Love Radiates Outwards

“My work with the poor and the incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice.” —Bryan Stevenson

At Empathematics, our primary focus in all things is healing--healing for our communities, our world, and ourselves. We want our clients to understand that healing is at the heart of all things--especially financial management. We believe that you deserve space and time to heal yourself and to have a sense of financial security that allows you to do that, but also that we all have a financial obligation to help create healing spaces for others. Our goal is to honor that every person comes to us with trauma (often around money) and needs space to heal. By honoring that space, we make a pathway for you to heal others and have confidence in your contribution to healing. Our approach is called fractal healing. 

Image from Measuring Love in the Journey for Justice: A Brown Paper

Fractal healing is the concept that healed people heal people. We heal through care that starts internally and, often, that has to do with having a sense of financial security. When the Universe makes space for us to grieve and heal our trauma--individualistic trauma, ancestral trauma, and collective trauma--we develop the skills to help heal others within our sphere of influence. When we are granted permission to pause, slow down, and feel our way through things, we are empowered to give that grace and help others through that process. We are able to better show up for other humans in our life because we aren’t stuck in lizard-mind, a reactionary place, and we can show people, hey there’s another way to do this. 

What if we weren’t dependent to do good, or halt bad, based on what kind of day we’re having? What if negative things were to happen around you and you were able to respond rather than react and to observe patterns rather than replicating them? So often, we find ourselves in negative loops, repeating patterns, because those patterns feel safe and familiar even if they’re toxic. To do anything different can seem scary and overwhelming. What if we took this to the next level and moved through earth as whole and healed people and that became what we rippled out into the world? That is what we are talking about when we talk about fractal healing. 

When we talk about fractal healing through the lens of collective liberation, we are assuming that the base work of all collective liberation is raising our consciousness to connect to ourselves and to one another with more depth and authenticity. By investing in healing each other, we practice radical generosity and pass along surplus funds to those who are already practicing or would benefit from fractal healing. But you can’t see humans as members of your collective unless you heal yourself first. It’s very difficult to see the world as full of hope and strength when you have unprocessed trauma. We give to those who already keep the care of others at the forefront of their mind. By prioritizing caring for people who already care for people, we are amplifying the magnitude of care that goes out into the world. I frequently remind myself, “I am not my sister’s keeper, I am my sister.” Raising our consciousness and truly seeing the suffering and joys and magic of each other allows us to imagine a world in which every person has what they need to thrive. 

The world we want to create is within reach if we can liberate ourselves and each other from the constrictions that not only create our trauma but actively benefit from it. These systems do not exist separately from us; we create and maintain these systems by engaging in toxic patterns of withholding care. When we create a new pattern--a pattern of relating to one another at a higher vibration--we divest from systems of harm (i.e. capitalism and white supremacy). We do not always have the time and space to complete our own healing, especially in a society that seems determined to give all of us complex PTSD with its ongoing abuses, but we can actively work on our healing every day. In doing so, we can spread the tendrils of healing throughout our communities and we can do this with confidence as we know we are investing in a community of care, in our security, and in our future liberation.

Image from Measuring Love in the Journey for Justice: A Brown Paper

-Fiadh Leigh