If you would prefer to listen to a recording of this, you can view and listen to this 33 minute share on You Tube.
I am sitting in deep integration from the Fall Equinox/Eclipse season in a purging of patterns in ways I have shown up. Collapse around us, collapse within and I hold myself accountable for the ways I have projected my pain and trauma onto other people that caused harm. I believe a part of being a micro in the macro – a fractal in the whole of our shared consciousness – is to take responsibility for the ways I perpetuate dominance culture and release them so I can more authentically be in the vibe of building towards possibility.
Autumn’s turn of the wheel of the year is a time that accentuates a balance of light and dark, shine and shadow, and deep cauldrons of release to create the space for the world we are turning into, and how we relate to each other. The consciousness evolution I have been talking about since I first began offering events with EmpowR Transformation is here in full force. I feel like I’ve transformed, transmuted, and transmitted more in this past year than in whole decades combined. On the cusp of 50, deep in my change into elder hood, I am shedding, sloughing, and flowing at a pace I struggle to find the words for while also recognizing the time I have been preparing lifetimes for is here. I’m so curious about what other people are moving through in this energetic upgrade and how you are making meaning of the consciousness shifts in this mind blowing, heart wrenching, gut clenching, and wildly expansive time of collapse? There is so much more I can say, yet my intention in sharing this communication is to be witnessed in my accountability and dissolvement of what no longer works so my energy can be focused on collective movement building.
Thank you. Thank you for any and all of the ways any of you create building blocks for a more just and liberated world. I am so deeply grateful for weaving with folks working towards collective liberation in a system designed to keep this work silent. I am appreciative of anyone who has participated in any parts of EmpowR’s courageous and vulnerable attempts at building community, facing white supremacy, navigating discomfort, showing up when it is hard, participating in our programs, tending to the land at Grandmother Cherry Sanctuary, and learning to be in kinship in a social construct designed with venom and managed with violence to keep us separate. Thank you for being teachers, students, unlearners, relearners, collaborators, confidants, and friends. Thank you for trying, practicing, and playing with possibility, imagination, and magic. Thank you for being here right now – listening, witnessing, and hearing. I appreciate you and all of the ways your gifts ripple into the world, and any opportunities I have had for your gifts to ripple into my life and weave in the messy, imperfect, experimental, journey of empowering the transformation of a culture where we can all belong in our power and in song.
“sweet trees i surrender
i surrender my ego to you
sweet trees i surrender
may my heart be true
in a Maple grove
where the sweet sap flows
a family and community
the cycle of life
intertwined
cocreating unity”
Will you share a breath with me?
A double sipper?
Now into the back of our hearts too?
The collective liberation dream is one where no one is free until we are all free (Emma Lazarus 1883, Martin Luther King Jr. 1963, Maya Angelou 1969). I speak the collective liberation language often and this past year I heard other white folks using it in a way that centered their struggle without seeing their struggle as interdependent with people who have been more historically excluded from the systems of accessibility and opportunity. I realized that I too have centered myself and my needs in this framework. When I do, my energy veers into victim consciousness, which my intellectual brain knows is a place of scarcity and that trying to be resourced from that place keeps me in a cycle of perpetuating my own trauma. My heart, spirit and soul knows another place, one where magic is so very real and the flow of possibility is abundant. My quest to find and build community to be in that place together has been unwavering, believing deeply that
“one of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone.” Bell Hooks
…and in that very quest, lurks my every present shadow, dancing with me and everyone I engage with – after all I am a Water and Air witch and reflections and communications are a gift and a weapon, a power I am on a long arc to hone. Over the years this shadow dance has deeply impacted how I show up and hold community. In the soil of uprooting the collective shadow of white supremacy, I call myself into accountability for how patterns of white supremacy show up in my behaviors and relationships and how they reflect pain that surrounds us.
I own that my delivery of the shared vision of EmpowR Transformation, at times fell into the realm of there being “one right way.” There are times when I spoke with minimal consideration of the impact my words have on others. If my words have harmed you, I apologize. I am aware and am continuously working on awareness of my impact and how to create new patterns that can reduce harm.
