Welcome to The WELLS Healing Center and our monthly newsletter, The Healing Current. This newsletter serves as a record of and resource for our collective movement towards wellness, equity, love, liberation and survival. Providing sustenance with knowledge, inspiration, and healing. We're so happy to have you.
This newsletter touches on themes of healing from trauma. Please take care of yourself as you read and feel free to step away if needed. Remember, you are always in control of how you engage with this space.
From Della's Desk:
Last month, I shared how I began laying new foundations for healing - finding breath, leaving academia, creating space. Now, I want to talk about embracing the dark, not as absence but as presence. Like the rich darkness of fertile soil, like the depths of melanated skin, like the velvet night sky full of possibilities - this is where transformation begins. Just as leaving academia was a necessary first step, what I share today builds on that foundation.
Today, I want to talk about courage. About intimacy with the unknown. About how building foundations for healing isn't just about the visible structures - it's about embracing the sacred dark spaces where wisdom grows, learning to trust yourself in the mystery of becoming.
When I first committed to healing my sexual trauma in January, I entered a life-changing period of depth and intensity. I'd spent years constructing careful walls around my pain, sealing away stories and memories in hidden corners of myself. I feared that opening these sacred spaces would unleash something uncontainable. That I'd shatter completely. That no one would be strong enough to hold all my pieces - the tenderness and the rage, the hurt and the wild.
I invite you to take a moment here. What wisdom guards your own protected spaces? What stories have you held close, waiting for the right time, the right witnesses to share their power?
The paradox I've learned is this: true softness requires incredible sturdiness. When I talk about seeding softness, I'm not just talking about gentleness or flexibility. I'm describing something both tender and rigorous, both nurturing and challenging - a softness grounded in Black feminist ethics of love and liberation. It's about being soft enough to feel everything and sturdy enough to hold it ALL.
This journey of building courage took time. I began with small acts of bravery, each one a deliberate step toward my truth. I got even more honest with my partner about how our different relationship styles were suffocating me. I started speaking about my poly identity more openly in professional spaces. Each truth-telling was a rehearsal for bigger revelations, each lost connection a lesson in surviving authenticity.
These daily acts of bravery taught me something vital: my healing and wholeness were worth any alienation they might cause. We all deserve to be our authentic selves, particularly in our intimate relationships. Yes, this truth-telling cost me love. Yes, it changed relationships. But all parties survived, often emerging with more wellness for having honored truth over comfort.
Just months ago, I presented this zine called "the dark" at an art show. Through collage, photography, and poetry, I vulnerably shared my journey from fear to transformation, from resistance to embrace. Sitting there, watching others engage with the work, I realized how far I'd come from January's uncertainty. The depth hadn't destroyed me - it had nourished me into something new.
These smaller acts of courage gradually prepared me for deeper healing. Like building muscle through consistent exercise, each brave choice strengthened my capacity to face what waited in those protected spaces. When I finally opened those doors, everything shifted - not because I broke, but because this healing asked for all of me.
Insomnia arrived first. My body moved through intense cycles of release. PTSD symptoms collided with external expectations, creating a storm of upheaval. Sleep became a different landscape. I'd bolt awake, my body remembering old wounds. Irritability, sadness, and depression became my teachers. This is the labor of trauma healing - invisible but profound, and oh so demanding.
The clearing came, as I'd secretly known it would. Like a forest after necessary fire, space opened. My healing journey made it impossible to continue participating in systems of harm - even those that had offered me belonging and possibility. The American Psychological Association/mental health industrial complex and the foster care system both uphold the carceral logics that wound our communities. I had to release both my professional home and my dreams of adoption; my commitment to decolonial, anti-carceral liberation wouldn't let me stay. Relationships ended. A business partnership dissolved. Pride crumbled. Loss after loss after loss. In future pieces of this series, I'll share how these releases, though painful, taught me something essential about living in alignment with my ethics.
But here's what I want you to understand now: deep healing changes us. Real healing transforms us. These losses weren't failures - they were necessary clearings, making space for new growth, like seeds that need the deep, rich dark of soil to sprout.
Take a breath here. How do you relate to transformation? To necessary losses? To the idea that healing might fundamentally change who you are?
In these spaces of change, I deepened my existing healing practice and learned new wisdom. How to tend to myself at 3 AM during night terrors. How to move with depleted energy and limited mental capacity. How to say no, ask for help, demand care. Each skill grew from my growing intimacy with the unknown, my willingness to trust the sacred process of transformation.
A Moment of Softness: Find a quiet space. Close your eyes. Feel the richness of the dark behind your eyelids. Notice what emerges when you sit with your own process of transformation. Instead of pushing away uncertainty, try holding it gently. Whisper to yourself: “I honor both my journey and my pace. I trust the wisdom that grows in these depths. I respect the labor this healing requires.”
As we continue this journey together, I invite you to consider: How do you relate to the depths of transformation? To breaking open? To becoming? How might you create space for yourself or others to transform without judgment? To be fundamentally changed by healing?
