So many of us have been hurt around our voices and are seeking healing. This three-hour singing circle hosted by Holistic Resistance is a space to receive emotional nourishment by disrupting the notion that we can not sing together, using collective singing as a healing modality to release distress and build the deep connections we need to fight systems of oppression and to dismantle racism.

Sacred Embodiment Community Seattle. $5-$35 suggested donation, No One Turned Away for Lack of Funds. More info here.

Caring for your own anxiety and building resilience as white folks are two critical pieces of staying in anti-racism work for life. Anxiety can be an opt-out button for white folks, a reason for you not to do this work. Anti-racism can be an avenue for deeply healing your anxiety and trauma, and more deeply grounding your anxiety while doing this work can reduce harm to People of Color. This Deep Dive explores the critical topic of caring for your trauma and anxiety while doing anti-racism work and building connection with People of Color. We will build strategies for resilience for life-long social change.

Questions we may explore:

1. How are touch and connection critical pieces of resilience?

2. What do you feel in your body when you feel anxiety? What do you feel in your body when your anxiety is released?

3. How do you ground yourself when conflict comes up around racism?

4. Where do you go to get connection around your experiences of racism?

5. How do you track your capacity for this work?

A deep dive has a maximum of eight participants with a minimum of two individuals. This event is about connecting and building bonds that dismantle racism. Having a small group can slow down how we see, hear, and reach for each other. A deep dive lasts for five hours. Breaks will be taken as needed. Participants are welcome to bring snacks and a full meal if desired. The team will consist of two African heritage facilitators with two white support allies. Sliding scale for the event from $250 to $650. Please contact holisticresistanceinfo@gmail.com.

For white people looking for regular connection and growth around Holistic Resistance-based liberation work. Guest facilitated by Aaron Johnson and Porsha Beed. Contact holisticresistanceseattle@gmail.com for more information.

About Wake Up: Interrupting Our Whiteness:

**For Nov 6th and November 24th: Please note! We are honored to be joined by Holistic Resistance for our first meetings in November. Aaron Johnson and Porsha Beed, two incredible facilitators of Color, will be facilitating in November, along with our Seattle based white facilitation team.

Wednesday November 6th 7pm-9pm at The Living Room 2207 NE 65th st (entrance is on the west side of the building)

Sunday November 24th 6 pm-8pm at Sacred Embodiment Center on Capitol Hill

Resma Menakem in his book My Grandmother’s Hands articulates something that struck us as so true, something we’ve been feeling in our bones but hadn’t put to words:

White folks who seek to undo white supremacy are missing a crucial piece in our anti-racism work: community and culture. While there are plenty of organizations, initiatives, strategies and ideas for how white folks can act in allyship, there is often a focus on the individual; we as white folks have yet to truly develop an anti-white supremacy culture, a way of being and relating to each other as a community of white allies practicing the culture of the liberated world we wish to live in.

Further, in our work in various circles committed to dismantling white supremacy, we’ve noticed that many white folks haven’t yet found spaces to look at how their own internalized white supremacy manifests.

We are offering a monthly group to gather with other white-identified folks that is:

• A place to practice being in relationship and conflict; to relate in ways that help undo our internalized whiteness, including relating across difference.

• A place to practice and notice the ways in which our own internalized white supremacy leads us to judge, enact comparisons, and other ways of creating fragmentation instead of solidarity

• A place to real-time process our whiteness that arises in our group time together through relationship building, inquiry and togetherness.

• A space that prepares us to be resilient, self-regulated and self-connected as we move into mixed-race spaces, in order to minimize harm on BIPOC and to stabilize our nervous systems to receive feedback from and center the experiences of black and brown folks, all of which are deeply necessary for true allyship.

• A space to grieve, feel and move through what is living in our bones as trauma, colonial oppression, ancestral guilt, internalized racism and so much more.

• A space to develop lifelong connections to each other that will support us to stay in this work, in community and solidarity and care.

Wait… Is This Group Centering Whiteness?

Yes, this is a group that centers whiteness in order to dismantle it, and a group that supports us to see the ways whiteness manifests. Whiteness in this context doesn’t mean centering white people, but rather learning about and undoing the elements of white supremacy culture* that keep white people in power. (*years of data by BIPOC and white anti-racist organizations as presented in https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/white-supremacy-culture-characteristics.html).

