For the second blog in the “Healing Our Healers” series, Dr. Rhonda Tsoi-A-Fatt — our Founder and CEO — explains how culturally responsive healing practices rooted within the ecosystem of a community can offer a pathway to restoration for people of color. We invite you to join the conversation and share ideas about the ways we can heal youth of color, our communities, and ourselves.
Let’s be real: Healing-centered practices designed and led by people of color are distinct from Western approaches. Traditional healing often:
- Uplifts highly individualistic methods, where “the self” is dealt with separately from “the community”
- Regards the mind and body as separate, so one’s diagnosis and treatment plan are not integrated
- Narrowly defines mental health as a disease requiring a specific and named diagnosis, along with an individual treatment plan, to cure a person
Words like “individualistic,” “separate,” and “self” are core elements in Western models of healing. But after working for more than two decades in the racial justice field, and absorbing many lessons and cultural wisdom from healers and longwalkers in the nearly 10 years that I’ve led TMG, I’ve learned that centering hyper-individualism in our healing is not humanity affirming for people of color. Our healing is often most effective — and fulfilling — when we center our cultures, community, and connection in our restoration. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General called on Americans to implement a national strategy to combat the epidemic of loneliness and isolation that has increased our risk for mental health challenges and premature death:
“Our relationships are a source of healing and well-being hiding in plain sight — one that can help us live healthier, more fulfilled, and more productive lives,” said U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. “Given the significant health consequences of loneliness and isolation, we must prioritize building social connection the same way we have prioritized other critical public health issues such as tobacco, obesity, and substance use disorders.”
Practitioners of color, in particular, understand that culturally responsive practices rooted within the ecosystem of a community — and healing methods that consider the mind and body in tandem together — can offer a pathway to restoration that helps us reclaim our joy and elevate our growth. These practitioners also:
- Recognize the value and power of being understood and seen. Despite their best intentions, the implicit bias of white practitioners causes them to see clients of color through the lens of their own internalized messages and experiences if the practitioner has not done their own conscious antiracist work to become more culturally responsive. This bias can negatively impact diagnoses, interactions, treatment plans, and crisis responses. With a practitioner of color, POC can immediately connect on a level that doesn’t have to be taught or explained because they share a lived experience.
- Provide medicine that bridges current healing practices with our ancestral memory. We all possess ancestral memory and cultural knowledge that is passed down through generations via genetic or epigenetic mechanisms. And many practitioners of color study and understand the generations-old healing modalities that were birthed in our countries of origin. These ancient and Indigenous modalities — like drumming, storytelling, herbal medicine, sweat lodges, Chakra healing, sound or cupping therapy, and more — resonate so deeply because they are embedded within our DNA.
- Understand that our thriving is tied to the thriving of our community. Westernized society thrives on individualism, which teaches us to be ashamed of our struggles and hide them. Through our work with the Forward Promise initiative, we know that leaders of color thrive when they are members of communities of care that authentically and unapologetically support them, encourage collaboration in a safe container rather than through competition for resources, and inspire the organic creation of relationships that are free of traditional power dynamics that can inhibit self-expression and/ or vulnerability. Healing happens when we can freely talk, share, and cry together — and then create solutions together.
- Draw from varied healing practices that are different from their own cultures. We exist in communities with others who have experienced similar struggles as our own. That solidarity can fuel our healing when we share and learn together. The principle of bearing one another’s burdens, and leaning on each other, is central to many faith practices and cultures. Let’s champion each other by promoting greater health equity; ensuring access to healing practices from multiple cultures, not just the mainstream ones that are covered by health insurance and flexible spending plans; and upholding the sacredness of all culturally responsive practices.
I don’t discount the fact that many of us have healed ourselves by relying on traditional interventions and modalities. But solidarity, community, and connection are vital components that shouldn’t be ignored.
There’s value in remembering that our minds, bodies, and spirits are connected. Some of us are connected to nature, so spending time in fresh air, digging our bare hands in the earth, or immersing ourselves in water rejuvenates us. Some of us are connected to a divine source, which offers healing, wisdom, and understanding. And all of us, whether we acknowledge it or not, are connected to our ancestral strength. We are the living testimony of our ancestors’ courage and tenacity. Without their strength, none of us would exist. So, when we prioritize our connections to our communities, we honor our connections to our elders and ancestors. We release the dehumanizing indignities they experienced and the hardness they carried for survival. And we allow them to bear witness to the beauty of us living freely and fully.