I struggle with an elusive form of perfectionism where people who are in alignment with me on an approach or idea are “right” and those who are not are “wrong.” This is also a slippery tread into being in a binary of right and wrong that centers the very kind of righteousness that has led to such a violent backlash in this country. I’m grappling with the need to shift away from “identify politics” at this time and it’s very, very uncomfortable as I have a lot of perceptions about “unity consciousness” that are judgmental. Yet shared consciousness is where energy is flowing. Resisting flow and being stuck in an outdated paradigm halts possibility and imagination. I also believe that the human species is dividing into two – those who are becoming machines, devoid of empathy and controlled by propaganda, artificial intelligence, and their own fear and those who are trying to heal, care and be in kinship with each other and the Earth, and evolve into the frequency of love. I wish there wasn’t a binary, however this is what has been manufactured by the greed of angry white men. It is the reflection of that energy of dominance within myself I am releasing.
My best attempts at holding community have been plagued with taking on risk and expecting reward. My visions are too expansive for me to hold, cast, create, and build on my own and this creates a pattern loop of envy of those who have the resources, loved ones, and community to build their visions. Simultaneously I have had expectations of people who come into my life to show up in the ways that I need, at times with lack of consideration for their own needs. I want to own that I can lack empathy and consideration of others, especially when there is an opportunity to pursue my own interests or needs, and that is a shadow I am actively working to transform. I believe this is a root of conflict for so many people as we look at the shadow of individualism all around us and what we need to collectively shift in order to take care of each other and not just ourselves.
These are aspects of white supremacy culture – one right way, binary of right and wrong, perfectionism, expectations, and judgements – that are my shadow work. When faced with other people’s shadows of white supremacy culture, my own often flare up. I get triggered when the fear of conflict or people’s emphasis on their right to comfort keep them from showing up or speaking up. One of the ways I often see this taking shape in relationships and communities are people using boundaries to avoid courageous conversations. And I also realize I have my own edge in how much energy I can put into relationships that are not based on shared values. Stretching that edge and building capacity for discomfort while having boundaries at the same time is something I actively work on. I also really struggle when different expressions of fragility (especially crying, tuning out when a conversation gets difficult, disassociating, ghosting) and all the ways silence keeps people from saying what needs to be said because of how fear for one’s self minimizes care for someone else. With so much to fear right now this is also an edge I am walking – what I can put energy towards, what I cannot; when I need to lean in more, or pivot. I’ve done a lot of projecting over the years in blog writing and on social media in these areas which has alienated people from the beautiful and brilliant aspects of my work.
I own it. I am sorry. I forgive myself. I forgive you. I love you. Thank you for forgiving me. Thank you for seeing me as human. Thank you for being human. We are such messy, hurt, and also adaptable beings.
I offer credit to the ho’oponopono forgiveness prayer of indigenous Hawaiian culture.
Will you share a breath with me?
Both my trauma and my truth telling have kept me from being hirable in a leadership role in Vermont where I could have the opportunity to lead, cocreate, facilitate, and work collaboratively with a staff as a visionary space holder for transformational change. Because I could not find an opportunity to share my gifts, I created one. While this can be considered an arc of things from brilliant to narcissistic, the real challenge lied in how much energy I have had to expend to convince people to show up. Whether that be for a program or event with labor intensive marketing and social media or trying to schedule power building communities of practice, which is a foundational element of culture building and premise of EmpowR Transformation’s vision.
I have lived a trauma cycle over and over in my life of the pain that overwhelms me when people don’t show up. My self worth healing work kept telling me that this would change and that my vision, ideas, and value were worthy enough for people to show up for. I kept changing what was offered and convincing myself different types of adjustments were needed. But really the adjustment that was needed is I cannot continue to put myself in roles where I am convincing people to show up. Capitalism makes that really, really hard and this has been a repeat cycle for me, with aspects of EmpowR Transformation the latest iteration of an old story.
And if I am to be really, really honest, EmpowR Transformation was partially created out of a wounding for healing that actually kept the wounding cycle going.
In 2018 while navigating the cancer and mental health crisis I went through, so much of my suffering was based on lack of community and family combined with the friends and colleagues who could not support me because of all the other things they had going on in their lives. This was heart breaking for Mitch and I, and I further cracked open to:
- the injustice of inequitable health care (specifically in cancer and mental health)
- the roots of my colonizer ancestry and how empathy was displaced with judgement through cycles of epigenetic trauma
- how the saviorism, elitism, and expectations of white supremacy culture showed up in people that limited their ability to meet my needs when I was sick and how that narrative led me to get sicker
- I began to awaken to how much societal suffering is rooted in the ways racialized capitalism is a disease that binds white folks to the very patterns of behavior that keep us separate and harming each other and the connection to our inability to have direct, conscious, open, and accountable communication with each other
- All of these awakenings were a birthing canal for EmpowR Transformation.
