Strategic Healing

Strategic healing is the theoretical and practical framework that I developed to support individuals, communities, and organizations who have sought sustained healing with me. Strategic healing, while rooted in spiritual and pastoral care, critically attends to the structures of violence that render harm for both victim and perpetrator. First, it is a proactive approach supported by decolonizing practice, trauma-informed practices for safety and accountability, and a commitment to healing as fundamental to transformation toward a more loving, caring, nurturing, and just world. Second, the work is inherently spiritual work. As spiritual work, strategic healing takes seriously what religious practitioners and students of the psyche have known since time immemorial: that the material and spiritual are inextricably bound together and that the impact of strategic healing goes far beyond the well-being of one single individual even while honoring their unique, inherent value and dignity. For this reason, strategic healing is integrative, meaning that it attends to bodies, histories, emotions, and spirit. Last, strategic healing is about scale and locus of impact. Modalities, implementation, even location are driven by the individuals, communities, and organizations who seek healing, and are designed to hold harms accountable. 

I grew up hearing "no justice, no peace," but have come to understand "no healing, no justice" to be even more apt. Strategic healing is a method to bring justice and care together concretely, and to do the work--and the work--with integrity.