The Importance of Skilled Accompaniment through the Healing Journey

The word accompaniment traces back to the French accompagnement, which evolved from accompagner, meaning "to go with" or “to accompany.” Its Latin root “companio” combines “com” (together) with “panis” (bread), originally referring to sharing bread with another—a metaphor for companionship. In Spanish, my mother tongue, the word is acompañamiento.

From 2009-2019 I worked side by side with individuals struggling primarily with complex trauma, social isolation, poverty, addiciton and mental health deterioration among many other challenges.

For those 10 years, the primary focus of my work was to provide company, to be an acompañante, through their journeys... and while walking side by side with them to identify small opportunities and interests to connect them with meaningful resources and services to them. I provided accompaniment to people in detention centres, first housing projects, treatment centres, schools, back alleys, community gardens, phone booths, shelters, healing lodges, psychiatric wards, mountain hiking, NA & AA meetings, friendship centres, drug shacks, basketball courts, police cars, community kitchens, bus rides, library computers, supervised child-parent visitations, memorials, nature camping retreats, abortion clinics, Tim Hortons, welfare offices, empty buildings, case conferences, colleges, emergency rooms, canoe trips, tent cities, city parks, music rooms, train tracks, funerals, trials, cheap restaurants, probation offices, ice-cream shops, cancer units, swimming pools, safe houses, community BBQs, protests, recreation centres, over-crowded homes and counseling rooms... among many other places... and most often we traveled in between these places together, transitioning together from place carrying an intention and a goal with a story.

Looking back... my work really was to be present, supportive and loving. During those 10 plus years I worked primarily with two communities doing very similar iterations of the same accompaniment foundation, working through 8 different organizations and being involved in over 20 different programs and projects. I owe the value of my work to the people that welcomed me to accompany them during that time. They were my greatest teachers for building this practice.

No one should go through so much nervous system dys-regulation and confusion on their own. It is often a lonely road for those of us who carry complex trauma. This is our collective journey, offering to accompany others through what I once consider almost impossible to overcome... But it is possible. It requires committed intentional work; it may take time (it took me 13 years and the work still continues) but the journey is not so hard when we have proper, skilled, loving accompaniment.

Offering this work supports my gratitude for what has been given to me by all the teachers, friends and supports that have accompanied me in this journey. I had to reconcile that the offering of this practice and this work are essential for me to continue growing. This is different to therapy in the sense that, there is an acknowledged reciprocity in this accompaniment. We will need each other to continue growing collectively. We are not meant to do this alone. In this process together, I learn from you how to better integrate our mutual accompaniment into this body of work, so I can to continue inspiring the journey ahead. In return, you learn from a 15 year catalogue of knowledge, skills, practices and experiences all integrated into my work, thanks to all those whom I accompanied in the mental health field plus all those who provided me with loving company through the journey. We are together here with all those whose company we have cherished.

I am in total admiration of the people in my life who can regulate innately and naturally having access to well toned ventral-vagal parasympathetic equipment. I rejoice with gratitude when I meet healthy parents nurturing healthy nervous systems in their children. This world needs more healthy well regulated nervous systems with us, within us, so we can find a gentler, slower and more peaceful flow collectively through the dance of life.

May we continue being inspired by each other, every step of the way.

Sincerely & with Love,

R. Alejandro C. Zuluaga