Given that white people are primary upholders of white supremacy culture, we have to look and live this shift in order to undo it. This is a necessary part of interrupting white supremacy culture. This group is not a replacement for participation in POC-lead movements and learning spaces; instead this work with white folks is supplemental and intended to be mutually supportive.

About POC Accountability

We are deeply inspired by the creative work, hearts and ways of being, modeled to us by Aaron Johnson, Porsha Beed, Jennie Pearl and Dylan Wilder Quinn of Holistic Resistance, which is a black-led organization focused on black liberation through intimacy and relationship.

We are supported, encouraged and mentored by Holistic Resistance to create this monthly group in Seattle by these beautiful humans, and we are accountable to their POC leadership as we facilitate this group.

Meetings

Wake Up Seattle: Interrupting our Whiteness will hold meetings one Sunday and one Wednesday per month. Our intention is to keep these consistent with the First Wednesdays (7-9pm at The Living Room) and Fourth Thursdays (6-8pm at Sacred Embodiment Community), and there may be variations. Topics will sometimes be chosen in advance and sometimes arise from what group brings. Once a quarter, we aim to do grief work together, learning how to grieve in collective spaces and witness each other. We consider this work integral and necessary to racial justice.

Please contact us at holisticresistanceseattle@gmail.com with questions. At this time, we are not asking for RSVP’s.

About the Facilitators

Anna-Brown Griswold - (she/her pronouns) white-identified (Irish/Scottish). Anna-Brown works as a trauma therapist and facilitator in Seattle. For most of her adult life she’s been experimenting with how to integrate the deep wisdom and transformative power of Buddhist practice, truth telling and action around systems of oppression, and a love of justice. As a mom to a toddler, integrating parenting into the whole beautiful mess is an ongoing exploration. (Anna-Brown will primarily lead Wednesday classes)

Grace Bryant - white-identified, gender non-binary (they/them), queer

Grace is a non-binary and female identifying, queer, white northern European descendent human. The intersection of spirituality and healing justice is currently their biggest passion in their roles as polyamorous partner, community builder, spiritual mentor, youth teacher and holistic coach. They are the community director at Sacred Embodiment Community in Seattle, lead silent meditation retreats, and offer embodied sexuality and intimacy coaching. They are humbled to be mentored by Aaron Johnson and Porsha Beed through Holistic Resistance, and many other social change leaders of Color, and have been changed to the core by these honest, holistic approach to racial justice. (Grace will primarily lead Sunday classes)

Zevi Yoj- (they/them) Eastern European Jewish, Irish, Queer and non-monogamous

Zevi has been blazing trails through time and space for lifetimes. In this go-around, they seek culture shifts in bringing their 20+ years of holistic family support work into their deep mentorship reaches with youth and families in an effort to cultivate resilient spirits of the future ancestors. They desire to help rebuild the choir of voices that care through non-performative, engaging and deeply felt song and sound.

A raw journey of courting their own grief after a series of extreme personal losses brought them home to themselves and awakened their Sacred Activism path (a moment of gratitude for Layla F. Saad and her personal reflection workbook, “Me and White Supremacy” which deepened Zevi’s social justice work). They are humbled to be a guide to the good grief of being alive in ecocidal times, honored to co-create spaces to hold both individual and collective grief and trauma stories and to continue to draw from the wisdom of their bones around issues of cultural erasure and genocide so as to stay vigilant and heart-led during the great turning of our times.

Reparations/Donations:

As a group, we will seek to cover the cost of gathering spaces (when the space isn’t donated for our use) and desire to collect donations to be used as reparations. Redistribution of resources is one concrete step towards justice.

What are reparations?

Reparations for slavery and colonization is the polical justice movement, and corrected action that money will be paid to the descendants of Africans trafficked to and enslaved in the Americas, as well as paid to the Indigenous people of these lands- the Duwamish Tribe, who are fighting tirelessly for proper stewardship, resource and recognition of promises made about this land.

