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TEK: Traditional Ecological Knowledge (technology)

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wholeworking: meeting people to improve the inner workings of ourselves within the network, and thus the inner workings of the network itself (Yetunde, 2023, 17)

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Multidirectional space for roots to grow

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Multidirectional space for roots to grow

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a couple of years ago i hosted a community of practice. one of the outcomes of our year of building relationship and sharing of ourselves was an idea articulated toward the end by gibran rivera: coevolution through friendship. meaning we evolve in relationships of mutual transformation.

since the community's formal time ended, i have watched and felt this relational coevolution continue in a variety of ways, including close daily personal contact, occasional opportunities for mutual support, noticing and supporting each other's work and growth from afar, and being more intentional about bringing this practice into the way we hold all of our relationships.

these past few weeks i have been really aware of the power of coevolution through friendship as i have been in what feels like a growth spurt. babies do this, suddenly overnight become taller, fuller, using new words, more confident in their bodies and complex in their communications. it's pretty incredible to watch - and to feel that the growth doesn't end even if it changes form. in this period i have been supported, inspired, encouraged and witnessed by a marvelous circle full of people in their own growth.

the very nature of this is iterative, so i am not writing any definitive guidelines up for y'all. but it is so delicious and impactful that i wanted to share some of what i am noticing, some elements of coevolution through friendship.

self-transformation. both/all people in the relationship are committed to their own self-transformation, aligning with the words of grace lee boggs that 'we must transform ourselves to transform the world.' we see ourselves as microcosms of the world, and work to shift oppressive patterns in our bodies, hearts, minds, speech, interactions, liberating ourselves into purpose, liberating our communities into new practices.

curiosity. we have curiosity about our own lives as learning labs for our values and figuring out what it means to be human at this moment in time. and we have curiosity about each other's lives, about why we do what we do, about the roots of our behaviors. we want to know if there are lessons and changes available in the reflection and action cycle of life. this curiosity ranges from philosophical to academic, historical, nosy, somatic. our lives are our life's work. what matters is that we are authentic with the questions, we believe the answers are important and we listen to each other accordingly.

vulnerable reflection. we reach out to each other and say things like 'something incredible is happening', 'i don't know', 'i fucked up', 'i think i hurt someone', 'i'm overwhelmed', 'i'm terrified', 'i think i'm hurting', 'i'm lost', 'am i falling in/out of love?', '_____ happened, what should i do?', 'i want to do something new/different/marvelous/dangerous/that feels essential to my soul - help!' and so on. we ask others to be mirrors for us at our most vulnerable places, so we can see what we are learning, see new possibilities in our lives.

pattern disrupting. i know i am always whole theoretically, but i don't always feel that way, i feel half sometimes, i feel fragmented sometimes, messy. being whole includes owning all of that as me. when i am feeling fragmented or limited, seeing any of my friends in their wholeness reminds me of my own capacity. and as i stand in my wholeness, which includes being more honest with myself and others about what i want and who i am in the world, it exerts a pressure on others, both to receive me and to become more whole in themselves. this disrupts those familiar diminishing patterns in my friends and in myself, the internalization of a world that has rejected every aspect of my identity at some point. counter rejection. still i rise. and new patterns become possible, more interconnected and interdependent patterns which rely on being open.

present and intentional. this is perhaps the biggest place to practice. life is not happening to us. we are learning to be in the actual current moment, to recognize where we have choice...in a terrifying twist it turns out we always have it*. so the great question is how to be intentional, in the present moment, to take responsibility for your state of being, and for your life? another participant-teacher in the community of practice asked us to consider, 'what if i am responsible for everything?' it's not a singular task, to be responsible for what happens in this world - we do not exist or transform in isolation. we are in this universe. we are actively reflecting on how to be in our lives, to best embody our greatness and to yield a more liberated future for ourselves and thus, in the fractal sense, for all of existence.

there is a lot to be careful of. we are not yet masterful, even though there are moments of collective genius. sometimes we misread each other, push each other too hard, get defensive or give unsolicited coevolution pressure.

sometimes what is happening in the world is so terrifying and urgent that we forget our complexity, or wonder why take time on ourselves or our friendships when there is so much work to do. what i am noticing is that it is not a privilege to practice coevolution through friendship - it is the deepest work.

i believe it is how communities have survived.
i believe it is harriet tubman going back to free others, because it wasn't enough to free only herself.
i believe it is ubuntu active in my life.
i believe it is the freedom that we are longing for, which will never be given to us, which we have to create, the pulsing life force of the collective body we are birthing, the rhythm of a shared heart.

"coevolution through friendship is a path to liberation." - gibran rivera

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* recently i have been wrestling with even seeing death as a liberatory choice in response to oppression and suffering, as a wave of suicide moves through and near my life. this doesn't give me peace, but it gives me pause, trying to see wholeness in a life ending when i wanted it to continue. endings are sacred too. it gives me pause. what i can say is that the unknown is a massive yawning universe, and i have to respect it.

