Members of the Quinnipiac University community came together on April 7 for the school’s second community healing session.
The session was hosted by Don Sawyer, Quinnipiac’s vice president for equity and inclusion, and led by Enroue Baba Onigbonna’ Halfkenny — an activist, priest and clinical social worker from New Haven.
“We wanted to have these healing sessions to give people a space to come together as a community,” Sawyer said. “We’ve all gone through a hell of a year, to say the least. We’re not always given the chance to pause, to connect with our human side. This is a place to share and be with one another. Not a meeting, no agenda.”
The event was open to students and faculty. While 16 people registered, only six attended. This was a decrease in attendance from the first event last month, in which 47 people registered and 23 attended. But attendance isn’t what matters to Sawyer.
“I always feel that whoever needs to be there will be there and get what they need,” he said.
The session focused on the different ways life has been upended throughout the past year. It’s been one year and one month since COVID-19 devastated the world and forced a nationwide shutdown, revealing the inequalities in access to medical treatment and forcing a record high number of workers to apply for governmental assistance to compensate for lost wages.
Halkfenny began by leading members in a meditation exercise.
“Close your eyes and invite in the support systems that are important to you,” he said. “It might be your ancestors, your notion of God, your tradition or spiritual practice, your connections to community or humanity or other kinds of sacred beings. Invite them in to give you the support that you need.”
Attendees were subsequently broken into groups where they discussed the impact of the past year and how it is present in their lives today. Halkfenny stressed that the goal was not to have a back and forth; rather, it was an opportunity for participants to explain how this past year has affected them.
Alan Bruce, chair of the department of sociology at Quinnipiac, explained that COVID-19 did not directly affect him or anyone in his family. Because of this, he has a hard time rationalizing the severity of the pandemic with how it’s represented in his everyday life.
“I have been so fortunate in the fact that I’ve been untouched by the pandemic. I know very few people who have lost their jobs. I know very few people who have had covid. Yet I know that that’s what going on in the world,” Bruce said. “Part of where I am as a result of this past year is feeling disengaged from a lot of what’s happening right now.”
Sawyer spoke of how the loss of human connection has affected him.
“It was something I took for granted, being able to go to someone’s office and have a conversation in the doorway, or the ability to walk across campus and get a smoothie on the quad,” he said. “Talking with someone on a computer screen, there’s something missing there.”
And that’s exactly why he holds events like this.
“We’re experts of our own experiences, and only we can articulate what we’ve experienced over the past year. But to hear what other people have experienced, and just holding space to be able to hear that, is to see beyond the experiences that I was having for myself. It’s a step outside of just myself. And we all need that right now.”
The third community healing event is scheduled for April 20, and Sawyer is hoping for a bigger turnout. He is also hoping to have in-person healing events this fall.