UOG Horizons: Knowledge for Life - Resisting the rip current: Healing through connection
UOG Horizons: Knowledge for Life - Resisting the rip current: Healing through connection
UOG Horizons: Knowledge for Life - Resisting the rip current: Healing through connection
3/13/2026
For a long time, I thought of healing as a place - somewhere you arrive once life’s hardest storms have passed. I believed that if I could just get through the challenges, relief would be waiting on the other side, clear and certain. Over time, I’ve come to understand healing differently. It isn’t a finish line. It’s something we live, return to and practice - especially in moments when life feels most uncertain.
This understanding shapes how I view social work and why the theme of the upcoming National Association of Social Workers Guam annual conference, Resisting the Rip Current: Culturally Grounded Social Work for Healing, Justice, and Wellness in the Pacific, feels especially timely for our island communities. Across Guam and the broader Pacific, we are navigating layered social, historical and systemic challenges that call for responses grounded not only in evidence but also in relationship, culture and care.