06/02/2026
Authenticity and safety in community ; Recap 1 from our talks at Boston conference: 1. Building authenticity and safety demands leading with vulnerability as mental health workers , and showing and communicating points of solidarity with communities enduring injustice and inequality. Our systems are failing. Health inequity and selective application of human rights and safety are exacerbating injustice and diminishing mental health. Safety is not singular and building it requires multi dimensional approaches pulling from music, the arts, communication, spirituality, the land—- not jus the academic and clinical. 2. Healing is communal and the presence of communal acts and rituals and survivor-led spaces is a key line for community repair and perseverance — especially in conditions of persistent war and violence and uncertainty. But without communication skills building —there can be no community. Authenticity and safety also ask for tenderness and a pause in judgement where connectedness prioritizes control. 3. Community mental health demands the building of repetitive creative actions, and communication rituals (oral, visual, nature based , music based , story based) to deepen the voice , choice and control of survivors. Stories are living things shaping our healer . Love and gratitude to Mike Niconchuk and the Inner Safety Project and to for inviting and our founder . More to come from this special trauma conference. Gratitude to all the hard working mental health workers and survivors we had the honor to meet. There are healers in this broken world. Together, we are not broken. We are a story still becoming. Love over fear ❤️🔥🙏🤲☮️🧠