Liberation is a Community Spell

~offered by horizon~

Our nervous system, the mycelliul web of our ecosystem body, is both ancient and timeless. Ancient like the stars. Timeless like the earth. Still and moving like our lungs, breathing in what was also breathed by our ancestors and what will be breathed by those who follow and by those who follow them. The steady beat of our hearts—that which instructs our lungs toward movement and stillness—following its own rhythmic beat, connecting us to our ancestors, to our descendents and to the web of life. Deep (inter)connection reverberting through our ecosystem bodies, sometimes signaling safety (I belong) sometimes signaling threat (I am unsafe). Always wise.

The work of liberation is not the work of one person. This is not work we are supposed to do alone. Liberation is a community magic, a community spell. It is the magic of relationship, of who we are together and of who we can (together) become. In the lineage of ancestral folk magics we inherit, this is an inheritance woven from a tapestry of beauty, belonging, freedom, connection, pleasure, collectivism, interdependence and love. It draws on the wisdom of relational repair after rupture, of what we know about healing in relationship and of us remembering, collectively, who we were born to be.

Community Healing (Liberation) is what comes after the work of collective trauma metabolism. The Star after the Tower. The brilliance we are able to be after the true dismantling of all systems of domination and oppression. As social justice warrior Michelle Cassandra Johnson says, “We need to ask ourselves not just what we are dismantling, but what we are mantling, what we are creating.”

I am a trauma worker, a somatic therapist and a culture builder. I mentor social workers, therapists and other healers in the deeply embodied, open-hearted work of somatic trauma healing. And by this I mean our birthright ability to heal our individual and collective traumas, griefs, ecosystems and futures. And by this I mean healing in ways that are rooted in love, that unlock what is possible.

I have spent more than 21 years in a deep study of how healing happens, learning to undo oppression while learning to co-create cultures of justice and belonging.  I have been mentoring and supervising folx in anti-oppressive, liberatory healing modalities for more than 15 years. I help liberatory therapists step into their full power as visionary healers. This is my life’s work.

I consult with folx who have a deep longing to practice in ways that are liberatory, and who are thirsty to know what that might look and feel like. Social workers practicing harm reduction and anti-oppression within deeply racist, oppressive systems. Trauma healers practicing EMDR, IFS and other relational trauma healing modalities. Folx seeking a trauma healing practice that opens up pathways to freedom in our clients’ ecosystem bodies (and collectively). Folx working (and starting) in private practice, thirsty for community and the shared experience of how to return to a liberation-rooted practice again and again. Others, like me, who are lifetime students of how healing happens and who need learning, inspiration and community to allow our true Self to shine through our practice.

If you are looking for a way to see yourself (and your impact) more clearly, searching for a soul-aligned-liberatory-framework to set your practice inside, and seeking to allow what is possible to blossom from within your practice, let’s schedule a consultation.

There will not ever be a single way that healing happens, and true freedom cannot possibly be found inside a single theory. We are far to brilliant, far too queer and far to magical to limit our healing within a single idea. Healing cannot be contained. But our brilliance, our queerness and our magic is exactly what supports us in learning to reliably co-create the conditions for safety, which in turn allows us to access (and to help others access) the healing that is our birthright. This is magic we were born to do. This is who we were born to be.

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