Motor City Mobile Wellness

History

In June 2020 Rachel and Yoda.Kai lost their six month old daughter, Amaru. After calling an ambulance for help, instead of being met with empathy and gentle care, Rachel was greeted by multiple police officers who arrived at her door with the EMT’s. They declared her home “a crime scene,” detained, and interrogated the family until abuse was ruled out. Directly following this traumatic experience, her Indigenous neighbors lit a funeral fire in her backyard in Southwest Detroit. Her family was assisted and held by the fire keepers, community healers, therapists, death doulas, Reiki practitioners, tarot readers, musicians, herbalists, and dear friends who streamed in and out of the home funeral during the following four days. It was at this sacred funeral fire where the idea of a collaborative mobile healing unit that can respond to crisis, outside of law enforcement, was born. Amaru’s family experienced first hand how compassionate community care and expertise offer a safer alternative in de-escalating already tense situations.

Mission

Motor City Mobile Wellness offers a variety of holistic wellness services and resources to Detroiters. Our cooperative of healing practitioners operates outside of the medical industrial complex to address the spectrum of wellness needs of our communities.

Vision

Motor City Mobile Wellness is creating an alternative network of care in Detroit, providing individual and community healing support that combines compassion and expertise for safer responses apart from the carceral system.

Values

Motor City Mobile Wellness is a cooperative that believes Detroiters deserve access to safe, person and community centered wellness services that honor our dignity. We are committed to first listening to the expressed needs of communities, and then building networks of diverse care that allows healing within community. Our practitioners operate from a *social justice and *abolitionist lens that increases access to holistic wellness practices and resources that affirm the whole person and/or community.

How You Can Help

Your participation and donation directly impacts the success of the Motor City Mobile Wellness project. We thank you for your generosity and for investing in Detroiters’ wellness.

*social justice: "both a process and a goal. The goal of social justice is full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs. Social justice includes a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are psychologically and physically safe and secure.” (Bell, 2013, p. 21) Readings for diversity and social justice. New York: Routledge.

*abolitionist: The prison abolition movement is a network of groups and activists that seek to reduce or eliminate prisons and the prison system, and replace them with systems of rehabilitation that do not place a focus on punishment and government institutionalization.