Remember: building foundations for deep healing requires preparing for transformation. It means gathering supports sturdy enough to hold both your tenderness and your rage. It means developing trust in the sacred process of becoming. Most importantly, it means accepting that real healing will change you - and that's exactly as it should be.
Until we meet again in this space, may you honor both your process and your pace. May you trust that you're sturdy enough to hold whatever emerges from your sacred depths. May you know that community awaits to hold you in your transition if you are brave enough to seek it. May you know that in these rich, dark spaces of transformation, new life is already taking root.
With love, Della
GET CONNECTED WITH WELLS + FRIENDS:
Last call for donations to students in the Yellow Island Program! Help support this year's mentees in getting to their first scientific conference to present their findings from their work over the summer. To bring all 6 undergrads out to SICB in Atlanta in January, it will be approximately $1400 each (conference registration, travel, lodging and per diem). So far our contributions have helped 2 more students be able to attend! If you are able to donate, a little goes a long way (donate here - all contributions to WELLS between now and December 3 will go to these students!).
Join the waitlist for groups starting in the new year! The WELLS Black Grad Student Mentoring and Community Care Group, the WELLS Healing and Wellness Grad Group for Transgender, Nonbinary, Gender Diverse Black, Indigenous, Students of Color, and the Blafemme Healing Sanctuary: A Virtual Black Feminist Healing Group waitlists are filling up! Click the group title to join the waitlist - to learn more about WELLS groups, check out our offerings page on our site. Please share these group offerings widely with folks you know who need the space!
Looking for an amazing gift for the spiritual social butterfly, therapist, or fellow human on their healing journey? Check out Blafemme's Healing Journey Workdeck - now on sale for 20% off with the code BLAFRIDAY!
Searching your email for an old WELLS newsletter or want to share it with others in an easier way? The WELLS Newsletter is now The Healing Current and as of today, all our prior newsletters are now available as blog posts on our website! Head over to The Healing Current page and feel free to comment and share!
WELLNESS TIP - how to talk about racial justice with your loved ones this holiday season.
Are you wondering how to have those difficult but important conversations with your loved ones? If so, tune into this Facebook video from Della, Pearis, and members of the A4BL collective on “Making Holiday Conversations BRIGHT:" Here are the highlights:
BRIGHT stands for...
Black liberation focused
Radical systemic change (focused on sociopolitical change)
Inviting (calling in not calling out)
Growth promoting (mutually beneficial)
Honest (honoring who you are, who you are talking to, and what you are talking about)
Timed appropriately (being intentional about when, where, how)
Black liberation focused:
All Black people are worthy of wellness. It can be easy to argue that a Black person should be treated well because they never went to jail, were innocent in a situation, are a smart student, or well-liked. However, we know that even those Black people who are not perfect deserve dignity. We can undermine our own arguments against anti-Black racism when we use these more personalized arguments of Black exceptionalism. This point also encourages you to look for opportunities to center Black people who experience multiple forms of oppression, such as Black disabled, elderly, transgender and/or unemployed folx to name a few.
Remember that Black liberation is about getting free from all forms of oppression and being free to experience holistic wellness, dignity, and thriving. It may helpful to consider if your approach to the conversation reflects both these sides of liberation (e.g., freedom from/freedom to; Fromm, 1941). Ask yourself what the goal(s) of your conversation might be as it relates to Black liberation.
Consider multiple aspects of Black wellness. These conversations need not only be related to a hashtag or to “police violence,” but instead they can reflect multiple forms of wellness (e.g., emotional, financial, spiritual, occupational) or be focused on how different systems (e.g., healthcare, education, media) create barriers to wellness for Black people.
Keep Black folx at the center of the conversation. Often in conversations regarding anti-Black racism, especially when someone is being asked to recognize their role in causing harm, they can become emotional, intellectualize, attempt to justify, overemphasize their rationale or process related to the topic, etc. Stay focused on your message in the face of these diversions. Show care and compassion without caretaking at the expense of your point. You can even name this desire explicitly. For example, “I see you becoming emotional and I want to attend to your feelings, but I have learned that doing so in the middle of these conversations can make it so your emotional reality becomes more important than the realities of the Black people whose experience we were discussing.”
Radical systemic change (focused on sociopolitical change)
Maintain a systems focus. Be careful not to get caught up in conversations that remain at the personal level (even if you start the convo with a story about an individual). Because anti-Black racism is systemic, we encourage you to be diligent about maintaining a system-level frame for the conversation.
Black survival and wellness is a product of action. Recognize that your conversation with them is an introduction. You may need to help them think about how they can play a role in facilitating Black wellness after the discussion ends. Whether you ask them to do or not do something in the future, point them toward an organization or source that is working on a sociopolitical issue impacting Black people, or simply name that you hope they will join you in working toward systemic (as well as personal) change, a part of this conversation should call for radical systemic change to improve conditions for Black people.
