Join me every other week for bite-sized insights on healing, growth, cultural responsiveness, and decolonial practice.
Mentorship without sponsorship can leave skilled and deserving minoritised employees stuck proving themselves without gaining access to opportunities. Sponsorship can open doors, but when it is primarily offered by people already in positions of dominance, it can reproduce the very hierarchies that the workplace claims to challenge. True equity happens at the intersection of mentorship, sponsorship, and structural change. It’s not enough to guide and prepare workers ,we must also redistribute power, confront bias, and create opportunities that don’t depend on permission from those who historically controlled access. Mentorship prepares you. Sponsorship positions you. Equity demands we shift who controls the door
Ever wondered if the invisible labour we carry in professional spaces gets recognised in supervision?
Code switching Self editing This is labour
Hiring isn’t neutral. Names, accents, confidence all signal who belongs. I only returned to my full name, Simangaliso, when I could finally do so safely.
time for us to talk about the importance of a decolonial lens . Without a decolonial lens, cultural responsiveness can become polish not repair. Practice may feel more inclusive while the structure stays the same. Refinement builds trust. Redesign builds accountability. We need both ,so systems don’t just welcome people, but evolve with them.
First contact is relational . Let’s talk about our intake processes and the “other “ category that we see on our intake forms instead of self description options. See you next week .
Permission to therapy in language or rather structural permission to therapy in language :Lessons from a multilingual therapist . My social work and counselling training were both in Australia . I have mainly provided therapy in English even for clients from Zimbabwe 🇿🇼. It’s not until I started my own practice and mainly last year that I was able to offer clients the choice of therapy in language . I speak multiple languages but offered therapy in isiNdebele , Shona and English . I was stretched , I had a lot to unlearn . Here is what I observed
True trauma-informed work must centre lived experience, challenge power, and honour culture
