Book I’m reading is giving me the thinkies

[flamingsword]

What It Takes To Heal by Prentis Hemphill

“What would it do to movements, to our society and culture, to have the principles of healing at the very center? And what does it do to have healing at the center of every structure and everything we create?”

Prentis Hemphill is a therapist and one of the foundational members of Black Lives Matter. They ask these questions while at the same time teaching about how to live in and feel my body, how to envision new possibilities that can transform me and in turn can change the world where it intersects with my life.

I want to be a healed person with a regulated nervous system, so I am doing stuff that leads that direction. So far it’s giving me a lot of thoughts about how my imagination used to be a big fascinating experience for me and now it’s just a tool that I use to spitball solutions to problems. And that’s kinda sad, isn’t it? That I don’t really use my imagination for play anymore. So I’m trying to think more imaginatively.

Comments

[1empress]

I think one of the main causes of stress in adults is that we lose the skill of playing. Duties take over, there's barely any spare tume, and friend time becomes harder to schedule. Play is so important. But actually getting to do it is really difficult.

[flamingsword]

It is! And that is by design! Late Stage Capitalism can die in a Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire.

[extraarcha]

Hoping i'm not missing your point. Healing is necessary and all, but why does our society injure and/or break us all? Raising our children well should be the point. So, how about having living in health be at the center? Song from way back: "Teach your children well..." Ah, well...

[flamingsword]

Not breaking other people should be the point, in a more ideal world, but we’re not there yet. There’s too much generational trauma, too much violence inherent in the system, for that to be the heart of our society any time in the next 100 to 150 years. We have at least five but more probably 7 generations of figuring out how to deal with our shit before we can make that shift to cultural and legal standards that don’t allow power-over models of relating to thrive. As long as aggression and dominance are the secret organizing principles of society, as long as the status game is built on competition based on inequalities, then we’re all playing catch-up on healing.

Even in a world that is healed, communication difficulties will still exist, bids for connection will be unmet and needs for repair will still exist. So healing will still have a fairly central place even in a better world. There are studies where mothers miss ~70% of the bids for connection from their infants, and I would imagine that number does not get completely better as children and parents age together. And if you don’t have the skillset to fix the problems that arise even in a healed world, it will devolve back into this one eventually. And that is painfully sad.

[extraarcha]

I'm very much with you on what you're saying. Just trying to add a suggestion to allow hopeful thoughts.
I spent many years being paid to fix things. Also many years fixing things that i didn't get paid for, family and friends things. A hopeful, positive outlook is very much necessary to do well at fixing things. Sometimes, faking it is necessary! LMAO!

[genderjumper]

Definitely need more imagination in my life...