Inviting Self to the Movement
Written by CHJL alum, Lemy Garcia (they/them), this text explores the question: How does Self-leadership get us closer to the next world? in conversation with fellow alumni Denise Perry, Adaku Utah, & Sage Crump.
This piece is a part of CHJL’s upcoming Love Letter Magazine. Subscribe to our mailing list to be notified when it is released!
In the fall of 2023, as an organizer with over ten years inside the movement ecosystem, my body felt tired. I was uninspired and yearned to tap into my imagination. When I couldn’t, it became clear that I was experiencing a deep burnout; I needed to slow down. I am a person from an immigrant family that had to work endless hours to survive, so the idea of slowing down for the sake of being in closer connection with myself, my loved ones, my community, and Mother Earth challenged me. This moment was a “yes” to honoring my Self and an opportunity to trust that I will arrive wherever I am meant to be. I wanted to get curious about my burnout and how it impacted my ability to show up as an organizer and, really, in all aspects of my life. With all of this in mind, Khrysta’s [1] invitation to write this piece exploring my curiosities about the role of Self in our movement ecosystem felt truly aligned.
And I am so excited to welcome you into this conversation with me! In writing this, I held the awareness that it is more important than ever to engage in practices that invite us into Self. We are witnessing multiple genocides, fascist tyranny, consistent state and interpersonal violence, extreme environmental crises, and the list goes on. These harms that persist, oftentimes without adequate healing or justice, encourage us to live disembodied lives and disconnect us from Self. In this piece, I share what I’ve learned about why it's important to lead from Self, in hopes that you can get curious with me and envision the possibilities for our movements and our world.
In this process of deepening my understanding, I chose to be in conversation with three incredible movement leaders and organizers whose work has inspired my own organizing: Denise Perry, Adaku Utah, and Sage Crump. I was curious about how being in Self was impacting and transforming how these revolutionary leaders are meeting this current moment.
Denise Perry (she/her): Organizer of 35 years and Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of Black Organizing for Leadership & Dignity (BOLD)— From Denise, whom I learned alongside in CHJL’s inaugural cohort, I wanted to hear the stories, lessons, and questions that have guided her process of creating profound spaces of transformation. I’ve witnessed the expansiveness with which Black organizers lead after attending a BOLD training. In their organizing, I noticed a shift toward creating space in the work for people to learn more about each other's stories. They learned to stand in their own power, inviting others to do the same; they were embodying Self. I was excited to have the opportunity to learn more about Denise’s vision and what she believed was possible for our movements through Self-leadership.
Adaku Utah (all pronouns [2]): Organizer of 20 years, Senior Manager of Movement Building Programs at the Building Movement Project, and Co-Founder of Harriet’s Apothecary— Bringing Adaku into the conversation felt important because they embody a Self that feels connected to all beings. I was curious about how this level of connection might give us more room to feel and practice being free. Furthermore, Adaku’s organizing experience spans the globe and has touched several corners of the movement landscape over and beyond the last decade. I felt that they would have an invaluable perspective on the potential for Self-leadership to impact the movement ecosystem as a whole.
Sage Crump (she/her): Cultural Strategist and Facilitator of 20 years, Director of Racial Justice and Movement Building at the National Performance Network, and Chief Architect at Emergent Strategies Ideation Institute— In the several years that I’ve known Sage, she has consistently modeled for me and many others what it looks like to bring ancestral wisdom, play, and Self into facilitation. Her experience offers vital insight into the common struggles and victories that exist throughout our movement, as well as an opportunity to appreciate the role of Self while holding space. Bringing her into this conversation was also driven by a curiosity to understand how she grappled with Self-leadership in her practice of building the next world.
I led each conversation with the intention of creating a virtual circle where we could have honest, heart-centered discussions guided by this central question:
How does Self-leadership get us closer to the next world?
