Fierce Vulnerability - Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse

In times of collapse, we need a movement that recognizes injustice as a reflection of collective trauma and embraces its role as a catalyst for collective healing through transformative action.

I have come to believe the idea of personal healing and individual liberation is a delusion. There is no such thing as personal healing in an interdependent world. In order for any of us to be free, we must work for the liberation of all beings. (Location 316)

It’s about reimagining activism as healing work and organizing as a spiritual practice: imagining a social justice movement led not only by “activists” expert at shutting down highways, but also by healers, artists, grief tenders, and ceremony leaders expert at opening up our hearts. (Location 367)

In Newtonian organizing models, we can do a power analysis, figure out the right levers to pull, mobilize around the perfect point of intervention, and demand the one piece of legislation that will result in the change we want to see. So, what does quantum organizing look like? It may look like accessing a different kind of power than we are used to. It may look like understanding our interdependence: that the liberation of our “oppressors” is the key to our own freedom. It may look like an incredibly small response to the biggest crisis in our collective history. It may be that, as adrienne maree brown describes in Emergent Strategy, the smallest intervention can have the largest impact. (Location 491)

That awe, humility, and inspiration—the realization that our world is so vast it can never truly be known—is what I mean when I use terms like “spirit.” (Location 546)

I consider any practice or experience that allows us to access that feeling of deep awe and connection a “spiritual practice.” (Location 568)