Courage of Care Coalition

Some number of years ago a small team of us at the Courage of Care Coalition stepped into an emerging movement to build a third political party in the US. We were on fire for the work—we knew business as usual couldn’t continue, and that the two-party system in the US was fundamentally flawed. Not only was it corrupt and bought, but the rhetoric of the so-called ‘left and right’ employed by this system was astonishingly oversimplifying, limiting, and polarizing.? This movement for a third party seemed to be about something different—a care-based system, at the very least—that gave us hope that another world was actually possible. So as to not bury the lead: the movement fell apart. In short, the movement crumbled under the weight of its own dysfunction. In spite of all of the time, heart, and energy that was poured into this vision, the movement suffered from power grabs, lack of transparency and accountability, divisiveness, and so on. Some of it was wrong; some of it, sadly, was predictable. This organization—like many others—attempted to build an alternative movement out of the dredges of an anti-relational, capitalist, racist, supremacist, and genocidal culture. So many of the trappings of those very systems ended up being replicated within this very ‘alternative’ structure. (To be clear, this is not a critique of attempts at third-party building,) How many of us have experienced something similar within our own organizations and communities? So heartbreaking and frustrating and perhaps even rage-inducing, yet also so human and so understandable. How can we be expected to not only dream of alternatives to the status quo but also embody and enact them if we haven’t had opportunities to practice or experience something different? Not just taste alternatives, but practice alternative ways of being to the same depth and intensity that we have practiced ourselves into urgency, individualism, competition, extractivism, exploitation. Our RISE program for Relational Facilitators is open to anyone interested in nurturing the relational connections in their community, their local organizing or mutual aid group, their organization and/or their movement for justice. It offers a framework as well as tools and practices to help us develop inner confidence and skill in building compassionate, counter-oppressive, healing-centered, and pluriversal cultures of practice. We believe the work of tending to the relational fabric of our organizations and communities is a project for each of us. Some of us do this work formally—we are coaches, facilitators, trainers, educators, activists. Some of us are called to do this work informally, without an official title. Yet many of us are called to learn how to better foster solidarity and mutuality within and between our organizations and movements because we understand the importance of relationships. The next cohort launches February 20th: https://lnkd.in/gJAabMK8

Our next cohort of RISE for Relational Facilitators program launches February 20th! This 15 session program -which has been running for nearly 10 years - is designed to provide facilitators with a robust framework and relational tools to strengthen solidarity, culture, and collective visions for freedom within our communities and movements for healing, justice, and liberation. As a participant you'll learn to: *develop relational tools for strengthening connection and belonging, as well as a frame for building "right-sized" containers for the work at hand; *strengthen your structural competency and fluency in embodied, anti-oppressive pedagogies, and learn various frameworks for facilitating transformative somatic work among teams; *apply tools for healing and transforming conflict and oppression, and learn to assess readiness for engagement (and what do to or where to start if a team isn't ready, yet!); and *expand your vision for more joyful, responsive and regenerative communities, and inspire imagination and hope without spiritual bypass. Upon completion of the program, you'll be invited to join our growing Courage Kin skill share and practice community where you can continue to learn with and from other committed facilitators. Sliding scale registration and payment plan options in service of racial and economic justice. Join us! For more Info: https://lnkd.in/gJAabMK8

Our new issue of?The Arrow Journal - Steadfastness and Spiritual Solidarity Through Gen****e: SWANA and Ally Voices -?is Available! This is our first issue as part of our new collaboration with?The Arrow Journal.?Please join us in celebrating, sharing, and supporting this moving work. In her Editor's Introduction to this issue, Maha wrote,? "My 15 years living in Palestine were a sacred blessing...[T]his special?issue?on?sumud,?or steadfastness, is a love story and tribute to the?wisdom and?yaqin,?or?faith, that only Palestine can tell and that cannot be destroyed by any amount of b0mb$, dehumanization, or g******de. The pieces collected here are a testimony of voices, practices, teachings, and ancestral wisdom of Palestinian, Arab, and SWANA-heritage teachers, guides, healers, scholars, activists, and practitioners, who share with us the many expressions of sumud as practiced across different generations and multiple tragedies as well as through the land, ancestors, sacred grieving, food sovereignty, ancestral plant?wisdom, Dabkeh, and art. To read each of these pieces is to experience the aliveness and sacredness of Palestine and the SWANA region—the land and her people." We are so grateful to be the new home of?The Arrow Journal, and are eager for our communities to continue to learn and deepen in practice together. Stay tuned for our forthcoming issue on pluriversal practice, due out early in 2025, and our next call for papers. In the meantime, we invite you to subscribe to?The Arrow?to support our authors and our small editorial team.? https://lnkd.in/dRz-wyWi

