(Image by August de Richelieu via Pexels )
“Take a day to heal from all of the lies you’ve been told and the ones you’ve told yourself.” – Dr. Maya Angelou
Happy Community Healing Day! On every third week of October, this holiday is celebrated to designate healing time for Black communities. This celebration was founded by the Community Healing Network (CHN).
Panamanian-born Enola Aird Esq., the President of the Community Healing Network, noted that bearing witness to colorism and self-hate, and reading the work of Pan-Africanists like Marcus Garvey and Carter G. Woodson, were crucial moments that shaped her awareness in realizing the importance of Black people to heal.
Dr. Maya Angelou, who inspired the celebration, was the founding Chair of CHN’s Board of Advisors. Angelou advocated for communities to wear the color sky blue on Community Healing Day to symbolize unity in healing and visually represent the transcendence from pain or “the blues” to psychological freedom of unlimited possibilities or “sky blue” through healing.
The dismantling of the lie of White superiority and Black inferiority is a guiding principle in CHN’s work, as well as embracing and catalyzing the idea of limitless possibilities for Black people. The global CHN team works towards these goals through emotional emancipation and community healing initiatives.
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Another program of CHN is the Emotional Healing Circle (EHC), which was designed in collaboration with the Association of Black Psychologists. EHC is a space to share resources, breathe, and explore the historical experiences that have shaped our sense of self.
Some other initiatives include Rapid Response Ubuntu Healing Circles, the Valuing Black Lives Global Summit, and the Breathe Baby Breathe: The Fresh Air of African Values podcast.
Black youth like Timothy George Simpkins, an 18-year-old student in Texas who pulled a firearm from his orange backpack and fired rounds after being bullied and robbed, and 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant, who was killed in Ohio by police during an incident with her foster sisters, could have benefitted immensely from community healing initiatives.
We ask that changemakers around the world join in on this healing effort to potentially save Black lives through creating or joining healing initiatives in your community.
Register for CHN’s Community Healing Day virtual events here.
Works Cited
https://communityhealingnet.org/community-healing_days
Nana Ama Addo is a writer, multimedia strategist, film director, and storytelling artist. She graduated with a BA in Africana Studies from the College of Wooster, and has studied at the University of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Nana Ama tells stories of entrepreneurship and Ghana repatriation at her brand, Asiedua’s Imprint ( www.asieduasimprint.com ).
