A Conversation
nisha ahuja, Lamia Gibson, Pauline Sok Yin Hwang, and Danielle Smith
In the fall of 2015, a group of Toronto-based practitioners working with a variety of healing modalities met at Six Degrees Community Acupuncture, a healing space on the traditional territories of the Mississauga of New Credit, Haudenosaunee, and Three Fire Confederacy on Turtle Island (colonially known as Toronto, Ontario, Canada). Others doing similar work, including Gunjan Chopra, Susanda Yee, and Chiedza Pasipanodya, had planned to be part of the conversation but could not be there on the day. There are many others who have and continue to strive to have similar conversations and dialogues within our communities. We invoke them in this conversation. We thank Shruti Krishnamoorthy for transcribing this roundtable.
nisha ahuja: It’s really beautiful that we’re gathered today to talk about healing justice, and about offering healing spaces intentionally, to queer and trans people of colour in Toronto. And to talk about how that’s come to be, and how we’re all doing it. I just want to give love and thanks to the many other people who have been doing work to create healing and wellness in our communities, both locally and in other areas, because we’re all connected. Let’s start by talking about what is healing justice and how it’s come to be a term that we’re even talking about. For me, healing justice is a growing movement of people around Turtle Island who are using this term to talk about collective liberation. Who talk about how our wellness as individual beings is absolutely connected to collective liberation in a broader sense. Healing justice assumes that working on one’s own wellness is connected to one’s own wholeness, and that healing wounds that have been created through colonization and capitalism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia is actually subverting and transforming some of the deepest harms that our system creates. I’m familiar with the term through a lot of folks who are connected to the Allied Media Conference (AMC) and the Healing Justice and Disability Justice tracks which came out of the AMC and the US Social Forum in 2012.1 But I know that this has been happening for centuries, not just on Turtle Island—with Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples—but also in other places. So that’s my own personal connection with it. I don’t know if others have thoughts on it.
Lamia Gibson: Healing justice is something that has been happening as I’ve been doing my work and as I connect with more people who’re doing similar work. I haven’t really named or defined it until today.
Danielle Smith: Like you said, it’s been done since time. But I appreciate healing justice because it’s challenging the medical industrial complex and how that functions and how artificial that system can be. It’s because the medical industrial complex is so dominant that defining healing justice is an ongoing thing, speaking to whatever needs to be addressed.
Pauline Sok Yin Hwang: I can definitely relate to not necessarily having the words to put on this as an approach to activism or an approach to life. But I guess it’s those two words together, “healing” and “justice,” that have so many connections for me. As nisha was saying, it’s very obvious that there are ways that our bodies completely change in reaction to the trauma that’s caused by injustices in the world, to these systems of violence. They get very personalized in the body. So it’s an approach that works with the body and also in the context of the greater movements, and then just sees those two pieces working synergistically together. How can you work with one person without supporting them in the web of relationships that they’re in, with everyone else and all living things? How can you build movements when you don’t look at the individual people in that movement and their well-being, which affects the well-being of our relationships?
na: On the idea of movement building, I think healing justice is recognizing, naming and centralizing that healing—healing modalities and well-being—is in itself radical. Going back to our roots (literally the definition of radical) is in itself movement building. That is in itself justice work. Often, in activist spaces, caring for each other or ourselves and addressing the deep wounds created through systems of oppression are seen as secondary to movement building when actually they can be centralized and can shift and transform our relationships to systems of oppression. Really transform those relationships in a way that creates a lot of individual and collective empowerment. Sometimes I’m wary of using this word, but there is a deep power that we connect to in these processes.
DS: Just listening to you all speak, I’m even thinking about the terms “health” and “healing,” and what it is to be healthy for us as various practitioners of something. To think about health, not in the terms of the medical industrial complex, but how “health” is actually so multifaceted, and that’s what we’re all trying to address. I keep thinking about the different systems of oppression that are at work, and about the connection between individual and collective healing. Bringing it right here for us as practitioners, and speaking to my experience of illness this morning, how do we as practitioners in a particular method define healing? What I’m trying to say is that healing can take place in so many different ways. And the term “healer,” I’ve been questioning it a lot.
na: I question it all the time.
