Healing is not a linear process, rather it is a path or some sort of spiral. There are moments that you will be at your baseline, where you feel the greatest that you can. Other moments you will be more unwell. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're unhealed, but rather that this is part of healing from the wounds that you may have experienced. Whether they may be physical or emotional as someone who has apparent or non-apparent disabilities.

Writing was a form of therapy because I could not and I did not have access to a therapist. It was my way of letting things out, my way of processing. My way of being able to start to talk about the things that weren’t very much talked about in my family. For example, disability and how I became disabled. Even though I was clearly disabled. That's sort of how I started facilitating more community action work around disability.

At that time, I very much thought of it as disability awareness. Though I've moved from that perspective. In my current work as a psychotherapist, who really believes in creating more culturally attuned forms of accessing mental health services. I tell my clients that I am not here to “heal” you. This is not a recovery model. That's not what I'm here for.

Healing means that we start to address the wounds that someone might feel, and the patterns, behaviors or in their words “problems”, that they think are causing concern. Addressing these issues sometimes helps them to have a broader understanding of what actually might not necessarily need any form of “healing”.

Carl Young’s “wounded healer” talks about how we become healers because we have our own wounds. Stating that “healing” is something that I would actively do feels a little uncomfortable. In my community, we have curanderos, community healers. That's the way that people access treatment. It's not like going to a doctor, right? I think that [is there content missing here?] different to me than what I've grown up thinking about healing.

I think about healing from an institutional, also religious perspective: getting healed means that you'll have no affliction. For many people, this is what healing still means. In my academic and community work, I've learned the different ways and the expansions that the term healing has meant for me. I ask, how do I balance what other people believe in? While trying to deal with the guilt and shame that people may feel: somehow one is lesser than because they are not healed? Or that healing somehow will make someone worthy of more love? Often, people come in feeling broken, so then we get into the concepts of what it means to heal and cure, how do those tensions play about, work together and also work against each other.

I recently went back to my earlier work and I noticed the amount of pain and sadness in my poetry, and some of them still rings true. Other times, that feeling is not resonating as much as it used to anymore. It doesn't mean that I got rid of it or moved past it, but I think it's quieter. I think that's part of healing.

When it gets louder, I know that’s when I draw my support and talk about what is happening in my writing. Also being able to share with people perhaps being more open about who I am in my writing. For me, it's a vulnerable place to be in. And I think that's what's been really hard for me about even thinking about publishing. Because I don't know that I necessarily want literary critique. While I think my work can use a few tweaks here and there. It’s pressuring to think about somehow I'm not saying it in the way that people wanted me to say it. I feel like I would fall back into the same trap of the things that I'm trying to cope with now and that have become quieter over time.

I don't wanna discount or bash anyone who's doing disability awareness. But in my mind, my own particular position in my work has definitely moved me to a point [is there missing content here?]-able. I don't want to replicate a lot of the stereotypes around disability.

So in some ways, that is where I think disability arts, cul- ture, that is where I see my work fitting in. In my opinion, the beginnings of disability art weren’t just about sharing your experiences, but the ways that we can see how society views someone with a disability or the disability itself. I’d like to ask, does it [disability art] create more questions than answers? Does it move someone to create their own art form? Or does it motivate someone to look up more art from other disabled people?

I started reading my poetry for community service learning hours that I had to complete in high school. I remember this organization in my community gave me a shot. They would ask me to write and read poetry about different themes in relation to community violence or gun violence. Whatever I wrote about also had themes of disability. So I think starting out as a sort of community performer really influenced the way that I write because I want my writing to be accessible to my communities. That's why I never felt like I quite fit in in my English major or in my creative writing classes. Because that was not what they were teaching me. They were teaching me how to write from a very stylistic, almost unattainable literary canon to emulate. That wasn't really what I wanted. I think the one that really spoke to me was the ones who had a voice that was more easily discernible.

I used to feel terrible if my art form moved someone to tears. But if this is the only way that someone can let out their feelings, what if this is the only time that they've allowed themselves to feel, allowed themselves to cry? Who knows? I think in those terms: feeling your feelings, and starting to break down those walls of “respectability” and “professionalism”... being your authentic self. I think that's where the healing happens in communities and how it brings people together to talk about [is there content missing here?]