Notes from Race Forward’s Just Narratives for Multiracial Solidarity 2025
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Years ago, in my first nonprofit communications role, a colleague asked me why I was shaping my work around what the system allowed (what I thought was “realistic”), instead of imagining a system that actually served us. That question changed everything for me.
At Race Forward’s Just Narratives for Multiracial Solidarity 2025, it felt like the whole convening was grappling with that same tension: What possibilities are we leaving behind because we’ve accepted the limits we were handed? If harmful systems were imagined into existence, what could happen if imagined something better?
Throughout panels, performances, research sessions, and even late-night conversations, imagination wasn’t framed as a soft skill. It was treated as political power, and one we need to take seriously if we want to build something better.
Imagination is the Starting Point
The opening panel reminded us that pointing out what’s broken is only step one. Movements can’t grow without a shared picture of what comes next. Fear can ignite urgency, but it rarely sustains people. It shrinks our sense of who belongs and narrows what feels achievable.
Hope, on the other hand, builds the kind of community that lasts. It expands our sense of belonging, creates room for collaboration, strengthens trust, and helps people stay in the work through long periods of uncertainty. And choosing hope doesn’t mean we just ignore the compounding crises we’re in – it means recognizing that hope requires action, discipline, and a willingness to stick with the work even when progress is slow.
Monica Roa from Puentes put it plainly: “The world is indeed shit, and we can choose to compost it together.” The circumstances are tough, but we are not powerless. And if harmful systems were imagined into existence, then new systems can also be imagined.
Later, a Palestinian dabke performance from Canaan Wellspring reinforced that imagination can also be embodied. Culture, rhythm, and collective movement are forms of political storytelling.
Nikko Viquiera from Race Forward added a grounding point: imagination without action is just delusion. Naming and posting aren’t enough – dreams require steps.
Infrastructure Shapes What Imagination Can Actually Do
Rinku Sen from Narrative Initiative grounded the conversation by discussing infrastructure – not in an abstract policy sense, but in terms of what allows imagination to become reality. We at IISC wrote about the importance of infrastructure a few months ago here. Infrastructure is not only organizations or reports. It’s people’s stories, their capacity, their confidence, their relationships. It’s whether everyday people (not only professionals) have what they need to share narratives that matter.
Jennifer Ng’andu from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation added that infrastructure also includes trust, support for leaders who are under-resourced or targeted, and the relational glue that keeps movements going.
Anna Castro from the Transgender Law Center reminded us that infrastructure isn’t just the bones, it’s the joints. It’s what makes movement possible. And she pointed out that the South has been living with disinvestment long before national headlines caught up. Southern organizers have had to imagine new solutions out of necessity, and there’s a lot to learn from that.
Together, these points made something clear: imagination is powerful, but it needs structure. Without infrastructure, imagination never makes it off the page.
The Hope Gap: When People Support Change but Don’t Believe It’s Possible
One of the clearest connections between imagination and political power came from folks I deeply admire: the BLIS Collective. Their workshop introduced the Hope Gap, the distance between what people support and what they believe is achievable.
Their research shows major gaps in belief:
76% of Black Americans support reparations, but only 21.5% believe it can realistically happen.
80% of Indigenous people support Land Back, but only 19% believe it’s possible.
This pattern extends across many bold policies. People want transformative solutions, but decades of disinvestment, backlash, and political messaging have convinced many that big changes are unrealistic. When people don’t believe change is possible, they disengage or lower their expectations. The Hope Gap isn’t just a barrier to action, but a crisis in political imagination.
The BLIS research is ongoing, so instead of presenting final answers, their workshop taught us how to identify Hope Gaps in our own issue areas. We worked collectively to explore narratives that invite participation rather than resignation.
My biggest takeaway was this: we don’t have to start from scratch. We can learn from what already exists. We can amplify the wins, from reparations efforts to LandBack victories, so they feel possible, repeatable, and real. When we lift up these examples, we normalize the idea that what we imagine together can take root.
Imagination Grows Through Community
Outside the formal sessions, the theme of imagination showed up again in the way people gathered. I spent time tending to old and new relationships, eating and dancing together, laughing through a spontaneous mini-makeover session. At one point, nearly everyone said some version of, “This is why we come.”
These moments truly were the heart of the gathering. They confirmed that narrative work, hope-building, and movement strategy grow through connection, the kind you build by showing up, sharing space, and remembering that people are the reason this work moves at all.
ALOK’s Call to Choose Humanity Over Convention
ALOK Vaid-Menon’s brilliant keynote tied the theme together. They asked why our sector continues to choose convention over humanity. They reminded the audience that our values come from the people who have held and supported us through our lives.
Their central point was that all justice work is connected. Trans justice, racial justice, climate justice, gender justice, disability justice – these are not separate fights. When we act like they are, we weaken all of them. And there are systems intentionally built to keep them separate.
ALOK also named the funder-industrial complex’s role in encouraging fragmentation, but insisted that collaboration is where our movements gain power. We shouldn’t need to justify why justice movements are linked. We should care because people matter.
What I’m Taking With Me
Imagination is political power
Action gives imagination meaning
Infrastructure makes imagination possible
Relationships make imagination sustainable
Hope must be intentionally built, protected, and nurtured
It is not enough to critique the systems we live in. Just like we need better messaging, we also need better imagination to actively build alternatives. And we need the conditions that allow people to believe in what they already want for the world. If fear built the systems we’re fighting, imagination can replace them.
Take a moment to ask yourself and your team:
What possibilities have we dismissed because we assumed they weren’t realistic?
Start naming them, imagining them, and then start building the infrastructure that makes them real.
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There’s a quiet revolution underway. You can see it in church gatherings and small-town meetings, on Zoom calls between elders and young organizers, in community art projects, healing circles, and protest planning sessions.
Across the country, IISC has had the deep honor of supporting and witnessing this movement: the call for food justice in Mississippi, the fight for immigrant rights in Florida, and unincorporated towns in California’s Central Valley organizing and standing against corporate land grabs with the memory of ancestors alive in their bones.
