A Reflection from VOX Mental Health

At VOX Mental Health, we mark Juneteenth with reverence— a moment for remembering, grieving, and staying grounded in the ongoing work of justice and collective care.

On June 19, 1865, Black people in Galveston, Texas were told they were free—two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. That delay isn’t a historical footnote. It is the story. Juneteenth reminds us that freedom has always been delayed, resisted, and incomplete. And for many, it still is.

Though Juneteenth is rooted in American history, it holds deep relevance in Canada. We often pride ourselves on being “better,” but the truth is: enslavement existed here. So did segregation. So does systemic anti-Blackness—in education, policing, health care, child welfare, and yes, in mental health systems.

What does Juneteenth mean to us at VOX?

It means acknowledging that therapy hasn’t always been safe for Black clients. In many cases, it’s been a space of surveillance, silencing, and pathologizing survival.

It means recognizing that most of us were trained in clinical models built on white, Western, colonial frameworks—ones that prioritize detachment over community, define health through whiteness, and erase cultural or ancestral ways of healing.

It means understanding that Black pain isn’t only historical—it’s neurological, generational, and somatic. The trauma of slavery, systemic violence, and exclusion lives in the nervous system. It shows up as hypervigilance, exhaustion, numbness, rage, and grief that may have no words—but lives in the body.

And it means choosing not to turn Juneteenth into a hashtag or a marketing moment. Instead, we use it as an invitation to listen more closely, act more intentionally, and centre the experiences of Black clients, clinicians, and communities.

What we’re working toward at VOX:

• Challenging colonial models of care that place the therapist as expert
• Unlearning white clinical norms that dismiss or minimize the impact of racism, power, and systems
• Making space for Black grief, joy, and truth—not just in June or February, but in every session, every policy, every intake
• Refusing to be “neutral” in the face of injustice—because neutrality too often becomes complicity

We also name that members of our team come from identities that have caused harm—historically and in the present. We hold that with responsibility, and commit to listening, deferring, and learning from Black-led voices and communities, when we are invited to do so.

Juneteenth isn’t just about what happened in 1865.
It’s about what continues.
It’s about what still needs to change.
It’s about how we show up—today and every day—for collective liberation and healing.

We are an anti-racist and anti-oppressive team of registered social workers.

We believe black lives matter.