For years, I’ve questioned the popular notion that healing ourselves is enough to heal the world. I’ve spent a long time reflecting on why I’ve always had the same reaction to that claim—the feeling that a significant part of the truth about what is required to heal the world is being left out of this conveniently simplified (and quite individualistic) mantra. Personal healing alone does not encompass the full truth of what is necessary for global healing. I keep asking: What about liberation?

At what point does personal healing translate into collective freedom? True liberation goes beyond freeing ourselves from patriarchal, white supremacist, colonial, and imperialist beliefs. It requires dismantling the oppressive systems that manufacture poverty, illness, state-sanctioned violence, exploitation, laws that control people’s bodies and choices, war, genocide, and profit-driven degradation of land and resources—systems that harm and kill every day. These are the very systems we must confront to heal the world.

We need to rethink how we talk about 'healing.' It cannot be confined to individual responsibility alone; it must be seen as a means to prepare us for the sacrifices necessary for the greater good. How can the world heal when so many remain trapped? If we’re all focusing on personal practices—dancing, meditating, and therapizing—to connect  deeper with our bodies and souls without using the clarity, embodiment, and power they provide to resist and dismantle oppressive systems, we fail to contribute meaningfully to collective activism. Healing must be the first step towards broader action.

I long to hear conversations that shape a new, positive, and affirming narrative around resistance, protest, and revolution, showing how these actions align with spiritual, emotional, and somatic healing. I want to be part of discussions about how consistent acts of solidarity with communities outside our own—those who are subjugated, oppressed, and harmed by current systems—are essential to collective liberation, alongside personal healing. These two seemingly different approaches, the work of healing oneself and active resistance, are not merely complementary but mutually dependent. As long as we keep separating them, and as long as we fail to move from healing to active resistance against the systems that uphold the status quo, we will never achieve collective liberation.

Hold Up! Why Listen to Me?

I believe it’s worth sharing the realms of experience, wisdom, and understanding from which I come. This is my practice of embodying loving and purposeful self-awareness, healthy confidence, and transparency:

I am deeply dedicated to spiritual, emotional, somatic, ideological, and ancestral healing. I approach this healing work having lived with an abundance of grief and trauma, most of which occurred within the first 25 years of my life. This “baggage” includes the deaths of both my father and my brother, at separate, unrelated points. Both of these losses—along with many other unnamed painful experiences I’ve carried throughout my life—have left a wellspring of stored complex Trauma (big T), pain, fear, and heartbreak in my body. I have had to, and continue to, do the work of acknowledging, loving, destroying, and releasing this pain. Then comes the unlearning and relearning—becoming free. This work allows me to thrive, and importantly, ensures that I do not enact harm on others from a place of personal pain. All of this, of course, is ongoing. I come with profound lived experience, like so many of us, in the deep, transformational work of personal healing.

I bring 13 years of experience in social justice through advocacy, organizing, and culture change work. As a cultural organizer and narrative strategist, my core goals are twofold: first, to help shift collective consciousness and dominant culture toward a just and truly liberated world, and second, to materially change the existing system to reduce harm, affirm life, and protect all who are subjugated. This work has equipped me with extensive knowledge about human behavior, belief systems, political systems, culture, and society, informing my understanding of human nature and theories of change beyond my personal experiences.

Lastly, I am simply a human living in this world, aware—like many of us—that violent systems continue to harm and kill the planet, its people, and its creatures. Despite witnessing perhaps the largest collective awakening to systemic injustices in history and an unprecedented focus on healing, these systems persist. It is clear that people are aware and do care—collectively, we are highly aware and care deeply.

My purpose and intention in doing healing work is to bring nourishment and genuine love to the many tables I sit at and to show up as an expansive and true version of myself. In doing so, I can be part of collective expansion beyond the confines imposed by unresolved pain, ultimately pushing society toward a more liberated future. Through this, I have studied how the stories we tell—through art, media, and other cultural expressions—shape our belief systems and cultural norms. These narratives, in turn, eventually influence our behaviors and ultimately our collective reality.

The Interconnection of Healing and Resistance

The siloing and ongoing division between healing work and revolutionary resistance keeps us going round and round on the hamster wheel. While some people engage in both, many who claim commitment to collective liberation fail to align their actions with this claim. They live in an either/or mindset even when they speak of a both/and approach. In the spaces I occupy as a healer, activist, and human, there are few honest conversations about what it means and looks like to engage in both.

People healing themselves and their lineages have been engaged in this work throughout modern history. Healing, while essential, is insufficient on its own for achieving collective liberation. Confronting ingrained behaviors and beliefs, shifting consciousness, and healing one’s bloodline of trauma through somatic and cognitive therapies are crucial steps toward creating a liberated world. 

Our efforts must extend beyond personal growth; we must move from imagining to doing. This shift requires a profound understanding of our purpose and a willingness to sacrifice. We must resist and divest from the status quo as a vital part of our life and healing practice. Actively dismantling the systems that have created the need for such deep healing is essential to the liberation of communities beyond those with whom we identify and the personal experiences we have endured. After all, everything is connected.

