- Conflict Resolution
- Conflict resolution is a process whereby someone who is not connected to a situation assists those people who are more directly connected to that situation come to some sort of resolution.
- When resolving conflict, there might not be a specific readily identifiable harm, but rather a situation that all involved parties are seeking support to resolve.
- Restorative Justice
- Restorative justice is a framework that ethical, legal, educational, community, and other systems are using to address harmful actions with a focus on healing and restoration, rather than on punishment.
- Restorative justice seeks to hold people accountable for their harmful actions and does so while acknowledging the ways that they also have been harmed in the past.
- Sometimes there will be a clear “harmer” and “person who was harmed.” Sometimes, those distinctions will not be clear.
- The aim or goal for us to engage in a restorative justice process is to reach a resolution whereby all involved parties can move on from the initial harm/situation and continue in their own community engagements and healing journeys – perhaps together, perhaps separately.
- Why not Transformative Justice? What’s the difference?
- Transformative justice is similar to restorative justice, but differs in the sense that it aims to abolish and transform punishing systems.
- In my role as a therapist, my capacity to engage with transformative justice is limited as it is these very same systems that regulate my practice.
- Transformative justice organizing requires maintaining ongoing relationships, which is at odds with your hiring and paying me as a professional to help resolve your situation for a limited length of time.
- For more information about restorative justice and transformative justice: link
- My vision for our process:
- Can be leaning more toward conflict resolution or restorative justice, or blur the lines.
- It can be time limited as our focus is on addressing a specific situation and not a long term healing process for the participants OR be connected to an ongoing relational therapy process.
- Everyone involved agrees to be accountable for whatever harm they may have caused.
- Our goal in addressing this situation is not to return the relationship or situation to the way that it was, but to find a new normal that works better for the involved parties.
- There may or may not be a feeling of closure.
- This process is not mandated by the legal system, very unlikely to involve the legal system, and is explicitly not a substitute for legal mediation. Rather, it is something everyone involved is voluntarily choosing as a way to address situations without the intention of using legal apparatuses. It may become necessary to use the legal system anyway depending on the situation, but it is our intention to avoid its use.
- See Collaboration Agreement for more information.
Long term trauma healing at your pace via reprocessing trauma and building relationships.