Healing Conversations from the Front Lines of Activism

What do I mean by activism, and how does healing fit in? Welcome to the conversation.

I love activists. I mean, what is it that moves people to envision possibility beyond the “givens” of the present condition, and offer their precious life-energy toward creating something better?

Let me begin by clarifying how I define activism.

I think about it broadly, to include anything that seeks to change the status quo and shape the foundations of a reimagined world. Of course, this can take place from any position on the political spectrum, but I am concerned here with progressive activism that fosters collective wholeness, and the dignity and well-being of all.

At its best, activism catalyzes the personal transformation of hearts-minds-souls, and the collective transformation of social structures and institutions. Seen in this way, it can include not only participation in demonstrations and civic actions, but writing, art, music, teaching, healing, praying, farming, parenting, mentoring, creating new systems and ways of being in relationship with one another in the community of Earth.

I have identified as an activist for most of my life. As a child during the US war on Vietnam I “published” what I thought of as an underground pacifist newspaper, “The Dove,” and distributed it covertly to my third-grade class and the bus driver who carried us to school each day. Over the 50-plus years since then, I’ve participated in street protests, policy work, and community education, before moving into my role as healer, counselor, and retreat leader for frontline change-makers and caregivers. (Although I do still occasionally get out in the streets!)

Justice and Healing

There is a long lineage of those who have served justice movements as healers and spiritual guides within an array of cultural traditions. Healing – whether physical, emotional, or relational – is fundamentally about restoring wholeness. And social justice is a matter of restoring wholeness to individuals and communities where systematic and state-sanctioned harm has been done. There is no real justice without healing.

Most of us come to social justice work with embodied trauma – personal, collective, ancestral. Indeed, it’s often the pain of that trauma or the rage about its causes that brings us to movements for justice. For effective and sustainable movements, however, we must be able to transform the wounds we carry lest we be destroyed by them.

It’s considered almost a given in movement circles that activists experience burnout. In many of my own networks, that badge of martyrdom was regarded as proof of one’s commitment to The Cause, whatever the cause might be. This mindset led many people to become casualties of their activism, dropping out of movement work – sometimes embittered, sometimes feeling guilty, often wounded. The more benign version – of wanting to take time for renewal but having it constantly preempted by the never-ending stream of crises – yields similar impacts.

Physical and mental illness, exhaustion, addictions, and disruption of relationships are seen as common “side effects” of activist life. The attrition this creates can lead to a kind of collective amnesia – a loss of the learnings and insight that come through decades of lived movement experience and multigenerational collaboration.

One of the ways we heal is through being present with one another: through sharing our insights and our pain, through witnessing and being seen, through compassionate connection. I find that although my activist friends may talk about the burnout and trauma that we so often experience, it’s less common to talk about healing. Not just healing we may do in times of stepping back from the work (which is certainly important), but how healing can happen in the midst of it. And how we can stay tapped in to the sources of our greatest inspiration and vision.

Healing Conversations

Through this blog, I invite those conversations and share them with you. I hope we might become a wide community of readers and conversation partners, as we find healing in the midst of struggle. Given the urgency of the times we inhabit, all of us are on the front lines. Whether self-identified as an activist or not, each of us has a gift that is needed. I hope the wisdom and stories shared here through the voices and lives of my conversation partners will be a resource for your own healing.

We’ll speak with people from Gen Z to Elders, from a range of ethnicities and spiritual paths, and a variety of areas of activist engagement. (Some of them didn’t consider themselves “activists” until our conversation!) I’ll ask what inspires and sustains them, and what they wish they had known earlier that might be helpful to others. And I’ll weave in some of what I have learned through navigating my own times of burnout, and through decades as a counselor and facilitator working with frontline folks.

Whatever your experience, you are welcome here. Feel free to add your own respectful reflections, stories, and questions. Please do subscribe, and share this blog with your friends and networks so we can build community together.

PS: If you’re wondering who I am, you can learn more about me here and here.

The photos in this post are of a mural that used to be in my Oakland, CA neighborhood, painted by students at Oakland High School. Sadly, it has since been painted over. Those pictured include Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, Che Guevara, Frida Kahlo, Bob Marley, and Muhammad Ali. Find more at: https://oaktownart.com/2009/09/03/beautiful-struggle-oakland-high-school/