Rethinking Healing Justice: Personal Reflections

14 May 2025

Siran Hovhannisyan

It’s me again, speaking about another concept. This time, about “healing justice,” which I have some issues with—mainly due to how it’s being used. Yes, I do, because I get the impression that, once again, thinking about myself and applying this practice must have a conceptual name that is difficult, if not impossible, to meaningfully “translate” into Armenian. Meanwhile, this practice has been with us at every moment of our lives. The problem is that, in this case, simply criticizing the concept is harder, as there are numerous ethical and diverse sources and experiences involved. I must make one important note before proceeding: an opinion on the concept can only be formed at the end of the material. When I say that I am not reconciled or can’t stand it, that doesn’t mean I don’t use the concept or that it’s not relevant. So, let us navigate through this debate unfolding within me together.

Initially, I had started writing about this concept because, as a carrier of feminist approaches, I felt obligated to follow everything and pass it on to others. But after a conversation with colleagues, I convinced myself that blaming the concept and its timely or untimely usage would not be helpful. With that in mind, I will try to unpack healing justice for all of us.

Let’s begin by acknowledging that it is very difficult to translate the concept due to cultural differences and differences in trauma. Yes, the concept must be translated because its foundations stem from struggles against racist approaches, from anti-racist resistance, and from the hierarchies inherent in these systems. The concept has been so “fermented” that it now encompasses all identities—not only Black and Indigenous identities but also white identities—based on the idea that we are all carriers of collective trauma. I like this approach. In general, there are many similar approaches, where the oppressed “manage to imagine themselves in the position of the oppressor,” taking into account that the identity of the oppressor is not homogeneous. Of course, we all understand that it “should not have been like that,” because it turns out that the oppressed, once again, is the one making the extra effort. But to be honest, we must accept that the other side will not do it. At the same time, this approach allows the oppressed to find deeper and broader ways of thinking and struggling.

Healing justice is a form of political organizing aimed at addressing the systemic causes of injustice on their various levels. These injustices mainly relate to the experiences of marginalized or systematically neglected people, which arise from:

Oppressive or suppressive histories
Intergenerational traumas
Structural violences

Oppressive histories, historical oppressions or suppressions have manifested in many different forms throughout history. For example, the women’s movement arose from the chronic suppression of various groups of women. Similar oppressions have also been inflicted on various tribes and local and Indigenous peoples since the colonial invasions. Intergenerational traumas stretch across multiple generations and can take many forms—from domestic violence and racist suppressions to wars, displacements, and police repression. Structural violence includes, for instance, racism, income inequality, and not just gendered but also class-based unequal distribution of resources, homophobia, and more.

The healing justice approach assumes that all of the above create collective traumas, which negatively affect the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being of activists and their movements.

Within the healing justice framework, collective healing and care are cornerstone principles. These concepts are essential not only for solving local and individual problems but also for political organizing. The terminology of healing justice overlaps with feminist activism, collective healing, decolonizing methodological approaches for data collection about different groups, as well as building and developing movements. It is in these interconnected internal and external struggles that the foundations of healing justice can be found.

Discussions about healing justice as a separate concept have only started recently compared to other terminology. It has mainly been used in the southern parts of the U.S. (not surprisingly, since the North and South of the U.S. share a history of struggle resembling a horror movie—including anti-racist movements) in organizing actions by people of color who practice healing justice. This approach has become one of the cornerstones of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The participants in BLM, through their struggle, want to see a society free from racism and police violence, as the movement arose from the impunity surrounding police killings of Black people. This doesn’t mean that the Black movement started from this point, of course, but it is part of a broader movement that, for its participants, is a process leading to healing justice. After all, the history of Black people in the U.S. has unique cruelties—slavery, lynching, and other forms of discrimination that continue today, resulting in intergenerational and collective trauma for Black people (not to mention the examples from African regions with their own uniquely cruel histories).

Now, imagine what collective trauma means in our context. Yes, you’re right. For us, one of the traumas passed down through generations is the trauma of the Genocide. The doubts about it and the global response to efforts to prove it are also the result of an oppressive history and an ongoing chain of structural violence. One collective trauma is linked to another: divisions based on ethnic identity between two different states throughout history. These are collective traumas that will persist for a long time. A collective and intergenerational trauma is also the trauma of Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Indigenous Native Americans, Algerians, Sudanese, Vietnamese, South Africans, Japanese, Indians, Tibetans, and many more.

Now, imagine that this trauma doesn’t affect only one aspect of a person. For a poor Armenian woman with three children, this trauma has different meanings. For a gay Palestinian man being bombed, this trauma is very different from another’s experience. But the harm and trauma belong to everyone—it is collective. And the movement for collective healing justice helps address exactly the collective harm and trauma carried by systemically neglected and non-privileged people, who continue to live under structural violence and systemic injustice.

