Dear ones,
A lot of you (and folks on social media) keep asking me where I have learned what I am sharing, what books I am reading (it’s usually 7 different ones at the same time) and how you can learn more.
I have been thinking about those comments, and most importantly, like many of you, I have been feeling the urgency to practice liberation now. Not writing about it. Not thinking about it. Not theorising about it. I want, I crave practicing it, with folks. With you.
I have been working on a 1-year practice program that aims to bridge the gap between somatic work, embodiment, healing, social justice, abolition, the survival of our home and the erotics of being embodied. I want to share everything I have learned/am learning and most importantly (which is wayyyy bigger in my body, trust me) all the questions I have about being a person. For the most part: I don’t know. I am trying. I am failing. I am really trying.
I want to try with you.
If you’ve come to my last workshops, you know that we create magical spaces together. Not magical as in, doesn’t exist, more like: magically human. Flawed, learning, always growing, transformative, trying, trying, trying. And plenty of cute, too. Plenty of cats. Some dogs. Sometimes a turtle !
In my last workshop, Transformative Justice embodied, we practiced in the best way possible: a conflict erupted in our learning space. Just before, I was talking about white dominant culture and one of its cornerstone: avoidance. “Just keep going!” I heard my anxious brain whispering. Ignore the conflict, the discomfort everyyyy body and their dog feels because we have to keep working, producing, destroying the planet.
Right after the conflict erupted, we went into a break. In my bathroom mirror, I looked at myselves. I looked worried.
Some days ago, a friend of mine had decided that I was avoidant, and therefore a fluke. It’s not the first time this happens lately, and I am sure this will happen again. You see, when you talk about conflicts, relationships, trauma, people expect you to be perfect at it. People expect. And I get it. I know that my words, my presence carry deep impact. I used to shy away from it but I’ve always been the tallest and my mouth has always been the biggest. I was the “why kid”, the queer one, the one that looked like a boy when she should look like a girl, I was the ‘complicated teenager’, I was the ‘loser’ as an adult, too. I failed binary categories, all ways. I failed being a girl, I don’t want to be a boy, I failed to be an employee, I failed to be a daughter and I failed to be straight and kind, and nice. I am loud.
The last two years have been a silent hell. I have come back from things I am just opening in therapy, and while the death of my father has crystallised everything in my bones until they felt like breaking under pain, I have become much more silent. I don’t have capacity for a lot of things. My therapist calls it “functional freeze”. I didn’t catch that, and I am a somatic practitioner. You see I keep telling my clients: “the eye can’t see the eye. But I am here to see you so that you can see you, too”.
In front of the mirror, I looked worried. Am I being avoidant now? This felt uncomfortable, but I was not sure yet how and why. Is my friend right? Am I just a fluke?
And then I realised: This is it. This is the practice. I don’t have to know to name. I can just name and practice with folks. That’s the practice.
(The Justice card, from The Ancestral Healing tarot deck, a deck I published in 2022. Will be republished soon <3)
What came after was a beautiful tornado of emotions and feelings. I really made the all-in-black pisces sun/scorpio moon depressed teenager surrounded by avoidant adults proud. No avoidance. There is nothing to fear.
I talk about conflicts the most because I struggle with it. I talk about trauma because I can’t see past it. I talk about abolition all the time because I don’t see life outside of it. I called myselves Care because I need it. Not because I am a master at giving it.
I want to thank all of you who came. It’s been such a joy to practice with you.
I have been building a program that is about exactly this: practicing with folks who are trying their hardest, and failing humbly forward, too. I am tired of speaking into my phone that reduced my father’s country to a land of despair about abolition, I want to practice with folks. I want to undo and unlearn, together. I am tired of seeing folks 101 when I know trauma happens in relationships, and so healing has to happen there, too. Trauma is structural and 101 work, although magnificent and beautiful can only go so far.
Liberation Practice Field is a 1-year program that aims to create a space where we can practice personal & collective liberation, radical belonging, world building and symbiotic relationality rooted in trauma-informed, spiritually seeded and abolition oriented guidance. I won’t be the only one to teach. Amazing folks like Leah Manaema (@co-culture on ig!), Richie Reseda (@richiereseda on ig!) and Che Che Luna (che.che.luna on ig!) will be giving guest workshops, too.
I want this program to blown us away honestly. I want this program to change our collective DNA. So that care and liberation become inseparable from our breath.
You can read more about Liberation Practice Field here.
If you’re interested, you can write on your name on this form, and you’ll be the first ones to know when it’s live. It will launch in a few days, so: see you soon hopefully.
Thank you for your trust! for your care, for your deep, rageful care.
Care
Question to you : What does 'Gentle Liberation' feel like for you?