DS: Thank you for that, because it’s made me think about it a lot more. Status can be given with that title that may not fit. I’m also thinking about individual healing and what it means to work in a particular mode or modality. And what it takes to be able to do that, and what healing looks like to be able to do that, and what self-care looks like. And even complicating the term “self-care,” where it is usually left up to the individual to look after oneself. Which I think is reinforced by the medical world, too. Versus the collective notion of interdependence—how we take care of each other. And what all of the facets of that look like in the movement that we’re creating or participating in and the things that we’re trying to heal. There’s a lot in there.
na: Yes! It’s a lot! As you’re speaking, I’m thinking of what it means to cultivate communities of care. Many of us are individual practitioners or folks who try to create spaces where people can gather to go on their healing journeys, which is about creating communities where care, health and wellness are centralized. I keep thinking of a circle, like it’s centralized, almost like a chain effect, or like a thread that weaves through everyone. I’m also thinking of what you said about the idea of the word healer. We often talk about this. Some people feel really called to use that word for their modalities. And no shade on them. But for me, the idea of facilitating someone’s healing journey or sharing a healing modality is more true to what my being does, because I’m more interested in someone connecting to their self-healing, their innate self-healing ability. This is why the idea of healing justice is so powerful in the face of all these systems of oppression. Because when people connect to that essence of themselves, they can’t be fucked with in the same way by these systems because you enter into a level of expansiveness of the spirit and the body. Yes, things are going to happen and we’ll still be affected by them, but the resilience and the vulnerability that is involved in that resilience is much different.
LG: And that medical model you mentioned functions on the truth that it takes the power away from people and shifts it over to the practitioner, as opposed to returning the power to the person. Not even returning it, just saying that it’s there. This makes a space for people to be like: “Oh, I can connect with this in me? Oh, it was always here?” Making that space is a massive tool of resistance against so many systemic oppressions.
[. . .]
PSYH: I grew up in this city, and it’s really hard to separate my own history and my own journey from various healing spaces that have existed here over time. There are many other practitioners who have done a lot of work with queer and trans people of colour activists, even if they don’t necessarily identify that way. A lot of times, in the forging of a public movement like healing justice, there’s the naming, and then there’s who hears about it, and then who publicly participates. And then there are all these other people who do that kind of work and don’t really talk about it very much. I can think of Eileen Eng at Spectrum Healing, a naturopath and energy healer who has a clinic on Dupont and a retreat centre in Minden. Eileen has worked with so many people in the community and inspired many of us to work from that juncture of spirituality and physical energy healing. And there was a yoga practitioner, Nitya Kandath, who was here for many years, who lots of people have practised with, like Sairupa Krishnamurthi, the yoga facilitator, practitioner of shiro-abhyanga (Ayurvedic head massage), and naturopath. Most of these folks are people of colour, some queer. I also keep going back to spaces that are more like community spaces. Like community organizations and art spaces. When I was growing up, there weren’t necessarily a lot of explicit “healing justice” spaces, or spaces framed in terms of your physical or mental health. Well, we did have to heal. [Laughs.] But we often did so in spaces that framed it as coming together, being ok, being able to be yourself, and exploring parts of that, and doing it in so many ways. So I guess that’s why I’m still struggling with this “healer” or “healing justice” kind of line. I just feel like gazillions of people who are doing community arts stuff or community facilitation stuff are doing healing as well. I remember the Arrivals Project that I did with Danielle and Diane Roberts in 2007. That was a community arts project, but it ended up facilitating so much emotional as well as physical healing for many participants. So where is the line?
