Editorial for Special Issue

COVID-19 has revealed underlying social inequities that disproportionately impact Black communities. This commentary offers three different reflections by creative arts therapists on this critical moment of widespread protest, organizing and demands for justice led by Black activists worldwide. 

At the time of this writing, the world is in the throes of a global pandemic. COVID-19 has reached every corner of the world. The impact has been devastating across individual and collective contexts. This autoethnographic poessay is a creative exploration of a Black woman’s experience(s) of living in and through COVID-19 and enduring racial oppression. It weaves between time, space and place recognizing the interconnectedness of the personal, professional, and social-cultural. This piece intentionally amplifies, and grapples with, emergent and conflicting tensions without seeking to resolve them.

This article explores the need for a Relational-Roles Assessment Protocol that can be applied to clinical practice. Relationship is embedded in the work of therapy and this article proposes a self-assessment protocol that might be used in clinical practice and/or clinical supervision. The purpose of this protocol is to support ethical practice through deepening self and relational understanding within the therapeutic process.