This June marked 32 years since IISC was founded to build collaborative capacity for social change. As we reflect on more than three decades of work, we are clear that real transformation is rooted in the relationships, strategies, and structures that make long-term change possible.
This is what power-building looks like – not only marching or resisting, but reimagining how we live, lead, and make decisions together.
We’re living in a moment full of pressure and possibility, where movement leaders are not only responding to harm but also building blueprints for belonging, designing ecosystems of mutual care, shaping decision-making structures that reflect their values, and challenging the status quo about who leads, who benefits, and who gets to be fully seen.
And in the background, behind the chants and policies, something quieter (and often invisible) is also happening: Movements are collaborating in deeper, more intentional ways. And we are helping to seed and shape that work together.
Power Building Is Infrastructure Work As capacity builders, we’ve learned that what sustains movements isn’t just energy or the rightness of the cause – it’s the infrastructure that doesn’t always show up on a stage, but holds everything in place. While people typically think of “infrastructure” as technology, tools, funding, and flows of information and resources, there is a deep need for relational, human infrastructure and the skills that enable people to make and sustain change together.
Behind every campaign or viral hashtag, there is slow, deliberate work. Networks negotiating values, grassroots leaders navigating conflict and decision-making, and organizers choosing to stay in relationship when things get hard because they know liberation isn’t a solo act.
This is the kind of power that movements are building and that we co-construct with them. Power built through:
Clear strategy rooted in shared values
Equitable decision-making across lines of difference
Leadership that centers collaboration, healing, and shared accountability
Networked action that multiplies impact rather than fragments energy
This kind of infrastructure does not emerge overnight or from passion alone. It takes facilitation, training, culture-building, relationship tending, strategic clarity, and people who are willing to hold space for discomfort, emergence, and transformation. It takes collaborators who understand that the right kind of structure does not limit people; it liberates them to move together toward something more powerful than any of us could hold alone.
Movement Work Is Evolving, and So Must Our Support In this era, the most critical support for power-building groups is not marketing or messaging or a one-time DEI workshop – it is long-term, trust-based relationships coupled with visionary strategy that build the muscle of collaboration, collective care, and self-governance. It is support that meets movement leaders where they are, with tools that are grounded in deep equity, shaped by experience, and designed not just to help organizations “function” but to help them thrive in alignment with their purpose and people.
This is the kind of capacity-building work we at IISC and many peers in the practitioner ecosystem are committed to:
Facilitation that invites truth and transformation
Strategy development that is relational, emergent, and rooted in values
Cohort design that cultivates brave space
Network weaving that strengthens interdependence
At its core, this work is about building the capacity for collective liberation, and doing so in ways that reflect the values and visions of the people who are most impacted.
Deep Investment and Choice We are witnessing a moment of both resurgence and retaliation in the U.S. and globally. While movement leaders dream and deliver bold new futures, political parties and their supporters are doubling down on repression. And yet, movement leaders keep showing up. They keep convening. They keep trying to do the impossible: imagine a future where everyone can thrive and build together toward that day while under attack.
What would it look like if we, as capacity-builders, met their courage with our own?
What if philanthropy prioritized sustained infrastructure for movements instead of short-term wins?
What if intermediaries slowed down to listen deeply and moved at the pace of trust instead of deliverables?
What if everyone pursuing justice understood that strategy, facilitation, and organizational development are not extras but essential nutrients and foundation for the long road to justice?
The Invitation If you are building power, thank you. If you are funding frontline power building, consider funding infrastructure as well, to resource the ecosystem as a whole. And if you’re an infrastructure-building organization, be humble, be bold, and be in right relationship with folks who are building power.
Change is already underway. And what grows next will depend on who is willing to hold it with both courage and love.
This post was originally published on August 8, 2022, and updated on June 30, 2025.
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“The times are urgent, let us slow down.” Bayo Akomolafe, The Emergence Network
Words and images have incredible power to shape reality. One self-image I still have to shed is seeing myself as “workhorse,” always pushing forward, rather than “show pony,” allowed to pause, shine, and simply be.” In the early days of the pandemic, as IISC wrestled with what contribution we could make, I had to temper my desire to move quickly with a sober assessment of our actual human capacity. Even now, on any given day, our team – and the staff and volunteers practically everywhere I turn – ranges from sick, exhausted, and overwhelmed to joyful, optimistic in the midst of it all, and eagerly seeking new possibilities. I continue to remind myself that we can only go as fast as we can go, even if that doesn’t seem fast enough given the conditions around us.
Therein lies the struggle. The work of making a better, more just world IS urgent. People are paying with their lives every day because of the way our society is constructed. Take health as an example. Healthcare is a for-profit industry, and the profit motive drives who gets treated, what kinds of treatments are approved or even exist, and what unhealthy conditions are allowed to persist. Access to healthcare is granted mostly as a privilege to people with certain jobs, rather than to all people as a human right. People are dying every day because of this. Getting care to people who need it most – people who are unhoused, and/or unemployed, disabled, elderly, or otherwise unable to participate in the paid labor force – is urgent. At the same time, we have to devote attention to the necessary, long-term work of building political will and shifting the political system in the direction of making healthcare a human right. Otherwise, we’ll be forever doing the urgent work of helping people on the margins to survive. As our friends in public health remind us, we have to “get upstream” to stop the “flow” of people who need urgent support that the system doesn’t provide.
Generations of warriors for justice have taught us that the struggle for justice is costly and urgent. In my earliest days of political formation, my mentors argued (sometimes explicitly and sometimes by example) that I didn’t deserve a good night’s sleep or many creature comforts because people were suffering and dying every day due to racism and poverty. This led me to an unhealthy kind of self-denial and overwork. While my group members saw me as productive and committed, in the eyes of some folks who I was both critiquing and attempting to recruit, I appeared unbearably self-righteous and absolutely no fun to be around.