Why does pluiversal practice matter? And how can it help strengthen our movements for justice, healing, and liberation? The ways in which we think about and relate to reality shape not only what we think is possible, but also how we act. From our perspective, the ways in which we orient to "justice", "healing", and "liberation" frame and in some cases limit how we approach the challenges of our time. Our frames also shape what we see, what seems necessary, and how we approach building solidarity within and between our movements. At our symposium *this Wednesday, October 23rd*, we will explore ways in which “one-world-worlding” manifests in our organizations and movements for justice, and how these limiting perspectives can actually undermine our collective causes. Sessions will invite us to notice, interrupt, and ultimately transform this habit of one-worlding in service of pluriversal practice through embodied practice, reflection, dreaming, deep-listening and frame-shifting. The full following program will be recorded and available to all registered participants. We just released discounted tickets to ensure accessibility to the program! Join us live for as much of the program as you are able, and leave with inspiration and tangible skills that you can practice with your colleagues and communities. "Unraveling from 'One-World-Worlding' in Our Movements" with Brooke Lavelle & Maha El-Sheikh "Shaping New Worlds Through Sensory Imagination" with Dhara Shah and Alyssa Smaldino "Community Death Practices for the World to Come" with Pleasance Lowengard Silicki, M.ED "Building Community and Capacity for Pluriversal Practice" with Farah M. and Katie Robinson "Listening Deeply, Embracing Our Kin" with Marlo De Lara, PhD, FRSA "Community Dreamwork" with ?? HyoYoung Minna Kim and Stephanie Knox Steiner "The Not Yet Lab" with Sara El-Sayeh "Embracing Complexity and Contradiction Through Embodied Trust" with Raina LaGrand Your registration supports honoraria for our guest facilitators—please help support the work of these incredible dreamers, weavers, and space-holders! Join us: https://lnkd.in/ebYKuNbY

Practicing for the Pluriverse - This Wednesday October 23!! Relational facilitators dance on the growing edge. They hospice the colonial, imperialistic, extractive, oppressive worlds, while also midwifing, birthing, and nurturing liberatory worlds. Where many people may encounter hopelessness regarding the state of the world, spiritually grounded folks, activists, organizers, writers and artists, are visionaries, who can imagine and uncover alternatives, seek justice, and build anew in the face of collapse and even their own despair. This year’s annual symposium—on Wednesday Oct 23rd—offers participants an experiential dive into spiritual practices and cultural and community traditions that help us work within and between many worlds to keep portals of possibility open, and the many paths of justice and liberation visible. We have an amazing line-up of facilitators who will guide us in their wisdom, experience and practice! ??"Connection and Confrontation: Building Belonging and Solidarity Within and Between Worlds" with Katrine Bregengaard ??"Unraveling from 'One-World-Worlding' in Our Movements" with Brooke Lavelle & Maha El-Sheikh ??"Shaping New Worlds Through Sensory Imagination" with Dhara Shah and Alyssa Smaldino ??"Community Death Practices for the World to Come" with Pleaseance Silicki ??"Building Community and Capacity for Pluriversal Practice" with Farah Mahesri and katie robinson ??"Listening Deeply, Embracing Our Kin" with Marlo De Lara ??"Community Dreamwork" with ?? HyoYoung Minna Kim and Stephanie Knox Steiner ??"The Not Yet Lab" with Sara El-Sayeh ??"Embracing Complexity and Contradiction aThrough Embodied Trust" with Raina LaGrand Register: https://lnkd.in/dFQPU4SX

October 23rd! Join our annual symposium for facilitators, "Practicing for the Pluriverse". Accepting session proposals through September 30th.

