Earlier this month, the NSU College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS) Graduate Student Government Association presented “Healing the Divide: A Talk on African Americans and Race Relations.” Speakers addressed trauma, healing, personal care, and mental wellbeing while sharing their own stories and experiences, and attendees were encouraged to interact with their own emotions during the conversations.

“People wanted the chance to talk, and they wanted to feel heard, and they wanted to talk about healing,” said Jennifer Lawer, president of the CAHSS Graduate SGA. “We asked ourselves, ‘how can we take what we’ve learned in the conflict resolution program and use that to help facilitate the start of the healing process?'”

Four of the workshops were led by NSU CAHSS Ph.D. candidates in Conflict Resolution or Family Therapy:

• Adrian Carter, M.Ed. “Understanding the Conflict & Relevance for Solutions”
• Radar Onguetou Essiene “The Human Factor”
• Porshia Cunningham, LMFT “A Courageous Conversation”
• Edwina Ward, M.A. “Youth Empowerment”

Sheena Rolle, M.Div., Deputy Director of Campaigns of Faith in Florida, also facilitated a session on “Faith, Justice, Healing.”

Lawer, who is also a Ph.D. candidate, said that the idea for the conference came to her when friends reached out to her to express their reactions to the unrest in the country. She remembered a story Radar Essiene had told in one of their conflict resolution classes. Essiene recounted how an officer pulled a gun on him after deciding he fit the description of a suspect. Drawing on this traumatic experience Radar wrote, “I did discover that night that what I experienced was similar to the experiences of many other black people in the United States. ‘Being black,’ ‘driving black,’ and ‘walking around black,’ now have meaning to me. I share these conditions with other black Americans”. He also stated, “After this incident, I started recognizing the importance of addressing and increasing awareness around diversity issues instead of denying the existence of racial prejudices.”

“I felt those were the stories that could be shared right now that would help other people heal,” said Lawer. “As part of the SGA, so much of our job is to listen to constituents to see what they want. People wanted the chance to talk. They wanted to feel heard, and they wanted to talk about healing.”

She added that the question, “How do we heal from past conflict, from trauma?” was the guiding question for this conference. Speakers were able to take what they had learned from conflict resolution and other therapy courses to help others start the healing process. And participants in the conference wanted to share, so much so that people were moving conversations into private chats after the presentations were over.

“Our goal was for people to have space to express whatever they were going through at the moment,” said Lawer. “We wanted this conference to address a particular hurt, those deep emotions, and recognize that there’s so much healing that needs to take place. The workshops provided a space to be with each other and to feel supported.

“There was already an interest in this topic,” she said. “My immediate take away is we have to do it again and that is something we’re hoping to do. As soon as we finished, each of the five speakers contacted me and said, ‘let’s do it again.’ We’ve already lined up multiple future guest speakers and facilitators. I would like to see events and programs like this take an approach of using conflict resolution techniques to heal the divide.”

Lawer hopes the CAHSS SGA will host similar conferences in the upcoming months. The organization has already been active in promoting healing. Prior to outbreak of COVID-19 causing a move to virtual platforms, the CAHSS SGA conducted a symposium on Mental Well-Being and Diverse Populations. The group also partnered with Leaders Recognizing Leaders, an organization that helps youth in underserved populations.

In addition, a few weeks prior to this conference, the CAHSS SGA invited an author and Holocaust survivor to participate in a webinar. The author shared how her father was shot five times at one point, and even though his prognosis seemed bleak, he was taken to a doctor who believed he would heal. He survived. The power of healing, and the power of having someone who nurtures the thought that healing is possible even in the direst of circumstances, is something Lawer hoped to convey during the workshop.

“It’s important to believe that healing is possible and have someone stand with you and say healing is possible,” she said. “These five speakers were able to do that for the students – whatever the despair, the anger, the pain – they, in a very strong way, offered a positive message that gave people the confidence that they could heal.”

“Emotions are important. We need to express them. What do people see? Our body language, tears, and hear our cries. If the eyes did not have tears, the soul would have no rainbow. I like rainbows.” – comment from a “Healing the Divide” attendee