What is Healing Justice?
Healing Justice is a framework that identifies how we can holistically respond to and intervene on intergenerational trauma and violence, and to bring collective practices that can impact and transform the consequences of oppression on our collective bodies, hearts, and minds.
- Cara Page, Kindred: Southern Healing Justice Collective
Changemakers are dying as a result of spiritual and physical deprivation from trauma, stress, and unrest in our movements.
We need to be able to respond to the increased state of burnout and depression in our movements; systematic loss of our communities' healing traditions; the isolation and stigmatization of healers, and the increased privatization of our land, medicine, and natural resources that has caused us to rely on state or private models we do not trust and that do not serve us.
- Kindred: Southern Healing Justice Collective
Who Created Healing Justice?
Healing Justice as a movement and a term was created by Queer and Trans people of color and in particular Black and Brown femmes, centering working-class, poor, disabled and southern/rural healers.
- Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Honoring Cara Page
Cara Page is a Black and Indigenous Queer femme organizer who is one of the guiding forces who helped birth Healing Justice movements through her work with Kindred: Southern Healing Justice Collective.
Her work helped create the 2010 Detroit United States Social Forum's Healing Justice People's Movement Assembly and Healing Justice practice spaces.
Her work grounds us in Abolitionism, reminding us that we can not separate the traumatic impacts of state violence from the work of building collective power.
Our movements themselves have to be healing or there's no point to them
- Cara Page, Kindred: Southern Healing Justice Collective
Healing Justice Political Strategy
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Collective trauma can be transformed.
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There is no single model or right model of care.
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Community must have autonomy and agency on how we choose to heal in our communities.
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Healing strategies are rooted in place. We root in Black and Indigenous southern ancestral traditions.
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Healing Justice holds an anti-capitalist, Black feminist, abolitionist lens and centers disability, reproductive, transformative, and environmental justice analysis.
Applying a Healing Justice Framework Invites:
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Rethinking and re-imagining our organizations, our structures, and our sectors.
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Seeing, naming, and being accountable to the forms of oppression that directly impact you and those around you
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Having regular practices to ground and address trauma and harm that happen interpersonally and systematically
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Rethinking and re-imagining our organizations, our structures, and our sectors
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Reclaiming ancestral practices and tools for healing without culturally appropriating
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Building relationship with and paying healing justice practitioners and healers to sustain their important and necessary work.
Why Actively Center Healing Justice in our Work?
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Healing Justice supports us to practice internally the values we long for externally.
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Center a racial equity lens and directly challenge power dynamics.
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Bring us back into the body where liberation actually exists.
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Remind us that we are not machines and center humanity.
Bring Healing Justice to Your Work
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Engage in sustained anti-racism education for all staff.
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Offer rest periods for recharge including office closures and sabbaticals for all staff.
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Educate yourself on best practices including trauma-informed language and accessibility practices.
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Practice pay equity by being transparent about salaries and dismantling wealth disparities in your organization.
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Offer wellness stipends so your team can take care of their healing in ways often not covered or acknowledged by conventional health insurance policies and practices.
Reflection Questions
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What would your workplace look and feel like if you incorporate healing justice practices into your work and culture?
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What tools shared here can you begin to implement at your workplace? What support do you need to make this happen?
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What practices for healing, grieving, processing and celebrating have been sacred to your ancestors? What practices are sacred to you? How do they support you in challenging times?
Healing Justice in Action Featuring Sovereign LA
Sovereign LA is a 501(c)(3) art and wellness center dedicated to the healing of Black and Indigenous women and gender Non-binary people of color.
Born to create a state of belonging, we strive for safety, accessibility, and inclusivity.
Sovereign LA Artists
The sacredness of Black innocence while celebrating Black identity through representation.
Finding positivity through the massive societal and environmental shifts during the COVID-19 pandemic.