In this introductory video, Dr. Jameca Cooper launches a 30‑day “Radical Healing” series aimed at people of color—especially women of color and Indigenous individuals—who face intersecting systems of oppression such as racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism. She explains why conventional healing is insufficient, arguing that a radical approach is needed to address historical trauma, generational patterns, and daily “racial battle fatigue.” Dr. Cooper outlines the four pillars of radical healing: (1) awareness of oppressive forces, (2) leveraging personal and external resources, (3) seeking support from one’s community (family, friends, cultural groups, or geographic community), and (4) cultivating hope rooted in ancestral resilience. She ties these concepts to her book I Am My Sister’s Keeper: The Brown Girl’s Guide to Radical Healing and sets expectations for daily videos that will provide practical tips, insights, and exercises to help viewers end the year with greater wellbeing and start the new year in a healthier mental space. The video concludes with a call to action to like, subscribe, and commit to the 30‑day journey.
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Hi, I'm Dr. Jameca Cooper Cooper. Make sure you like this video and subscribe to the channel before we get going. I'm so, so, so excited. Today we are starting with our 30 Days of Radical Healing. You heard it first. Here we are today on the first video. And if you've watched my other videos, you already know that we have talked about radical healing before because it is so necessary for all people right now. And, um, this is also what I talk about in my book, um, on Amazon right now, I Am My Sister's Keeper: The Brown Girl's Guide to Radical Healing. So lots of what I talk about in the book is about healing for people of color, specifically women of color and indigenous individuals. Um, it's important because We are those people in this country that have suffered through the most trying times, through racism, sexism, oppression, all of the things that cause a person to really be weighed down and to feel stressed. Many times when I see my patients in therapy, they talk about how they just kind of walk around with this, this weight, feeling like they carry the weight of the world. On their shoulders and sometimes feeling like they never get a break from any of that. So 30 days of radical healing starting today, but first I want to explain to you what radical healing is. So why we need it. I already talked about racism, oppression. These are systems that we all deal with in this country that are quite difficult to navigate through. We can't just snap our fingers and get rid of it because they always are there. They exist everywhere. No matter where you go in this country. If you're a person of color or a woman of color, you know that you can think of many experiences where you have encountered any system of oppression, and at the end of the day, it just makes you feel tired. So hence the term that I've heard before, which is called racial battle fatigue. Some people call it racial trauma, racial stress, whatever you call it, it weighs heavily on each person from day to day. And I'm going to talk to you in this 30 Days of Radical Healing about ways to deal with that, especially right now at the end of this year. We do not want to end the year in the same way that we are going to start the new year. It's very important that we take stock of what's been good or what's been bad about this whole year. Try to take a look at it, get some awareness, Acknowledge what's been good and acknowledge what's also been not so good so we can think about our goals for the new year. This is always a time of the year where I work with my patients on what's going to be different for you next year. How do you want to focus your energies? What type of space do you want to create for yourself in your home and in the world? These are things that are very important. So let's dig into radical healing and some of the components of radical healing. Um, the first thing that is crucial about radical healing is that we have to be aware of oppression and oppressive forces that we all deal with in this country. So when I say oppressive forces, I mean things like racism. We're all usually pretty aware of racism because we encounter it mostly on a day-to-day basis in some shape, form, or fashion. But sexism is also a part of that. If you are a woman of color or an indigenous woman, you always have to deal with sexism. What does that mean? Being called names sometimes, maybe on your workplace not being given the same respect or reverence that maybe your male counterparts have to deal with. So we have racism, we have sexism. Another that could be for women who are older middle-aged and older is ageism. In other words, not being given the same opportunities that someone with your same qualifications but younger would have been given. And then we also have something called heterosexism. That is an oppressive force in this country. If you are a woman of color or Indigenous woman that is, um, a member of the LGBTQ community, then you know. That heterosexism exists everywhere in this country as well. It seems to be normative that people expect each person to be heterosexual, such that when you are not heterosexual, then there's the stigma, then there are the stereotypes, then that is the discrimination that often comes with that. So, um, we also think about, um, how this country was founded. This country was founded on the basis of white men. So not people of color, not women, and also white men that were heterosexual. So when we think about what that looks like, what norms and what typical and normal look like in this country, we have to think about what sits outside of