KCIT Conference 2022: Healing is a Social Equation

The Keystone Crisis Intervention Team supports victims of crime and their communities in recovery from traumatic events. Having the honor of being a part of helping communities heal we think it is important, especially at this time to open a bigger conversation around what healing truly requires.

Contrary to popular cultural narratives and ingrained attitudes healing isn’t accomplished through self-care alone. Self-care is just one part of the equation. Healing is a social equation. It includes me and you.

While trauma creates a need for protection, healing brings us towards connection. We invite you to explore a different paradigm for healing through the perspective of remembering community care which recognizes our undeniable interdependent and social nature as human beings and involves a commitment to use our privilege to support each other when we can so that no one has to go without. Together we have everything we need.

KCIT has a total of 24 Speakers and over 20 workshops to choose from.

Keynote Speakers
1. Nakita Valerio: In the wake of the Christchurch Mosque massacre in New Zealand which took the lives of 51 Muslim worshippers, Nakita Valerio posted a status on Facebook that has since continued to go viral, years later. She wrote, “Shouting ‘self-care’ at people who need ‘community care’ is how we fail people.” Thirteen words ricocheted around the world, resonating with countless people, especially with the coming of the Covid-19 Pandemic, inspiring reflection, writing, lectures, community care initiatives, and honest conversations about the way forward.

Nakita Valerio is an award-winning writer, researcher, and Muslim community organizer based on Treaty 6 territory in Edmonton. She serves as the Research Director for the Institute for Religious and Socio-Political Studies (I-RSS), as well as the Editor-in-Chief for the RSS Journal and the Edmonton Heritage Council’s ECAMP collection.

2. Travis Heath: Travis is a licensed psychologist and is an Associate Professor at San Diego State University where he serves as Chair of the department of Counseling & School Psychology. Past work he’s been involved with looked at shifting from a multicultural approach to counseling to one of cultural democracy that invites people to heal in mediums that are culturally near. Travis is well known for a talk he gave for the Tedx Stage named from Self Care to Communities of Care where he reimagines a model of community care wherein people don’t have to self-care their way out of social inequities.

His most recent work involves incorporating the work of Black abolitionist scholars into psychotherapy, community healing, and uprising. His writing has focused on the use of rap music in narrative therapy, working with persons entangled in the criminal injustice system in ways that maintain their dignity, narrative practice stories as pedagogy, a co-created questioning practice called reunion questions, and community healing strategies. He is co-author, with David Epston and Tom Carlson, of the first book on Contemporary Narrative Therapy released in June 2022 entitled, “Reimagining Narrative Therapy Through Practice Stories and Autoethnography.”

Contrary to popular cultural narratives and ingrained attitudes healing isn’t accomplished through self-care alone. Self-care is just one part of the equation. Healing is a social equation. It includes me and you.