Our Approach
“Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of differences but by their affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.”
— bell hooks
What we believe in.
We believe in the transformative power of courageous self-reflection and radical collaboration to build our individual and collective capacity for equity work and for challenging systems of oppression.
Click on the dropdown menus to learn more about the values and practices that ground our work.
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Guilt, shame, and fear are poor grounds for transformation. We support participants in facing difficult questions about personal histories, implicit values, and harmful behaviors within a space that prioritizes curiosity and compassion.
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We challenge the hierarchies that underpin injustice, especially those in which we as white people are implicated. Hand-in-hand with challenge, we envision alternative worlds beyond white supremacist culture and beyond patriarchy, grounding our work in intersectional-feminist, life-affirming perspectives.
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Because we create the space while participants do the work, each experience we facilitate is different. We affirm that each person possesses unique wisdom and insight, which in turn gives distinctive shape to what is created and explored together.
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The outcomes of this work are serious–matters of life and death. But the doing of the work does not always need to be somber. Inspired by “pleasure activist” adrienne marie brown and other Black women activists, we bring a spirit of warmth and joy to the gatherings we facilitate in the belief that these are vital characteristics of the Beloved Community for which we are striving.
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The work of inner and communal reckoning does not happen only in our heads. We invite participants to engage in simple but powerful somatic and breath practices that access transformative energies below the cognitive level.
What we uniquely provide:
Equity from the Inside Out: We offer opportunities and practices for guided self-reflection and contemplation and for group dialogue.
Sustained Transformation: Our offerings are not one-time diversity or sensitivity trainings. Rather, even in our free-standing workshops, we set participants up for ongoing transformative work.
Accountability & Support: For those who are interested, we provide ongoing accountability and support through individual coaching or a community of practice.
Our model for inner reckoning.
We have developed a model for inner reckoning to guide ourselves and our collaborators through self-reflective practices that enable us to confront the legacies of racial injustice and to deepen our capacity to navigate intercultural differences so that we can pursue our work with self-compassion and confidence.
This model shapes all of our offerings, serving as a guiding compass as we and our collaborators together explore the various dimensions of who we are and how we reckon with systems of power:
Personality
Values
Community
Identity
Intercultural Competency