In each conversation with Denise, Adaku, and Sage, I asked them to share their definition of Self [3], so it’s only right that I share mine as well. For me, Self is the connection to my whole being as I am. When I lead from Self, I’m showing up aware of my needs, knowing I’m capable of bringing what is necessary to meet the moment. My relationship with Self is a symbiotic one that is nurtured by practice and thrives when I give myself room to be at choice [4]. For instance, I feel that my process of weaving this piece together while moving through huge shifts for myself and my lineage is an example of me embodying Self, for which I’m very proud.
The learnings, affirmations, and questions that surfaced after engaging in these conversations, cross-pollinated with my own insights from personal readings and reflections with friends, were woven together to reveal four truths that I believe can serve as an invitation for each of us to bring our Self into the movement.
Self-leadership makes it more possible for us to connect with ourselves and each other.
Throughout my history as an organizer, I have been in a continuous practice of assessing my leadership and what it means to show up with the best version of it. Having been part of various movement spaces, I’ve seen how we’ve struggled with practicing collective leadership. Organizing through collective leadership requires slowing down to find our flow, which first requires us to find our Selves. But it’s hard to slow down when we see what’s happening in our neighborhoods, to our communities here and worldwide; we want to do something. That is the work, though. We have to take the time to figure out how to be in relationship with ourselves to have any chance of tapping into the collective’s needs, desires, and will. Adaku and I grappled with this concept of Self as connection.
The word Ubuntu keeps coming up here. I am because we are, we are because I am. And we say those phrases together because we're not disappearing the “I” for the sake of the “we” or disappearing the “we” for the sake of the “I”. In Self-leadership, there is actually space for both the “I” and the “we” to coexist in a way that's interdependent and mutually nourishing.
Ubuntu became a practice for Adaku– in his work and in his community. For me, the “I” feels very important to remember in this process. We cannot let go of our own individual journeys because our paths benefit the collective. It’s about nurturing the process we are in, together, knowing that whatever road we walk, we do not walk it alone. This connection is life-saving. It is how we care for each other.
When COVID first hit, my work as an organizer included leading a membership of women with incarcerated loved ones. Without our advocacy, it was clear to us that our loved ones inside would be forgotten, that their lives would not be considered in all the “solutions” that governments were coming up with to “sustain life”. So, in a moment when the set structures were not giving us the answers we demanded (Was my loved one getting the support they needed? Were they being treated as if their life mattered? Were they alive?), we turned toward one another. We knew it was essential to create systems of support and to generate our own resources by way of mutual aid because, in the end, all we had was us.
While doing this work, a lot came up for me about my leadership. What did it mean to win when so many of us are dying? How much should I prioritize my well-being as an organizer? As a person who cares deeply about my people, I put a lot of pressure on myself to keep my “stuff” – my struggles, my needs, my grief, my despair – to the side and prioritize the work. However, it soon became apparent that I needed to lean on my own practices and support system to clarify where I was and what I could offer to meet the moment. And it was tough.
I’ve been part of different movement spaces where leaders modeled a practice of neglecting their needs for the sake of the work. However, one thing that was consistent across each interview was the idea that Self is not singular but actually a vast embodiment of connection. Each time we arrived there, I felt my body relax into this truth more and more. Neglecting our Self and our Parts does not make us better organizers, especially because the people who come together on any given issue to do this work are often the same people who are or were once impacted by said issue. When this is true, it becomes even more critical that the work uplifts those doing it. So when Denise shared in our conversation that investing in our movements requires the vulnerable presence of Self, it resonated.
I feel like our ability to increase our Self-awareness, our ability to increase our Self-love, actually allows us to drop deeper into this work we're doing. And a focus on Self is not to take ourselves away, but to actually bring ourselves completely in. If you never use the person's name, they don't feel as though they belong, right? This is the same thing. When we don't [make room for] ourselves, then we're [left] standing on the outside…
This use of Self is bringing us completely in. We need to be vulnerable. We need to be present. And so to me, I see Self-leadership as making a commitment for ourselves to be in 100%.