In the context of this group, this will mean sending our donations to the Queer POC housing projects led by Porsha Beed, supporting the Chronically Undertouched work that Aaron Johnson is leading, Holistic Resistance movement efforts and other African-descent led initiatives as they arise.

Additionally, generations of Seattleites continue to benefit from the Duwamish People's presence and stewardship of this land. We could not call this city home without the Duwamish Tribe. As a group, we’d like to acknowledge what it means to be a white person on these tribal lands and make it a point to make a monthly contribution to Real Rent Duwamish (https://www.realrentduwamish.org). We would also like to empower individuals to do consider making a monthly pledge and to share this initiative with others living and doing business on the unceded ancestral lands of the Duwamish people who inhabited these lands since the end of last glacial period.

Deep Dive for POC/POGM (People of the Global Majority)

Facilitated by Porsha Beed and Aaron Johnson

This deep dive is built around people of color coming together as a disruption of the chronic patterns of scarcity and hurt we have when reaching for each other. For example, colorism and economics have historically been effective barriers that people of color often have to navigate in order to be close to each other. We want to be clear that we are committed to holding space for people of color who are white passing, and at the same time hold the complexity that comes up for folks with darker skin. In this deep dive, we want to track and hold the ways in which we’ve all been hurt. We will reach for each other through deep listening, questions, and music to remind us, as a mixed POC group, that these barriers can be dismantled. We deeply desire to live in a world where we can receive all of the support that we need within our own communities. This deep dive will center Blackness as a powerful model within white supremacy culture. By acknowledging how black people have been hurt, we also recognize how white supremacy has hurt all of us and pits us against each other. We believe that reaching for each other and building relationships is one of the most holistic resistant actions we can take and will be one of the most challenging things we will do in this work. Finding the courage to simply show up is a major disruption to systems of oppression. We are excited to begin this deep reach with you.

Access Note:

Holistic Resistance is committed at every opportunity to offer resource to people of color without cost. We invite white people to support through reparations and donations to care for and meet the needs of our facilitators.

Come for any amount of time. We will have food. Contact holisticresistanceinfo@gmail.com for more info.

One of the most important types of activism we do is right in our living rooms, raising children. Children’s education can play a critical role in ending racism and systemic oppression. This Deep Dive is about asking questions of ourselves as parents and encouraging our children to ask questions of the world around them.

We will wrestle with the questions:

1. When do I talk about race with my children? What do I say? Will I traumatize my child?

2. How do I create my own questions for myself, my partners or community, and my children around this critical topic?

3. How do I prepare the next generation of white children to be anti-racist?

4. How can we talk about touch, consent, and sexual education with our children in a way that includes race?

A mini deep dive has a maximum of four participants with a minimum of two individuals. This event is about connecting and building bonds that dismantle racism. Having a small group can slow down how we see, hear, and reach for each other. Breaks will be taken as needed. Participants are welcome to bring snacks and a full meal if desired. The team will consist of two African heritage facilitators with two white support allies. Sliding scale for the event from $250 to $650. Please contact holisticresistanceinfo@gmail.com for more info.

Critiquing Blackness is one of the most important conversations for white folks to consider when doing racial justice work. As we reach for African Heritage folks in social justice work, part of that relationship is reevaluating how we give correction as white people. Every correction has an impact. And it’s a necessary part of reaching for blackness. In this deep dive, we are going to investigate what comes up in ourselves, the potential impact, and the after care for ourselves and for them. There are three categories we will discuss. Critique around money and the professional environment, the body, and sexuality.

1. When critiquing a black person what emotional tools/strategies do you use?

2. Are you committed beyond your white convenience?

3. As a white person standing up for racial justice, what consequences do you face from other white people?

A deep dive has a maximum of six participants with a minimum of two individuals. This event is about connecting and building bonds that dismantle racism. Having a small group can slow down how we see, hear, and reach for each other. A deep dive lasts for five hours. Breaks will be taken as needed. Participants are welcome to bring snacks and a full meal if desired. The team will consist of two African heritage facilitators with two white support allies. Sliding scale for the event from $250 to $650. Please contact holisticresistanceinfo@gmail.com.

