This story never fails to move people. (It moved me to become a designer!) It’s a perfect anecdote to illustrate the power of proactive empathy: responsive and compassionate and inventive. But Sen’s experience also speaks to something else—something so obviously true that it feels silly to point out, yet almost entirely lacking in our conscious cultural awareness: Healing is social.

Barriers to Social Healing
Think for a moment about a major experience you’ve had of loss and healing. I bet you can identify someone in that experience who said something helpful. Some who brought you something you needed in the moment. Maybe someone who pointed you to helpful resources, or asked you a question you hadn’t realized you needed to hear.

Healing requires the participation of other people. We need people who are willing to notice our pain. People who are willing to listen deeply, and ask questions about it. People willing to take action to support us. People who have lost someone or something similar, and can—even if they’re strangers—intimately understand something about what we’ve experienced. People who can draw on their wisdom in one discipline or expertise, and use it to observe, ask questions, and build solutions with others, toward human flourishing.

Added to all this, our communities are changing. In 2020–2021, we moved in higher numbers than ever before, leaving millions without layered, physical ties to place-based community and care. The last three years of COVID-19 have delivered a truly global, yet fractal, experience of loss. Religious attendance is also declining worldwide, and with it, we are losing connection with communal rituals and inherited wisdom around loss, pain, healing, and rebirth.

2) We don’t have equitable access to the wisdom, knowledge, and medical resources that already do exist for healing.
Fortunately, we have an enormous amount of scientific data and research around indicators of mental health, flourishing, and success rates for healing interventions — i.e., what does wellbeing mean and how do we achieve it? Unfortunately, most of these findings are shared in science journals and literature reviews that often require pricey subscriptions, and a knowledge of the industry—and expert language/jargon—to find or learn from.

We don’t have adequate, broadly-shared social scripts and frameworks to talk about loss and healing.
Contrary to popular belief, the “five stages of grief” model does not insist that there are 5 brief, linear stages to move through toward healing. But (the incorrect interpretation of!) this model is probably the most familiar—or only?—framework for healing that most of us can point to. We may personally know that grief and loss are complex and meandering, but most of our daily social contexts — work, school, social clubs — expect people experiencing loss to “bounce back” quickly

Fortunately, modern medicine is more able than ever to treat many forms of pain, injury, and trauma. Unfortunately, modern medicine is specialized, meaning medical professionals can care for a specific instance of pain, but are often unable (by training, or legal red tape) to attend to the whole person. Medical care is also expensive. In the United States, for example, most therapy is prohibitively costly—meaning, even if we understand what healing interventions are available to us, we may not be able to access them.

Our public scripts are uncomfortable with the idea of “lingering” in complicated, “negative” feelings, preferring instead to encourage each other to see the bright side and proactively embrace positivity. We might be great at showing up in a moment of crisis…but after that, we largely expect people to navigate losses on their own, or get healing help from formal places (like therapy or yoga classes) instead of their closest relational networks (friends, housemates, neighbors, friends online). And while a moment of loss may be taken seriously when it involves death or major trauma, that same social grace isn’t often extended for other significant forms of life loss: illness, major life transitions, physical/mental decline, or the end of a friend/romantic/familial relationship

If no be wahala you dey find, how you go dey toast single mother a week to school resumption

I ask again , do you genuinely believe that prayer works?? If yes, kindly repost