To lead with love requires that we be love. For many of us, that requires that we come together in community and tend to our own healing and internalized forms of oppression in order to be present to and of greater service to others and our world. Succulence is a healing and integration program for relational facilitators and others who work to make our organizations, communities and movements for healing, justice and liberation more resilient. This program which launches Tuesday, September 3rd is designed to help you: ??strengthen your relational compassion practice in ways that are sustaining and generative and protective against burnout; ??identify habits, patterns and structures that inhibit care and connection; ??integrate tools for self- and collective-healing and transforming trauma and oppression; ??tap into renewable sources of joy, hope and resilience that sustain you in the work; and ??clarify and align your personal and professional work with your highest aspirations and intentions. Two full fellowships for youth leaders and one fellowship for wise elders remain. Join us! Register here: https://lnkd.in/dEZU34cx Interested and have some questions about Succulence and/or Relational Facilitators that also starts the first week of September? Join us for an Open House on August 22 from 2:30-3pm ET. Register here: https://lnkd.in/dQBjkmgV

To lead with love requires that we be love. For many of us, that requires that we come together in community and tend to our own healing and internalized forms of oppression in order to be present to and of greater service to others and our world. Succulence is a healing and integration program for relational facilitators and others who work to make our organizations, communities and movements for healing, justice and liberation more resilient. This program which launches Tuesday, September 3rd is designed to help you: ??strengthen your relational compassion practice in ways that are sustaining and generative and protective against burnout; ??identify habits, patterns and structures that inhibit care and connection; ??integrate tools for self- and collective-healing and transforming trauma and oppression; ??tap into renewable sources of joy, hope and resilience that sustain you in the work; and ??clarify and align your personal and professional work with your highest aspirations and intentions. Two full fellowships for youth leaders and one fellowship for wise elders remain. Join us! Register here: https://lnkd.in/dEZU34cx Interested and have some questions about Succulence and/or Relational Facilitators that also starts the first week of September? Join us for an Open House on August 22 from 2:30-3pm ET. Register here: https://lnkd.in/dQBjkmgV

Our Relational Facilitators Program launches Thursday, September 5! Relational Facilitators is designed to help folks learn to lead and build compassionate, counter-oppressive, healing-centered and visionary communities, organizations, and movements based on our model, CourageRISE. As a participant you’ll learn to:? *develop relational tools for strengthening connection and belonging;? *strengthen your structural competency and fluency in embodied, anti-oppressive pedagogies;? *apply tools for healing and transforming conflict and oppression;? *expand your vision for more joyful, responsive and regenerative communities; and? *integrate your personal and collective liberation practices in sustainable ways.? ? Upon completion of the program, you’ll be invited to join our growing Courage Kin skill share and practice community where you can continue to learn with and from other committed facilitators.? Register here: https://lnkd.in/guCx43SC

**Starting this Thursday, August 1!** We invite you to come together in community to practice possibility as a form of resistance; to see and sense what other worlds and ways of being are also here; to remember the many, many beings, past, present and future working to build more loving and just worlds; and to flex our creative muscles and build capacity to usher in new worlds. Together we will: ?? Ground in what we are working for, rather than what we are only working against; ?? Sharpen our understanding of the frames, stories, and narratives that shape our realities and our sense of what we think is possible; ?? Practice unraveling from dominant, oppressive frames to sense what other ways of being are available through play, rest, and grief rituals; ?? Build skills that support us in holding uncertainty and complexity as we dream and imagine what else is possible (what we call the both/and+); and ?? Strengthen our muscles of creativity, storytelling, and emergence so we may embody the realities and futures we long to live into. Sessions meet Thursdays from August 1-29th, from 12-2pm ET. All are welcome. We'd love for you to join live if the timing works to help us build community and our container, but folks can also sign up to receive the recordings afterwards. More info and registration here: https://lnkd.in/dP-Ewscr..