This posture didn’t win over a lot of new people to our way of thinking, and it ingrained in me a habit of ignoring my own needs that has been extremely hard to break. While I can say with conviction to others that “self-care isn’t selfish” and “it’s essential to find joy amid struggle,” I still have trouble taking my advice sometimes. I’m making progress, though it’s slow! I still hold onto this quote from George Bernard Shaw: “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations.”
One thing I find striking and encouraging about the current generation of racial justice activists is their explicit focus on wholeness, healing, belonging, and restoration – think of emergent strategy, the cultivation of Black Joy, and the work of healing justice, to name just a few. We are beginning to recognize that we can’t do any of this necessary and urgent work at the expense of people and relationships. And I think we still have a long way to go.
If we want to make change at the scale of an entire society and beyond, we have to find new ways and rediscover ancient ways of doing the urgent work of survival AND the urgent work of structural change. And we have to find ways of doing both that don’t exhaust and exploit the people doing that work, and that make space for new, more beautiful ways of being together. At IISC, as we take up this challenge and offer what we can share, I’m trying to remain vigilant so that a sober assessment of the urgent need for justice doesn’t push me toward dominant-culture ways of pressing beyond the capacity of our human community.
How are you replacing a dominating sense of urgency with an appropriate sense of urgency that honors and cares for people?
This Black History Month is a harder one than most. It’s a marker of a terrible moment when our president is calling for an end to racial justice and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) programs. His actions are fueling the resurgence of white nationalism and scaring institutions to backtrack on their equity work. The stakes are high: hostile workplaces, preferences for jobs and opportunities to the elite, and an erasure of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color history. And this doesn’t have to happen on our watch. There is much we can and must do together to ensure these next four years don’t set America back for decades. There’s a lot of faulty information and fear out there. We don’t have to settle for it.
This month and beyond, we need to tap into the strength and love of Black history to move forward boldly. Below are ways we can do this.
1. Support civil rights and civil liberties legal organizations.
Civil rights and liberties organizations are already filing lawsuits to stop the implementation of orders that attempt to dismantle racial justice, DEIA, LGBTQ+ rights, and immigrant protections. Many executive orders signed by past administrations, including the current one, have been knocked down, in part or in full because they violated the US Constitution and civil rights laws from Title VII to the Americans with Disability Act. We can stand against discrimination and unfair practices. We can support the organizations fighting in the courts. Organizations run by Black leaders and legal institutions such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, the Protecting DEI Coalition, and organizations like ACLUs around the country are pivotal to the strategy to challenge racist and discriminatory policies.
2. Remember your power and independence if you’re not in the federal government.
The administration’s most recent policies apply most directly to the federal government, although there are attempts to influence the private sector and others to follow suit. If you don’t receive or if you reject federal funding and contracts, and you are a non-profit, a charitable foundation, or a private company or business, you can use this opportunity to hold the line. Unless Congress or your state passes new laws, continue to move forward with your racial justice and equity work and don’t look back. Even when laws are passed, check in with your networks to understand the actual implications. For example, if certain words are targeted, you can still do critical anti-oppression work. Here is an example from leaders in climate justice about how to remain conscious of disparate impacts in your policy and legislative work. Let’s also support the organizations and brave leaders who are standing up to protect federal employees and civil rights in federal agencies.
3. Amplify and advance your racial justice work.
Consider all the benefits it has brought you. At IISC, as we partner with organizations and cities to build out racially just and equitable practices, we’ve seen firsthand how they become better institutions and agencies as a whole. They seed new ideas, improve outcomes for people and communities, recruit and retain collaborative leaders, and center humane workplace practices that benefit all. In fact, in the report, Blocking the Backlash: The Positive Impact of DEI in Nonprofit Organizations, nonprofit workers were most positive about the workplace when their organizations employed five or more diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies. And we know that employee morale just makes good economic and common sense.
If you pause your racial justice and equity work, you can expect to be left behind by organizations who will benefit from diverse approaches, to lose your best employees if they don’t feel valued or respected, and to be exposed to lawsuits from employees who experience discrimination. We must show what happens if we don’t advance racial justice and equity work. If we see trends toward toxic workplaces, violence, and poorer health, employment, and educational outcomes, let the media and our communities know about it.
4. Stand up and be visible and bring in new allies.
Recently, I was on a call with 3,500 Black women leaders around the country fighting for civil rights and justice. They are clear that we are too quiet at this moment. We must make the time and muster the confidence to contact those who can influence change quickly: policymakers, companies we do business with, social media organizations, and media outlets that have rolled back their equity and democracy commitments. We can protest in our streets, neighborhoods, and workplaces. We can put a spotlight on what’s wrong and remind our country of the benefits of inclusion, shared power, and repair. We can ask for help from other leaders and organizations if we get attacked. Let’s keep expanding our movements by identifying new allies who share our values. Let’s be proactive and reach for people who have not yet joined us. For example, think about veterans, parents, rural communities, working-class communities, labor unions, and faith-based communities who share our values.
5. Move into leadership everywhere you are.
If you are a BIPOC or white leader, or leader of any background, who understands what it means to create a better workplace and institution by investing in racial justice and equity, we need you to stand up against the backlash and push forward the broader vision of collective wellbeing. The movement for racial justice has never been a single-issue movement. Racial justice is immigrant justice, gender justice, trans justice, and economic justice. Fight for all and stand together. Join the ranks of leaders in communities and institutions of all kinds who are pursuing justice. Run for school board and other municipal-level positions, or state and federal office. Become board chair of an organization or company. Seek support from those in similar positions so you can build coalitions and protect one another if attacks come your way. Gain allies and champions and do the work that you know is necessary to defend hard-fought victories, protect the most vulnerable people in our communities, and build toward a bold future in which we all thrive.
