Refuge Architecture: Building Sanctuary in a Burning System

Purists often demand bonfires.

"Let the clinic collapse!" But my people are still inside - so I reinforce crumbling walls with one hand while drafting new blueprints with the other. Call it incrementalism; I call it sanctuary: exits unlocked, no forced healing, and survival honored as expertise.

The System You Loathe Still Holds Up My Clients

Who benefits when ideological purity abandons marginalized folks?

The DSM is compromised scaffolding. Demolishing it crushes those leaning on it.

This isn’t compliance. It’s tactical use of corrupt infrastructure - redirecting its resources toward sanctuary.

The Ethics of Sheltering in Place

I refuse to sacrifice real people for abstract victories.

When systems reward performative radicalism, the most vulnerable are the first to burn. Theories that ignore material urgency become complicity tools. Keeping trauma survivors housed is resistance - even if it doesn’t pass a purity test. We must survive to revolt.

To people who worry about incremental measures: one aspect of privilege is theorizing revolution from a safe distance. The revolution needs survivors.

Parallel Sanctuaries Rising

My framework, Contextual Systems Therapy (book forthcoming: The Contextual Systems Therapy Field Guide) builds refuge infrastructure:

• Therapy as mutual aid hub

• Joy as defiance (when a client laughs at absurd insurance paperwork instead of internalizing shame - that’s dismantling neuronormativity)

• Grounding as inventive play, not compliance

No grandstanding. No martyrdom. Just brick-by-brick work while old systems cannibalize themselves.

Keep building. Your sanctuary is the revolution.