Self & Community Healing

Ancestral, historical, intergenerational, familial, cultural, and interpersonal wounds disrupt the realization of human potentialities, possibilities, and purpose.  Intergenerational, historical, racial, and cultural trauma alienates community members of the African Diaspora, thus immobilizing the power and self-determination of a people rich with a triumphant history and heritage. 

Self-Knowledge 

The root of disorder, dysregulation, and disorganization in the self, the family, the community, and the nation is spiritual disintegration, which culminates in various degrees of cultural misorientation. The maxim 'Know Thyself,’ which derives from Ancient Kemet (commonly referred to as Egypt), reflects the enduring process of investigating, exploring, processing, and (re)learning the history, experiences, and circumstances that interact with the material and spiritual realities of the collective. 

 Social, Cultural, Critical Consciousness

Cultural and critical consciousness are the expressive manifestations of the interrelationship between cultural worldview, ancestral wisdom, value systems, principles, ethos, creeds, moral instruction, philosophical assumptions, mythology, experiential learning, symbolism, and other related elements. The creative power of consciousness assesses the demands, needs, questions, and issues related to reality. It utilizes instrumentality (e.g., analysis, reasoning, thought) for the purposes of problem-solving, coping, creative inventiveness, protection, survival, and achieving its goals. 

The Groundings of Liberation Social Work™ 

Ideas, Principles & Concepts

Liberation Social Work™ is an Afrocentric approach to community and human well-being, supporting the actualization of optimal worldview development, self and collective healing, de-fracturing social, cultural, and critical consciousness, and enhancing the capacity to define one's sense of reality.

Liberation is the enduring process of purging, untethering, and refining the soul, freeing it from alien consciousness and the power bases that stagnate, delimit, and restrict the illumination of the soul, thereby disrupting the expansiveness of social, cultural, and critical consciousness. The means and aims to attain unimpeded, (un)incarcerated freeness are predicated on a human-life-enhancing paradigm, supported by dignity-affirming values, and informed by the historiography and psychology of its people, and expressed through self-determining practices, processes, and policies. 

Anchored by the principles of truth, honesty, and moral justice, Gracefully Imperfect is rooted in spiritual inquiry and guided by the pursuit of self-knowledge. It welcomes curiosity at the threshold of truth-seeking and sets the stage for a comprehensive review of the known, unknown, and unrealized. Self-inventory necessitates the process of de-layering. De-layering offers insight into core beliefs, perceptions, prejudices, biases, and other conceptual or ideological structures that fortify the worldview.

Gracefully Imperfect centers on the ancient African-centered cultural wisdom of being, knowing, belonging, and becoming. Inquiry, reflection, contemplation, and expressionism are transcendent portals that bridge curiosity to the struggle for discovery and enlightenment. The struggle to Know Thyself is enduring, ever-evolving, and everlasting. 

Ma'at is the moral and ethical framework that comprises truth, justice, reciprocity, harmony, balance, order, and righteousness.

Nguzo Saba is a value-principles system that comprises Unity (Umoja), Self-Determination (Kujichagulia), Collective Work and Responsibility (Ujima), Cooperative Economics (Ujaama), Purpose (Nia), Creativity (Kuumba), and Faith (Imani).

The Soul is the animated life force that guides and directs spiritual, moral, ethical, emotional, and social processes - expanding beyond the limitations or restrictions of the rational mind and cognitive faculties. 

Consciousness is a social, cultural, creative, and political product. It is manifested through our personality, attitudes, affect, emotions, habitus, thoughts, behaviors, communication, language, and problem-solving capacities. It is foundationally anchored by worldview and directionally mobilized by values. To a certain degree, our choices, our orientations toward humanity, the relationships we cultivate, and how we interact within family and social communal systems influence the state, level, and quality of our consciousness. 

Culture is the immune system that protects, defends, strengthens, and rejuvenates a collectively-oriented people from alienation, attack, and disintegration. Culture transcends the expressions of cultural products, such as dress, customs, language, dance, song, music, cuisine, and theology. Naturally, culture is ideological, sociological, psycho-spiritual, and behavioral. Culture provides structure and organization to a people's way of knowing, their ideas of being, their conceptual universe, value systems, and understanding of the cosmic universe. 

Cultural orientation is the center of gravity that balances humankind within the context of a diverse and vast Cosmos.

Revolutionary Love is characterized as...

COMPASSION amidst chaos.

EXTENSION into the unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

ACCEPTANCE of physical, socio-political, economic, and ideological diversities. 

AWARENESS and ACKNOWLEDGEMENT of the inextricable nature of oppression, trauma, health, and justice. 

Intimacy engenders vulnerability, and vulnerability engenders self-trust. Self-trust is the foundation of self-love, and self-love is quintessential to repair, healing, and transformation. Self-love is the foundation for cultivating a love-extension that is spiritual in nature, revolutionary in practice, and fortified with an armor of humility, sensibility, and dignity. 

The use of Natural Psychology encompasses essential patterns, images, qualities, and functions of the natural ecosystem that must be observed by humankind to best understand the nuances of human transformation.