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Mariana Lafrance's avatar

Great essay, I'm on board with you about the collective wounds needing to be healed in a collective space and the time is ripe for that. I couldn't help but read through while holding another lens that I'm trying on since I came across it yesterday. In the write-up for Bayo Akomolafe's most recent course offering, he writes, "focus not on what gets in the way of healing, but on what healing gets in the way of." This line stopped me in my tracks. I've been digging into grief work and in reading that line, grief is what rises to the surface: To not let the project of collective healing get in the way of the collective grief that is bursting at the seams of our relating, both in the public & private spheres. Can we trust that healing will take care of itself if we make space for the immense grief that is present, without the agenda of getting the grief out of the way, without wanting the process to be different so that we can get to the healing already? The paradoxical theory of change proposes that accepting & welcoming what is present is all that is needed. So, what if we dropped our need to heal?

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Sama Cunningham's avatar

Wow, thank you so much, David, for this incredible essay series. I truly think that this is one of the best things I’ve read, period. It felt so resonant with what has been unfolding inside of me, and brought things together for me in such an inspiring way...I felt like it came to me at the perfect time. I hope it becomes widely read - it would be a medicine for many people, I think! Yet regardless, I trust that cause and effect are much wider and deeper than the old materialistic story says, and I can only imagine the ripples already being created in our collective morphic field by you writing and publishing this work. Thank you again.

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