Have you ever heard of the saying, 'work to live’, instead of ‘live to work’ and wondered… how the heck do I do that?

…Perhaps there's something gnawing inside of you when you hear that you have a choice to “live” fully/presently.

…Perhaps you are seeking for self-actualization or a spiritual awakening of some sort, to transform and do some healing.

…Perhaps you are similar to myself, in which they call a ‘cyclebreaker’.

…Then maybe you're in the right place 💗

In these past few years, I found myself exploring rest as resistance and strategizing ways to escape capitalism (which is a system that uses humans as commodities) with the intention of living wholly as a liberation practice.

I sense in my body, that when I verbalize these words above, it's still fresh. Kind of like discovering a treasure chest that’s been locked up under the sea for a very long time.

Sometimes I wonder if an ancestor from my lineage has called out unjust systems before and the wisdom got lost along the way.

Or if they were punished for questioning it.

Or that no one has ever cared to be critical of it until little old me.

In this journey, I am discovering just how deep intergenerational wounds can be, especially when it comes to my relationship with work for survival…

 ₊˚ ☁️・₊✧ 

Healing justice is when we reflect, observe and recognize how systems we seek to change outside of our bodies are also carried within our bodies.

To feel worthy of rest is not easy for me and my lineage!

In fact, it's an arduous feat for someone like me to find exits out of stifling spaces and experiences. I find myself crisis managing, keeping up with thoughts of what is expected of me in moments when I need to listen to myself and need rest the most.

(Below is me rambling so you can choose to skip past this)

I heard stories that each of my parents took on multiple jobs to save up for a one-way ticket to come from their motherland to a new continent, leaving the rest of their families physically behind and sending back the fruits of their labor to support them financially. Growing up, it was normalized to not take weekends off. With barely any time for relational building and quality time, this never-ending hamster wheel has played like a broken record.

(Okay, I would LOVE for you to read this ↓)

Breaking the cycle means unwinding intergenerational wounds of up to 14 generations!

Please note that it is NOT about breaking the entire 14 generations of burdens, and that if you still struggle with the cycle showing up, you are no longer a cycle breaker. The focus is more about building awareness of personal responses, of family's history and ancestors' stories, as well as cultural woundings. Being a cycle breaker is about building critical consciousness (will write more about this in the next newsletter) of what is the wound that your lineage and yourself have been carrying. 

In the therapy room, I have been practicing remembering that when clients/folks are in session with me, I may be witnessing up to 500 years of ancestral wisdom, cultural and historical stuff showing up.

Hey, I recognize that this practice sounds intimidating. However, it serves as a reminder that we are incredible humans who can carry some pretty heavy stuff.

We are on this journey of liberating ourselves, future generations and organizing with community for a better world. That’s some superhero typa power 💪

・₊✧  Take a deep breath here   ☁️・₊

Some gentle reminders I tell myself:

"I will notice more presence, tend to my body and mind, and feel my heart space soften.

There will be many more moments where I catch myself in labor when I could have chosen to relax. That is because these systems are designed for me to sense risk if I were to choose to rest (ahem… due to capitalism, patriarchy, intergenerational wounds… ahem).

There will be many more moments where choices to rest will become closer within reach. When I am no longer defined by the disconnection, violence, betrayal and disregard of my healing."

꩜   𖦹   ꩜   𖦹   ꩜

Here's a journalling/art prompt for you, or a conversation you may choose to have with your community:

What is it that you are hoping to break in this lifetime?

-Linda

There's what it is. 

Then there's what it seems.

Recently most of my concerns shows up as what it seems like initially.

It's as if my actions seem futile.

It seems like like I'm losing it. 

My body, my business and my life seems like they're in their flop era.

Witnessing the age of the neocolonial internet where those who hold power actively outrightly censor untold stories of the oppressed and when allies share their activism, how shadow banned their accounts can become.

Here's what they don't want you to know!