At this same time I attended the New England Women’s Herbal Conference in 2018 where a broad council of black and brown women and non-binary people from multiple cultural backgrounds called in the white medicine women of the northeast to do our whiteness healing work so we can speak up and show up without bypassing our deepest shadow (whiteness), build skills to speak up for justice, build capacity for discomfort, lean into conflict and have the hard conversations to heal, transformation, and come together with women and non-binary folks of all cultures as Water – the powerful feminine force to clear the power of patriarchy and greed.
This is the foundation of EmpowR Transformation. A small but mighty ship in the sea of white supremacy trying to find other ships to build a flotilla with.
Oh Great Water…
My wounding created vision. The wounding of black and brown women was also at the heart of the concept of EmpowR’s personal to cultural transformation vision with lots of influence from Resmaa Menakem, adrienne maree brown, Sherri Mitchell, and so many other folks.
The call in to “do better when you know better” (Maya Angelou) was foundational in the pattern shifting and behavior change premise of EmpowR Transformation. This is what the black and brown women who advised EmpowR Transformation were asking of us white folks – to show up and to change.
This is what they needed and one of them died because the entire system of white supremacy and racilaized capitalism killed her.
Will you take a moment to say her name with me? Sister Sankofa.
And another breath?
One of the things that came up a lot in EmpowR Transformation community spaces is about self worth and being “enough.” This is something so many people struggle with. I often personally struggle with feeling like I am not enough to be a priority in people’s lives, sort of like I or what I offer is always the last resort, the party someone goes to when there’s nothing better to do, the friend someone calls when all the other friends are busy. I feel into the complexity of self worth wounding from not being enough (or being too much) as a white-bodied woman being raised in mainstream “white” culture. I feel the collective harm that has caused throughout society, and I understand the therapy and spiritual draw to remind myself that “I am enough.” And then I also hear the call in from black and brown folks to white folks to change. To do better once we know better. This contradiction is in the root of the violence we are swimming in culturally. White folks don’t want to be told we have to change because the culture we’ve built tells us everyone else has to change to be like us. I believe we are both enough as we are AND – at the same time – we have to change. I think that’s a big part of what EmpowR Transformation has been about and that is a contradiction that is hard for white folks to hold.
It’s hard for me to hold. It’s taken to this point for me to be able to authentically communicate that while I am beautiful, powerful, magical, and brilliant, I am also capable of and have caused harm – to myself and people I love. I am worthy of prosperity, support, generative community, and loving relationships and I also must do better for my own health and healing, for the people I want to be in relationship and community with, and for the collective consciousness of transforming out of these patterns that prohibit living and communicating with imagination toward belonging, dignity, and possibility for everyone.
Self actualization and awareness is the first step to transformation. Building skills to move shame through our bodies with somatic spiritual practice so we can expand our consciousness frequency towards courage is a path I’ve been guiding for myself and in community. It’s challenging to offer this work that is as equally contingent on people showing up as it is in holding transformative space. People’s individual life restrictions to being able to show up are a key prohibitor to building community in the micro and resisting the regime in the macro. I began to shift community building efforts into removing the roadblock beneath changing time constructs and engagement patterns. In community we explored how to asset map ways to match abundance with need to create capacity and space. It became clear the more swiftly we can build our mutual aid webs and networks, the more resilient and post-collapse we will be (part of why I am shifting much of my energy from online community to geographic community).
The liberation and care people who want to free humanity seek is to liberate ourselves collectively from the confines of racialized capitalism. To do so, we must give up privilege and shift beyond the individualized family unit into communal networks. And that is a transformation collectively that will take much more time than my ego would like, so I release many aspects of EmpowR Transformation and weave myself back into my body where I am following the current of what is emerging in my local community. I am flowing down a river cocreating with friends who share purpose, vision, and capacity for showing up instead of swimming upstream with isolating pools of stagnant water surrounded by my shadows.
EmpowR Transformation was built to hold a community of practice for people building anti racist culture, and by healing at the taproot of racism, we connect all injustices – economic, class, gender, ability, environmental, and beyond – as flowing together towards collective liberation. Everything EmpowR Transformation has done, whether it be the journey of our community, the client work I’ve had, the programs we’ve offered, cocreator and changemaker structure building, ceremonies, retreats, conversations, challenges, and songs – all of it matters. We cannot create something new without trying and failing first. I’m so grateful for all the lessons, as painful as they were, and for all the play and joy, as hard as it can be to find.