na: You’re so right, Pauline. There are so many queer and trans allies who might not totally know the personal experience of what it is to be queer, trans, or even know the “right words” that might be happening in movement building but are there to support in different ways. Whether it’s through artistic exploration or creating gathering spaces or just being a practitioner who is trying to create a sliding scale or free days, or just different accessible ways of being with people. I’m studying Ayurveda right now at the Centre for Ayurveda and Indian Systems of Healing. My teacher, Ismat Ji, Dr. Ismat Nathani, is not queer or trans, but whenever I bring up questions that are specific to communities that I’m connected to in class, she’ll always approach it in a way that is open, accessible and without judgment. There are so many people I can think of. Like Zainab Amadahy, a Toronto-based author, screenwriter, community organizer, and educator of African American, Cherokee and European heritage, who is someone who often comes up in our conversations. And folks who aren’t here in this circle who would be great additions to this conversation in so many ways.
PSYH: When I was growing up and becoming politicized, a lot of the spaces that in reality were queer and/or trans POC-dominated spaces were not explicitly queer . . . and sometimes not explicitly POC. I personally felt more comfortable in POC-dominated spaces than in strictly queer and trans spaces, because those were often pretty white-dominated. I’m also thinking of a lot of folk organizing in the context of the antiglobalization, antiwar movements such as Colours of Resistance, No One Is Illegal, Freedom School (pre-Asian Arts Freedom School), some of us at Youth Action Network, and other networks that were trying to do antioppression work as part of anticapitalist organizing. It was many, many queer women and trans folks of colour doing a lot of the legwork. It’s through that work that today I still have a strong sense of being part of queer and trans communities of colour. A lot of my friendships came out of that time. Though none of these groups were explicitly queer, there was some overlap with folks from groups like Queer Asian Youth, Black Queer Youth. There were writing retreats at Camp Sis, the Indigenous and women of colour run healing arts space in Minden, and lots of events at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore which, with all its challenges, was for sure another place where a lot of queer BIPOC hung out and built community. Another thing comes to mind is the project that Lamia and I have been working on to make the Ontario Vipassana Centre more trans and queer accessible.
na: How is that going? What’s happening?
PSYH: I think it’s going really well!
LG: I think it’s going well too. I feel like, for the time that we’ve been doing it, which is since maybe 2014, there’s massive change.
PSYH: It’s been rippled all over North America.
DS: Do tell more please.
LG: There’s not a lot of tangible change that’s rolling out because it’s an international organization so the application form cannot be changed yet at an international level. So it’s hard to see the change. But the folks who run OVC and what they’re communicating through the community of Vipassana Centres is incredible. They’re just like, “Give us more! Tell us more! We wanna change things! We wanna make it better!” Such genuine, cis-gendered folks, straight folks, who are like: “I’ve never thought about this! I’m gonna go learn and come back with like this language.” And I’m thinking: “Wow, you really did learn something in there! You’re not even pretending.” Yeah, it feels very authentic and genuine.
DS: That’s exciting.
PSYH: I did some reflecting on the process and just what an example it is of how deep but quiet shifts can happen on the basis of something like, “I’m trying to minimize my ego . . . I’m trying to actually listen. [Laughs] I’m not trying to be important.” It’s not showy, it’s just part of the spiritual work to listen and not be defensive. I don’t see a lot of that kind of work in other spaces around divides of oppression, so it’s kind of exciting.
