion of issues of intersectionality and resilience in prevention and intervention efforts. 

Moving away from a focus on people’s deficits allows for opportunities to tap into strengths of individuals and communities to promote resilience (4). 

Healing and resilience grow when we can bring our full selves into that process—when intersecting roles, identities, experiences and needs are welcome and safe (5). Tiombe Wallace, MS, MFT 

We have learned that trauma, toxic stress, and/or adversity can be impactful in people’s lives. Similarly, healing is also shaped by the intersectional and shared identities of race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Addressing intersections of disadvantage through solving systemic inequities goes beyond a Band-Aid or checkbox approach addressing “symptoms” (such as demographic representation). It requires us to: 

  • Learn about root causes of inequities, starting with racial inequity. 

  • Acknowledge that policies and practices are driven by racial bias and systems have been built for the advantage of white populations and the disadvantage of people due to racial or other identities (6, 7, 8). 

  • Recognize inequities (disparities) contribute to education, health care, housing, race, and gender inequalities.

  • Take action to address  the root causes of these inequities and the environmental context that causes harm (9). 

This work must include…….

The following interactive tool guides us to learn about how we might come together to solve systemic inequities and create environments for all people to experience healing, resilience, and thriving.

In the Contra Costa County Call to Action: Preventing Interpersonal Violence participants in the community survey and focus groups prioritized the following: 

  • Increasing investment in understanding and addressing the root causes of violence.

  • Addressing social and economic inequities created at the system level (such as the income gap, gender and racial inequalities, and health disparities). 

    • Addressing structural bias, which occurs when institutions such as schools, banks, businesses, or government agencies reinforce biases like racism, prejudice against people with low incomes, and other types of injustice. 

    • Utilizing Targeted Universalism: tailoring strategies for and investing in communities that have faced the greatest inequities over generations.

  • Acknowledging current and past harms. 

    • As a result of violence by law enforcement and other government agencies, and responses to the violence, distrust exists between county government systems and county residents. A strong desire was expressed for acknowledgement of current and past harms.

“Safety is not a service to be provided, but a result of conditions where people feel nurtured and have meaningful and equitable opportunity.” – Call to Action planning participant

We must work together to transform the conditions that perpetuate violence and instead help people thrive (10, 11).

Thriving =

optimal conditions of justice 

control of life

collective power

pursuit of dreams

collective responsibility

sense of collective peace (12)

 

Sources:

  1. Porter, Martin & Anda (2017). Culture Matters: Direct service programs cannot solve widespread, complex, intergenerational social problems. Culture change can. Academic Pediatrics. Volume 17, Issue 7, Supplement S22-S23. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.ACAP.2016.11.006

  2. To learn more about intersectionality visit Kimberlé Crenshaw: The urgency of intersectionality - TED Talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality?language=en or Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality, More than Two Decades Later (2017) https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/archive/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality-more-two-decades-later#:~:text=Crenshaw%3A%20Intersectionality%20is%20a%20lens,class%20or%20LBGTQ%20problem%20there

  3. López & Gadsden. 2016. Health Inequities, Social Determinants, and Intersectionality. NAM Perspectives. Discussion Paper, National Academy of Medicine, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.31478/201612a

  4. Lisa De La Rue (2019) Intersectionality and Resilience: Updating How We Address Adolescent Dating Violence. American Journal of Public Health 109(10):1324-1325. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336181426_Intersectionality_and_Resilience_Updating_How_We_Address_Adolescent_Dating_Violence

  5. Tiombe Wallace. Impact of Trauma, Violence, and Stress on Health (Presentation). http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/bos/supdocs/113136.pdf

  6. Nicole Anand (2019) ‘Checkbox Diversity’ Must Be Left Behind for DEI Efforts to Succeed. Stanford Social Innovation Review https://ssir.org/articles/entry/checkbox_diversity_must_be_left_behind_for_dei_efforts_to_succeed

  7. Ginwright & Seigel (2019) Social Innovation Alone Can’t Solve Racial Inequity Stanford Social Innovation Review https://ssir.org/articles/entry/social_innovation_alone_cant_solve_racial_inequity

  8. Reid, Nariño, Magge & Sassi (2019) Advancing Equity in Health Systems by Addressing Racial Justice Stanford Social Innovation Review https://ssir.org/articles/entry/advancing_equity_in_health_systems_by_addressing_racial_justice#bio-footer