For white people looking for regular connection and growth around Holistic Resistance-based liberation work. Guest facilitated by Porsha Beed. Contact holisticresistanceseattle@gmail.com for more information.

About Wake Up: Interrupting Our Whiteness:

**For Nov 6th and November 24th: Please note! We are honored to be joined by Holistic Resistance for our first meetings in November. Aaron Johnson and Porsha Beed, two incredible facilitators of Color, will be facilitating in November, along with our Seattle based white facilitation team.

Wednesday November 6th 7pm-9pm at The Living Room 2207 NE 65th st (entrance is on the west side of the building)

Sunday November 24th 6 pm-8pm at Sacred Embodiment Center on Capitol Hill

Resma Menakem in his book My Grandmother’s Hands articulates something that struck us as so true, something we’ve been feeling in our bones but hadn’t put to words:

White folks who seek to undo white supremacy are missing a crucial piece in our anti-racism work: community and culture. While there are plenty of organizations, initiatives, strategies and ideas for how white folks can act in allyship, there is often a focus on the individual; we as white folks have yet to truly develop an anti-white supremacy culture, a way of being and relating to each other as a community of white allies practicing the culture of the liberated world we wish to live in.

Further, in our work in various circles committed to dismantling white supremacy, we’ve noticed that many white folks haven’t yet found spaces to look at how their own internalized white supremacy manifests.

We are offering a monthly group to gather with other white-identified folks that is:

• A place to practice being in relationship and conflict; to relate in ways that help undo our internalized whiteness, including relating across difference.

• A place to practice and notice the ways in which our own internalized white supremacy leads us to judge, enact comparisons, and other ways of creating fragmentation instead of solidarity

• A place to real-time process our whiteness that arises in our group time together through relationship building, inquiry and togetherness.

• A space that prepares us to be resilient, self-regulated and self-connected as we move into mixed-race spaces, in order to minimize harm on BIPOC and to stabilize our nervous systems to receive feedback from and center the experiences of black and brown folks, all of which are deeply necessary for true allyship.

• A space to grieve, feel and move through what is living in our bones as trauma, colonial oppression, ancestral guilt, internalized racism and so much more.

• A space to develop lifelong connections to each other that will support us to stay in this work, in community and solidarity and care.

Wait… Is This Group Centering Whiteness?

Yes, this is a group that centers whiteness in order to dismantle it, and a group that supports us to see the ways whiteness manifests. Whiteness in this context doesn’t mean centering white people, but rather learning about and undoing the elements of white supremacy culture* that keep white people in power. (*years of data by BIPOC and white anti-racist organizations as presented in https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/white-supremacy-culture-characteristics.html).

Given that white people are primary upholders of white supremacy culture, we have to look and live this shift in order to undo it. This is a necessary part of interrupting white supremacy culture. This group is not a replacement for participation in POC-lead movements and learning spaces; instead this work with white folks is supplemental and intended to be mutually supportive.

About POC Accountability

We are deeply inspired by the creative work, hearts and ways of being, modeled to us by Aaron Johnson, Porsha Beed, Jennie Pearl and Dylan Wilder Quinn of Holistic Resistance, which is a black-led organization focused on black liberation through intimacy and relationship.

We are supported, encouraged and mentored by Holistic Resistance to create this monthly group in Seattle by these beautiful humans, and we are accountable to their POC leadership as we facilitate this group.

Meetings

Wake Up Seattle: Interrupting our Whiteness will hold meetings one Sunday and one Wednesday per month. Our intention is to keep these consistent with the First Wednesdays (7-9pm at The Living Room) and Fourth Thursdays (6-8pm at Sacred Embodiment Community), and there may be variations. Topics will sometimes be chosen in advance and sometimes arise from what group brings. Once a quarter, we aim to do grief work together, learning how to grieve in collective spaces and witness each other. We consider this work integral and necessary to racial justice.

Please contact us at holisticresistanceseattle@gmail.com with questions. At this time, we are not asking for RSVP’s.

