The problematic politics of 'healed people heal people'
What does it mean to be a 'healed' individual in an era of licensed bigotry against those the majority considers unhealed?
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Slogans fuel movements. Consider "Nothing about us without us". First used in the South African disability rights movement in the 1990s, these five t-shirt-worthy words continue to galvanise marginalised communities' fight for rights and dignity. I don't remember when I first heard the slogan, but I remember feeling instantly electrified by it.
One more slogan that I've long held in my head is "Healed people heal people". It's a corollary to "hurt people hurt people", another adage that also rose to prominence in the 1990s.
The earliest recorded instance of someone saying “hurt people hurt people” is in a 1959 edition of a local Texas newspaper, which attributes the line to one Charles Eads, probably an educationist. But it was in the 90s that it became a staple of self-help literature. For instance, in 1993, family therapist and Christian self-help writer Sandra D Wilson wrote a book titled Hurt People Hurt People.
"Do you know someone, perhaps even a Christian, who seems impossible to get along with?" reads the book's blurb. "From the people in the pews to the members of our families, we are surrounded by people who hurt other people. And they do so, the author tells us, because of the seemingly inescapable pain in their own lives."