When I’m truly being vulnerable, I’m embodying an open posture. I’m speaking from a place of truth that’s possible because I'm being present with my Self. I have witnessed how vulnerability, when collectively practiced, makes it possible to access Self. And when we, the collective, can access Self, there is greater potential for people to be in deeper alignment and connection with each other and the movement.
Practicing Self-leadership in our movements is not work we do alone. When I started organizing, even though I understood the powers we were fighting against, I took not winning really hard. It angered me that our organizing spaces weren’t winning more, which made me feel defeated. Defeat activated so many of my Parts: Not Enough, Anger, Urgency. This led me to push myself and my membership to do more and do it faster, in a way that wasn’t grounded in our collective needs and conditions. My Parts activated their Parts, leading to disconnection and discontent. Rooting into my Self-leadership created an opening for me to love and care for all the Parts of me that need tending. And when I do this for myself, I create opportunities to show up resourced and grounded for my co-conspirators as well, which encourages them to also meet me in Self. Denise also spoke to the impact of this camaraderie.
I don't think the work into our Self is an individual thing. It still has a relationship with others. It requires someone to be working with us. I was at a friend's house, and they had [a quote] on their wall that said, "Be careful with each other so you can be dangerous together." [That is] what we're talking about here. Becoming our best selves is this work with another. Being with someone else helps us see more about who we are; who we are offers something to them understanding who they are. And ultimately, we're creating this powerful source.
The more I do this work, the more I know that the support and care we give ourselves and each other are as much part of the work as any other part of executing a strategy in a campaign. When we love ourselves, we have the capacity to love others. When we know that we are loved, that the crew we are rolling with and the people with whom we are building the next world love us, we move differently. We are more tender with each other; we take more risks because we have trust. Organizers sometimes have the pressure to develop bold campaigns, exciting and visionary demands, and creative and innovative ways to take action. When this type of love is absent, our work may fail to meet the moment. And when it is present, anything is possible.
Self-leadership helps us create and nurture spaces to practice the next world.
As an organizer, I wasn’t encouraged to invest in my own healing. There seemed to be a fear that doing so would lead to self-involved organizers who had lost sight of what they were supposed to be fighting for. I found this confusing because I could see that my disconnection from myself impacted the way I organized. I was constantly giving more and more to campaigns and projects, feeling completely depleted, and sometimes disagreeing with how we were moving the work. In this state of disconnection from my Self and my body, I didn’t trust my own assessments of strategy and action plans; I felt others had more to offer and that eventually, hopefully, I would get to the same level of clarity they had. When I asked Adaku about their organizer role and how it has transformed, they shared this:
Coming from a long lineage of farmers and organizers really drove me into organizing. But I was an organizer from a very disembodied place… The way that my life was organized was very external. [My focus was], “Where the people at? Get the people together. Do the work that needs to be done.” And it was powerful, but I could not feel myself inside of that…
The kind of organizer that it created inside me was an organizer that was very dissociated. And that dissociation did not just impact me, but it impacted the quality of the assessments I could make in my community… I wasn't as invested in community in the same ways, and I think part of that was because I wasn't invested in the community of my own body. And so organizing, to me, is fundamentally about relationships. And the deeper relationship that I have with myself, [the more] my capacity to relate to the world [increases].
Similar to Adaku, my work in cultivating Self-leadership has been a practice of understanding my internal ecosystem and how it relates to the movement ecosystem. I’m working toward embodying the practices and values I want to see in our future liberated world, and because of this, my fight for liberation no longer requires me to forget my Self or abuse my body. Self-leadership pushes us to get clear on what it is we’re actually moving towards and whether that’s truly what we want. In this process, we have the opportunity to change the world not just based on what we do, but also on how we do it, so that each step towards our next world is a reflection of where we want to end up.
