Found Inspiration – June Jordan

Found Inspiration is a series inspired by a prompt at the start of our meetings where we invite therapists to share an unconventional not explicitly therapy-related influence on their clinical practice. We’ve found that when your experiences aren’t reflected in academic settings and literature, and when you expand your understanding of mental health care beyond a medical model to one of healing, meaning-making and connection, you have to build your own canon.

June Jordan, who Toni Morrison described as someone who “defied all pigeonholes. Poet, essayist, journalist, dramatist, academic, cultural and political activist – she was all these things, by turn and simultaneously, but above all, she was an inspirational teacher, through words and actions, and a supremely principled person.”

Themes of truth and freedom, ever-present in Jordan’s work, deeply resonate with our approach to psychotherapy where uncovering and reflecting on what brought us to where we are, holding multiple truths and revising stories that have been written for us or by us are all part of the process of freeing ourselves.

Therapy, of course, isn’t the only path to deeper self-love and liberation. In the spirit of June Jordan, we embrace art and creative expression as a tool for exploration and healing beyond traditional dialogue.

In her potent commitment to leading a life of radical self-love, truth-telling and politics through an intersectional lens, June Jordan is a guiding light for thinking about what is most important to us, how we show up for ourselves and how we show up for community.