Collective Healing

When Dr Moore and I (Dr Rita) came together to talk about our reflections on 20-30 years of justice work, we agreed on one fundamental point. At the start, we underestimated the cost of what justice work would do to our bodies, our families, our pockets, and our careers.

A number of years ago, while I was writing my book, Our Search for Belonging: How Our Need to Connect Is Tearing Us Apart, I started doing something uncomfortable: I began talking with people who had voted for Donald Trump.

Us simple folks have a deep-gut feeling that the lives of the rich and famous are not just out of reach, but that they have something, something profound and inaccessible that’s completely different from us. It’s a weird feeling that we could never truly mix with that world even if our skin color, wardrobe, and way of speaking didn’t set us apart.

What does a frequency of justice mean especially in relation to white supremacy and racial justice? When I was sitting in a ballroom of 1,900 people from around the world, I realized the significance of being with a different frequency related to our work in addressing white supremacy. A frequency that we, as individuals and a collective, can decide to engage with or not, as it travels through our emotional and physical bodies.