Despite ongoing genocides and the accelerating impacts of climate change, there remains resistance to genuine resistance. We must address this, own up to it, and change course. Quickly. It’s not that healing or social justice work alone is not ‘enough;’ these two aspects must be integrated to truly be effective.

Let me pause for a moment and define a few terms so we’re all on the same page moving forward:

Collective liberation is the idea that people can work together to end global oppression and create a truly free, equitable, and thriving world by acknowledging and addressing the layers of intersectional oppression that negatively impact all of us under patriarchal, capitalist, heteronormative, white supremacist, classist, and ableist systems. These systems create ideologies that uphold them, resulting in a cyclical nature of oppression. Collective liberation involves recognizing that all forms of oppression are interconnected and that everyone has a role in breaking the cycle.

Additionally, we must understand the difference between allyship and solidarity. According to the New Breath Foundation:

The Role of Individual and Collective Healing in Liberation

Collective liberation requires real, tangible acts of solidarity; it goes beyond the healing of those who have been harmed. We must recognize and fully adopt the practice of consistently, vocally, and outwardly resisting and divesting from the status quo.

This brings me to the impetus for writing this: What does it take to truly achieve this? Is individual or even ‘collective’ healing enough to build a new world order and set the world free? If our ‘collective’ healing excludes those most impacted by oppressive and violent systems, whose healing are we truly focusing on? What does ‘collective’ even mean?

What I hope you take away from this is that, while this work is challenging and requires sacrifices—varying by socioeconomic status, identity, and individual privileges—it is not as daunting as it seems. If we all participate and share the load, the weight of the work becomes lighter for each individual and the collective as a whole.

How oppressive systems, along with the narratives and cultural norms that uphold them, are interconnected is complex. Niel Theise discusses complexity theory, which explores how complex systems manifest in the world as complex, but not complicated. This theory is rooted partly in recognizing sameness and simplicity, similar to how fractals—neverending patterns—appear in tree branches and roots, mirroring those found in human biology, such as the lungs and nerves. Understanding this simple sameness of the world and our place in it is essential to understanding what is needed to free ourselves and the world.

With this in mind, collective liberation requires two key actions from everyone:

1. Divesting your resources and energy from anything that isn’t rooted in humanity, doesn’t affirm life, isn’t kind to our planet, and doesn’t contribute to a thriving, healthy, and happy world; and

2. Actively working to heal the hurt caused by oppressive systems, ideologies, and others (look up somatic healing if you aren’t familiar) so that you don’t unknowingly replicate it. 

These two actions directly feed each other. If you don’t actively divest from oppressive systems and norms, you are investing your time, energy, and resources in the creation and maintenance of an oppressive world. Similarly, if you don’t heal from the effects of these systems, you will unknowingly perpetuate the thoughts and behaviors that uphold these systems and ideologies, sustaining the very unjust world we should be divesting from.

These actions don’t just coexist—they are the same. Resistance, divestment, activism—whatever you call it—is collective healing. This is an expression of love for ourselves and the collective. By resisting oppressive systems, we demonstrate our care for the true collective, actively working to lessen the harm to others and the earth by refusing to support ideas, apparatuses, and structures that perpetuate that harm.

One might even argue (as I am now) that the concept of duality isn’t truly real but exists only in our perception that everything is separate. If we truly understood interdependence, rather than misunderstand collectivism, we would grasp that everything is interconnected. As Lauryn Hill said, “Everything is everything.” This, to me, defines plurality. To live in a pluralistic world, we must embody a pluralist approach all at once, in everything we do, and in every place we occupy (another sneaky pop culture reference).

Active Resistance as a Form of Healing

The status quo system thrives on our failure to make conscious changes, leading us to believe that, as long as we’re resting and finding individual joy and autonomy, we’re doing enough. While these things are important things to take care of ourselves, they are not the work of the revolution. Slowing down, resting, and creating joy in a world that values humans solely for their money-making productivity is indeed a form of resistance. But aren’t acts of resistance that actively work to dismantle these systems in tangible ways just as essential to our healing?

Divesting, boycotting, protesting, redistributing wealth and power, unionizing your workplace, and publicly speaking out against injustice—even when it’s risky—all contribute to healing. So too does putting your body on the line—especially able white bodies and bodies of privilege—and sacrificing for the greater good.

So yes, continue healing yourself—you must. As you grow and evolve, you’ll find yourself reckoning not just with your own experiences but with the world around you. Individual healing is required for liberation but it is just one piece of the puzzle—stop letting it take up all the space. It may feel overwhelming, but recognizing it’s all interconnected will transform it from feeling like work to feeling like your purpose—because it is all of ours. If we make it so, as Gwendolyn Brooks wrote, it will eventually also be our harvest, our magnitude, and our bond.

Allow your healing to extend beyond your personal experiences. Dismantling systems, engaging in civic action, standing in solidarity with marginalized and oppressed communities that you are not part of, and holding those in power who uphold the status quo accountable are not misaligned with your individual healing. In fact, they are perfectly aligned.

It’s both because it has to be both. If it’s not, well, as Jorja Smith puts it—round and round and round and round and round and round we go.