With grief and trauma being far too familiar realities in Black homes, communities, and bodies, efforts are increasing to provide venues for healing.
And true to African and African American cultural traditions, the power of community is being utilized more and more often in these healing efforts.
GROUPS UTILIZING COMMUNITY
The Black Man Project (BMP), founded to deliver healing and mental health resources directly to communities, does so in part via monthly therapy sessions where Black men circle up and share.
“We provide safe spaces where we have a community of people,” said BPM founder Brian Ellison. “We have therapists on hand, where we are able to have dialogue and conversations around the things that we have to navigate on a day-to-day basis.”
Harris County Precinct One’s Senior Enrichment Program (SEP), the brainchild of County Commission Rodney Ellis, operates on this same principle of community healing. SEP affords seniors the opportunity to forge new relationships while collectively participating in enrichment programs, special events, and day trips that promote physical, emotional, and social well-being.
Houston’s Citywide Kwanzaa celebration operates on this same principle – the power of community. Instead of each of these organizations/movements doing their own thing with their own crowds for Kwanzaa, they come together under the Operation Unity banner, combine their efforts and spheres of influence,e and celebrate the Kwanzaa principles together, displaying the first Kwanzaa principle, Umoja (Unity).
Restoring Justice’s Monique Joseph, along with friends from the Texas Organizing Project (TOP), organized a recent community-based healing experience for the general public in the form of “Healing Circles.”
The experience, held at CLASS Bookstore (3803 Sampson St. C, 77004) and hosted by CLASS’s owner duo David and Lara Landry, was all about providing hurting people with healing opportunities.
“Healing Circles provide an opportunity for folks from the community to come together and just talk with each other about collective struggle, collective survival, and how we use those things towards collective change,” said Joseph.
PHOTO GALLERY
Here are just some photos from that recent Healing Circle at CLASS.