This sentiment can also be applied to how we collaborate with each other. Movement history has shown us that organization is vital to winning. And yet, I’ve seen us struggle to create and maintain organization. I’ve seen leaders frustrated at the lack of imagination in our campaigns and demands, only to arrive at a limiting assessment that says organizers are not working hard enough. I have received that assessment and have spent so much time and energy pushing myself to be more creative, to feel more enough than what I already am. I desire for our spaces to talk about what makes it possible to tap into that sacred place where the creative lives, not to mention where this incessant push for more comes from. This is something that Sage also acknowledged in our conversation.
We've seen it. We're in our own spaces, with our own [people], and mimicking the shit that we say we're trying to combat. Self-leadership… is key to actually being able to imagine and build something transformative... Self-leadership is a movement toward what? A movement for what? If we're going to be able to be in that sort of space that doesn't have form yet, then the place of study and practice is Self. So that we can say, “Oh! This is what I need to feel safe. Let’s try this collectively.”
It's not an accident that we are being asked to fight so hard because fighting so hard tends to harden us. And when you get hard, it's harder to imagine something else. Self-leadership… is an ingredient needed to grow our imagination, and our imagination fuels our actions. When we believe more is possible, we act like more is possible.
When we practice Self-leadership, we can honor and protect our capacity and that of others, allowing us to access the ingredients needed to be creative. When I’m activated or exhausted, my capacity for creativity is limited. When I view myself or others through a lens of deficit, then I create limitations before we even act. We can't win this way. But when I understand my capacities and my choices, then I get to be in my essence, in my power. When we do this, we put out a beautiful invitation to our whole selves to come out and play, to imagine what is possible.
I feel fortunate that in my development as an organizer, I’ve had countless opportunities to be in collective spaces where we get to imagine what the next world looks like. Sometimes, we don’t know all the answers or the immediate next steps, but Sage reminds us: “You don’t have to know the destination to be in practice.”
This imagining often goes hand-in-hand with our next-world values of allowing our bodies to release the long-embedded demands of racialized capitalism. If rest becomes available, slowing down becomes available, saying “no” becomes available, whole-body yeses become available, deep satisfaction becomes available, our next world becomes available! Self-leadership helps us create spaces where we can practice being in our liberated bodies and liberated relationships, and experience the pleasure of where that can take us.
And in doing so, there is one next-world practice that my time embodying Self-leadership both within and outside of movement spaces has shown me is non-negotiable. We do not get where we’re going without being willing and able to engage in generative conflict. This was confirmed for me by the fact that all my conversations about Self-leadership included anecdotes about choosing each other and keeping hope alive when we are in conflict with one another. This offering from Adaku stood out to me.
In our work as organizers, we're meeting people who often have very different political ideologies, especially if you're organizing migrant folks… You have people who don't use the same language as we do in movement or might have different stances on queer and trans people. But does it mean that we can't work together? I don't necessarily think so. There are ways that we can work together. There's also a time when I have to make sure that I'm putting up boundaries if I feel like being in relationship with somebody is going to cause me harm. So it's complex.
And, at the core, we’ve got to be in relationship with really complicated people. I'm also a very complicated person. So I feel like [Self leadership] really enriched my capacity to be in relationship for the long term in a way that was more intentional, not just because we needed this win, but because I care about you. It made me more clear about the role that I need to play right now and where I need to turn my attention.
This spoke to the Part of me that seeks to nurture spaces that don’t just feed our fire energies, but that also welcome the depth and calm brought by water energies. I do this because I believe we need to spend more time understanding what safety feels like within collective spaces and within our bodies.
Our work to create collectives grounded in love and care creates so much potential for us to engage in conflict and struggle. When we operate from Self-leadership, when we can see and love the Self and Parts of our co-conspirators, we hold and embody power in a way that has the potential to uplift everyone in the room. This type of power makes our spaces more permeable and connected, which then makes it more possible for us to navigate conflict and arrive at even more alignment and strengthened organization.
