Walking with Difficulty: Practical Skills for Challenging Times

Covid 19 has highlighted significant injustices that disproportionally impact Filipinos and other Black and Brown poeple around the world. In order to strategically address this imbalance, we must apply an exceptional ethic of love and care to ourselves and, in turn, our kapwa. As we learn to tend ourselves, we become more able to craft the world in which we wish to live and design communities that we can rely on. This workshop offers practical skills for strengthening our ability to provide impeccable love and care to ourselves and therefore our communities. Add these skills to your existing care practices; take a moment to ground in your nourishment; or investigate if these practices could work for you.

About Jo La Torre

Joanna La Torre, MSW, ASW, a cis-gender, queer, multi-ethnic Filipina, currently practices medical social work in Ohlone territory (Oakland, California). Joanna specializes in child and family practice and has focused on work with teens and adolescents for over 20 years. As a scholar, Jo has written about the movement of decolonizing and re-/indigenizing Filipinos in diaspora, LGBTQ+ affirmative social work practice, and social work’s responsibility to the #blacklivesmatter movement. Her ongoing research focuses on framing mental / health disparities of diasporic Filipinos within emerging historical trauma and colonial mentality lenses and brings focus to the movement of Filipinos decolonizing and re-/indigenizing. Joanna currently serves the leadership core of the Center for Babaylan Studies (CfBS), the seminal organization of the Filipino decolonizing movement. Joanna, has been transformed, inspired, and healed through attending CfBS events. Joanna loves the mixture of scholars, artists, leaders, culture bearers, seekers, community-makers, dreamers, and many more that she has encountered at CfBS. Additional interests include qualitative and mixed methods, community-based research, LGBTQ+ affirmative practice, climate crisis and environmental racism, restorative justice, disproportionate minority contact / confinement, and embodied practices. 

Instagram: @marunggay_medicine

Email: jlatorre@babaylan.net