Human Harmonies
By Dr. Leticia Nieto and Candace Tkachuck
Humans have always lived with cataclysm. Of course, this truth does not minimize current global suffering, which holds collapse, war, and inequity. And yet, there is a developmental shift on offer for those of us alive now, if we choose it. Colonialism, violence, and extraction are being illuminated in new ways. Those who crave alternatives to dominance are finding each other in practices of interconnection, nonviolence, and restoration.
People carry trauma, and systems are made of people. So it follows that we change systems as we heal ourselves. (Of course, there is a differential experience of trauma in areas of our social profile where we carry membership of privilege and areas where we carry membership of marginalization.)
Awareness of both our own and another’s pain is a way into more transformative tenderness. Conditions of claiming and care can be crafted: to claim how trauma has shaped each of us and to care about the impact of trauma on other people. This dual capacity of attunement in activism is alchemical, potent, and preserving of liberatory community. The space between—the field—is a web that is both hurt and informed by trauma.
Those of us who are counselors, teachers, and healers can live out our interconnection by skillfully tending to those facing risk and danger. J. Eric Gentry describes a foundational approach for those who provide trauma-informed tending. Namely, people begin to heal when two conditions are present: the experience of relationship, and the expectation that something good could happen.
Everyone you know is impacted by traumatic events: current and historical, immediate and distant. Everyone is in some form of reaction to trauma. We are all seeking to co-create conditions for collective healing.
When we work together to address injustice, our bodies can be regulated or dysregulated. When we are regulated, we have access to capacity, including the resources of the more-than-human world. We can reach into the past and our ancestry. We can reach across to others with whom we have resonance. We can tap into our highest virtues of creativity and collective knowing. When we’re not regulated, we experience fight, flight, fawn, or freeze. (These are all signals of trauma.)
A feature of liberatory community is that we have commitment to each other for the long term. It is then natural for us as individuals to have trauma responses that our community is an audience to. This creates an important opportunity for us to practice regulation with each other. The more that we can experience moving from regulation into dysregulation and back again for ourselves, the more this can be offered to our collectives as a beautiful byproduct of relationality. As Resma Menakem says, “A settled body helps other bodies it encounters to settle as well.” (My Grandmother’s Hands, p. 125)
We can work to build our collective such that a subset of us can regulate at any given time. When this can reliably happen, we can protect ourselves from having dimensions of oppression seep in and disrupt our connection with each other.
True care is an experience of humanity and insight. It is a way of being that is experimental, thrilling, and challenging. This care is energetically different from the platitudes about how we are all one, and that nothing needs to be transformed. Instead, our interconnection becomes the realm in which our most meaningful work takes place.
An area where we have found a sturdy practice of transformative interconnection is in community song circles. Recently, we were in a space facilitated by Heather Houston who had invited Lyndsey Scott and Shireen Amini to share and lead songs.
As part of Lyndsey's offering, we sang songs that reminded us that care is the work. Shireen claimed the power of reaching for beauty and joy in the midst of anger and heartbreak. We also saw close-up the field of care that Shireen and Lyndsey have built with each other as they have collaborated and led song circles together over time.
Singing releases endorphins, which reduce pain and amplify pleasure. Singing tones muscles and regulates breathing. Especially when singing in a group, the nervous system and the entire self is calmed and enlivened. Joy of life displaces anxiety, exhaustion, and stagnation.
In song circles, we go in and out of rhythm, in and out of tune, in and out of remembering the words without negative impact to the whole. When we sing together, we can find our way back. We move through dissonance, through feelings of weakness, into experiences of strength and sustainability.
In so many ways we are singing together. After a long day, we sometimes don’t want to show up to collective space. We are grateful for those who can hold the flow when we have lost it for a moment. Sometimes, there is dread at first that then gives way to expansive meaning and belonging.
Resonant collective space is mood-altering and emboldening. Together, we find frequencies that are specific, active, and liberatory. Our alignment with each other, so different from conformity, is a source of ringing hope for the beauty of the world and the sacred in one another.
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Beautiful healing efforts to learn about: Deconstructing the Mental Health System, Grief to Action, SSoMA, Three Black Men
Incredible song leaders to check out: Ahlay Blakely, Lea Morris, Maggie Wheeler, Melanie DeMore, Te Martin
About Dr. Leticia Nieto
Leticia Nieto, PsyD, LMFT, TEP is a psychodrama trainer, leadership coach, and psychotherapist. Her book, Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment: A Developmental Strategy to Liberate Everyone, is an accessible analysis of oppression and supremacy with skills to promote social justice.
About Candace Tkachuck
Candace Tkachuck has aligned with liberatory culture shifts in education, writing, community engagement, and philanthropy. After working in educational environments for some years, she now enjoys collaborating with others who are drawn to emergence and relational repair.
