MEET CAROLYN COLLADO
Hi, my name is Carolyn (they/them)!
I am an Afro-Taino, queer, non-binary, neurodivergent human in recovery from substance use issues. I grew up in a predominantly white middle class neighborhood in the most diverse urban area in the world of Queens, NY, USA. I am the child of immigrants raised in poverty in the Dominican Republic, or the Kiskeya as the Tainos knew it. We are from an island nation that has been long under the spell of Spanish colonization; it is the ground zero of colonization in the Western Hemisphere, leading Dominicans collectively to deny our Black and Indigenous roots and perpetuate trauma among ourselves and our island neighbors in Haiti, a country with such deep pride in its Black roots and the first country of enslaved African people to overthrow their in the Western Hemisphere colonizers. I have both benefited from and survived some of the most elite, imperialist institutions in the country and the world, graduating from Yale University with a degree in sociology and working at a Big Four firm consulting for the federal government. My experience has long been defined by self-suppression and survival, all while studying the dynamics produced of colonization, white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, and patriarchy on a systemic, interpersonal, and individual level.
My experience has disillusioned me with the “American Dream”, the idea that being here, working hard enough, being smart enough, aligning with whiteness and patriarchy enough, will help lead to my liberation. That’s a fallacy. My experience has also shown me that through colonization, imperialism, and globalization, the poison of these forms of oppression are widespread. I know institutions existing under capitalism will not help us. I know that as long as we operate in ways that perpetuate systemic oppression, none of us will be free. As long as we extract and hoard resources, none of us will be free I know that we are all living with the deep intergenerational traumas of the history of humanity, and it’s making it hard for us to exist on this planet, it’s making us physically, emotionally, and spiritually sick and ruining our beloved planet, our home. I know that capitalism wants to keep us in this trauma, this pain, this need for consumption for glimpses of “relief” at the expense of ourselves, each other, and the planet, until we eviscerate everything.
Learn more about my story on the Sober Curious podcast.
Recovery from a decolonized, anti-oppression lens pointed me towards the gate of freedom for me, my lineage, and my community, and I believe it can do so for the world.
My experiences make me uniquely qualified to work in the collective in a way that is rooted in my African and Taino lineages, a way will usher in the remembering of the Indigenous ways, being conscious of the lessons learned under the weight of colonization, in order to vision and actualize a healthy, loving, liberated collective. With my intersectional identities and experiences, I am able to move across communities, across different revolutionary ways of being and seeing that are needed for the freedom we are bringing in.
What will I do in Recovery for the Revolution?
I serve the collective by reframing our narratives around addiction and recovery through a trauma-informed, anti-oppression lens and offering decolonized approaches to treat the narrative we have learned as a result of history of separation we have from ourselves, from each other, from the divine, from the ancestors, from our planet, from the multiverse. We are all connected, we have forgotten all of the ways in which that manifests, and this work centers on that principle as being integral to recovery and collective liberation.
In this work I am:
Communicating about personal, spiritual, and societal, systemic change in recovery.
Convening and collaborating with others in recovery and in spiritual, mental/health/wellness, pleasure, and anti-capitalist communities who are committed to having trauma-informed, anti-oppressive and decolonized, intersectional approaches in order to bring about new recovery modalities, literature, and support structures that center people at the intersections of queer, trans/gender-non-conforming, intersex, femme, disabled, Black, Indigenous, people of color identities
Mobilizing people in recovery to commit to decolonizing and/or unsettling as a necessary component of ending the cycle of addiction
Aiding in the social shift towards transformative justice and mutual aid solutions for the collective to move away from punitive justice and capitalism.