Community strengthens connection and is one of the most powerful antidotes to isolation and depression. We are wounded in relationship; we heal in relationship. Learning from and supporting one another, practicing together in groups, co-creating community and sharing is the most sustainable form of healing.

 

We have all been conditioned by the culture in which we are living, as well as the cultures in which our ancestors lived. Oppression has been experienced through the generations, has been passed on to us, and lives in our bodies. We must find ways to heal at every level of our being. Every one of us, but some more than others, are impacted and harmed by the isms. Our country has elevated some and put its knee on the neck of others. Genocide, slavery, continuing structural and institutional racism, sexism, violence against women, people not having control over their own bodies and exploitation of our precious Earth resulting in climate crisis are traumas that live in the body.

 

Our culture, built on the myth of the rugged individualist, supports the idea that the individual is supreme, that it is the individual’s responsibility to take care of themselves and their own, that problems are personal and need to be dealt with on a personal level. (“brush it off” or “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps”). The aforementioned are not problems that originated nor can they be solved on an individual or personal level. Community, sangha, solidarity and commitment to collective liberation are the paths to connections that are needed to heal.

 

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Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.

Do justly, now. Do mercy, now. Walk humbly, now.

You are not obligated to complete the work,

but neither are you free to abandon it. 

- The Talmud