In each of these interviews, I am reminded that whether we are a facilitator, a manager, an executive director, or a comrade, we have the power to create containers where our values are centered, which supports our capacity to collectively craft the conditions necessary for people to feel possibility. By possibility, I mean the feeling that we can overcome whatever we may face. This requires us to choose each other, and we choose the world we need, over and over again. Inevitably, there will be times when staying in practice becomes challenging. For me, knowing that this is indeed a practice feels liberatory because it reminds me that we are building toward something that surpasses perhaps what we can even dream. And the best part about it is that doing so allows us to access the liberation of the next world, today.
Self-leadership challenges us to expand what we consider a win and how we hold power.
Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about wins, targets, and the types of plans and campaigns that get us more wins. I have been in rooms where we are debriefing a campaign and have an extensive list of all the things that could have gone better and a very short list of what went well or what we won. I would leave those spaces of reflection feeling discouraged and unsure of what we were building.
It wasn’t until I started working on my personal healing in relation to my role as an organizer and reading pieces like the “Combahee River Collective Statement” that I began to see that our ability to lead with our values is also a win! I opened to the idea that a win also includes the common ground we’re able to build with one another. This opening was possible because of how the spaces I was in were facilitated; they allowed room for people to share learnings, to be in relationship with each other, and align on how we want to direct our power. When I'm operating from Self, I hold my power in an expansive way that is less attached to outcomes and more focused on harnessing our collective power.
For me, Sage’s retelling of a conversation she had with a friend about the war in Ukraine helped illustrate the importance of facilitation in helping us reframe what’s possible.
I was sitting with my friend and we were watching the beginning of the [war in Ukraine]. She looked at me and said, “You know, as governments topple, facilitation becomes governance.” And I was like, ‘Oh shit. This is a skill we're going to need!’... Facilitation is about how, collectively, we move somewhere together. It keeps me up at night [thinking about how] the rightness or wrongness paradigm gets us locked-in in a way that sometimes [makes us] forget that we're going to have to travel together. We're actually going to have to figure out how to do that.
When holding space, it feels important that the people we throw down with have a container that can support us in making decisions together. Practicing co-governance gives us insight into our relationship to power – how we embody it, how it feels in our bodies, the ways power has been taken from us, what it has taken to gain it – and encourages us to get curious about different forms of power. We are on this road together, and the way we build each other up and invest in each other’s leadership can be considered a win.
Adaku shared that they see the work of CHJL “not about building leaders that can do more, [but rather] about building up the quality of leadership.” I believe that our debriefs and assessments should include reflections on how we’re able to govern together, how we’re able to have conversations, make decisions, and take actions that are Self-led. I discussed this with Denise, and she shared an example of how this happens at BOLD.
There's such an equation of vulnerability and crying. We pretty much can't get through a course without someone shedding tears because of the vulnerability of it. That has such a powerful impact on everyone in the room, and it actually made that person more powerful to us [rather] than less. That, in and of itself, is powerful! Because it has allowed us to get more cohesive, which is what we need in order to win. It's like, “Wow, we're building cohesiveness because someone in the room's crying? Okay! That tells me something different.”
Whether it's wittingly or unwittingly, I began to change and move. I think [through] watching the [BOLD] national gatherings and how people come together, there's a shared language and shared practice, and all of those things are just really powerful to me. And [the fact] that it can be tender. That power doesn't have to be [thought of in] the US context of breaking heads and dictating– but that it's actually because we're more cohesive, we're able to try new things together, struggle together. I think that's the liberation that we're all actually looking for. And I feel like we've made that okay versus gripping and holding [the vulnerability] down until the thing is over.
This wisdom from Denise reminds me that when we see power in tenderness, it also has an impact on what we are able to build together. We need spaces where we can ask, “Did we transform? Did we build trust? Did we continue to nurture trust? Did we move through conflict in a generative way? Where is accountability needed? What are our opportunities for repair?” This work requires us to choose each other, over and over again. We can be at choice in this commitment to each other when we know that our transformation is not only connected, but a fundamental part of the work we are doing together.
