July 28, 2020
Some of you may be wondering where we’ve been on social media the last 6 weeks?!? While our social media voice has been silent as of late, our actions have taken Opal’s anti-oppression work to new levels. As white business leaders, Julie, Lexi and Kara have been applying our learning and personal racial identity work from the last few years into new stages of awareness, analysis, accountability and action within Opal’s walls. (Barbara Love’s Liberatory Consciousness Model (www.barbarajlove.com).
We have been humbled and changed by our work with Aiko Bethea, Esq., PCC of RARE Coaching and Consulting, as well as being held accountable by our strong and vulnerable Opal community.
We are not settling with the status quo of higher level of care eating disorder treatment any longer!! We are working to center anti-oppression work throughout Opal’s treatment which is changing the way we are framing and talking about eating disorders in all aspects of treatment. To name a few of the changes, we are having anti-oppression conversations in group therapy, examining RO DBT and Health at Every Size from an anti-oppression lens, teaching our clients through a Systems of Oppression Didactic group, working with our staff in interrupting microaggressions, and recruiting staff with a variety of lived experiences. We hope that having more positions of power held by individuals with marginalized identities at Opal will lead to a transformational change in how we are doing treatment and shift our work culture to be a more equitable space for all staff. We are committed and in for the long haul.
Stay tuned to an upcoming episode of The Appetite where we share more about where we have been and where we are now.