We have a lifetime to stand tall and powerful against assaults on our communities and to build a better and enduring future. Even though damage will be done over the next four years, let’s remember that the struggle for civil and human rights is as old as the country itself. Some of our civil rights laws have been around for sixty years while others have been in place since the first Reconstruction Era. For the past fifty years and more we’ve seen the power of working for justice by developing and implementing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility policies and practices.
You can’t take away what has been learned, built, and integrated into our minds, hearts, and structures that easily. The muscle has been developed and the space has been claimed. We don’t have to comply. We can be courageous in collaboration as we continue working together to build the future we all need and want.
Need support in this moment? We’ve got you. See Resources in the Age of 47, our living document filled with tools for action, resilience, and justice. Updated weekly—share it with your networks!
This post picks up where Part 1 left off. To read that post, go to this link.
In a recent conversation with a cherished elder, we got to talking about these times and the story of the caterpillar changing into the butterfly. In her usual no-nonsense way, she shared that she often hears people talking about the cocoon, and maybe something about the “imaginal cells” that get to work in the cocoon to create the beautiful butterfly form (so cool!). “What I don’t necessarily hear is that whole thing about destruction of the caterpillar body – it basically gets pulverized and turns into goo!” This followed by laughter (she laughs a lot). Right, the goo. Not a lot of talk about the goo, about the dis-integration of the previous body that is necessary for the new body to organize.
I have caught myself doing this, banging my head against the question “What is the next (and better) form of family, community, organization, institution, society, etc.?” without allowing for the necessary meltdown of old forms. A version of this old adage just came to mind – “Can you be patient enough to let the mud settle?” Sometimes. Hopefully a little more each day. As I spend a fair amount of time working with social change networks, I am trying to remind people I work with (and myself) that the work of “network weaving” is not simply about always reaching out, always bringing in more and supporting more growth, but also about stepping back, seeing what is, perhaps doing some pruning. And remember to exhale.
The other thing that I try to remember is that if what we are moving through is really and truly “transformation,” not just some superficial rearrangement of the furniture, then it is going to be very hard to imagine not just what “the other side” will look like, but how I will feel inside of that new reality. I find that I can be prone to feelings of “fluttery-ness” these days, and if I don’t take care to listen more closely, I might assume that I am feeling nervous/anxious about the current state of the world. Of course sometimes I am (for example, when I wake to several days here in Western Massachusetts feeling as if I am in the Caribbean, weather-wise). Other times, when I slow down enough to actually interrogate the fluttery sensation, I realize that it can also be akin to the excitement I have felt when getting to the top of a tall rollercoaster and anticipating that moment of release. And I wonder…is that what the butterfly feels when it emerges from the cocoon, and when it takes its first flight? Just how does it go about adjusting to its new embodied reality?
Several years ago, I read the book The Net and the Butterfly, which is full of examples and suggestions of methods for opening ourselves to “the new.” A core point of the authors, Olivia Fox Cabane and Judah Pollack, is that in order to access new ways of being and doing, we do not have to be artistic geniuses or spiritual adepts. What we do need are ways to make the time and space to peacefully pay attention and notice differently, allowing insight and novelty to emerge on their own.
The common theme underlying the practices that the authors explore is supporting so-called neuroplasticity, our brains’ remarkable ability to rearrange neural pathways for new possibilities. Neuroplasticity happens on its own, to a certain extent, but is reduced by practiced habits and routines – i.e. staying stuck in ruts. This happens as we age and get too comfortable with or protective of the familiar. So in order to encourage an openness to new pathways, what can we do?
Stop trying to figure it out. Simply grinding on a situation or challenge or sitting in fear and frustration can prevent “solutions” from showing up. Give your mind a rest – take a shower/bath, take a walk, relax and breathe, or engage in relatively mindless activity (wash dishes, bounce a ball).
Try on new perspectives.Looking at the world differently can help us to see possibilities we had not observed from our usual vantage points. Read literature from different and unfamiliar disciplines. Talk to someone who sees the world differently (culturally, politically, professionally). Study a different language. Take a different route to work or for your daily walk. Lie down on the ground and look up and around, or climb a tree to literally get a different perspective on things.
Open up to different sounds, tastes and sensations. Intentionally seeking out and paying attention to unusual sensations can also strengthen our flexibility, adaptability, and openness to novelty. Research shows, for example, that by using our non-dominant hand to perform daily routines (brushing teeth, brushing hair, drinking from a cup) we can strengthen neuroplasticity. The key is to really pay attention to what we notice.
Learn from the intelligence and wonder of our more than human kin. Much more is being written about biomimicry and the wisdom of following the larger living world’s innate capacities for resilience and regeneration. And the power of awe is in some ways hard to beat in terms of its ability to crack us open. Check out this website for inspired ideas from our broader family or look at the writings of Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Tristan Gooley and others that can help us read the patterns of living systems.
Be as full bodied as you can be, remembering we are bigger than our bodies give us credit for.As Richard Rohr writes, “To finally surrender ourselves to [transformation], we need to have three spaces opened within us – and all at the same time: our opinionated head, our closed-down heart, and our defensive and defended body. That is the work of spirituality.”
Lastly, I want to return to what I started with in Part 1 – listen/feel music.A philosopher once said, “The world without music would be wrong,” (or something close to that). I certainly find that the right song at the right time can create a kind of full-bodied resonance that is incredibly “regenerative” of my entire being and brings the world alive around me. I offer one more favorite here through an excerpt and invitation to watch the full video below:
I don’t wanna be someone who walks away so easily I’m here to stay and make the difference that I can make Our differences they do a lot to teach us how to use the tools and gifts We got yeah we got a lot at stake And in the end you’re still my friend at least we did intend For us to work we didn’t break, we didn’t burn We had to learn, how to bend without the world caving in I had to learn what I got, and what I’m not And who I am
I won’t give up on us Even if the skies get rough I’m giving you all my love I’m still looking up
What are you finding helps you to stay grounded and navigate these transformative times?
“Transformation is a process and, for survivors, it’s a process with ups and downs, flashbacks and panic attacks. But as [regeneration] confirms, it’s the better way.”
