Have you ever thought about your relationship with your breath? To your body?
For Black, brown, indigenous, queer, and trans people working on the frontlines of violence intervention, the relationship to the body and breath can be simultaneously sacred, tenuous, and uncertain. BlPOC communities have experienced generations of surveillance from police, forced labor, and bodily harm. It only compounds the collective stress and tension that strains much of our society. This is especially true of our leaders at the frontlines of community-based safety and healing.
Our society desperately needs the work of community-based safety leaders. They operate as trusted first responders to violence, experts on intervention, mediators, and community-centered strategists. Many are survivors of violence themselves, making them specifically qualified to help solve it.
But how do we value and care for these leaders? How do we make space for them to heal, breathe, and not burn out during critical and life-saving work?
Those who are most impacted by our nation’s endemic violence must be most involved in our solutions. They must also be included in the myriad forms of healing, care, and rest that Black, Brown, and indigenous people have historically been isolated from and shamed from participating in.
This April, Equal Justice USA traveled to Orange Beach, Alabama, with seven leaders working across mental health, grief support, youth development, and decarceration, all with a particular lens on violence intervention and prevention. Throughout a long weekend, our team and partners broke bread, practiced various forms of radical restoration, and set the stage for future collaboration and mutual support. Each day began with a morning meditation and grounding practice, introducing and re-introducing everyone to tools for breathwork, presence, and feelings of safety within our physical and emotional bodies. The EJUSA team and our partners facilitated discussion circles, a day trip to neighboring Pensacola, FL, to learn more about the history of the area and activism to preserve Black land and business ownership amid gentrification, and an herbalism workshop that guided everyone through the medicinal properties of various herbs. Each person could create custom tea blends to suit their healing needs. Each day’s menu featured home-cooked meals with whole foods, culminating in a culinary healing workshop that simplified incorporating healthier, nutrient-dense foods into our days.
EJUSA worked together to curate a healing room adorned with flowers and incense for the advisors to rest, listen to calming music, and take in ocean views. Many organizations doing direct violence intervention and prevention work face endless barriers to sustainable funding and long-term healing amidst multiple exposures to trauma and institutional violence. In sharing various tools and resources with our advisors, we hoped to expand the access they and their organizations have to simple yet effective community healing and resilience practices.
Over the course of the retreat, each of us felt and witnessed the bonds between ourselves and our partners deepen, and it drove home the importance of self-care, community care, and communal healing. For some, work didn’t stop, but they got a glimpse of what it was like to balance the pressing needs of their community and their own healing needs. Whether through morning walks on the beach, casual conversations near the pool, or breaks in the healing room, leaders were carving out time for themselves to share space and find calm. With healing practices, we can stay rooted amid chaos. This was especially highlighted during a Friday morning meditation and discussion session, where leaders expressed the weight not only of their professional and community work but also in their roles as caregivers, parents, and providers moving through their healing journeys as survivors of the same violence that they are working to end. As each person shared, support came in waves: “How can we support each other?” “what does it look like to continue this space after we go home?” “what does it look like to form organizations that can fully center our healing?”
These questions are not asked often enough for too many folks on the frontlines. From navigating the daily operations of managing non-profits, community groups, and city-wide safety initiatives to experiencing what Network Member and EJUSA Board Member Lisa Good noted as disenfranchised grief, community-centered public safety leaders disproportionately bear the brunt of the impacts of state violence, community violence, and structural inequities that leave many Black- and brown-led organizations without resources needed to secure the safety and wellness that they deserve. As public safety remains a stronghold in our collective consciousness, it is not enough for organizations and leaders to only experience healing during a single weekend away from their homes. This is why EJUSA is working to increase equity and resources for community-centered public safety in a broader sense and to sustain the individuals leading the charge in their respective cities, states, and issue areas. For safety to truly exist, it is not enough to stop violence. We must also resource the healing, wellness, and recovery of those most harmed by it, including those dedicating their lives to achieving our shared visions of safety.