na: It’s really interesting to see that happening with regard to trans and queer stuff. I think about my love MeLisa Moore, who’s not from Toronto originally, she’s based in Baltimore. She’s a Black and Indigenous to Turtle Island woman, genderqueer presenting, who has a long history as a meditation/Dharma practitioner and has deeply contributed to my spiritual growth and understandings of the workings of anti-Black racism. In a lot of Dharma spaces or spirit-based spaces that could offer healing through one’s own connection to spirit practice, like meditation or Buddhist or Yogic practices—a lot of places that I’m connected to—the amount of racism that is present and anti-Black racism specifically is so intense. In a way that practitioners, or the people who are holding the spaces, are so unreflective of. MeLisa and I have both been talking to different centres. MeLisa, taking the lead on that as a Black woman, and as someone with a long history of experiences in Buddhist and spiritual spaces and with Buddhist teachings, talks about how this is an integral part of even one’s meditation practice and working with the ego, which are central principles to her work in community wellness. But there’s a different level of resistance that I’m hearing to race than to queer and trans stuff. Which is interesting, because I wonder how the Vipassana people would respond to talking about anti-Black racism that shows up or even racism that brown folks and other people of colour experience in spaces. Which is why it’s often queer and trans Black, Indigenous and people of colour who are trying to create these spaces for healing. It’s really bringing up for me the need for spaces that centralize queer and trans folks but also racialized queer and trans folks. And that’s such a need because so many spaces that are geared towards healing, connecting to one’s own self-healing, or meditation or yogic spaces, can be so isolating and non-welcoming, and actually re-triggering. I’ve experienced more racism and homophobia in spirit-based places that are supposed to be connected to my own ancestral traditions than I have in other places. That’s sometimes the most damaging I find. So that’s why I keep coming back to wanting to do this kind of work. How about you, Danielle? You had like a yes response when I asked that question about ancestry.
DS: There are so many things, and so many things that are unknown for me about that. I’m thinking about the work that Pauline and I did, almost a decade ago, and that I continued on working with Diane Roberts and Heather Hermant, what now I’m terming as embodied ancestral research. I like to describe it a little bit as using theatre exercises, like a person would do character study on a character and embody that character to perform it. For lack of a better description, a similar sort of process is done, but it’s not to perform your ancestor but to embody your ancestor, to experience your ancestor, and to experience the connection of your present day self with your ancestral self. And that line of how it can work, it’s vast . . . like the potential in that is so overwhelmingly vast. And that connects, too, to the grief that came up, really quickly, when you and I were talking about how we’ve all come from these different places ancestrally in the world. And even conversations that MeLisa and I had last year with a bunch of other folks about the lack of information that’s known about African spiritual traditions. I know they’re out there, I know people are practising them, but the accessibility and the knowledge, the general public knowledge about it, is still so limited. And that might be a good thing in the way Black culture’s appropriated. I don’t know. [Laughs.]
[. . .]
na: Connecting to ancestors has been integral to my own journey of connecting to self-healing energy or whatever that part of my energetic body is—and also to how I share energy work with others and do work around healing relationships through time energetically. Also, as someone who has an artistic practice that’s been really important as well. Actually, in the artistic practice accessing things that were connected to ancestors then translated into how I share healing work with other people or with myself. It translates into the recognition, or maybe the question: If we offer healing to our beings now, in this present moment, does that then offer healing to ancestors past and generations forward? My personal belief is HELL YES! [Laughs.] This is probably getting a bit more into other realms. But in terms of what we now call quantum physics and the idea of how energy and time works, we can actually shift through many things because energy and matter are the same. That’s a very brief outline of why I believe it so much. [Laughs.] So I do feel that ancestral connection and I also feel guidance, even though there’s a lot of blurriness around if there were people who shared healing modalities in my ancestral past. I know that the region I come from, a mix of many things were happening: Buddhism, what’s called Hinduism, yogic practices from many lineages. . . . I think of caste, how caste has erased where a lot of the practices of yogic sadhana or practices come from. I know that that was all in the mix along with Sufi stuff, along with Islam. . . . The region I come from in South Asia has that mix, so I feel that coming through in different ways in the yogic practice I share, in the energy work, and even in the Ayurveda stuff. I feel it present. And I feel like people, whether they’re present with it or not in their current day experience, are doing that. They’re gifting that to their ancestors as well.