We are in the practice of building a bigger “we.” To build this “we”, we need to support people in their transformation so that they may show up as their most authentic Selves. When this happens, when there are more people showing up from a Self-led place, the work becomes more energizing and fuels our collectives. There are more ideas, more care, more energies in flow with one another. That is a win.
Another unexpected place I found power in my growth as a Self-led organizer was through my journey towards embodying the fullness of my brown, queer, non-binary Self. As humans, we often skirt away from what feels intangible, which can be incredibly limiting in our movements. We have so many examples and models of power that are sadistic and anxious, seeking to confine and control through assumptions of rightness and wrongness, stripping us of our innate power in the process.
For this reason, I believe queerness is an incredible tool for us to redefine what it means to be powerful, liberating us from binary constraints. Inviting our queerness into movement spaces, as a concept that reaches beyond the context of sexual identity, allows us to embody power in ways that are vulnerable, grounded, resilient, and brave. And in Self, we have access to the expansiveness that queerness allows us, introducing us to wins we didn’t even know to look for.
In my conversation with Adaku, she highlights the overlap between queerness and Self as well as how both invite us to interrupt our inclinations toward certainty.
What I love about being queer is the unapologetic abandonment of binaries. One of the ways the world tries to punish us is to make us into certain people; it increases the certainty of the world. You're either this or you're that. You're either wrong or you're good. You're either gay or you're straight… I think it’s really uncomfortable for people [to embrace queerness] because some people find safety in certainty. If you are certain about something, it's predictable… There are so many points of confinement around who we are that don't honor the fullness and the abundance of our lives.
The essence of queer to me is so rooted in what we've been [saying] about the Self. It's the invitation to move beyond restriction. Queer it up!... It can feel disruptive to the system, whether it's the system of ourselves or the system of the communities that we’re a part of. But we still got to do it!
One of the most beautiful aspects of my organizing experience has been participating in spaces that, for a long time, have grappled with and practiced a queering of power that is curious and emergent. Queerness, like Self, is a medicine that heals the harm that binaries have caused us, that the burden of proof has caused us, that the limitations on goodness have caused us. It is a reflection of Earthly life at its essence and, as such, can be utilized as both a tool and a blueprint to reclaim our power and dismantle virtually any systemic limitation of our humanity. In these spaces, I had the opportunity to reflect on the different ways I felt powerless as well as the impact it had on what I could imagine and create as a queer organizer. It took healing through my connection to Self to transform this limitation. In doing so, I now understand that our ideas about power and what it means to win can be so expansive.
Self-leadership has helped me understand that a win is in the ability to have more choice, particularly about what we decide is truly powerful and worth celebrating. When we are at choice, we free ourselves and our movements from the restrictions of the master’s tools [5]. This helps us believe that more is possible, and it shapes what we dream, what we demand, and what we create. We feel more capable of governing our lives and communities on our own terms. And that, too, is a win.
Self-leadership helps us heal and meet the moment through its connection to Spirit and ancestral wisdom.
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For some time now, I’ve been cultivating and deepening my connection to Spirit and the ancestral wisdom that resides within my body, my communities, and Mother Earth. It has not been easy.
Early on in my career as an organizer, after graduating from college, I was pouring nearly everything into my work. I could see myself growing as an organizer– I was becoming a better public speaker, I was learning how to grow a base, and I was witnessing the effectiveness of the strategies I had implemented. I could see the impact of my work and how it was benefiting the communities I worked with. And then I learned I had an eating disorder.
Over time, I realized that I was living a disembodied life. I was so focused on becoming a better organizer, a better sibling, a better partner, and a better caretaker that I forgot about myself. And my body was suffering the consequences. My conversation with Adaku reminded me that colonization is the source of so much of our collective disembodiment and that Self-leadership is a means of reclaiming ourselves.