Inviting (calling in not calling out)
Invite your loved ones into the global movement for Black liberation. In doing so, don’t shame them for not already knowing or being engaged in this work. Before you start the conversation, it might help to reflect on what it was like for you to initially come to awareness about your own complicity in anti-Black racism, and about your potential to facilitate Black survival and wellness.
Reject urges toward performativity (no woke olympics). Be more concerned about Black survival and wellness than proving what you know or that you know more than someone else. You might look for opportunities to signal that becoming critically conscious about anti-Black racism isn’t a one-time conversation or moment but an ongoing process that you are inviting them to journey alongside you on.
Growth promoting (mutually beneficial)
Pay attention to the relationship. You love these people (whether or not you like them now, or even most of the time for some of you). Hold your love and care for them center. Having a conversation where you call someone into awareness about (their) anti-Black racism and sharing that your values and actions are in alignment with the movement for Black lives isn’t something you are going to necessarily do with everyone. Honor that you have a relationship with someone you want to help grow in this way. Call ins can feel risky and require your cognitive and emotional labor. If there are strengths related to the person you are speaking with or to your relationship that make you feel willing to have this conversation, do you imagine it would be helpful in any way to name this with them? Stay mindful of how trust, authenticity, and intimacy show up in the conversation and in your relationship afterwards.
Black liberation benefits your loved ones too, even if they are not Black. Be sure you are not asking for charity and/or sympathy for Black folx but initiating a conversation rooted in your awareness that Black liberation (both the process of pursuing it and outcome of attaining it) is good for all of us. If you can not argue this, or recognize it as your own truth, you may not yet be ready for the conversation.
Consider how you hope to grow from the conversation. Recognize this as an opportunity for you to practice your Black liberation work. Your goal isn’t to be a perfect advocate or ally, but to be true to your own commitments of striving toward antiracism and to practice it with folx you love. Reflect on your own process as you go through it. Be mindful. Be in your body. Notice what is happening. Try not to judge yourself but to get curious about your reactions.
Honest (honoring who you are, who you are talking to, and what you are talking about)
Get real with yourself first. Reflect on how and why you feel moved to push for Black survival and wellness with your loved ones. Be real with yourself about how this can be uncomfortable and challenging. Get curious about any concerns you may notice arising related to having these conversations. Be compassionate with yourself, taking steps to move more towards your own emotional wellness before, during, and after the conversation as needed. What are your own “triggers” as it relates to the content and to your relationship with this person? Do you know you are going to make mistakes in the conversation and how to course correct when you do?
Use what you know about your audience. While these conversations won’t always be planned, when they are, you should spend time considering how you can incorporate what you know about the person you will be speaking with in a way that can help the conversation and your Black survival and wellness goals. Prepare to “speak the language” of those you are talking to in ways that don’t compromise your own authenticity (e.g., take a personal story approach when speaking with someone to whom it may resonate, bring in statistics for the person who it might land well with). Be intentional and consider what is likely to happen based on all the data you have access to and respond accordingly.
Speak the truth. Anti-Black racism is real. Your narrative around it should be too. Do not lie or exaggerate or otherwise compromise your integrity in this process. When you need to, know that you can say “I don’t have enough info on this yet, but what I can say right now is…and let’s learn more together.” Keep it as real as possible through the process.
Timed appropriately (being intentional about when, where, how)
Are you ready? There are many reasons we can develop to say we are not yet ready to share our concerns about our loved ones’ anti-Black racism or about our commitment to facilitating Black survival and wellness. But moving past nerves and fears, actually how ready are you? Where you are on your own critical consciousness of anti-Black racism journey can help determine the focus and approach to the conversation you have with loved ones. What can you speak on given where you are? What kinds of interventions are appropriate for you to make with your loved ones given where you are now? What work might it be important for you to do so you can engage these conversations with loved ones (and others) in more expansive ways in the future?
Be aware of timing. Your goal is to increase the chances they can hear you and that you can engage in a meaningful dialogue with them. So what time of the day, week, month or at what point in the holiday function are you and the person you want to speak with going to be in the best position to talk about this? For example, when are you most grounded, clear-headed, and open? When is the person you are speaking to most and least irritable and distracted? Are you allowing enough time for a meaningful dialogue? What should be your signal that it is time to end a conversation or to take a break? Are you making decisions regarding the timing of this conversation based on convenience or intentionality?
Use the current moment. This point has two meanings. First, stay present, out your head, listening to what’s being said once you are in the conversation. Second, consider whether there are opportunities to use the current sociopolitical moment as an entry point to help you reach your goals. Current events can be meaningful on their own or serve as a lead-in to another related topic that you want to address. Are there local issues and experiences that Black folx in your community are facing and for which your loved ones’ awareness or lack of awareness could serve as another entry point to the conversation?
Bonus: check out this two-part post (here are links to part 1 and part 2) from The IMEU on how to talk to your family and friends about Palestine this holiday season. We know these conversations aren't easy, but they can truly make a difference. Work with your community to have them take action in the name of liberation - and remember, they can start small, learn, and invest in the movement over time. Aim for sustainable connection!
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Thank you for being a part of our community, The WELLS Healing Center Team
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