Why Healing Must Be A Community Effort
I’m not unlike most people who spend too many hours of my time scrolling through Tik Tok when I should be doing literally anything else. In my mind, however, it's justified -- as long as in between videos of dance challenges and gross food recipes, I watch videos about how to heal my gut, or listen to one of the many Black therapists on the app try and cure me of my people-pleasing ways.
There’s been an abundance of online content geared towards healing, within the last few years especially. Everywhere I turn, someone is tweeting about how to align your chakras or what combination of fruits in a smoothie will clear your skin or what hip stretches will release the trauma from my body.
It barely registers as odd to me now, since I began intentionally immersing myself in these online communities over the last year in an attempt to treat emotional and physical ailments. But sometimes, I am caught off guard by the ways in which healing has become a currency of sorts on social media.
As with anything that touches the timeline, there’s an opportunity to be rewarded with likes and retweets, and hoards of followers. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it does leave the opportunity for attention to be allocated towards the glossiest, most idyllic version of life, which creates an environment of people trying to outdo one another.
There are hundreds of morning routines on Tik Tok where the creator takes over an hour to get ready as soon as they get up, from eating breakfast to exercising to journaling. There are healthy grocery hauls with over a hundred dollars worth of items. There are people who give their testimonies about manifesting themselves into a life of wealth and prosperity.
I watch all those videos the same way one might watch an animal documentary on National Geographic: with a morbid sense of fascination. I glean a few things from these videos that I’m able to transfer into my own daily life, but I can’t help but wonder what healing is supposed to look like for those that don’t have the lives that the people in these videos have.
When people talk about healing, it’s very individualistic and lacking in a racial and class analysis. It doesn’t take into account all the different systemic traumas that impact people on top of personal trauma.
How can one eat the food they need in order to repair their stomach if they live in a food desert? What does the morning routine look like for a person who is coming home from a night shift and has only a few hours in the morning to rest before going to another job? How does a person begin to heal in a world that constantly retraumatizes them because of their Blackness?
When western NGOs tried to help survivors of Rwandan genocide with individualized therapy in an indoor room, they were notably unsuccessful and in many ways were thought to have retraumatized the survivors. A Rwandan man described it like this:
“Their practice did not involve being outside in the sun where you begin to feel better. There was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again. There was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy. Instead they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them. We had to ask them to leave.”
When I think about healing, I think of it as a collective effort. I think about the communities that grow gardens together and share the harvest. I think about the communities that have set up a public fridge for everyone to use. The grassroots organization that organizes mental health resources directly to under-resourced communities.
When we treat healing as solely an individual pursuit -- something that can be achieved through smoothie drinking and stretching -- we lose a necessary dimension that teaches us how to be a part of a whole; that allows us to lean on one another when life burdens us and lets us know we are not alone in our struggles.
There’s nothing wrong with applying facets of healing learned from people online or living vicariously through their daily routines that might be slightly unattainable. But the real healing begins when we learn how to do it together.
Read all of the stories in the Issa Rae: She Comes First editorial series here.
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How Content Creators Hey Fran Hey And Shameless Maya Embraced The Pivot
This article is in partnership with Meta Elevate.
If you’ve been on the internet at all within the past decade, chances are the names Hey Fran Hey and Shameless Maya (aka Maya Washington) have come across your screen. These content creators have touched every platform on the web, spreading joy to help women everywhere live their best lives. From Fran’s healing natural remedies to Maya’s words of wisdom, both of these content creators have built a loyal following by sharing honest, useful, and vulnerable content. But in search of a life that lends to more creativity, freedom, and space, these digital mavens have moved from their bustling big cities (New York City and Los Angeles respectively) to more remote locations, taking their popular digital brands with them.
Content Creators Hey Fran Hey and Maya Washington Talk "Embracing The Pivot"www.youtube.com
In partnership with Meta Elevate — an online learning platform that provides Black, Hispanic, and Latinx-owned businesses access to 1:1 mentoring, digital skills training, and community — xoNecole teamed up with Franscheska Medina and Maya Washington on IG live recently for a candid conversation about how they’ve embraced the pivot by changing their surroundings to ultimately bring out the best in themselves and their work. Fran, a New York City native, moved from the Big Apple to Portland, Oregon a year ago. Feeling overstimulated by the hustle and bustle of city life, Fran headed to the Pacific Northwest in search of a more easeful life.