In recent years, women’s funds have consistently emphasized feminist healing and its importance within the movement. A group of women’s funds, including the Armenian fund, defines healing as a “political, collective, and intergenerational process.” We know that feminist activists and various women’s groups carry a long history of collective generational trauma and structural violence, and the only “working” approach to addressing this is the healing justice approach. This is one reason why several funds have adopted well-being funding policies not only for their immediate members but also for their partners.

Collective care or collective healing is not about everyone being constantly present but about knowing that people will be there when needed, or that they are somewhere for us. We are decentralized, but we know there are people we can rely on. Collective healing must not only be a practice but also an idea we believe in. Another important point for me is that collective healing must also recognize that the “collective” should allow the individual space to be with themselves, not always within the collective. Miracles happen when people step out of that bubble.

This is where we can think about healing without guilt. This too is a serious matter for our discussions, especially since guilt is often mentioned briefly—“Do you feel guilty? Don’t.” Very helpful, right? Not really. Guilt, even if conditioned by external norms and pressures, forces us to confront our feelings. Only by going through them can we grow, explore ourselves, the world, and give meaning to our lives and our decisions.

We should also discuss boundaries, which we often neglect. In feminist groups, there’s a tendency to blur relational boundaries between people, to “include” someone without considering their feelings. And the person must be grateful, right? After all, it’s for their own good, right? No—perhaps people don’t need to be included, or their definition of inclusion may differ from another’s. By violating boundaries in this way, how are we supposed to help others accept that healing practices are important, and that we must radically value our well-being, wellness, and rest?

Perhaps we don’t need Western-style lessons on how to heal, but rather share existing experiences and practices, and choose what works for us—perhaps the best solution is what we already have. So what?

Let’s dive a bit deeper into this matter: Feminism and food are directly connected. For centuries, women have been the primary cultivators and preparers of food, and food preparation remains one of the most expected duties for women in most cultures. Proponents of the food and feminism concept argue that this is one reason women should reclaim their spaces in food-related areas, including kitchens and other spaces. It is in these spaces that women share their most pressing issues; around food, the strongest women’s mutual aid groups are formed. In these groups, the sense of safety is unparalleled.

The feminist critique of food may have other dimensions. For example, food intake is crucial for ensuring health and life, and neglecting it reflects how we treat our well-being, health, and how much priority we give to our bodies and lives. Interestingly, in cultures like ours, the fact that women prepare food, gather around it, and create a collective sense of safety is quite ordinary.

This isn’t easily imagined in more individualistic capitalist cultures. In individual-centered cultures, if you have a problem, especially anxiety, you turn to a psychologist or other professional and solve the problem on your own. “Pay! Solve!”—this formula works best here. It’s worth noting that not all Western cultures are like this, and people in these cultures do gather and prepare food together. The issue is that when feminists from such cultures encounter food and feminist non-Western approaches and begin offering their interpretations, it often results in the main event of a healing gathering being the joint preparation of food. To clarify, the issue isn’t the preparation of food itself, but the context in which it occurs. Let’s be honest: no matter how much we enjoy food and its preparation, no matter how much we enjoy compliments about the food we’ve prepared, when we speak of well-being, rest, and healing in cultures like ours, we’d be more satisfied not preparing anything, but rather enjoying “earned rest.” Isn’t it true that part of our domestic labor revolves around food?

When speaking of healing justice, we cannot ignore the idea of “earned rest.” We live in societies where paid labor and monetary compensation are central to our lives. Rest is now framed in such a way that, to truly enjoy it, you must spend earned money on it. The chain is such that you must suffer at work, go to work with disgust, earn money, and only then can you enjoy rest without guilt. Behold our “earned rest.”

The chain is also such that money plays a role: to experience true rest, you must spend money on it. Beyond spending money, the process of rest must be “acceptable,” must be postable on Instagram, like the stories of influencers, so we can feel satisfied that a certain group will see our adventures. And after returning to the “boring” so-called ordinary life, we feel we haven’t rested. Social media pages will remind us that we must have more.

The point is not that someone has money and spends it as they wish. Nor is it that people shouldn’t spend money on travel—no. The point is that:

A person doesn’t “earn” rest. Rest is an inseparable part of life. Without it, our breath will simply run out sooner than it should. Don’t force yourselves to think that you’re unworthy of rest.
Rest shouldn’t be a copy of someone else’s. It shouldn’t be about resembling what others do to feel satisfied.
Rest takes many forms—for one, it might be a barbecue with friends at home, for another, it might be a pina colada by the sea, or for a third, it might be two weeks living in a rented apartment, “enjoying the rent.”

Unfortunately, we live in times where even rest has become a resistance movement, because you’re forced to prove that you deserve it.

My advice is not to give in to beautiful words and use them just to feel accepted in different groups. I, myself, didn’t have much information about healing justice, but during this time, I filled that gap—through the opportunity to share. We live in a time when powerful and transformational historical events are happening—regardless of our desire or influence. Whether we call it healing justice, coffee with a neighbor, or a walk with a warm friend from one end of the street to the other, during which we talk about our stories of oppression and ways of resisting them, let’s use that opportunity and privilege to make our lives and struggles more bearable.

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