The flood in Plainfield last summer was a catalyst for acutely shifting my energy to micro-locally focused. A community met with climate crisis is a community that shows up ready for action. A need arose in my geographic community for trauma-informed collaborative leadership. In addition to already being the farmers market co-manager, all that has transpired in Plainfield (and other Central Vermont and Vermont projects I’ve been woven into) have provided me with some really synergistic ways to share my gifts and put my vision, approaches, and practices into action with people highly engaged with meeting the shared need for communal care and mutual aid networks.
There is a balance, a flow, an emergence, and rhythm that despite all the horror taking place externally, feels really “right” in my body. Not right as in my shadow of judgment of right and wrong, but right as in rooted relationship with self, community, land, and place.
I’m putting forth sustained effort to build a shared leadership network to create a Resilience Hub in Plainfield. It’s strategically emergent, seeking ways to be financially resourced, and my experience with EmpowR Transformation transfers in ways that are a good match for building community-led resilience and power sharing.
I’ve also been volunteering with Central Vermont Showing Up for Racial Justice to facilitate merging different groups and efforts for being better positioned for strategic collective work. I look forward to continuing to support this effort in building a strategic foundation that connects racial and economic justice in Central Vermont to the national SURJ organization.
I also have some paid consulting and facilitation work to support groups and organizations in conscious communication, conflict evolution, and culture change work. I am so grateful that the foundational business aspects of EmpowR Transformation are being utilized in this moment and welcome new clients as well. I am curious about how EmpowR Transformation transitions and merges with other efforts as our communities adapt and shift toward kinship.
The EmpowR Community I was curating has dissolved. It was trying to do too many things all at once and I take responsibility for that. I trust many relationships made will continue to ripple root healing and white supremacy shadow work into the collective as folks play new and emerging roles in the possibility of the Great Turning by laying the foundation for something new and just.
On days imagination and possibility feels impossible and I get overcome by the horrors. But more days than not I am in flow, trusting, imagining, and creating possibility with people working on similar paths, shared starting points, with lots of layers, nuance, and contradiction. I have faith more of us can hold the complexity with grace and humility. I am alive at this time on the planet to do so with all I have experienced and always try my best to build towards something new with the wisdom of old. That is my reciprocity for being alive, having the privileges that I do, and breathing, drinking, and nourishing from this beautiful planet and the painful existence of being a human.
I’ll continue to explore ways for Grandmother Cherry Sanctuary to be a community-tended space as the privilege and burden to tend land with diminishing resource is fucking hard. As I weave more with land access work in Vermont and creating possibility in Plainfield, I trust this path will emerge and flow. In the meantime your support of buying herbal products, booking the Hygge Den apartment or Witchy Woods campsite, and offering to lend us a hand on the land are so welcome and appreciated.
I’ve got serious concerns for safety in how I operate and am planning to go deeper underground. Subscribing to and reading the EmpowR Transformation newsletter is the best place to get information and stay in the loop.
I’ve also revised the EmpowR Transformation Patreon for people who want to support me to offer financial resource for operation and labor costs to sustain some of my volunteer work. Whether you benefit directly, through ripples, or just have the resource to offer support I appreciate any generosity that can be extended to support my uncompensated change making work to build community resilience as resistance. As a gesture of appreciation, I will provide eight podcasts a year offering Wheel of the Year Elemental Magic and Astrology Forecasts working with my deepening skills in channeling.
Will you share another breath with me?
Thank you for your time and energy to receive this communication.
In closing, I want to bring in Norma Wong’s voice. Norma is an indigenous Hawaiian elder who has been a guide in EmpowR Transformation’s work from the beginning. This summer I attended a community convening with Rockwood Leadership Institute where I an alumni. These were some of Norma’s words when responding to the question, Where do we go from here?
“Courageous conversations are only courageous because we don’t have them. When we make courageous conversations a part of what we do on a regular basis, we can grow together with much more possibility. This helps us more quickly determine who we can be in relationship with and what work groups can do.
I cannot fix. Nothing can be fixed.
I will not shy away from the discomfort in front of me.
The fast, clear path is moving ahead of the destruction and make possible what we need for humanity. Choose to live in what possibility lies beyond.
The collapse happening right now is the juncture for transformation we seek.
Break the habit of sharp analysis of what is happening right now.
Cocreate with space and time. Unburden from that which we don’t have any agency over to create the space and time. Create space to just be with empty space witnessing and observing what is around us.
Navigate deep power building in times of rapid response. Diversify our modalities and engagements so we are not consistently in reflux response.
Be in indigenous, animist, relationship with land and in relationship and responsibility with ancestors and descendants. This is what creates space for culture – returning to possibilities of kinship in creating a new future.
