In the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, workers are responding to suffering, hardship and oppression in situations we couldn’t have imagined months ago. The pandemic has disrupted much of our lives and ways of working bringing disconnection and fear. The ongoing  Opioid Catastrophe has killed more people in BC than the pandemic, and all of this is happening on land soaked in the blood of unreconciled genocide of Indigenous people. Resisting Burnout in this moment means we need to go deeper than the “self-care” we are normally prescribed and look at Community Collective Care and our Mental Wellness, considering cultural, spiritual, relational and community-based ways to collectively support ourselves and our communities. The ambient/ever-present trauma we are swimming in can be crazy-making, and we resist with collective care as a sanity-making project. 

Vikki Reynolds PhD RCC is an activist/therapist from Vancouver, Canada, who works to bridge the worlds of social justice activism and therapy. Vikki is a white settler of Irish, Newfoundland and English folks, and a heterosexual woman with cisgender privilege. Her experience includes supervision and therapy with peers, activists, and other workers responding to the opioid epidemic/poisonings, torture and political violence, sexualized violence, mental health and substance misuse, homelessness and legislated poverty and working alongside gender and sexually diverse communities. Vikki is an Adjunct Professor and has written, keynoted and presented internationally on the subjects of ‘Witnessing Resistance’ to oppression/trauma, ally work, resisting ‘burnout’ with justice-doing, a supervision of solidarity, ethics, and innovative group work. Vikki’s articles and keynotes are available free on her website: www.vikkireynolds.ca