One of the harshest forms of harm through colonization is the severance from ourselves. We were literally ripped from lands. We were cut out from wombs. Our native tongues were taken away from us. Our ability to even identify some of the seeds that we grew up in [was stolen]. So when I think about re-occupying that Self, decolonizing that Self, that is the fundamental piece of what we're up to. That is what movement is about, you know? We're trying to decolonize not just our lands, but also our bodies. And our capacity to do that on all the different levels is crucial to our own freedom.
A significant shift in my own decolonization and reclamation occurred when I signed up for a generative somatics training. The training involved various exercises and conversations that helped me to feel into my body and the Parts of myself that were hurting. Somatics put me in connection with my flesh, and I discovered that there was trauma living in my thighs, my hips, my feet, and my stomach. My body had memories that my brain didn’t– at least not the whole story. Being able to connect with my body on this level also showed me that connecting to ancestral wisdom and Spirit included mending the threads that connect my whole being.
I had to start with grief; grieving the ways that colonization has disconnected me from my indigeneity and our inherent beauty. Temazcal ceremony helped me make space for that grief to come out, be witnessed, and be transformed. In this form of ceremony, my grief bursts from my gut and leaves through my throat in the form of a vibrational scream. It spews out of my pores in the form of sweat, and the collective songs we sing clear the pathways that will lead me to my ancestors and Spirit.
When we enter the temazcal, we enter with the understanding that we are returning to the womb. The womb, a place of becoming, is dark and hot. It’s a space that invites us to surrender into the vastness of who we are, a space where definitions that distinguish me from any other being dissolve. Our ancestors knew that we needed to return to the womb time and time again to find Self and connect with Spirit. It’s in ceremony that I experience the full breadth of the knowing that all beings are connected. When I organize from this understanding, I am better able to trust in myself and others, and I let go of the need to attempt to know all the answers.
I see Spirit as a fundamental component of movement work. I haven’t felt this way throughout my entire career as an organizer, and it remains a practice. What continues to be affirmed is that when I’m connected to Spirit, my sense of hope becomes a life force that I can fully lean into. In Love Letter to the Movement, Damon and Sarah share that Spirit is the embodiment of what guides us—intuition, ancestral knowledge, nature, a higher power. There is so much we don’t know about the next world. There is so much we don’t know about tomorrow! For me, this is where my relationship to Spirit is most essential. Spirit helps me continue even when I don’t have a clear vision. Ancestors nudge me forward, providing signs and affirmations that soothe my Parts and remind me of the power of walking my path in Self, even when I do not know the destination.
Of course, it’s not always possible to stay in this sense of interconnectedness and understanding. Our reality can destabilize our Self-leadership and contribute to our disembodiment. While we work to heal from the many ways racial capitalism and imperialism wound our communities, we are also being actively wounded. Sage speaks to an opportunity she had to highlight how our connection to ancestors can support us in the most troubling of times.
I was facilitating a group of about 40 folks, and we were trying to figure out what time it is on the clock of the world [6]. Someone stood up and was like, “Well, genocide, right? I don't know why we're even having this conversation. The time is of genocide.” And that kind of projection– that hurt. The room started to shut down a little bit.
So I was like, “Thank you, absolutely. And, most of us in this room”– because it’s a room full of people of color– “know that there's something on the other side of genocide. I wouldn't be standing here if there wasn't something on the other side of genocide.”… And I think that's the space [where] when it feels hard, [there’s] the wonder of somebody doing something that got us through. That's how we got here… Something else is always possible.
Two things stand out to me in Sage’s example. The first is her ability to offer perspective amid a challenging moment, which I believe is possible because she was in Self and connected to her ancestral wisdom as a facilitator. Sage was able to acknowledge the truth someone brought into the room, witness the impact that truth had on the group, and offer a deeper knowing that can support all of us in processing our reality. When we’re in Self-leadership, when we’re connected to Spirit and ancestral wisdom, we have an opportunity to support our collective spaces in ways that allow us to hold multiple truths without surrendering our power. Sage supported the group in connecting with their resiliency— our ancestors, guided by Spirit, have made a way out of no way before, and now, with their help, so can we.