About the Facilitators

Anna-Brown Griswold - (she/her pronouns) white-identified (Irish/Scottish). Anna-Brown works as a trauma therapist and facilitator in Seattle. For most of her adult life she’s been experimenting with how to integrate the deep wisdom and transformative power of Buddhist practice, truth telling and action around systems of oppression, and a love of justice. As a mom to a toddler, integrating parenting into the whole beautiful mess is an ongoing exploration. (Anna-Brown will primarily lead Wednesday classes)

Grace Bryant - white-identified, gender non-binary (they/them), queer

Grace is a non-binary and female identifying, queer, white northern European descendent human. The intersection of spirituality and healing justice is currently their biggest passion in their roles as polyamorous partner, community builder, spiritual mentor, youth teacher and holistic coach. They are the community director at Sacred Embodiment Community in Seattle, lead silent meditation retreats, and offer embodied sexuality and intimacy coaching. They are humbled to be mentored by Aaron Johnson and Porsha Beed through Holistic Resistance, and many other social change leaders of Color, and have been changed to the core by these honest, holistic approach to racial justice. (Grace will primarily lead Sunday classes)

Zevi Yoj- (they/them) Eastern European Jewish, Irish, Queer and non-monogamous

Zevi has been blazing trails through time and space for lifetimes. In this go-around, they seek culture shifts in bringing their 20+ years of holistic family support work into their deep mentorship reaches with youth and families in an effort to cultivate resilient spirits of the future ancestors. They desire to help rebuild the choir of voices that care through non-performative, engaging and deeply felt song and sound.

A raw journey of courting their own grief after a series of extreme personal losses brought them home to themselves and awakened their Sacred Activism path (a moment of gratitude for Layla F. Saad and her personal reflection workbook, “Me and White Supremacy” which deepened Zevi’s social justice work). They are humbled to be a guide to the good grief of being alive in ecocidal times, honored to co-create spaces to hold both individual and collective grief and trauma stories and to continue to draw from the wisdom of their bones around issues of cultural erasure and genocide so as to stay vigilant and heart-led during the great turning of our times.

Reparations/Donations:

As a group, we will seek to cover the cost of gathering spaces (when the space isn’t donated for our use) and desire to collect donations to be used as reparations. Redistribution of resources is one concrete step towards justice.

What are reparations?

Reparations for slavery and colonization is the polical justice movement, and corrected action that money will be paid to the descendants of Africans trafficked to and enslaved in the Americas, as well as paid to the Indigenous people of these lands- the Duwamish Tribe, who are fighting tirelessly for proper stewardship, resource and recognition of promises made about this land.

In the context of this group, this will mean sending our donations to the Queer POC housing projects led by Porsha Beed, supporting the Chronically Undertouched work that Aaron Johnson is leading, Holistic Resistance movement efforts and other African-descent led initiatives as they arise.

Additionally, generations of Seattleites continue to benefit from the Duwamish People's presence and stewardship of this land. We could not call this city home without the Duwamish Tribe. As a group, we’d like to acknowledge what it means to be a white person on these tribal lands and make it a point to make a monthly contribution to Real Rent Duwamish (https://www.realrentduwamish.org). We would also like to empower individuals to do consider making a monthly pledge and to share this initiative with others living and doing business on the unceded ancestral lands of the Duwamish people who inhabited these lands since the end of last glacial period.

Build the wisdom of Holistic Resistance into your anti-racism work in your community. This Deep Dive is for people who have already attended Holistic Resistance workshops and Deep Dives and are wanting a taster of our 6-month Facilitator/Ally Leadership Program. This Deep Dive is all about crafting questions. Have you wondered how we come up with our questions and our longer story questions? Dig into your own experience of undoing racism to create your own content for facilitation. Build the habit of asking better questions of the racist events you see happening around you. Build community and connection around asking and answering questions, and holding your community’s answers. Learn to use questions to help your community grow around their anti-racism.

A deep dive has a maximum of eight participants with a minimum of two individuals. This event is about connecting and building bonds that dismantle racism. Having a small group can slow down how we see, hear, and reach for each other. A deep dive lasts for five hours. Breaks will be taken as needed. Participants are welcome to bring snacks and a full meal if desired. The team will consist of two African heritage facilitators with two white support allies. Sliding scale for the event from $250 to $650. Please contact holisticresistanceinfo@gmail.com.