A recent graduate from Mount Mary University in Milwaukee, Xavier Smart is a young counselor and community healer at the Healing Intergenerational Roots (HIR) Wellness Institute, a nonprofit that offers free mental health services to Indigenous groups and communities of color. He describes himself as Afro-Caribbean with roots in the Bahamas and Florida. During his time in school learning psychology, he felt something was off about the lessons he was learning.
“Through my undergrad experience, I realized there was a lot of information out there, but a lot of it, I felt, didn’t apply to myself and my community,” says Smart. Most of what he learned was about how to heal the individual without involving the community they are a part of. “Our communities of color, we are very community based. We’re very for the people, together.”
Smart knew that if he was receiving this type of individualized treatment, he wouldn’t respond well to it. His lived experiences as a Black Caribbean man were rooted in community and shared spaces. To heal without that, seemed impossible.
While working on his graduate degree, he found HIR Wellness Institute and participated in their internship program. He discovered their new model for healing intergenerational trauma—a model called Community Activated Medicine (CAM) developed by its founder Lea Denny. This uses the idea the that communities of color are often in shared communal spaces, so they should have the opportunity to heal in those spaces as well. When Smart began working in this environment, it resonated with him, and he knew he found a place to stay.
Circle of Care
At the wellness institute, they have also created what they call a Circle of Care, in which a person receiving care, or “a relative” as they are referred to, has the option of working with multiple caregivers trained in different disciplines. In most spaces, people seeking care are forced to choose one type of care because of limitations by insurance, whether that be an occupational therapist, counselor, or trauma specialist. But at HIR Wellness Institute, services are free and insurance companies don’t dictate the care people receive.
Xavier Smart is one piece of that puzzle. He specializes in one-on-one counseling and community healing, going to community spaces to educate groups on mental health and teach stress reduction strategies. But many “relatives” need more help than that. After meeting with one healer, the staff may offer the services of an occupational therapist or an advocate trained in sexual assault.
“The Circle of Care indigenizes the way we provide healing in a way that brings us back to who we are as people. We are a community,” says Smart. Our Western medicine has siloed caregivers, but in Native American culture for example, there are multiple healers available in a tribe to offer different expertise and perspectives. The wellness institute brings that tradition back and offers a communal space for healing.
In next month’s hero article, we will work our way around HIR Wellness Institute’s Circle of Care by listening to the perspective of Val Lopez, a Mexican American occupational therapist who helps people realize the outside factors that impact their mental health.
Read this story on the Shepherd Express, part of the column Hero of the Week.