PSYH: I almost want to repeat that, and put it in bold or something: that the healing work that I do today affects the pain of my ancestors. I have definitely felt shifts with the ancestors that I have connected to, through projects like the one that Danielle did. As people who have experienced different kinds of colonialism and imperialism for so long, maybe that’s not something everyone thinks is possible, that there are ways to address some of the pain that was inflicted. There are ways, you know, on a societal level, but what happened did affect people’s emotional psyches, and we carry that stuff on till today. At least I feel that I have inherited a lot of things [laughs] from the ancestors. So yeah, I just want to underline that we can actually work on that today.
DS: I’d like to call Chiedza back into the circle in a conversation and a discussion that we were a part of recently. I had expressed the concept or the idea born of Indigenous teachings that what we do now affects the next seven generations but what we do now can also affect the past seven generations. Chiedza was talking about having a discussion with her mom, and asking her: “Well, when this happened, how did you deal with it? Like, what did you do?” And her mom is like: “What do you mean how did I deal with it? I went and I got the water, and I cooked food, and I just did what I needed to do. The daily things. Like these questions, don’t ask me that. We didn’t have the space to be able to examine this,” the way that our generation now does. And how it’s a privilege to be able to do so and at the same time a responsibility.
na: It’s like an opportunity-responsibility—that’s how I feel. This is an opportunity, at this present time, even though shit’s still going down. For some folks, there’s spaciousness. I’m not Black, I don’t know what it’s like to deal with the kind of anti-Black racism happening now. But even in the face of that, a shift can happen.
[. . .]
LG: I’ve got to chime in, as someone who’s British and Turkish, so representative ancestrally of colonizers, but also resisting white supremacy in my family, being raised with British people, and the way that white supremacy invisibilizes my experience. I practise medicine that’s not of my ancestry: Chinese medicine and Shiatsu, which is Japanese. And then through this work I come around, and I think “Oh there are pieces here where I hope that I can offer healing towards the layers of colonization through acknowledging my existence.” And through connecting with Turkishness and then: “Oh! I found out information about cupping traditionally in Turkish culture, cool.” But I’m so removed from my Turkish culture that it’s like a whole other bag of grief that I’m saying, “Hi, here you are.” I am disconnected but also there’s this incredible opportunity to maybe carefully, always humbly, or as often as I can be, offer a way to be, “How can we co-exist together? What is my responsibility as a person who is white passing, white privileged, raised British with the mixed race-ness in my existence which gives me so much information?” How do I sit with all of that, all of those truths—‘cause I exist? And how do we use that as a transforming tool? How can I be used, maybe, as a transforming tool to help mend these aches that sit historically in all the people’s lineages who crossed my path or hear this recording, read this chapter? How can I, with my British ancestry, step up? And be like: “Ok! I’m here.” As Maya Angelou said, “If you have the privilege then your responsibility is to share it.” How do I use it in ways, and how do I do that with less, with as minimal ego as possible? How do I support Indigenous sovereignty in this conversation? As a person who exists, I need to also acknowledge how much more I need to learn so that I can contribute to a just presence on this land.
na: I really appreciate you naming how white supremacy shows up in your family and also the white passing-ness and privilege that comes with that. And the complications of that, being Turkish mixed.
DS: I can riff off that too, identifying as a Black mixed-race person having light-skinned privilege. Thinking about how that plays out, and contemplating how privilege functions as a means of unawareness. How do we raise awareness—our own and others’—what role do I play in various contexts, and how do I use my privilege to move through different spaces intentionally—as you said, Lamia? To shift and heal relationships among us as individuals as well as collectively?
PSYH: I can definitely relate to what you both said, not with the exact same background, but just in terms of the many ways that I have privilege in the world. And then how that intersects with everything that we’ve been talking about.
