An Open Letter

Dear Community,

The GT in our name stands for (among other things) Growth and Transformation. We are in a time of deeply felt shifts, uncertainty, transition, and upheaval. The months of living with the pandemic have transitioned into months of racial justice momentum; this movement has transformed what we may have believed to be important, or timely, or necessary just a few months ago. In crisis, what matters to us most? The collective energy urges us to show up with a willingness to dig deeply and reckon with what the meeting of these moments means for us, our community and those we serve. 

The experience of moving through the initial months of COVID-19 called on many of us to make hard and fast adjustments during a time of fear and unknowns. For our practice, this meant adapting to a new normal of telehealth only for the time being; perhaps until 2021. We let go of a physical space. We only see our clients and each other by video. We have adapted to working from home with kids and no childcare. For the first time in most of our professional lives, we are also learning how to move through collective trauma in real time with the clients who we care for. 

Without silver-lining it, this time has also given us a new perspective: that so much of what kept us busy and gave us the illusion of control is unnecessary for the work we are doing. As a team, it’s allowed us to focus simply on providing the best care we can to our clients while taking the best possible care of each other, our families and ourselves along the way. Permission has been fully granted to do what we have to do to be as ok as we can be so we can keep showing up to do the work. 

It is also true that not everyone has fared equally or equitably during the time of COVID. Even before the Black Lives Matter movement surged so powerfully to the foreground (for white folx; BIPOC never had the privilege to experience it as “background”), the data was clear that communities of color were bearing the burden of the pandemic disproportionately. We may all be in the same storm, but we are definitely not in the same boats. 

If you’re wondering how all this fits in with mental health, here are just a few of the pieces of the puzzle: inequality in housing, food access, education, criminal justice,  health care, mental health diagnoses framed in white culture and pathologizing BIPOC cultures, the publishing industry, intergenerational and ongoing racial trauma, and how the legacy of white supremacy lives on in our bodies. Mental wellness does not exist in a vacuum. White therapists have an ethical imperative to address racism in the therapy room. 

We are committed to doing better by our BIPOC clients, colleagues and community. We are not deserving of kudos for this; the bar of cultural competency as a measure of a therapist’s ability (particularly white therapists) to serve BIPOC clients was never high enough. This movement demands more from us to commit to ongoing, lifelong learning to practice cultural affirmation & responsiveness. As predominantly white therapists, it is about accountability, committing to unlearning, doing our own anti-racist and racial identity work, ongoing training in cultural affirmation & responsiveness, and being intentional about using our platform to amplify BIPOC leaders, particularly as the racial justice movement intersects with mental health. 

How might our work as white therapists be more oriented towards true growth & transformation, towards restorative justice and equitable mental health care, if we can meet this moment with humility, courage, vulnerability, and realness? 

With love, 
Blake & Tracy