In the context of 2026 Sexual Assault Awareness Month at SFU, the Sexual Violence Support & Prevention Office (SVSPO), the Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group (SFPIRG) and the SFSS Women’s Centre, came together to ideate a zine workshop to explore together, how healing, while deeply personal and unique to each survivor, is also profoundly communal. This is how The Fire that heals us zine became a reality. 

Inspired by what Prentis Hemphill asks in their book What It Takes to Heal and some of the questions posed in the book: “What would it do to movements, to our society and culture, to have the principles of healing at the very center? And what does it do to have healing at the center of every structure and everything we create?” we invited participants to a zine making workshop to express through art and words to reflect on the following prompts:

• How can we hold space for healing—together—for survivors of sexualized violence?
• What ancestral, land-based, or community-centered healing practices have guided you back to yourself?
• What does community care look like when systems fail us?
• What practices help you listen to your body’s needs, memories, and wisdom?
• If your healing journey was a landscape, what would it look like? What colors, shapes, or objects are present?

Each participant did their unique interpretation of the prompts and reflected their answer in the poems, collages, and work of art presented in this zine.