Healing Justice

Join GSE in Committing to Healing Justice

What we are doing

At Garden State Equality, we believe healing is at the heart of justice. We’re committed to building a culture that supports healing—for ourselves, our relationships, and our communities. That means we’re learning how trauma impacts people over time and exploring what it really takes to heal, grow, and thrive.

We’re weaving healing-centered practices into all of our work—because healing doesn’t happen on its own. It takes intention, repetition, and care. These practices may seem small, but over time they can create big changes. They may even feel awkward or hard at first. That’s okay. Just keep showing up. Be gentle with yourself. Start again and again.

You’re invited to be part of this movement. Join our Healing Justice Connect and Practice Platform—a space where we connect, share practices, watch recorded workshops, and learn from one another. It’s a place to connect with us and each other, to access practices, conversations, recorded workshops, and to share your wisdom with us and the community.

(Note: for those of you who have been connected to our Communities Healing Together work previously, we are shifting from having a team focused on this to infusing it through the organization.)

What you can do

  • Learn: about how experience, both adverse and positive, gets wired into our bodies and habits. You can start by joining us here our Healing Justice Connect and Practice Platform.
  • Assess your current habits. Which ones help you? Which ones hold you back? What new healing habits would you like to try?
  • Practice: What we do repeatedly becomes automatic. Identify new habits and skills you want to cultivate and practice them often for short times. It may take time and diligence – stay the course!
  • Feel: Make space to allow your feelings to move through you. Observe the thoughts and physical sensations that move with them.
  • Pause: Find short moments often in the day to pause, breathe, move, dance, sing, rest, connect with someone else. The small, frequent practices help settle your bodymind in the midst of all kinds of feelings.
  • Follow: There are many healing justice visionaries living in our times. Which ones inspire you? If you use social media, follow them; they can remind you to practice and offer new things to try. Here are some that inspire us:
  • Rest: It’s not lazy—it’s essential. Rest helps your mind and body heal and recharge. Check out The Nap Ministry for ideas!
  • Connect: Be intentional about connecting with those around you. Think of a time when you felt seen and heard. How might you offer that for others?
  • Be Present: When interacting with others, set aside distractions and be fully present with them.
  • Regulate, Relate, Reason: Before resolving conflict, calm your body (regulate), connect with the other person (relate), and only then, engage in thoughtful conversation (reason).
  • Repair: When we experience harm it can take a lot of courage to enter into a process for repair. If people on both sides have felt harmed, listening to one another is difficult and important. Engaging in a reparative process can deepen connection and strengthen our ability to heal.
  • Rest and Resource: Co-regulation is powerful—find ways to rest and resource together.
  • Gather: In groups large or small, get together regularly with other people. Get to know your neighbors. Be intentional about connecting and being present.
  • Build trust: Start by extending trust wherever and however you can. In the book “Emergent Strategy” adrienne maree brown says “trust the people and they become trustworthy.” If trusting 100% feels like too much, ask yourself, “what can I trust?” and extend what trust you can. Even a little bit of trust extended can make a difference and set the foundation for building more.
  • Celebrate, uplift and center marginalized voices
  • Create shared agreements: While we may never know what makes spaces feel truly safe for each individual, being intentional about co-creating norms for engagement as we gather can give each person a voice. Begin by asking what do we need to make this space feel safe enough to be brave? If we are being responsible for our energy what would this space look like, sound like and feel like?
  • Hold space for grief and joy: We need both space for grief and space for joy and all of the spaces in between. Neither extreme eliminates the other. Feeling our grief and joy collectively is powerful, helps keep grief or fear or anger from getting stuck in our nervous systems and amplifies joy and power.

“During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for. It didn’t look like we were going to win then and we did. It doesn’t feel like we’re going to win now but we could. Keep fighting, keep dancing.”

—Dan Savage

  • Learn & unlearn together
  • Practice solidarity: What happens to others affects us all. We are deeply connected.
  • Play: Joy is part of healing, too.
  • Act for the global good: Whether it’s big or small, your action matters. What’s calling you?

Resources—learn more here!

  • What it Takes to Heal, Prentis Hemphill
  • My Grandmother’s Hands, Resmaa Menakem
  • The Four Pivots, Shawn Ginwright
  • Holding Change, adrienne maree brown
  • Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown
  • Pleasure Activism, adrienne maree brown
  • What Happened to You, Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry
  • The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk
  • Difficult Conversations, Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen
  • Hardwiring Happiness, Dr. Rick Hansen
  • The Whole Brain Child, Daniel J Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
  • Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman
  • Nonviolent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg
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