Currently, we offer DualColor Healing Circles in Green/Purple: for those who have been harmed sexually as a young person, and have caused sexual harm to another. In the future, we may add more DualColor Healing Circles.
It is difficult to navigate the healing path when having the experiences of being harmed and harming others.
There is a unique experience for those who were harmed as a young person, and from that experience, find they also harmed others. The participants who identify as Green and Purple often do not feel entirely safe in either color. For those participants, we offer this DualColor circle.
These are special circles for those who have the personal experiences of two colors. While many people have the experience of more than one color, they usually choose to do one color at a time. They attend the color that resonates most with them at the time.
Sometimes, participants find they struggle to feel comfortable in a single color circle when they have another experience that interferes with focusing on that one color. For example, when someone has both been sexually harmed as a child, and then harmed another sexually (which is not uncommon) it may be difficult to feel comfortable in either circle. The intersectionality of the two experiences can be hard to pull apart.
In order to heal from being harmed, we must feel the impact it had on our lives over time, and get angry. In order to heal from having caused sexual harm, we must feel the impact we had on others, and step into genuine remorse. But to do these two things simultaneously, can be difficult. When we start to feel angry, we undermine it with guilt. When we start to remorse, we move away from the intensity of it with explanations.
This circle holds the complexity of this unique experience so one might travel both paths of healing from harm.
Learn more about the structure and process of Healing Circles.
Our program aims to take our participants, approximately 300 per year, and give them the individual healing, the collective understanding and the prevention education to stop child sexual abuse before it begins.