Collective Liberation Is Clinical Work

"None of us are free until all of us are free." — Fannie Lou Hamer

June holds multitudes.

It is Pride Month, a time to honor queer and trans resistance, joy, and community care. It is also when we observe Juneteenth, a commemoration of the delayed emancipation of enslaved people in Galveston, Texas—more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Both observances are about freedom, but not just freedom as a concept—freedom as lived experience, access, and equity.

As a queer clinical supervisor working with LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, polyamorous, and neurodivergent clinicians and clients, I sit with the truth that we cannot heal what we are not allowed to feel. And so many of us are still denied access to rest, safety, healthcare, housing, and dignity.

This month, I hold space for the truth that Pride began as a riot led by Black and brown trans people, and Juneteenth is not just a celebration but a reminder of how long freedom can be delayed—and how fiercely it must be protected.

Mental health work is not neutral. The systems that cause psychological harm—racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, capitalism—are the same systems many of us must navigate while seeking care. And for those of us supervising the next generation of clinicians, this is a call to equip our therapists to be not just providers, but advocates.

As bell hooks wrote:

"Being oppressed means the absence of choices... [but] our struggle is also a struggle of memory against forgetting." (Teaching to Transgress, 1994)

Supervision is a political act. To supervise from a liberatory framework means teaching our interns and associates how to recognize injustice in the room and in the world. It means affirming lived experience. It means fighting burnout with boundaries. It means creating safety, not just talking about it.

This Juneteenth and Pride, I invite all of us in mental healthcare to remember:

✨ The personal is political

✨ The clinical is communal

✨ The work is the healing

Let’s build a world where freedom is not theoretical—but felt, shared, and held.

With radical care,