As I’ve been coming more and more into “the second half of life,“ I have found that I pay more attention, or perhaps I pay attention differently and to different things. One particular area I’ve noticed is song lyrics. Music that I may have previously enjoyed for the beats or melodies, I now find I am also appreciating for the timeliness and depth of the words. One example is one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite artists – “The Wood Song” by the Indigo Girls. I remember driving on a country road in my late 20s with windows rolled down and the radio cranked feeling the lift from both the rushing air and the rising chorus. In a more recent listen, these particular words grabbed me:
“Sometimes I ask to sneak a closer look Skip to the final chapter of the book And then maybe steer us clear from some of the pain it took To get us where we are this far But the question drowns in it’s futility And even I have got to laugh at me No one gets to miss the storm of what will be Just holding on for the ride”
Ah yes, how many times do I catch myself wanting to know “What comes next?” This could be for my own healing process, our family, “the work,” this country, the world as we know it. I suppose that curiosity is understandable/natural, and it can certainly be a trap when it keeps taking me out of the present moment. Also when it becomes a ploy to try and circumvent dis-comfort, noting here that the root of that word means to “not be coming with or connected to strength.” To feel uncertain and out of my zone of confidence and strong suit can of course be disorienting (anyone else out there having sensations of sloshiness?). Well, that really is the point, as the Indigo Girls sing later in that song.
“The wood is tired and the wood is old We’ll make it fine if the weather holds But if the weather holds we’ll have missed the point That’s where I need to go“
The point is to be present with whatever is, including the hardships of life and the turmoils of the soul. I don’t have to like it, and in fact many times have/will not, but should try not to immediately evade or skip over what’s hard and what hurts. To riff on a line from a country song, if you want to miss the pain then you’ll have to miss the dance.
*******
There is a poem I come back to every now and again, from David Wagoner, called “Lost”:
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here. No two trees are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows Where you are. You must let it find you.
You must let it find you. What is the “it”? The here and now. Not the “over there” or “next.” The present moment, as liminal and shaky as it may feel. And it certainly can feel shaky, at least in my experience and from what I am hearing and learning from others with whom I have been working.
When I do manage to settle and tune in to where and how I am, to where and how others are, and what guidance there might be from that powerful stranger, here is some of what I am hearing …
Take it easy.
Take good care.
Take care of endings.
Take care of beginnings.
Take care of one another.
Breathe … and remember to exhale …
Let things, “all the things,” bubble up; let them pass.
Lean in, engage; lean back, relax; repeat.
Stay curious.
Be humble.
Be kind.
Be.
Over and over, I am hearing and feeling these messages. And in moments of more extreme discomfort and pain, there is the reminder that “healing often hurts.” To recover you might have to do more uncovering, peel back more layers. Before you reweave you might have to unravel, maybe get rid of some of those dangling threads. To do differently or better, as my colleague Kellly Bates has beautifully written, you just might have to come undone …
All along the way, there were messages of what the times are calling for in terms of practicing resilience and transformation. Each of these deserves a fuller unpacking, and I offer them here for now, with much gratitude to many teachers along the way. I begin each of these with the word “remember,” as that was a core teaching from our gathering on Haudenosaunee lands, that one of our greatest gifts is to remember, and that so much of this is about remembering …
Remember that everything is designed to work together through reciprocal relations.
Remember where you come from, what your “creation story” is, as there is great guidance there.
Remember what matters most to you, your values, and align with them in practice.
Remember what is yours to do in this lifetime and in/with Life.
Remember to go below the neckline (to the heart and gut), without throwing out what is above it (the head).
Remember to practice belonging and accountability (they go together and support one another).
Remember to do intergenerational work/learning, thinking of those living, those passed on, and those yet to come.
Remember to bring in “the periphery” (whatever that means in your particular situation – this generally relates to power and access). There is much wisdom and fresh insight here.
Remember the importance of putting in place a “resilience or transformation infrastructure” (think process, roles and relationships) – this does not necessarily happen on its own.
Remember when it makes sense to “institutionalize” and do so in ways that do not kill spirit, vitality and diversity.
Remember not to make assumptions and be prepared to be surprised.
Remember to have faith in the unseen, the power of “practical magic.”
Remember to break bread with one another, to talk with one another and to keep leaning in to the (apparent) differences. Learning awaits!
Remember to find what grounds and nourishes you (individually and collectively) and cherish/honor it.
Energy System Practice: A Sampler of Practices, Frameworks and Tools
Over the course of the last few years I have been delving deeper into the trans-disciplinary science of energy systems, largely thanks to my colleague and mentor Dr. Sally J. Goerner. Earlier in 2022, Dr. Goerner and I offered a session to The Weaving Lab on energy systems science for network weavers. A summary of that session can be found here. Since then I have been working with a few others to explore,identify and build out resources, practices and tools at different “levels” (individual, group/organization, and larger system), all within the context of the planet that sustains us, in the four different domains of Energy System Science. Together, these domains support systemnic saluto-genesis – the capacity of living systems to reproduce resilience and wellbeing. The four domains are:
regenerative flows
resilient and balanced structures
common cause culture
collaborative learning
The Energy System Sciences (ESS) see all “living” systems as “flow networks” or structures that arise from the circulation of resources, information, nutrients, etc. Thinking through the lens of flow, systemic health can be seen as being based on things like:
investment and re-investment of key and diverse resources,
healthy outflows (not polluting or poisoning “the host”),
the velocity and spread of resources in the system,
cross-scale circulation, etc.
The nature and quality of these flows determines how systems are able to adapt and evolve in healthy and health-promoting ways.
The image above offers a sample collection of resources, practices and tools, that transcend specific sectors (economics, education, etc.) and that I look forward to bringing to a group later this fall. Certainly incomplete, these practices also do not all neatly fit into one category, even where they appear to in the graphic – that’s life! If you go to this link, you will find the above image as a clearer PDF document that has hyperlinks for some of what is listed (items that are underlined) that will take you to additional information. And I am always eager to hear what others would add!
