Our Response to the cry for global healing

Originally posted on Global Gratitude Alliance's blog: Gratitude For Good

​​I'm sleepless. Thoughts and emotions have been swarming and swirling, as I spend days and nights voraciously reading, absorbing, reflecting, connecting, planning… and, indeed, worrying about what the future holds .
​
In this post-election era, so few things feel certain. Yet in this moment, there is one thing that I know to be true

The cry for global healing is louder than ever.
​
We need to heal the wounds of intergenerational and institutional trauma from racism, oppression, injustice, conflict, violence, and extreme poverty.

We need to break victim-perpetrator cycles of exploitation and abuse that are destroying our communities and our planet.

We need to democratize access to healing – from a system that benefits a privileged few, to one where everyone at the community level has access to healing resources.

As an organization, Global Gratitude Alliance is making the commitment to focus support for trauma healing, resilience, and transformation for people of color, immigrants and refugees, Muslims, LGBTQ, survivors of sexual and gender based violence, and oppressed and marginalized communities - in the US and abroad.  

As an individual, I am making the commitment to be a vessel for peace, love, empathy, and compassion. To
stand in solidarity with those who are the most vulnerable and in need of support. And, to listen to those whose views may feel distant from my own, yet who, like me, have stories of struggle and disappointment. 

There is much to do - as individuals, and as a collective.  

And, when the anxiety rises in my chest as I start to feel the enormity of it all, I remind myself to close my eyes. To be still. To breathe in and out, put one foot in front of the other, and find comfort in the words of those who have been here before:
​
“Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.”
~ Coretta Scott King

“For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new… it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.”
~ James Baldwin

“If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.