About EOTO EOPO
"Each One Teach One, Each One Pull One" (EOTO EOPO) is a communal teaching that comes out of the African-American experience. It hearkens back to the era of chattel slavery when it was illegal for those who were enslaved to learn how to read.
In living practice, this cultural ethos mandated that:
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if you learned how to read, that it was your responsibility to teach someone else;
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and that if you became successful, that it was your responsibility to pull someone else up after you.
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Given that I am seeking a communal intervention to help complete my degree and am also intent on giving back to the community, EOTO EOPO seemed like the perfect name to grace The 2025 EOTO EOPO Doctoral Fellowship GoFundMe Campaign.​
About Me
In the article, “Theorizing as a Liberatory Practice,” bell hooks explains that she "came to theory because [she] was hurting (p.1). Hooks further elaborates that the practice of “theorizing” gave her a “sanctuary,” and helped her to “make sense of what was happening” (hooks, 1991, p. 2).
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When I first read this article, I instantly fell in love with it. As a wounded healer, I felt that I knew exactly what she was talking about because it described how I found my way to the discipline of psychology and to the practice of psychological “theorizing.” Like so many other mental health care practitioners, I found my way to psychology because I was hurting and wanted to understand why I was hurting and what I could do to make it stop.
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In that article, hooks also argued that while it is not easy to “name our pain,” that we need to theorize from that place (hooks, 1991, p. 2). In fact, hooks explained that “when our lived experiences of theorizing is fundamentally linked to processes of self-recovery, [and] of collective liberation,” that there is no gap “between theory and practice” (hooks, 2020, p. 2).
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Since I have encountered so much theory that feels "pie in the sky" and seems to have no real practical application, I was really captivated by these words. So, I have been experimenting with hooks' concept of "liberatory practice" ever since. I would like to pioneer new methods of working with trauma that are relevant and effective, because they have been sourced from lived experience and serve to illuminate the collective experience of the African-American community. I want to work in a way that eliminates the gap between "theory and practice." Ultimately, my goal is to decrease the suffering of the Black community and anyone else who has been adversely impacted by psycho-social trauma. ​​
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To Learn More About My Theoretical Orientation to the Work Click Here
See the Below Resources for More Information: :
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DeGruy, J. (n.d.) Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma: Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHu6rKX4gRc
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hooks, b. (1991). "Theory as Liberatory Practice," in The Yale Journal of Law and Feminism Vol 4(1):1-12.
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King, R. (2018). Mindful of Race: Transforming Race from the Inside Out. Boulder, CO: Sounds True.
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Menakem, R. (2017). My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Path to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Las Vegas, NV: Central Recovery Press