How to access what it is and has always been:

In my community, folks whom I've been reaching out to are helping me to be able to call out all the ridiculous moments it has been seeming like to get to what it actually is.

Oppressive systems are built to prime and gaslight us to feel ‘what it seems’ like. Like we are fraud, or that nothing we do will help and we should just look away…
 

…when it is actually a healthy sign of your humanity if you have been feeling dysregulated, feeling the rage from the grief of witnessing.

Your felt sense of discomfort, grief and rage is living proof of the practice of unlearning and decolonizing. Indigenous teachings tell us that our bodies carry the knowledge, wisdom, pain and wounds from 7+ generations. Rage is our embodied wisdom. 

 If you feel like you are in the smack middle of your ‘flop era’, 
you are in the right place.

The place where there is:

• collective healing towards liberation

• unlearning and resistance from oppressive systems and practices

• access to what it is and to your lineage's wisdom

• emotional healing instead of spiritual bypassing

• creative ways to validate your experiences

• bravery to share wisdom, advocate and call up reps because you're a badass human who cares.

“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians” 

- Nelson Mandela

The essence of our shared humanity and collective healing is to build a container for one another until all of us are free.

Bearing the weight of the thousands of lost dreams and the lifetimes of deep sorrow that will follow won't be possible if we don't come together, continue to call and email reps for a ceasefire NOW. 

I have been reflecting how from the outside…

social justice-work,

work by creatives or

those who want to make change in the world,

…have become romanticized.

It's the work that drives us to go around what's been already mapped out.

It can be deeply healing and rewarding, and can also be gritty, hard work.

So, what does social justice-oriented care look like? It means that we are committed to providing care that is anti-oppressive and rooted in social justice principles. This means that we work to identify and challenge systems of oppression. We aim to practice being in accountability and collective care with one another. We know that social change is a slow and difficult process, but we are committed to the long haul.

Here are some justice-oriented practices we, as a group therapy practice and as therapists, are committed in doing:

1. We are committed to the unlearning, decolonizing and working with values rooted in the principles of anti-oppression/anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, racial justice, gender justice, disability justice, and HAES alongside you. We are also committed to examining our relationships to whiteness, white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy and cis-heteronormativity as we talk to folks who come across our practice.
   

2. We aim to organize and redistribute wealth as much as we can. We reflect and actively work through a scarcity and charity mindset to one that is in solidarity and in community. After all, this work is survival work.
   
   

3. We aim to uphold anti-carceral care towards nuanced experiences and mental health cases we work with. Aka fighting for a world free from policing. Consent is highly prioritized in our work with folks. We are continuously reflecting on what the therapy field does that may perpetuate harm and power dynamics in and out of the therapy room. 
   

4. The effort to flatten hierarchies in systems. We work from a horizontal decision making structure in our team where we have as many people and members make decisions as possible.
   

   
   Note: We get that many of the folks we work with are struggling with or don’t work in settings where they can advocate/speak up for their values, are acknowledged, and are feeling stuck. In therapy, we may be brainstorming ways to support you in these oppressive spaces and find ways to name out what is going on more clearly.
   

5. We aim to support people in most dire conditions and center in marginalized folks and voices that are most impacted first, always.
   

6. Generative conflict and communication. Dean Spade’s book Mutual Aid discusses how conflict can be reworked into something positive and generative rather than something to be avoided and left to fester. This can look like clear decision making everyone is trained in.
   

7. We are committed in our own healing. Because some of us have been through similar stuff like the folks we work with and part of their journey speaks to parts of us from different points in our life that we are still working on. This is probably a big reason why we want to do this work alongside you.

We want to work together with you to end oppression in all of its forms. When we say "with you", we mean it. Everyone has a role to play in social justice, whether it is big or small. Because social justice in therapy can support folks to be heard and felt.

I often think about the similarities of interweaving in different activism work I am part of.

