Ideas

Shifting Trauma from an Individual to a Collective Responsibility

In a prior post, Healing: A Path to Personal and Collective Liberation, I discussed how systemic oppression has shaped living conditions that harm our physical, environmental, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Healing is not just personal — it is deeply tied to processing the trauma that oppressed and marginalized communities have endured for centuries. These conditions have caused historical trauma — cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over the lifespan and across generations — that lives within us today.

Historically, trauma has been framed as an individual burden, making healing a personal responsibility. But much of the trauma we carry is historical and intergenerational — passed down through learned survival strategies and lived experiences of systemic harm. It is also collective, shaped by witnessing those we identify with struggling to meet their basic needs.

If healing is not just an individual task, then what does it look like in practice? If a community experiences historical trauma, what does it look like for them to develop a collective practice to heal the trauma together? How do we create the conditions where both personal and collective healing can thrive?

The Value of Community Support While Transforming Trauma

Before we explore what community-centered healing practices look like in action, we must first understand why centering community in healing is essential.

Healing is not easy. The emotional and mental toll of transforming trauma is immense. It requires challenging deeply held beliefs, behaviors, and identities — asking people to rethink how they see the world and, most importantly, how they see themselves. People are expected to undergo this transformation while living under systems designed to keep them small, disconnected, and struggling to survive. It is a psychologically distressing, uncomfortable, and deeply demanding process. When individuals lean on their communities for support, they are no longer carrying the weight of transforming their trauma alone.

Furthermore, as people begin to share their experiences and resonate with one another, trauma starts to be seen not as a personal failure, but as a shared condition that cannot be addressed at the individual level. Rather, transforming the shared condition through collective healing practice shifts from the self to the systemic forces that created the harmful living conditions.

Two of the greatest lessons I’ve learned are:

1. That healing takes time and patience.
2. The undeniable strength of healthy communal bonds.

I would not have made it through the psychological distress without a community of people who were willing to listen, hold space, and accept my truth. This collective metabolizing of pain and harm moved me from feeling isolated toward connections within in community to create new conditions and ways of being.

Connection to our communities deepens our sense of belonging and strengthen relationships, which are foundational elements toward creating community change. In our blog, Achieving Equity by Building Community: Strategies, Interventions, and Evaluation, two core elements of building a strong sense of community are shared emotional connection and fulfillment of needs.

In this two-part blog, I explore two major hurdles that often block these elements from taking root, and I offer community-centered healing practices to overcome barriers and foster meaningful community bonding.

The Limits of the Medical Model of Processing Trauma

Mental health services provided through the U.S. healthcare system, such as therapy, are often positioned as the primary solution for addressing trauma. However, the system is prohibitively expensive — denying millions of Americans access to care or offering only inadequate and insufficient options, especially for communities of color. In addition, the medical model of processing trauma reinforces the idea that healing happens in isolation. When community-centered strategies are included, people are surrounded by others who can relate and empathize — making it easier to open up about harmful or traumatic experiences, release the pain attached to them, and create space for a new way of seeing themselves and their lives (Page & Woodland, 2023).

This system and model of care places healing behind a paywall that many simply cannot afford. At the beginning of my healing journey, I relied on therapy as my primary practice — and I struggled to access the care I needed and deserved. I wasn’t able to see my therapist consistently until I secured a job with adequate medical benefits and a salary that allowed me to cover copays without sacrificing basic needs. Even then, the financial strain remained a constant challenge. I had to prioritize insurance plans that had low upfront costs for mental health services — even if it meant higher costs for other essential health care.

Reclaiming Collective Healing: Community-centered Strategies

While medical services, like therapy, are valuable, healing has never solely happened in professional spaces — it has always existed in community, shaped by culture, tradition, and relationship. We must reclaim community-centered and community-led healing practices in order to shift healing from something we must “afford” individually to what we cultivate collectively.

In my journey, being honest and vulnerable about my struggle to reconcile how my past actions didn’t reflect the version of myself I wanted to be — for both myself and others — with my sisters and friends made processing trauma feel liberating. I was no longer holding all the lessons from therapy on my own. They reminded me that no one ever expected me to be perfect, and that I am still loved — even with the mistakes of my past. As I shared more of my experiences, others in my community began sharing theirs with me. I realized that so many of us are navigating similar battles. In forming informal healing circles with people I trust, I felt less alone — and more encouraged to continue growing.

Community-centered Healing Practices to Expand Access to Collective Healing:

• Holding healing circles creates safe spaces for sharing experiences, being seen, understood, protected, and held with love and accountability.
• Engaging in spiritual rituals both in organized settings and informal gatherings with learned and experienced spiritual healers.
• Cultivating spaces for group introspection, such as gatherings that use guided journals, meditation, and somatic practices to support reflection and emotional processing.
• Creating “third spaces” for connection like community centers, book clubs, artistic collaborations, and other gathering spaces where people can engage in dialogue, identity exploration, and cultural expression.
• Reclaiming food and music as communal healing tools where shared meals and music foster presence, connection, and belonging.
• Community-led creating and organizing of well-being resources can ensure that all community members have access to the necessities that support their physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

Strategy in Action: Churches as Healing Hubs in Rural Black Communities

In rural Black communities, where access to mental health resources is limited, churches serve as vital spaces for healing, resistance, and resilience. Integrating healing work into churches provides a safe, accessible, and culturally affirming space where trauma can be processed through both community and spiritual guidance. Programs like the Mississippi Conference’s “End Racism for Good” initiative and the National Black Church Initiative’s Healing Circles demonstrate how churches can act as third spaces — gathering places beyond home and work — where storytelling, faith-based mental health discussions, and spiritual rituals foster healing. Reclaiming churches as healing hubs strengthens communal resilience and can provide much-needed emotional support in rural areas where resources are scarce.

Continuing the Journey of Transformational Healing

Healing is not meant to be done alone. By reclaiming community-centered and community-led healing practices, we make care and support accessible to all — not just those who can afford it. More importantly, access alone isn’t enough — we must also unlearn the harmful narratives that tell us we don’t need help and reach out to build our sense of belonging and community, transforming our collective trauma to create new conditions for love, life, and thriving together.

In Part 2, we’ll explore how deeply ingrained stigma discourages seeking support — and how we can rewrite these narratives to make healing a shared, accepted, and celebrated experience.

Join me next time as we continue this journey of transformational healing — together.

References
Page, C. & Woodland, E. (2023). Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the crossroads of liberation, collective care, and safety. In Decolonization of Criminology and Justice (Vol. 6, Issue 2, pp. 79–82). North Atlantic Books.