Which leads me to my second piece. Even in this moment of genocide— because of our ancestors, because we are alive and breathing— another way, another world is emergent. How powerful is that? The fact that our ancestors continued through seemingly impossible circumstances creates possibility for us to find our own way forward, not in the sense of toxic resilience rhetoric, but in alignment with the radical tradition of hope for the sake of choosing life.
The forces and systems we exist under carry a high capacity to harm and have virtually limitless resources to carry out that harm. And yet, my connection to Spirit also equips me with my own set of resources that are not dependent on the material world. As people of color, our liberation has always relied on a connection to something bigger than us, bigger than this world. I feel this is the only way our people could have repeatedly overcome what seemed to be insurmountable odds. They believed in their liberation, and they believed in ours, leaving behind whatever they could in hopes that we might find our way back to them and ourselves.
Self-leadership gives us access to the expansiveness of Spirit. Sometimes it’s hard to see how we can heal the wounds created by our oppressors. And yet, there is a knowing in my body, a knowing that I inherited from those who came before me, that tells me it's not only possible, but that it's actively happening. So whether we encounter Spirit in connection with our ancestors, our past and future selves, our animal familiars, the moon, the land, or one another, the presence of something greater continually shines a light forward on our path to the next world. This, I feel, is what positions us to have an impactful movement rooted in the very thing that connects us all.
***
What I’ve shared here are ideas that I’m honestly still sitting with. To write this piece, I had to revisit many of the experiences I’ve had in movement, examine the role I've played, whether or not I was Self-led, and peel back the layers, taking in what was revealed; it’s hard. Sharing this is an act of vulnerability that I’m not used to. I’m looking forward to being a leader who practices embodied vulnerability and can create space for my emotional body to lead.
I’m wrapping this up feeling grateful to have had an amazing thought partner in Khrysta. We spent intentional time connecting and processing what we were learning, and really practiced being creative and Self-led. Also, a shout-out to my Parts that came out to share their thoughts – Campaigner Part, Healing From Queer Spaces Part, Curanderx Part, and We Are Not Enough Part. I see y’all and love you!
It feels exciting to add this piece to the conversations I hear in our movement spaces, including CHJL, and to know that it is being shared with people who also have a lot to contribute to our collective learning [7]. I look forward to continuing this conversation with our community about what was learned here. I hope that whatever resonates from here becomes an opportunity for practice and an invitation for Self to join the movement.
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Footnotes:
Khrysta Robinson is CHJL’s Community Growth Manager as well as the creator and editor of the upcoming Love Letter Magazine.
In acknowledgment of Adaku’s use of all pronouns, they are referred to using she/her, he/him, and they/them throughout the piece.
The philosophy and spirit of Self and Parts as a concept can be sourced back to any number of spiritual and wisdom traditions from around the world that have honored the multiplicity of the human psyche since the beginning of time. CHJL’s structure and process for working with Self and Parts evolved from Internal Family Systems (IFS), created by Dr. Richard Schwartz.
The IFS model describes Self-leadership as a state in which one is led by a curious, compassionate, and confident Self, rather than being led by various burdened Parts such as Fear, Scarcity, Rage, and Catastrophe. CHJL’s teachings of IFS and Self-leadership, developed over more than ten years of practice, build on this definition to acknowledge the impact of oppressive systems such as racialized capitalism and settler colonialism, as well as the healing that is possible through connection with Spirit, Ancestors, past and future selves, and the natural world. (Excerpt from Grounding in Self by Sarah Jawaid, an essay from CHJL’s upcoming Love Letter Magazine)
In CHJL’s teachings, “at choice” is a phrase used to indicate the state of being Self-led.
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” — A sentiment expressed by Audre Lorde, a Black American writer, professor, poet, and civil rights activist.
“What time is it on the clock of the world?” — A question regularly posed by Chinese American philosopher and community activist, Grace Lee Boggs.
That’s you. Thank you for engaging with this piece. We are happy to have you.