that. So we have to be aware of the forces that bring us to the point where we need to be healed in a radical way. So Now I want to talk to you a little bit about why radical. Radical is a big word, right? Radical is what is needed anytime you're dealing with people. Let's take African Americans for instance. African Americans have been in this country for 400 years, right? That entire time has been full of adversity, challenges. Now we can also look at that time and say things have gotten better progressively, for the group of African Americans, but it has been filled with adversity starting all the way from coming on the slave ships, all the way to living on slave plantations. Then you go from there to sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, Civil Rights era, all the way up to today where we know that there are very apparent and obvious differences among the resources and privilege that African Americans have versus everyone else. So we can look at all of that and say that we have to be aware of the role of oppression in our lives in order for us to heal from that. It has to be radical in order to overcome things like historical trauma, um, racism, discrimination, slavery, all these things. Radical is what is need to overcome generational patterns that occur as a result of that. Healing. So why healing? Healing. I chose healing because healing is what I want and what I hope for all of my patients. Not just to be able to get up out of the bed every day and live, but I don't want you to just survive. I don't want you to just live. I want you to heal, to overcome, to eradicate things that are factors in your life. So radical and healing. Healing because you're overcoming and you're moving forth, um, such that the same thing should not be issues in your life. Healing is a long process. It's not something you can snap your fingers and say, you know what, I'm healed today. Um, typically it's a process that is ongoing, and that's okay. It's okay if it takes a while. I just want to make sure everyone is on board to start healing. That's why we have 30 Days of Healing. You should be able to get in the habit of thinking about these different pieces so that in the end of the 30 days you can put them together in one nice little puzzle ball and, um, have yourself a little bit of satisfaction and improvement and hopefully be on the road to wellness from that point on. So I've already talked about the first component is being aware of oppression. That is necessary for radical healing. The other thing that is a component of radical healing is that you use resources that you already have in your life, or resources that you can obtain, in order to overcome adversity. So what are resources? Resources could be anything. It could be people in your life. It could be people. It could be books. It could be services that you can use in order to overcome challenges that you already face in your life. What else? What else is a part of radical healing? One major thing that is going to be part of this discussion of radical healing for 30 days is seeking support in the communities that you live in. Now, community is a word that's kind of thrown around a lot, but it means very different things to very different people. If you live in a small town in a rural part of the Midwest or the South, community could mean your town. If you're a person of color or an indigenous woman and you live on a reservation or certain, um, more cultural pieces or parts or aspects, neighborhoods of a town, then that could be your community. Community could be your family. It could be the immediate family that you live with. Community could be extended family. Community could be your friends. But whatever your idea of community is, A part of radical healing is seeking support from that community. And in some of the other videos, I'm going to talk more about what that looks like. So it's some examples of what you could do to seek support. And then the last thing, and maybe the most important component of radical healing, is hope. What is hope? Hope is ideas, um, imagination about just how good things can be. Um, hope is imagining the possibilities of what can happen when you are healed. Think about hope in the ways that I'm sure many of our ancestors had to think of it, because coming over from the continent of Africa on a ship with very little room and possibly seeing your other friends or family members jump from that ship, uh, and you making it just to come to this dire situation in which you're held captive and beaten. In order for anyone to make it through that situation, they have to have hope. Hope that it will someday be better. Hope that, that my offspring, my children, my grandchildren will not have to live this way. So sometimes in the midst of adversity and challenges, all we have to cling on to is hope. But radical hope is what we need in this case to imagine that we all can be healed and that we can get to a place when some of those things that have been issues in our lives are no longer issues. Because again, we want to be healed from it so that it does not continue to weigh on us on a day-to-day basis and cause issues in our life. So I hope I've explained myself well. Get ready, get set, and we are ready to go. Be prepared for one video a day for the next 30 days. 30 days of radical healing. We're going to end the year with lots of tips and insight on how you can be healed from various diagnoses or issues or situations that you've dealt with. And we're going to start the new year off with ways that you're going to get yourself in a better position to be healed and to be well 2022. So stay tuned, make sure you like and subscribe to this channel so that you can always be on top of our new videos. 30 days of radical healing, I'm ready, are you?