  9. Shawn Ginwright (2018). The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement. https://medium.com/@ginwright/the-future-of-healing-shifting-from-trauma-informed-care-to-healing-centered-engagement-634f557ce69c

  10. Iris Garcia. Building a Case for Healing Justice. Akonadi Foundation. https://akonadi.org/blog/building-a-case-for-healing-justice/

  11. Staci Haines (2019). The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice. North Atlantic Books

  12. Tashika McBride. Language as Liberation and Trauma Sensitive Learning Environments. International Institute for Restorative Practices, Radical Healing https://www.iirp.edu/images/pdf/IIRP-Radical-Healing-presentation.pdf

 
 

Support Collective Healing, Resilience, and Thriving

Self-healing communities is a concept developed by ACE Interface and refers to a...

 practice of inclusion, compassion, and appreciation for the core gifts of every person while recognizing that offering those gifts can be more difficult for people most affected by toxic stress and other adversities (1). Laura Porter

Self-healing communities can use capacity-building processes to:

  • improve connections, hope and efficacy

  • examine patterns of thinking and acting

  • nurture culture change that promotes healing and strengthens community resilience (2).

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Enough! Together We Can End Family Violence

Example: Mujeres, Salud y Liderazgo (MSL) Peer Leaders, many of whom are domestic violence survivors, initiated a family violence prevention project called ¡Ya Basta!. The project provides training about family violence to develop support in the Latinx community for ending family violence, to provide advocacy, public education and training for Educadores de Familia, and expand and enhance support groups, facilitated by trained Latina Peer Leaders and experienced mental health clinicians.

Click here to learn more about The Latina Center. 

Shawn Ginwright reminds us: 

  • just as trauma is a collective experience, healing is also experienced collectively

  • just as health and well-being are defined as more than the absence of disease, justice is more than the absence of oppression. 

He encourages a move from a focus on individual experiences > to a collective awareness > to collective action that fosters collective healing (3). 

Collective healing involves a restoration of well-being through….

  • culture

  • spirituality  

  • civic action

….offering opportunities for meaning, belonging, sense of purpose, and development of self-identity (4). 

Healing-centered engagement is akin to the South African term “Ubuntu” meaning that humanness is found through our interdependence, collective engagement, and service to others. 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 the harm within institutions (5).

Another way to nurture self-healing communities is by incorporating restorative practices.

By addressing the impact of violence, restorative practices help to heal harm, meet human needs, promote equity, and strengthen community bonds (6).

Restorative practices: 

  • Work to > heal and strengthen relationships and connections within the community.

  • Require > culture change in how a community thinks about harm and reparation, replacing ineffective and harmful policies and practices.

  • Shift and strengthen > social norms, patterns, beliefs and create new processes and structures (7).

An example of healing-centered engagement and restorative practices is healing circles rooted in indigenous culture where young people share their stories about healing and learn about their connection to their ancestors and traditions, or drumming circles rooted in African cultural principles (8).

Ryse logo.jpeg

RYSE was born out of young people of color (YPOC) organizing to shift the conditions of violence, distress, and dehumanization in which they suffer, survive, succeed, dream, and die. Every day YPOC struggle, succeed, and exceed metrics of compliance. RYSE is working to reimagine, uplift and hold metrics of liberation - where resilience is the baseline, not the benchmark. Where solidarity and resistance replace or enhance self-efficacy and civic engagement (9). Kanwarpal Dhaliwal

 

Sources:

  1. Porter L, Martin K, and Anda R (June 29, 2016) Publisher: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2016/06/self-healing-communities.html

  2. Porter L, Martin K, and Anda R (June 29, 2016) Publisher: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2016/06/self-healing-communities.html

  3. Shawn Ginwright (2015) Hope and Healing in Urban Education (p. 54). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

  4. Ibid

  5. Ibid

  6. The Contra Costa County Call to Action p 7 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kxjRVg4X3J8xRUz_O-fopomKEGQJA5fE/view?ts=5e41e033

  7. Community Health & Restorative Practices, International Institute for Restorative Practices. https://www.iirp.edu/resources/community-health-restorative-practices

  8. Shawn Ginwright (2018) The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement. https://medium.com/@ginwright/the-future-of-healing-shifting-from-trauma-informed-care-to-healing-centered-engagement-634f557ce69c

  9. Kanwarpal Dhaliwal. ACEs 2018 Conference and Pediatrics Symposium: Action to Access

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the following individuals (and more) for the work they are doing and acknowledge their writing and wisdom that has been included in this module. Click on their image to continue to learn more: