What is ReClaiming?
A new concept of “ReClaiming” through therapy refers to the core element and principle of professional psychological support received and given for therapists and citizens in Ukraine to navigate through this difficult time. ReClaiming Therapy encompasses the process of restoring contact with one's strength.
The Hero's Journey
ReClaiming The Hero's Journey is the collective efforts of current and trained Ukrainian professionals and therapists to create a 20 module course for groups. Each module will address the unique and specific skills expected from soldiers on their return to a “new normal” in their personal lives.
The path-breaking training will take place in a small, quiet town of Panchgani nestled in the valleys of the Sahyadri Range about 200 kms from Mumbai.
Learn more about the training here - The Hero's Journey.
Saturday Support Group
In the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this group started as a way to support the civilians. The group has given a safe space for the people to navigate through the distress.
Today, the group still meets. The agenda is set by someone sharing their process and the group supporting the individual and eventually the group to ReClaim their lost voices.
To participate in these meetings, write to Alan at admin@alanrichardson.net
How did it begin?
This project started three weeks into the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The team sent out an invitation to Ukrainian civilians to participate in an online 2-hour meeting. For the first time in history civilian populations remained connected via communication satellites. This allowed a fractured society to still meet and discuss the huge levels of distress that were impacting each individual.
The first meeting had about 30 people and over time, these numbers increased. In the early days many were joining the meetings huddled in subways, bomb shelters and corridors for safety and protection. People lived with the constant impacts of civilian death on the streets, building damage, missile and bombs in the skies, panicked defense systems and the soul wrenching loss and destruction of a way of life.
Over time the group included people fleeing into Europe and therapists continuing to support their clients through distant sessions. Defense and survival became important for all people. The groups focused on the shared impacts as the basis for creating therapy interventions with each other. One person's therapy became a shared, vicarious therapy for everyone. Everyone needed to adjust to explosions, to air-sirens, to death, to vulnerability, to emotional overwhelm, homelessness through the many stages of the invasion.
Evaluations of this weekly group highlighted a magical mix of information that the groups are very useful in reclaiming and growing their Self and transforming distress into challenges and with new skills and capacities.
Over the months, psychological adjustments means that the focus of the groups changed from survival to anger, then to a fierce resolve to fight for their nation and their personal well-being. Together, we learned to reclaim an inner freedom as the quest for the outer freedom continued. This was the birth of the project - to reclaim what was lost for ourselves and to help individuals and clients reclaim parts of themselves to weave the fabric that now holds their future.
ReClaiming Mother Ukraine
Mother Ukraine statue in Kyiv
The legwork for creating the ReClaiming website started many months ago. In one of the meetings, the team discussed the logo of the website - the logo with the Motherland monument statue in Kyiv. In the weeks that followed, Ukraine reclaimed the Mother Ukraine statue by changing the Soviet emblem to the Ukrainian coat of arms. This reclaiming is quite symbolic of the woman changing from a yearning woman to a woman standing valiantly standing to protect her land.
This, here is the mother who inspires Ukrainians to create their impact on the world map. The mother who yearns to become a powerful symbol of nations independence, to reclaim their physical and psychological well-being from the impact of the invasion. She is the mother of the new era of warriors.