Amit Singh

Amiteshwar Singh (he/him) is a Punjabi-British activist based in Norwich, focusing on and exploring the intersection of health justice, ecological justice and abolition. His work primarily brings forward a health perspective, working with organisations such as Health for a Green New Deal, People's Health Hearing Collective & the Youth Climate and Health Network. Amit commits himself to work towards a community-led radical, joyful future, where health equity is a reality for all.

Lands

Norwich & Punjab

How do I heal?

Whilst it has been fragmented through the grasp of neo-capital colonialism, healing is a collective process. I cannot describe how I alone heal, because I cannot heal alone. I will describe what healing looks like to me through the lens with which I perceive the collective.

Healing lives through the beating heart of solidarity.

I realise it through the process of healing others, and being healed by others. Sharing emotional labour, holding safe spaces and carrying each other's suffering within our own beings through deep listening and embodying emotions. This isn’t limited to pain, instead it is nourished through joy, delight and laughter. Healing is grown through collective struggle and joy alike

Healing is a process that can come to fruition only in a community which creates safety - a community that shields me, as I shield it. This community cannot be limited to humans, but encompasses all ecology - be it the air that provides for me, or the wilderness for which I provide. Within this, healing exists on the understanding that I am a part of something bigger than myself, whilst being consciously present in the fact that my value is not reduced in importance from being a part of this system. Without me, it cannot exist - without all of us, it cannot exist. This community creates a space where my imagination and magicalisation, an act of actualising concepts deemed unreachable, is not restricted. Instead it is nurtured to flourish and breathe freely. 

Healing is resting. Although a vital part of it, this is not limited to sitting still and slowing down the process of working - it is the holistic act of resisting toxic productivity. This can be realised through endless forms, such as sketching over essays, or vigorously exercising in your bedroom. Regardless of the form it takes, it must be a process that is rooted in defiance of neo-colonial capitalism in all its senses. 

I realise healing through crying in our suffering, and suspiring in our serenity. Healing relies on freedom of being. Healing is expressed in my surroundings through strokes of art encapsulating me and the silhouettes of my clothes. I feel it through the textures I wear to the sounds I hear.  Healing feels like drifting away to song one night, and dancing away to it another. Moving in unison, whilst independent of, a crowded room with a shared care for sound, I feel healing enter my body through sound and movement alike.

Healing must be actualised on levels including, and beyond the individual. It is rooted within and catalysed by the fruition of collectivity. The community and cultures surrounding us must create a space for regeneration, rejuvenation and health justice. We heal, when our surroundings heal, and they heal when we heal - we must, therefore, heal together.