[. . .]
na: Another question that we had on our list of things that we were excited to talk about was about models of holistic medicine practice that balance the sustainability of the practice with accessibility to the communities that we’re trying to serve. What does access to healing and healing justice look like in a city like Toronto, where gentrification is happening? In a context of higher rent, fewer state resources, and more people being denied primary health care. What does this mean for the modalities that we share? On the sustainability/accessibility note, I’ve been talking with practitioners who share different spaces. From free spaces to pay-what-you-can sliding scale, to fixed rate. And it’s trying to find a way that people can access it. But because we live in a capitalist system, people have internalized a monetary value of healing. So talking to people all over, from Oakland to the East coast (this part of Turtle Island), it seems people don’t benefit as much from the modality that they’re engaging with if it’s free because unfortunately capitalism has pushed people to undervalue what they haven’t given as much monetary exchange for. But then there are other people who know how important these practices are to their well-being. Where it’s like, they could throw down two or five dollars and receive immense benefit because that’s actually a lot of money for some people. And for some folks, going to a free workshop means they don’t even engage with the material in the same way. So it’s a tricky balance.
PSYH: It’s tricky. Is it possible to inject more conversations about money into our communities? I just feel like class and money are really not talked about much. My thoughts about this are in the larger context of how we talk about “isms,” which I also feel has shifted over the past fifteen years or so. Sometimes it feels like instead of having open, supportive, productive conversations, it’s more like “Oh you’re supposed to already know this stuff.” So if you don’t get it, then it’s like shunning, or naming and blaming. So yeah, creating spaces where we can actually have honest vulnerable conversations about all the isms, but also very much including class and money. Because I feel like so much is internalized from the capitalist value system.
LG: Totally. I’ve been doing community acupuncture in this Canadian context since 2007, where we have “free” healthcare. Watching people having to pay for a service—folks who would otherwise not have access to the service. And being a business owner watching people over a course of months, watching the numbers on one side and watching how people relate to the medicine. And then having conversations with people about treatment plans: “Okay, you’re here. You’re gonna pay for this service. This is how this medicine works. So you need to think about coming here once a week for the next ten weeks. So plan that budget, this is why we have this sliding scale.” The empowerment piece around how accessing health care almost gets taken away a little bit more in this system as opposed to our counterparts in the United States. I think about Third Root in Brooklyn, who have a very similar space to us here at Six Degrees, and going down there and talking to them. Our struggle here around people paying for something is so different than what’s happening in the United States. Because people there are so used to paying for things, so the success of community acupuncture is way bigger. As opposed to here—I don’t know if you find this in your practice—where people are like: “But I don’t pay for this. I can’t even factor it in.” Because here we go to the doctor for free and if you have some benefits then maybe your prescriptions are somewhat paid for. And just inviting people to think differently about their health care, and then having conversations. This is no slight on people. But we pay for lots of other stuff, and we don’t prioritize health care in the same way. Back in the day, I used to drink a lot. I would go out and party and blow like sixty dollars in a night, no problem, wouldn’t even blink an eye. But come to think about maybe getting a massage for my sore shoulder, I’d be like “Mmmm . . .” And there’s my own complicated reasons why I was drinking whiskey and not getting a massage. But just even the thought about the way that capitalism takes that away from us, and the options we’re given in this capitalist colonial context. And thinking about my history, I wish that in my growing up the thinking about health had been more prevalent. How this scarcity model that capitalism thrives on is counter to creating functioning, beautiful community and people helping each other out. And thinking of creative ways to make this space more financially accessible, and sustainable for practitioners. Because when Six Degrees started, the rate was twenty to forty dollars and then we shifted to twenty-five to fifty-five dollars, and now we’re at thirty to sixty dollars. And the reasons those things happen are about keeping sustainability for the whole place. Because rent goes up, because we moved space, because our rent in this new space is more than in our old space, and wanting to get bigger, to make it more accessible for more people, to have more practitioners, to have more styles and practices of medicine. . . . But thirty dollars as the minimum—that’s a lot of money! You know? “Ok, I think you need to come in once a week for the next five weeks and then we’ll reassess and see how you’re doing, that’s $150 in the next month! And I can’t even totally guarantee you that you’ll feel completely better, ’cause that’s just not how this medicine works, and that’s actually not how humans and bodies work a lot of the time.” So yeah. It’s just a lot of thinking and it’s risk taking, and it’s like we lose some folks, and some people don’t get to access those services any more, and other people do. And hopefully a new something model will come through and there’ll be some kind of sponsorship program one day. And then physical accessibility, rents are so frustrating in Toronto.