Her cross-country move is the backdrop for her new campaign with Meta Elevate— a perfectly-timed commercial that shows how you can level up from wherever you land with the support of free resources like Meta Elevate. Similarly, Maya packed up her life in Los Angeles and moved to Sweden, where she now resides with her husband and adorable daughter. Maya’s life is much more rural and farm-like than it had been in California, but she is thriving in this peaceful new setting while finding her groove as a new mom.
While Maya is steadily building and growing her digital brand as a self-proclaimed “mom coming out of early retirement,” Fran is redefining her own professional grind. “It’s been a year since I moved from New York City to Portland, Oregon,” says Fran. “I think the season I’m in is figuring out how to stay successful while also slowing down.” A slower-paced life has unlocked so many creative possibilities and opportunities for these ladies, and our conversation with them is a well-needed reminder that your success is not tied to your location…especially with the internet at your fingertips. Tapping into a community like Meta Elevate can help Black, Hispanic, and Latinx entrepreneurs and content creators stay connected to like minds and educated on new digital skills and tools that can help scale their businesses.
During a beautiful moment in the conversation, Fran gives Maya her flowers for being an innovator in the digital space. Back when “influencing” was in its infancy and creators were just trying to find their way, Fran says Maya was way ahead of her time. “I give Maya credit for being one of the pioneers in the digital space,” Fran said. “Maya is a one-person machine, and I always tell her she really changed the game on what ads, campaigns, and videos, in general, should look like.”
When asked what advice she’d give content creators, Maya says the key is having faith even when you don’t see the results just yet. “It’s so easy to look at what is, despite you pouring your heart into this thing that may not be giving you the returns that you thought,” she says. “Still operate from a place of love and authenticity. Have faith and do the work. A lot of people are positive thinkers, but that’s the thinking part. You also have to put your faith into work and do the work.”
Fran ultimately encourages content creators and budding entrepreneurs to take full advantage of Meta Elevate’s vast offerings to educate themselves on how to build and grow their businesses online. “It took me ten years to get to the point where I’m making ads at this level,” she says. “I didn’t have those resources in 2010. I love the partnership with Meta Elevate because they’re providing these resources for free. I just think of the people that wouldn’t be able to afford that education and information otherwise. So to amplify a company like this just feels right.”
Watch the full conversation with the link above, and join the Meta Elevate community to connect with fellow businesses and creatives that are #OnTheRiseTogether.
Featured image courtesy of Shameless Maya and Hey Fran Hey
Exclusive: 'Praise This' Producer Will Packer And Director Tina Gordon Pulls For Non-Traditional Audiences With Film
Praise This has a uber-talented cast helmed by the multi-hyphenate Chloe Bailey. But before the cast, filming, and other things came to play, it started out as a vision from executive producer Will Packer and director Tina Gordon. In our exclusive interview with the visionaries, Will shares that when he received the screenplay, he knew that Tina would be the perfect person to make the script come to life.
"She and I were so aligned in terms of the mission of this movie. We said that we wanted to make a movie that if you were [a] traditional, staunch, church type of person who believes that church should fit into a box, that we were gonna blow that out. That this wasn't the movie for you," Will says. "We wanted to make a movie that was for that non-traditional audience that is open to a church movie. You get that audience in by mashing up gospel with Drake, and with Beyoncé, with Cardi [B]. That's how you do that, and so you come in for the music, and you stay for a powerful story; Tina understood that."
He continues, "And so when I thought about who could helm this, the project was originally pitched to me by an amazing young executive named Antoine Jenkins, and I knew I wanted to do this praise movie in this world, Tina was the right one. I was really hoping she would say yes, and when she did, we were off to the races."
Watch Will's full interview below:
Executive Producer Will Packer Shares How Film Appeals To All Walks of Life
Tina, who directed films like Little, expresses her excitement about working on the Peacock film.
"Will sent me the script, and I had been like circling doing a musical. I hadn't really done something music-driven since Drumline, and so I was excited about the idea of showing gospel choirs, praise teams, specifically 'cause I thought that it would just be a really, just new facet of our culture to show," Tina explains. "And once I kinda nailed down the personalities of the praise teams and how they would be just a little funny, a little bit of a wink and a nod to church culture, I kinda got it, and I was ready to go."
Tina hopes audiences are surprised and inspired by Praise This and wants them to walk away feeling uplifted.
Watch Tina's full interview below:
Praise This is available on Peacock.
Director Tina Gordon Wants Audiences To Be Surprised By Her New Film “Praise This”
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Feature image by Terence Rushin/Getty Images
