Radical Social Work
Leading with Love. Compassion in action.
Radical Social Work is “Ubuntu: I am because we are.”
Radical Social Work is reclaiming indigenous wisdom and ecospirituality as public health and community well-being.
Photograph by Lauren Weissler
Shelita Birchett Benash, MSW
Founder/CEO, Loving Kindness LLC
"Radical Social Work" is a practice that prioritizes love, compassion, and action as a way to achieve health justice. This approach is built on values like cultural humility, interconnectedness, democracy, and empowerment. In my own journey towards health and wellness, I have drawn on my professional arts background that includes community programming through theatre arts, as well as my community service experiences as a family caregiver, elder volunteer, former certified hospice volunteer, and end-of-life doula. Through my work in crisis intervention and as a frontline clinical and public health social worker during the COVID-19 pandemic, I have witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of structural and systemic health disparities and toxic stress on vulnerable and marginalized communities. This experience has convinced me of the need for culturally adapted mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), which can help us all achieve greater health and wellness. MBSR pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn has described this as a pivotal moment for our species to mobilize the liberating power of mindfulness and its intrinsic values to improve the health and wellbeing of everyone.
In the coming weeks, as part of my Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) teacher training certificate pathway at Brown University and teacher certification at Oxford Mindfulness Foundation (OMF), I am offering pay-what-you-can beginners mindfulness classes for the historically underserved. I am excited about this opportunity to share what I have learned from receiving gold-standard evidence-based mindfulness education and training with communities who experience access barriers. Courses coming soon.
“I rise to that which I am called to do, have agreed to do. I sit upon the earth, among trees, breath rising and falling like those who have come before me. I plant my feet in the dirt and remember how to live without feeling terrified. I let ancestors take me up with them on horses and ride bareback to ceremony learning not to be an alien in a place I came from but blend back into the dirt, fiercely and fearlessly knowing that which brought me here will take me home.”
— Zenju Earthlyn Manuel