I am grateful for the many teachers and collaborators, in addition to Dr. Goerner, who have guided my thinking and practice along the way: Joe Weston, Gwen McClellan, john a. powell, Eve Capkanis, Melinda Weekes-Laidlow, Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, Joel Glanzberg, June Holley, Resmaa Menakem, Katya Fels Smyth, Tanya Tucker, Verna Allee, Carol Sanford, Robert Peng, Maya Townsend, Father Richard Rohr, Dorn Cox, Sherri Mitchell, Harold Jarche, Nora Bateson, Marty Kearns, Tara Brach, John Fullerton, Marilyn Darling, Daniel Christian Wahl, Anne Marie Chiasson, Dr. Chris Holder, Tyson Yunkaporta and Steven C. Hayes, among others.
Image, “The Healing Has Begun” by Rennett Stowe. Shared under provisions of Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0.
For the past few months I have been seeing an integrative acupressurist who has been practicing her craft for some 35 years. I am blown away and grateful for the extensive knowledge she brings to the inner workings of my body, including the interrelationships between different “parts” as well as the impact of the “environment” on my “internal” systems.
She has been particularly adept at helping me to understand that presenting and relatively superficial aspects of dis-ease or dis-comfort have longer standing and deeper contributing factors. Peel back one layer, with great care and re-spect, and you are likely to find something else. “Wonderful!” she will often say, marveling at how the body intelligently adapts to stress and other demands upon it. “While this may not feel good, it is actually a very wise and creative response!”
This has me reflecting on our dominant health care system in the US and what it tends to pay attention to and how it responds. How does that compare/contrast with and how is it complemented by what an integrative acupressurist does? What lessons and metaphors lie there for guiding me in my thinking about approaching other systemic challenges – in organizations, communities, economies … ?
First and foremost, an integrative acupressurist assists with body’s structural integrity (muscles, bones, organs), flow management and bio-logical co-operationand communication. Sometimes that is about tending to areas in the body where blood or lymph or chi (all vital flows) are not circulating in optimal ways. Sometimes that is about helping to stimulate parts of the body (organs and muscles) that have become guarded, tense or listless as an intelligent defense response (this often calls for treating those areas indirectly, to bypass defenses and stimulate areas that are impacted referentially). Sometimes this is about reintroducing different parts/regions of the body to one another with careful touch and stimulation. Sometimes it is about helping the entire body process new information and sensations more optimally, including the introduction of various healing and fortifying herbs.
As I have been experiencing these interventions, and learning from this remarkable healer/teacher (she loves narrating what she is doing and entertains all questions), I have been thinking about how this knowledge and wisdom translates into efforts to shift and heal other kinds of living systems. As I have written elsewhere, I am a proponent of not just simply talking about and working on “system change,” but supporting the inherent regenerative (self-renewing) capacity of living systems, social and ecological. My friend Daniel Christian Wahl turned me on to the notion of “saluto-genesis” when it comes to working with living systems, which means tending to the long-term and ongoing ability of systems to produce wellbeing.
Thinking as a systemic health promoter, or “systemic saluto-genarian” (thanks to Freya Bradford for helping to coin this phrase), isn’t what my integrative acupressurist does also our work? Supporting change in organizations, communities, economies, ecosystems is not simply about mechanically plunging in, but sensing the whole, connecting and working at the speed of trust and with great re-spect (of diverse and wonderful bodies – minds, hearts, guts, spirits ….), tending to the four key areas of focus of energy systems science:
structural integrity – optimal connectivity, resilience, flexibility, balance of “sizes”
regenerative flows – optimal movement (volume, velocity, directionality, reach) of enlivening resources
collaborative learning – timely sharing and exchange of information and co-creation of knowledge
common cause/collective culture – valuing and actually working together with an understanding of mutuality
This a metaphor and framework that is proving rich for practice and conversation with others. What do you think, feel, sense?
“Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center. … Big, undreamed-of things – the people on the edge see them first.”
– Kurt Vonnegut
I have used the above quote in a number of cases to illustrate a network principle of thinking and action – Don’t get stuck in the core, make the periphery the norm. As we come to the end of 2020 (as arbitrary as that calendrical designation may be), I am thinking about Vonnegut’s words in different and perhaps more expansive ways.
Seemingly many of us have been asked to live (in some cases, even further out) on any number of edges over the past several months – political, economic, psychological, social, spiritual. While exciting in certain cases, it has also been quite exhausting and for some it has been a push to and over the brink.
It is also the case that many have woken or are waking up to the realization that life can only continue in some form or fashion at various edges, especially in times of considerable change. The Aboriginal artist and complexity scientist Tyson Yunkaporta reminds us that from an indigenous perspective –
“Sedentary lifestyles and cultures that do not move with the land or mimic land-based networks in their social systems do not transition well through apocalyptic moments.”
And it would seem we are at an apocalyptic moment, if we take that term to mean a great revelation, along with a call for reckoning, healing and re-creation. “The Great Turning,” maybe, allowing that transitions take us to the edge, because that is where qualitative growth lies.
“Look well to the growing edge. All around us worlds are dying and new worlds are being born; all around us life is dying and life is being born. The fruit ripens on the tree, the roots are silently at work in the darkness of the earth against a time when there shall be new leaves, fresh blossoms, green fruit. Such is the growing edge.”
– Dr. Rev. Howard Thurman (philosopher, theologian, educator, civil rights leader)
Earlier this year I joined a beautiful community stewarded by Joe Weston, which has been brought together by a common desire to cultivate deeper shared capacity among people for what Joe calls “respectful confrontation” and “fierce civility.” The Weston Network is grounded in a set of practices drawn from martial arts, mindfulness and somatics, which help practitioners cultivate four core pillars – grounding, focus, strength and flexibility. These pillars support people to express and get their needs met in ways that can contribute to co-evolution (my word, not Joe’s), or mutualistic growth in groups and communities. I can really vouch for the power and the personal test of the practice!
