04/20/2025
We are immensely grateful to have had the opportunity to lead a convening workshop session at the 'Restorative Justice in Cases of Serious Harm' convening that took place at Colby College on April 5th. We thank everyone who helped to organize the convening and who came and participated in the convening's sessions. We thank you all especially for listening to our stories as survivors of serious harm who support restorative & transformative processes being made accessible as options for all, and for engaging in our session's participatory community engagement pieces.
One part of our session included the creation of a word cloud, in response to the question: "What are you most needing when you have been harmed or have caused harm?" It is striking to see the answers, many of which can't be parsed apart from the lens of either having caused or experienced harm, demonstrating that the needs of all parties in response to harm often have common threads and great similarity. Some words that stood out, as they were entered multiple times by participants, are: empathy, time, space, acknowledgement, support, communication, community, listening, & understanding.
We extend an invitation to think about and imagine: How might increased accessibility to restorative & transformative justice processes create the conditions to provide these needs?
Details of each photo in this post:
Photo 1: Left half of the word cloud
Photo 2: Right half of the word cloud
Photo 3: Some of the presenters for Healing First!'s convening session on: 'What do survivors of harm want?'