na: We’ve talked about how you had tried to put in an elevator into this building and it was exorbitant. Trying to hold our gatherings in physically accessible spaces is so important.
PSYH: I’m thinking about what’s happening in the city, and also about how big Toronto is and how many parts of the city are not that serviced. About starting a conversation about where we are located, why so many of us need to stay downtown. And if you wanna talk about health care spending and money, how much money goes into this biomedical industrial complex that we just assume is a given? It doesn’t have to be . . . not everywhere in the world is like that. And we need not only be completely outside of the “mainstream.” I know Guelph Community Acupuncture managed to find a spot in the community health centre there. I think it is more accessible and they are more able to build those connections.
na: I think about ways to counter gentrification—I know it’s always been happening, but I feel like in the last five years it’s happening quicker—that are really through community circles and community gatherings and organizations. Partnerships, like you said, like joining with either health centres that are already there or just shifting what it means to be in different communities geographically. There are so many folks outside of the city centre downtown that are needing access to these spaces and modalities. So doing that bridging more is something that I really envision in the next decade. And building a web of people that is harder to break, in resistance to gentrification, in a way that can support communities who are more marginalized, including queer and trans folks of colour. But also communities where we might not have the same visibility, because queer and trans folks live within people of colour communities as well.
[. . .]
DS: Another topic I wish we had got a chance to talk more about is disability justice and how that plays in. We talked about it in little bits and pieces but not specifically around that.
na: Disability justice has been a big influence on healing justice.
DS: And I’m not even sure what I would like to say or hear about it. I think partly because I’m coming from the background that I come from in sports massage therapy . . . very, very ableist and elitist. And how I have struggled with a learning disability while in school. And thinking about disability in different ways, and coming from my personal experience of being very very kinesthetic. I think there’s so much potential in how healing justice and the terminology and the language around it has been formed out of disability justice. It’s a totally different frame from the medical industrial complex, you know? And it’s giving back—what we started the conversation with: it’s acknowledging that each individual has their own healing capacities and that they’re defined in very specific ways that include harm reduction. And that things that mainstream medicine would call a pathology are actually very functional, you know?
LG: Totally, yeah to this.
PSYH: The normalization . . .
DS: Exactly, and it’s like “cure” or just “dispose of.” Like if you’re not in that cure model, then something’s wrong with you: “Sorry.” That’s how it’s gonna be coming from the mainstream model.
na: It creates the idea of suffering not existing, and pain not existing. And the ultimate place to be is without pain, and the ultimate place to be is without suffering. When is that gonna happen in this living world? So what does it mean not to be afraid of those things, but accept them as part of our journeys, as places of learning and growth and possibility for change and transformation? And also recognize the magic and skill and beauty and wisdom that come from journeying through whatever it might be?
LG: I’m sure the experience of pain and illness has infused revolutionary struggles for thousands of years. Because it’s always such a source of strength to come through to live with whatever it is.
PSYH: And to have that as a motivator to create those communities of care, that vision of interdependence, as opposed to “I can be strong. I can be completely ‘healed’ on my own.”
na: Yeah . . . which can be helpful for some, but it’s definitely not the only way. And we need each other.
LG: I gotta wrap it up because we gotta poke people in ten minutes!
na: Acupuncture begins! [All laugh.] Oh, thank you all so, so much, so much gratitude, and gratitude to all our ancestors and ancestors of this land, and all the cajillions of people that are doing this work in different ways.
All: Thank you!