A helpful concept that Joe introduced back in March at an in-person workshop, just before things started to close down because of COVID, was the idea that our individual and collective growth is found at “the resilient edge of our resistance.” The idea is that people tend to be resistant at the edges of their comfort zones, for some good reasons. And yet it is also true that staying hunkered down is not always helpful, and may even be dangerous. People also have the capacity to become more resilient at and over the edges of their perceived comfort zone. Life, in fact, requires this!
“Evolution is what happens when patterns that used to define survival become deadly.”
– Nora Bateson (filmmaker, writer, regenerative thinker and educator)
Through the Weston Network, I have been learning more about how to read resistance and sense its invitations beyond, “Don’t move. stay safe!” … feeling these messages in my body and a complex mixes of emotions, along with the dynamism of dancing on different edges. Resistance when met with a combination of respect, rootedness, receptivity, and recreation can build muscle, confidence, and open up new possibilities. How many people have I heard say that one thing they have learned this year is that they are in fact stronger and more adaptive than they might have thought? Or that they have found meaningful connection in struggle and disruption?
“We don’t have to resist entropy … or push the river. We just need to learn how to get out of the way and cooperate with the direction.”
As I have gone and been pushed to my growing edges this year, seen myself and the world from new vantage points, and tasted “resilient power” (Joe Weston’s words), I’ve been contemplating what this looks like as collective practice. And I’ve been dabbling a bit with both the Weston Network practices as well as those of the PROSOCIAL community in a few different groups and networks.
The PROSOCIAL community is rooted in extensive field research (including the commons-focused work of Nobel Prize winning economist Elinor Ostrom) and evolutionary and contextual behavioral science. PROSOCIAL offers tools and processes to support groups in cultivating collaborative skillfulness and the critical capacity of psychological flexibility, including the application of Acceptance and Commitment Training/Therapy (ACT) techniques.
The ACT Matrix (see above) is a tool that individuals andgroups can use to name what matters most to them, along with aligned behaviors, as a way of laying a foundation for transparency, agreement, support and accountability. The Matrix also helps people to name andwork with resistance found in challenging thoughts and emotions that might move them away from their shared values. In essence, this helps to normalize resistance and when used with other ACT practices (defusion, acceptance, presence, self-awareness), can encourage more sustainable, fulfilling (over the long-term), and mutually supportive choices.
I’m eager in the new year to lean more into these different practices with others, knowing that more of us are moving with intention into the “omega” (release) and “alpha” (reorganize) phases of the adaptive cycle (see below). While letting go and stepping into the unknown may not be a very compelling invitation to everyone, I’m hoping that the prospect of finding our resilient power and cultivating regenerative futures will be incentive to keep moving to meet, greet and play on our edges.
As you review the framework, would you share your responses to the questions below in the comments?
What does it bring up for you?
Where do you find yourself focusing your thinking and efforts?
What might you want to explore, start, continue or further develop, or stop doing in any of the stages?How does the framework help you prioritize and perhaps find empowering areas for action and partnership?
As you navigate the complex times of COVID-19 and racial uprising, consider what it would take to transition through these four dimensions, what needs to be in place, what is already in place, and what we need to reimagine and rebuild.
1 – In the Trauma Dimension: How are we responding to the impact of trauma from COVID, racism, and other shocks?
Racial Equity & Justice:
Are we removing racialized barriers to emergency resources?
Are we using a racial equity impact analysis tool to understand and evaluate our response? Even when we feel rushed?
Are we recognizing deep racial harm in our organization and networks?
Collaboration:
Are we pausing and engaging in quick and meaningful stakeholder engagement to guide our responses and ensure less harm?
Are we attending to both relationships and results as we carry out our work?
Love:
Are we acting and responding with humility, empathy, and transparency?
Are we practicing presence and accountability?
Networks:
Are we connecting with diverse networks to gather and share information and foster flows to address critical needs?
2 – In the Reckoning Dimension: How are we grappling with deep distress and the reality of shifting resources? How are we embracing racial uprisings for change? How are we embracing uncertainty?
Racial Equity & Justice:
Are we acknowledging inequities revealed by crisis?
Are we acting to undo the racialized impacts of our actions?
How are we recognizing the leadership of Black people and what are the lessons for our organizations?
Are we engaged in transparent and collaborative decision-making?
Are we facilitating conversations and activities to face the pain and opportunity of this crisis, our potential power together to make change, while also planning for next steps?
Love:
Are we embracing where people are? Their feelings, conditions, perspectives?
Are we modeling vulnerability as a sign of strength?
Are we exploring the reality through the lens of love and possibility?
Networks:
Are we setting strategic direction with critical partners?
Are we listening for and following the ideas of BIPOC communities (Black, Indigenous, people of color)?
3 – In the Healing Dimension: How are we creating the conditions for healing and well-being?
Racial Equity & Justice:
Are we supporting BIPOC people and communities to move through trauma, grief and anger toward joy?
Are white people leaning into discomfort, trauma and pain, and working that through with other white allies?
Collaboration:
Are we generating and living into community care guidelines to support self-care and collective well-being?
Are we designing and facilitating in ways that allow people to process holistically – intellectually, physically, emotionally, and spiritually?
Love:
Are we convening grounding conversations that allow for brave space, emotions, and truth sharing?
Are we offering resources for healing modalities?
Are we acknowledging all paths to healing?
Are we meeting pain with action and redistributing power and resources?
Networks:
Are we deepening networks and attending to flows of resources that create healing and well-being for people?
Are we setting up more distributive structures focusing on regenerative flows of resources of many kinds?
4 – In the Transformative Futures Dimension: How are we envisioning and living into equitable and resilient futures?
Racial Equity & Justice:
Are we pivoting from supremacist and extractive practices to what is liberating and life-honoring?
Collaboration:
Are we facilitating leaders to envision and invest in equitable and resilient futures?
