In many regards, Me Too is about survivors talking to survivors.
No matter what kinds of problems we might be going through, or what kinds of problems the world might be going through, music is the place where we can all get along. We can all jam.
Evil is a superficial manifestation of a deep disturbance and imbalance in our collective psyche. The only way for us to help heal the wounds is to be sober, sane, quiet, loving, and attentive to each other.
By healing the internal issues that we can heal as a people, our children don't have to suffer the same agony and pain that we put each other through.
Healing yourself is connected with healing others.
The healing of ourselves is the healing of the whole nation. Society is only a manifestation of our collective consciousness and our collective consciousness has a lot of fear, violence and hatred in it. ... It is possible to transform our heart...Not much time is needed...(the transformation can be born) the moment you vow to go in the direction of peace and service.
In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.
Where there is unconditional love, the wound of one is the wound of all.
When you talk, you realize that the pains and worries you feel are universal; you no longer feel alone in your sadness. You relate and find comfort in the fact that there are other women going through the same things as you are.
Humanity has to start noticing that we are One. We are connected with the net of beings who are the life of this planet - and before we take them all down, we ought to see what we can do to preserve this unique and extraordinary family. That's what I think the wounded healer would do. We're all wounded in one way or another. The question is, can we heal?
Do not be reactive and vengeful and if you look deeply into your anguish, you will see that it is the anguish of our wounded collective soul.
When you're going through something, whether it's a wonderful thing like having a child or a sad thing like losing somebody, you often feel like 'Oh my God, I'm so overwhelmed; I'm dealing with this huge thing on my own.' In fact, poetry's a nice reminder that, no, everybody goes through it. These are universal experiences.
I do believe that healing takes place on a number of different levels and that in fact black healing can be deepened by trying to heal across as well as within. But it could be that to call for black and Jewish healing without acknowledging the need for intra-black healing puts the cart before the horse.
Look at yourself as someone who is reaching for healing, and at the complexity of what needs to be healed. Do not think that you exist alone without other human beings of equal complexity.
I don't know if it is a spiritual, physiological or psychological phenomenon, but I believe now more than ever that singing is a universal, built-in mechanism designed to cultivate empathy and compassion.
Can individual psychic wounds really heal in an abusive and fragmented society? Audre Lorde has a poem which begins, "What do we want from each other/ after we have told our stories?" Where do we go to explore our stake with others in such a society?
Wouldn't it be incredible if everyone could be purged, somehow, of the projected not-them badness that they internalized and perhaps have acted out because their souls have been so damaged? Wouldn't it be incredible if everyone could find the joy that comes with committing to our own goodness? Perhaps we would stop dividing ourselves into malignancies of various forms.
It's group therapy for the world.
Characterizing debates in the United Nations:
You cannot heal yourself. You cannot heal anybody else. We're designed to do this in community because we were created inside community for community by community.
One thing that has become abundantly clear to me as I have advocated for the health and well-being of girls and women over the years is the innate power we each have within us to establish deep connection with one another and heal ourselves simply by sharing our stories.
Just being with a group of girls and experiencing sadness together - it's a pretty powerful thing.
I think when a society has such a profoundly dark and awful evil such as slavery in its history, then it leaves scars that are very, very deep. And unless we collectively address them and really put our effort to healing them, they'll perpetuate. The United States of America are still suffering from the echoes of slavery. I think we're still reeling from all the pain that is a result of it, and that's a reality.
We must turn the page on the dark parts of our history.
The work is more than just about the amplification of survivors and quantifying their numbers. The work is really about survivors talking to each other and saying, 'I see you. I support you. I get it.'
I'm going to fight to bring us all together, we're a divided nation. Very divided nation right now. We're going to be unified nation, a nation of love.