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a couple of years ago i hosted a community of practice. one of the outcomes of our year of building relationship and sharing of ourselves was an idea articulated toward the end by gibran rivera: coevolution through friendship. meaning we evolve in relationships of mutual transformation.

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Speaking up

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Gatherings with the Acosta Institute community

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Re membering to say thank you and be grateful 

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Re membering to say thank you and be grateful 

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pulling tarot, ancestor cards, and oracle cards ... journaling from this place

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pulling tarot, ancestor cards, and oracle cards ... journaling from this place

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The Nap Ministry’s Rest Deck: 50 Practices to Resist Grind Culture

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From Tricia Hersey, the celebrated founder of the Nap Ministry, this deck of 50 powerful rest practices helps you embrace rest as a form of radical communal care and personal liberation. This is about more than naps. Rest is anything that allows you to connect your body with your mind.” The Nap Ministry’s Rest Deck i

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universal design principals before and after every unit. Keeping in mind how AI architects use math when they dont call it by the proper explicit name.

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universal design principals before and after every unit. Keeping in mind how AI architects use math when they dont call it by the proper explicit name.

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I am soaking up all the new names and ideas offered by the Acosta community. It's reactivating buried and forgotten knowledge.

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I am soaking up all the new names and ideas offered by the Acosta community. It's reactivating buried and forgotten knowledge.

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Niels Bohr wrote, “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress” (Moore, 1967, p. 140). The problem of speaking for others is not unlike Bohr’s reference to paradox. There are many tensions that researchers must grapple with as they navigate “the ethics and responsibility involved when performing personal narratives, especially of Subjects whose identities and cultural practices are underrepresented and contested” (Madison, 2003, pp. 469-470). How do we make sense of the intersection between self and other?

Madison (2003) wrote extensively regarding the tension between the “cynics” and the “zealots.” On one end of the spectrum, cynics believe that researchers can never know what it is like to walk in the shoes of the research participants. Consequently, any attempt to speak for others will be inaccurate, as their truths are unattainable. On the other end of the spectrum, zealots believe that they assume the identities of others and speak for them, just as one speaks for herself. This makes it difficult to interrogate the (in)equitable distributions of power that exist between researchers, participants, and audiences. Without a critical examination, zealots may not pause to reflect on the consequences of their actions when speaking for others. As with most paradoxical situations, the best option is to engage in critical discourse that creates balance between both perspectives based on all contextual factors.

The nature of discourse adds to the challenge of speaking for others. Greene (1988) wrote, “Thought, after all, grows through language; without thought or “freedom in relation to what one does,” there is little desire to appear among others and speak in one’s own voice” (p. 3). This means that the “language of power” (Foucault, 1980) and the extent to which the written word is privileged (Madison, 2003, p. 470) have implications for the language that participants use when sharing their stories as well as their degree of comfort when sharing. When researchers do not navigate these pitfalls, they risk silencing participants instead of providing opportunities for participants to share their thoughts and stories through language (Fine, 2003). Any researcher working with marginalized populations has moral and ethical obligations to attend to the tension between language and power to ensure that participant stories are accurate and that participants are not further marginalized or exploited.

With the many challenges that researchers face with narrative inquiry, it is a wonder that researchers continue to employ it as a research methodology. Fortunately, using a critical philosophical stance and specific methodological practices can mediate narrative challenges. By doing so, researchers can permeate the boundaries between self and others while honoring both at the same time (Patton, 2002).

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An appropriate philosophical stance combined with high quality research methods allows researchers to engage in what Winn & Ubiles (2011) refer to as “worthy witnessing.” Worthy witnessing is a four phase process that includes admission, declaration, revelation, and confidentiality. Admission is very much like gaining access and making rapport. Declaration requires that researchers share of themselves and their ideas so that social and political ideologies can be revealed. Revelation refers to the way that researchers and participants become fellow travelers in the research process. Finally, confidentiality refers to the decisions that researchers make about what to share with the public. These decisions are guided by responsibility, respect, and reciprocity. A worthy witness is one who becomes actively engaged in the community, a community where the researcher “is initially a stranger and attempting to translate lessons learned to a new generation” (p. 307). A worthy witness is a community ally, not a “research pimp.”            Becoming a worthy witness was a recurring idea in my reflective journal. The participants made admission fairly easy, and they became even more willing to tell their stories after I shared my social and political ideologies. The similarities we shared made us fellow travelers, but I was careful not to disclose information about my stories as they shared theirs. I made the decision not to engage in reciprocal storytelling. Our interactions were warm and cordial, but professional. In doing so, it was easier to collect the factual data that is required for qualitative rigor. I avoided using their stories for my own catharsis or gain by simply letting the themes emerge from their data. While I know there is no such thing as a pure objectivity, I did strive for it as a way to counter bias that I might have brought into the study through my own experiences as a Latina/o teacher.