The More Collective
The More Collective is community, culture, and storytelling through healing. An unapologetic offering to honor the humanity and nuances of the black healing experience. Our vision is to create a safe space for our communities to explore the places inside of ourselves where joy does not feel belated. This will contribute to addressing the racial imbalances in mental health care by:
Strengthen the legitimacy of care by offering choice in the service modality and practitioner to ensure trauma-informed cultural competency
Reclaiming narrative using ethnography to deepen insight into the construction of one’s own narrative and the impact of compounded social influences
Illuminating the dimensions of complex intra-black healing stories to connect transatlantic communities.
The More Collective will fund up to 80 healing sessions across the United States and South Africa for those who are willing to share their unique healing journeys. The first iteration of this project will focus on the racial implications of gender, depression, and anxiety –and how this impacts our interpretation and experiences of the world.
PROBLEM ANALYSIS
Civic unrest coupled with a global pandemic has amplified the need to take an intimate look at the psychological effects of racism on black and brown people. The weight of oppressive images and videos capturing the dehumanization of black bodies are a constant reminder of the limitations of our freedoms. Dark and distorted –are the themes that not only describe the historical trauma that lives in our bodies, but a pathology of how black bodies are seen.
According to Mental Health America, Black people experience direct traumatic stressors (including the brunt of violence and over policing), indirect stressors (such as the effects of viewing the video of the killing of black bodies), and transmitted stressors (from traumatic stress passed from one generation to the next).
Nuanced narratives misrepresenting symptoms of psychological distress connects to the retention of racialized trauma. This highlights an overwhelming need to challenge healing frameworks shaped by western normality.
Impact
The long-term impact of this project is to decolonize healing practices. The direct impact I am intending to achieve is a community of self-taught ethnographer(s), to contribute to the research of black healing experiences through documenting their own journeys. The use of social media poses ethical considerations for the protection of participants and their stories. Overall, the idea is to infiltrate the culture of trauma and replace it with one of rich struggles coupled with healing to reveal how social justice issues impact our wakening lives. It is my hope it will also serve as a vehicle to spark dialogue –difficult but necessary conversations to transfer the knowledge of understanding from one group to another.