Below are some thoughts that I've been reflecting on in the world and lens of social justice, environmental justice, animal rights justice, that I adopt and aim to pursue collective liberation for us all:

Disclaimer: below are current self-reflections, learnings from activists and colleagues away from an institution (some days I wish I had to chance to learn from a program in undergrad and other times I’m honoured to learn at my own pace) to work towards transformative justice. FYI, there is no guarantee I will stay with these same ideas in the future: I may shift or grow out of these thoughts and ideas, which is all part of the process! I also don't expect you as the reader to agree with all that I write below. However if you resonate with any of these thoughts, that's awesome! :-)

Punishment and censorship from activism work is totally a thing.

“People get pleasure, validation, and even build community out of punishment.” - Mariame Kaba

I am practicing acknowledging that punishment can be ‘rewarded’ and at times even ‘pleasurable’ in our humanity. And as justice-practicing folks, we are not exempt from this humanness. When someone or something hurts us, we may also want to hurt them back. We are not perfect beings.

Perfectionism and activism don't work well together.

I have been unlearning the harmful effects of perfectionism the long and hard way through first dipping into 'white veganism' when I turned vegan half a decade ago. I was experiencing constant shame and guilt from this space: like judgements if you aren't vegan for the ‘right reasons’ etc. (don't even get me started!).

'Cancel culture’ in the social justice space is something I witness often too. Spending our precious efforts and time judging and hating on others can be exhausting and unsettling.

This work is a WIP. People are all in different stages and come from very different spaces. It usually takes group improvisation and nurturing, not isolating and cornering. If you are hoping to steer away from ‘cancel culture’, check out what transformative justice is all about.

Transformative justice gives us opportunity to “transform” through learning, growing, which can help us even in healing through discussions. I aim to sprinkle in transformative justice praxis in different spaces I enter. Join me if you're up for this challenge too!

Failures helps us grow! Failures provide movement!

It’s not always your role to educate those who aren't in the collective.

You don’t have to care about opinions from voices that are not in the collective. I experience exhaustion and insecurity around spaces dominated by white fragility, folks who shame and punish others for making mistakes and the like. Give yourself the permission to distance and disengage so you can spend your energy in spaces that make you feel empowered and sustained.

Deepa Iyer’s work on The Social Change Ecosystem Map helped me find that I don’t have to do and be everything; that I can take on roles for social change that sustains my energy while doing important, charged work.

Where does your passion lie?

My activism work is currently leaning towards healing justice work, connecting with folks who are hearing about these ideas for the first time (in their ‘awakening’ stage or contemplating on pursuing this kind of practice). I imagine adopting play, creativity, art into spaces I enter. I hope to create digestible content for those who are thinking of coming closer and maybe joining this community!

"Hope is a discipline” - Mariame Kaba

Hope in this context is not an emotion or something we hold onto. Hope is something we do. Hope sustains us in this work. Your role no matter how ‘small’ it seems is valuable. Instead of narrowing in on the dread of the current system and the state of the world, I am practicing on choosing to commit to something else that is possible.

Accountability in community.

There is deep yearning for a space that gets me and these values I care about. That provides me with a vision of where we can go. I have been reading and reaching to books, articles, podcasts by transformative justice advocates and learning from the roots, from BIPOC folks, from stories, from family, searching for communal care that have been passed down and ideas on liberation.

I am currently helping out on a really exciting project with a fellow therapist friend. ROJ will be an offering for justice-oriented practitioners (students, therapists, coaches, social workers, HR or DEI workers, SJ activists etc.) or those who are curious in adopting justice into their practice. If you are in need of an accountability community when pursuing collective liberation and would like to unlearn together, ROJ may be the community for you!

PS. I will be posting on @reflectingonjustice on IG, you are welcome to follow us if you are interested!

I don't know about you, but I've been searching and dreaming for a space like this for quite awhile now. I can’t wait to share the launch with you folks in the near future!

Healing and activism work is and will always be interwoven.

The symbiotic relationship of stories, emotions, feels that oscillate in and out of the humans we get the chance to witness and connect with. Collective healing and mutual aid can shift difficult and unbearable moments.