A Berkeley-born spirit, I found the deepest healing in a McKees Rocks circle

Once a week in a softly lit room, a circle of chairs awaits gathering souls, each one a beacon of solace in the dimness. This is a space we consider sacred. Tonight as we embark upon another Placed Based Healing Affinity Circle, the air carries a weight of shared sorrow and a lot of hope. The sorrow stems from the deepest and most sudden of losses: The deaths of children to gun violence. The hope comes from the community we’re working together to mend.

This sacred space is adorned with flickering candles, fragrant flowers, the gentle hum of a singing bowl and the fellowship that comes from sharing time with one another. Our community has agreed to hold space for each other, to respect one another and to avoid harming one another. We try as best as we can to allow freedom of thought, of emotions, of trust and a radical welcoming of all.

To date, there have been more than a dozen circles like this in McKees Rocks, the South Side and Larimer and East Liberty. Though the groups come from different communities and bring different life experiences, the energy and spirituality are the same.

My upbringing was in California — born in Berkeley and raised in Los Angeles in a very health-conscious family. My mother kept me involved in dance, yoga and teaching. As a young adult it wasn’t long before I became aware of gatekeeping and the injustice of unequal distribution of resources for health in mind and body. This awareness grew as I migrated from California to Georgia to Pittsburgh.

My journey from California to Pittsburgh has also been a migration through different forms of community and concepts of spirituality, with the one constant being a sense of common humanity. In the South Hills of Pittsburgh my family entered a nice community which lacks diversity yet offers stability. But some of my warmest embraces — including during my own times of greatest need — have come in places deemed less stable that are under-resourced and underserved.

An invitation to McKees Rocks

After I settled into Pittsburgh and my children grew older, I began teaching yoga, meditation and other forms of fitness. A client of mine connected me to efforts in the McKees Rocks and Stowe area.

I had never been to McKees Rocks before. But I had been in many areas throughout the country, especially South Central Los Angeles, that in some ways resembled McKees Rocks, so it felt familiar.

I met with the Grow Sto-Rox organization and Grounded Pittsburgh in 2017 to work on efforts to develop community green space where people could gather, enjoy gardening and have community meals, events and other opportunities together. The community work was valuable, but we seemed to be missing a forum for focusing on individuals prior to bringing the collective together. In spring 2022 we started that program, which we called Affinity Circles.

For that first session, we were very much in the shadow of COVID, masking and sanitizing and — for some — taking first, tentative steps out of isolation after two years. Ten mothers gathered, and when the ice broke, the pain poured forth. One woman had lost six people within her family to COVID. For another, the loss of her mother had plunged her into a depression from which she was just beginning to emerge. She hadn’t been able to talk about it with anyone until that day.

So it began. Each circle meets weekly for six weeks, working through sessions on health and wellness, resilience, financial literacy and value and purposefulness, then bringing it all together in a conversation we call “integrated you,” and finally celebrating together.

At that time Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Shared Prosperity began discussions that led to what has come to be called the Place Based Healing Affinity Circles program. Part of the center’s mission is to reduce barriers to equitable prosperity in the Pittsburgh region while working to build healthier relationships between institutions and their communities. Members of Grow Sto-Rox were a part of the center’s advisory group, and when they heard about healing circles, they pointed out that they were already doing affinity circles.

The Center for Shared Prosperity funded the collaboration, and to date we have been able to host 14 circles in which we work on healing, and provide research-based information, subject matter experts and resources for all participants.

A growing program, and a new need

We’ve branched out from the Father Ryan Arts Center in McKees Rocks to the Kingsley Association in Larimer and locations in the South Side and Shadyside area, working with The Hear Foundation . We also hosted a half-day healing circles retreat to which we invited CMU faculty and staff, Place Based Healing Affinity Circles staff and participants from our circles,  and staff from the Lawrenceville-based organization Open Up , who let us use their facility to host it. We hope to do more retreats like this in the future. Bringing people from different areas in the Pittsburgh community together like this was a wonderful experience.

We’ve learned to support community needs. We offer transportation and provide a catered, nutritious meal, because it is usually dinner time! If child care is needed we have a space and professionals there to stay with the children. We offer $600 stipends for those who complete the six weeks.

This season, we spent time with a beautiful group of women who have lost children to gun violence. As I sit among these courageous women, I am humbled by their strength and honored to share in their journey of healing.

Even as I write this my heart fills up with joy and peace because the time I have spent with everyone has made me whole. I have learned more, I have grown more and accepted the support I have felt from everyone who I have sat in community with. For me, to bear witness to this sacred gathering is a privilege beyond measure.

In each circle, in these hallowed spaces, I am reminded of the profound power of community, of the resilience that blooms from shared experiences and of the healing that emerges when souls come together in vulnerability and love. Recently I have been diving into some reading and am struck by this quote from author adrienne maree brown : “Trauma is the common experience of most humans on this planet. … We need a culture where the common experience of trauma leads to normalization of healing. … We should celebrate love in our community as a measure of healing.” This is exactly what Place Based Healing Affinity Circles are all about — celebrating love in our community as a measure of healing.

I found I needed that as much as anyone else when my health-focused life was suddenly turned on its head by symptoms and a diagnosis of lupus, an autoimmune disease. Suddenly, I had to rethink who I was, and wrestle with emotions including shock and shame. My feeling that I’d done everything right, and my sense of control over my future, melted away. The ableist society I’d long understood in the abstract became immediately concrete, as I faced spells in which I’d struggle with even normal functions, like walking.

I felt broken. I needed to practice what I preached. But I felt I couldn’t seem to talk about it — until one day, in the safety of an affinity circle at the Father Ryan Arts Center, I finally did.

Some of the women shared back their experiences with chronic disease. One pulled out of the circle, embraced me and prayed for me. The spirituality of the circle, which I had thought I understood, came alive and vibrant in a way I could not have seen before.

Its message was crystal clear: It’s OK, I’m not alone.

April Jackson is a transformative leader with an exceptional ability to infuse purpose and passion into diverse spaces, inspiring individuals, organizations, and communities and can be reached at april@capjconsult.com .

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