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 of the self, the family, the community, and the nation is spiritual disintegration - whereby culminating, to various degrees, the manifestation of cultural misorientation. The maxim of Knowing 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 so forth. The creative power of consciousness assesses the demands, needs, questions, and issues related to reality and uses its instrumentalities (e.g., analysis, reasoning, thought, etc.,) for the purposes of problem-solving, coping, creative inventiveness, protection and survival, and goal attainment. 

The Practice of Liberation Social Work™ 

Ideas, Principles & Constructs

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

Nguzo Sabo are the value-principles system that comprises of Unity (Umoja), Self-determination (Kujichagulia), Collective work & responsibility (Ujima), Cooperative economics (Ujaama), Purpose (Nia), Creativity (Kuumba), Faith (Imani).

Liberation is the process of purging and untethering the soul, freeing from alien consciousness and the power bases that stagnate and delimit the illumination of the soul and the expansiveness of social and cultural 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. 

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

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 and emotions, habitus, thoughts, behaviors, communication and 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 socio-communal systems influence the state, level, and quality of 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 and music, cuisine, theology, etc. Naturally, culture is ideological, sociological, psycho-spiritual, and behavioral. Culture provides structure and organization to a people's way of knowing, ideas of beingness, 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, vast Cosmo-Universe.

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 front door of truth-seeking and sets the table 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 and biases, and other conceptual or ideological structures that fortify worldview.

Gracefully Imperfect centers the ancient African-centered cultural wisdom of beingness, knowingness, 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. 

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 to 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. 

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