I have completed my first two semesters of my Master of Social Work education at the University of Calgary, and I already feel an immense awakening accompanied by the continual excitement and gratitude to be on this journey. Social Work as a profession has a deplorable history of being conduits of harm under the guise of good intentions and “helping”. Welding the racist, ableist, healthist, oppressive and patriarchal beliefs and power structures of a society that excludes, punishes, and vilifies. It has been important to reckon with this and build more awareness and capacity to sit with discomfort and recognize that my positionality places me in the category of a long line of people who acted from “saviorhood” and caused more harm, and continues in many ways to cause harm. It has been humbling, exhausting, and liberating to be immersed in this conversation and education around what needs to change within social work and how we need to be that change.
One of the big realizations this has led me to is the importance of community and collective healing, and the various ways that needs to be facilitated depending on the group, communal trauma history, and intention of the gathering. There is clearly a need for more community and spaces where we can gather to learn, grow, listen, collaborate, support, and lead together, and this is something I am feeling called towards.
If you are curious to learn more about what is possible when we come together in groups, I invite you to check out my two upcoming offerings.
Somatic Savvy for Anxiety & Depression
Doing group work is one way that we can all push against the colonial and patriarchal sentiments of individualism, capitalism, competition, othering, and pointing to blame. It is in community that we can reckon with the parts of us that have been abused and have been the abuser. Within each one of us there is an internal family of parts that have been wounded (for generations) and we can create positive change by learning how to hold space for ourselves and for others. We foster change with love, patience, understanding, and compassion, and we build new structures of power when we rally together to cultivate resilience for hard and important conversations, and see through the abuses that have kept us unconsciously shackled.
I would love to be in this work with you.
xo
Marin