Love:
Are we encouraging building futures from the lessons of love, possibility, and shared humanity?
Networks:
Are we fostering a new level of learning, sustainability, innovation and radical collaboration with people and our planet?
Are we focusing on systems change and building long-term movement?
Note: This blog was authored as a framework to assist leaders moving people and organizations through COVID-19. Shortly after it was written, the racial uprisings of 2020 began after the many deaths of Black people in the United States. We have since updated this framework to bridge the approaches we believe are necessary for navigating both COVID-19 and racial injustice. Please view this blog and new resource.
As we find ourselves rowing in uncharted, uncertain, and scary waters, feeling like we’re up against waves of deep tension and crisis, we know that we need to row together in new and deeply collaborative ways. Yet under current conditions, many leaders are overwhelmed with concern about their own organizations; their staff, volunteers, Board, constituencies, and networks. We are all problem solving minute-to-minute and facing many critical decisions – decisions which could determine if people have a source of income, if they will receive essential services, and, indeed, even if they will remain healthy and alive.
We need to support leaders at all levels – individually, organizationally, and at the level of the ecosystem of networks around them – to work strategically and collaboratively in this critical moment. We are using IISC’s Collaborative Change Lens, to harness the power of collaboration by focusing on love, racial equity, and networks. We are supporting leaders online, and will eventually support them in-person (yes, that day will come), to plan and move through the stages of transformation offered in this framework during the pandemic and beyond.
Organizations, communities, networks, and even individuals may experience these stages in linear ways. Or, they may dip in and out of the stages at different times as they move through challenges and opportunities. We are supporting them to shift from emergency responses to creating conditions for resilient futures that create regenerative and equitable systems that are sustainable for the longer-term. This includes helping individuals and groups “do what they do best and connect to the rest,” and to act in networked ways to strengthen response and movement.
As you review the framework, would you share your responses to the questions below in the comments?
What does it bring up for you?
Where do you find yourself focusing your thinking and efforts?
What might you want to explore, start, continue or further develop, or stop doing in any of the stages?How does the framework help you prioritize and perhaps find empowering areas for action and partnership?
Facilitate rapid problem-solving and decision-making in the face of immediate needs, heightened risk, chaos, and/or uncertainty.
_____
Collaboration Priorities:
Focus on relationships and results for rapid decision-making and crisis management
Engage in quick and meaningful stakeholder engagement of those impacted by critical and consequential decisions to generate effective responses.
Ground all decisions in what is best for our shared humanity and fate.
Love:
Act and respond with love, humility, empathy, and transparency.
Let those in critical need know they are not alone.
Show up with and model presence and focus.
Racial Equity:
Avoid “savior syndrome” and respect the dignity and voice of those most in need in the moment.
Recommit to racial equity practices and approaches from the organization’s past that can build resiliency.
Anticipate and remove racialized barriers to accessing emergency resources and uniquely tailor responses to account for historic inequities to eliminate disparities in the emergency response.
Networks:
Foster connectivity and flows between leaders in various sectors and ecosystems to gather and share information, understand the current reality, and respond to complex problems.
Tap into diverse networks to address critical needs and discover new possibilities.
Eliminate bottlenecks and liberate the flow of critical resources.
Grapple with the reality of fewer resources and more distress within the organization/community.
_____
Collaboration Priorities:
Facilitate conversations and coordinate activity to prepare for emerging into a period of relative stability, focusing on shared and equitable leadership.
Work with others to read patterns; probe, sense, and respond iteratively to achieve stability.
Love:
Shape conversations, cultures, and approaches to exploring the current reality through the lens of love and possibility.
Embrace the full complexity of where people are and how they are experiencing current reality.
Model vulnerability as strength.
Encourage people to reach for connection to experience belonging and avoid isolation.
Racial Equity:
Acknowledge and address the reality of stark racial disparities in our social systems that the emergency reveals. Remember and communicate that equity is not the same as equality.
Collect and examine data on who has been impacted by your and others’ decisions and how; determine new paths and approaches to root out inequities.
Foster deeper trust and network connections by continuing to exchange ideas and resources.
Build a gift culture where people offer what they can for the good of the whole.
Set strategic direction with critical stakeholders and partners. Join forces, align, or merge.
Create the conditions for healing and well-being for people in groups, networks, and sectors in which we live and work.
_____
Collaboration Priorities:
Model communication and consistent practices of support, cooperation, and coordination.
Generate and live into community care and mutual aid guidelines to support healing, refreshment, self-care, and improved physical and emotional well-being of oneself and others.
Love:
Convene healing conversations that allow for brave space, nourishment, emotions, truth, and care.
Leave channels of communication open for how people are feeling and experiencing things.
Remind everyone that individuals will be in different places at different times, and that is okay.
Racial Equity:
Make space for people with shared racial identities or a shared purpose to come together to move through and release trauma collectively, and to experience liberation.
Design and facilitate in ways that allow people to process holistically – intellectually, physically, emotionally, spiritually.
Networks:
Generate new connections or deepen older ones to refresh and heal on individual, interpersonal, organizational, and network levels.
Attend to flows of resources that create healing and well-being for people.
Envision, live into, and develop capacities for new and better futures
_____
Collaboration Priorities:
Facilitate leaders, organizations, and networks to envision and generate elements of a new future that is different from what was imagined before the emergency.
Create emergent learning spaces for people to share what they are experimenting with and learning.
Love:
Imagine a future from the lessons and examples of love, possibility, mutual aid, and collective care.
Build systems, processes, and practices that begin to manifest the future that you envision.
Racial Equity:
Design your vision and future practices by grounding them in the value of transformative equitable well-being and thriving.
Pivot from supremacist, extractive practices to what is fundamentally liberatory and life-honoring.
Make Meetings MatterJoin us on February 5 for a practical and energizing webinar that teaches simple facilitation practices to turn meetings into inclusive, focused conversations that lead to real progress!
