Emotional & somatic justice and liberation seeks to bring back emotions and spirit to everyday life. Too often, we are told that in order to be effective at our work we cannot get too emotional, so we repress our feelings. The truth is though, our emotions inform almost all of our decisions, and when we disconnect from them in our work and daily lives, we create the conditions for “othering” people. 

It was our capacity to detach from emotions that created the space to dehumanize human beings for the sale of profit, productivity and efficiency. Emotional and somatic justice and liberation tools are thus, absolutely critical for racial equity and justice work, and yet too often, many are doing this work without them. 

Change alone, even thinking about change, evokes strong emotions. If change alone triggers our emotions, imagine what the conversation of race does to our biology and then to our capacity, without understanding emotional intelligence. An emotional intelligence toolkit helps us weave our intellectual, emotional, spiritual and physical selves together in order to heal ourselves and our relationships and to unlock our capacity to access our deeper thinking and imagination.

We are called into conflict for reasons that reflect the dances we have throughout our lives with specific people and specific dynamics. As we still ourselves and invite inquiry, we can learn what there is to learn about ourselves that co-created the conflict. But we often act from painful avoidance. Not only do we not like conflict, we don’t like pain. The truth is, however, we do not have to control our pain, although we almost always try. We must learn to accept the painful things. We can do hard things.

“Where do I know this from?”

“What is there to learn?”

“What is this here to teach me?”

When we practice settling our bodies and get curious about our pain and the conflict, we create a sacred space where we can unlock our own agency to respond with a deeper understanding and compassion for ourselves and others. It is from this place that we can invite love into the hard conversations. I call this working love~ 

If we learn to hold space for it and practice the tools to move through it, conflict and fear can be gifts that keeps us from “othering” each other, can deepen our relationships, heal our wounds, and show us the pathway to our collective liberation.

My approach to restorative justice is from an Indigenous point of view where everyone is made whole, and no one is left behind. It is both honoring and humbling to facilitate repair conversations. I marry the practices of gifts of conflict and fear and emotional and somatic justice and liberation to help folx hold more than one narrative and feel in their bodies in ways that offer greater understanding and empathy for the other person, creating the space for healing and repair to happen.

Too often well intended folx – organizations and institutions, approach marginalized and oppressed communities in ways that activates fear and trauma. Real community engagement cannot happen if people do not feel safe, and thus, the tools we practice as part of our emotional intelligence toolkit are absolutely necessary to incorporate in our personal and organizational practice for community engagement. 

I work with folks to help develop a relational and cultural approach to community engagement, one that is rooted in the understanding of generational historical and social trauma in order to keep folks from mistaking trauma for personality and culture and from seeing the true gifts that lie within the community. Failing to do so, often reinforces power imbalances, sows seeds of mistrust and conflict, and perpetuates harm. 

A relational and cultural approach provides insights for ways of interacting with communities that are culturally sensitive and appropriate and incorporates the four R’s of Indigeneity, a paradigm that recognizes the common core cultural values shared by most Indigenous people. The four R’s (Relationship, Responsibility, Reciprocity, and Redistribution) are the cornerstone of community engagement that can restore power imbalances and facilitate trust, healing, and genuine collaboration.

Racism and white supremacy culture is inculcated in our systems and structures and in us. It is in the soil and the water of our lives, how could it not be in us? How could it be any other way? 

Emotional and somatic tools are a critical part of uprooting white supremacy culture. We have tried to teach our brains to think about race, but white supremacy culture doesn’t live in our thinking. It lives in our bodies. As Resmaa Menakem explains, “we will never outgrow white-body supremacy just through discussion, training, or anything else that is mostly cognitive. Instead, we need to look to the body — and the embodied experience of trauma.”

Offering emotional and somatic tools is one of the ways my offering for uprooting white supremacy culture differs from others. Additionally, I work with organizations and individuals to find and uproot racism using Indigenous wisdom, love and humor to move us into a more liberated world. Noticing, investigating, and uprooting white supremacy culture within us can and should be heartbreaking, but it can also be joyful and liberating. 

We can experience humility through laughter and the awareness that we are all in some way carrying white supremacy culture within us. In a world I would create, we would have the space to celebrate our healing and growth. People would be less afraid to admit their mistakes and harm to others and more willing to face the fears that keep them disconnected from others. In the words of Thomas Morton, “love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves – we find it with another.” This is the nature of all of my work. Everything I do is in service of creating a world where we create a more connected way of being and community.

I work with organizations, especially those doing work with Indigenous communities, to understand the history and impacts of colonization and the erasure of Indigenous Peoples that continues today. I offer workshops and coaching that helps organizations move beyond stereotypes — mascots, your grandmother, and costumes in order to shift their relationships with Indigenous communities. As a member of the Lumbee Tribe, I also work within my own community to create safe spaces for us to investigate and heal the places where colonization is in us.