A Love Letter to the Healers, the Beauty-Makers, and the Justice-Seekers
by Shawna Wakefield, Root. Rise. Pollinate!
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article is part of our initiative: Reports from a (r)Evolution of Being. This series is a place to tell stories of the future, the big transitions we need to make, and how these transitions are unfolding now. This piece is a reflection by our beloved co-director, Shawna Wakefield.
A revolution that is based on the people exercising their creativity in the midst of devastation is one of the great historical contributions of humankind. — Grace Lee Boggs
This is a Love Letter
A letter to the Healers, the Beauty-Makers, and the Justice-Seekers of the world.
Sitting in ceremony recently, I thought of you and how you light the way.
Healers, holding space and sharing gifts that mend and transform broken hearts, minds and bodies, helping us to remember who we really are.
Beauty makers, creating out of deep knowing, endless questions and imagination, expressing and giving life to what words alone cannot.
Justice seekers who are guided by fierce love, leading through the seemingly unbearable, organizing us for connection over separation.
You help us to remember the ways joy and freedom are always available to us. The opportunities to wake up. To level up. To open ourselves up to digging deep into what we desire, individually and collectively. To grieve disappointments that we may never taste the fruits of our labor. To have the courage to keep going.
For many of us, letting our overwhelm, grief and rage breathe and turning them into loving moves that heal and transform is our work. Personally, a cycle of migraines and chronic fatigue peaked in the middle of October 2023, coinciding with a hurricane that flooded my basement and shook my nervous system up, and a breakup that tenderized my heart. It was also the time of the horrific Hamas attacks, followed by months of escalating and ever more atrocious violence against the Palestinian people. Many of us are struggling to hold the complexity of a world in crisis, and our minds can’t make sense of it all.
Being in community with folks sharing healing practices, making art and organizing in community, reminds us that small actions can be revolutionary — creating a sense of belonging to ourselves and each other, a rekindling of imagination, that is at the core of transformation.
Tending to my own children with gratitude has been a tangible way to honor my ancestors and what they made possible for future generations. Imagine if we made more space to appreciate the continued existence of what we love, alongside our feelings of hopelessness and anger.
Being part of a community choir, and bringing those songs home, I feel how using my whole body and voice, I can alchemize what I sing. Be infused by feeling. Become joy. Become compassion. Know what I need to let go of. Imagine if we made more space to be creative and let big feelings move through us.
Teaching and witnessing students put their studies of gender and racial justice and decolonization into practice by organizing across religion and political positioning, with clarity, strength and mutual aid, in the midst of opposition and intimidation has been inspiring. Imagine if more of us held each other, even in fear and anxiety, and courageously voice what is necessary.
This week, voting early, I witnessed poll workers — elder Black female neighbors — playing their part in healing and justice, making sure that everyone knows they are welcome, that everyone knows the rules, that every new voter is cheered on. Imagine if every space in our communities celebrated that we showed up.
A revolution of being that is led by us — the healers, the beauty makers, the justice seekers — means imagining what a peaceful thriving world looks like, creating and recognizing it in the everyday as a way to confront the challenges to our humanity and planet. It means knowing that we belong to ourselves and each other, and that we can — we actually must — navigate multiple realities at the same time. I have known people who have lived through horrific, oppressive, violent conditions and yet managed to create beautiful communitie and to survive with more joy in their hearts than I used to think possible.
I hear the voices that say “keep going”, and to be honest, I am a sucker for the moment in the movies where a crew of different species and races, from wildly different places come together with a common vision, and, moving in formation, go in for the victory. I can see this moment for us because so many of us are in training and practicing to bring the light in dark times, knowing it does not mean looking away. I believe if we keep finding each other and leveling up, the ways of being we need now and for generations to come will give us that future beyond our ancestor’s — and our — wildest dreams.
Thank you for being in the field of healers, beauty makers and justice seekers.
I feel our collective, spirit-rooted power and our potential to keep evolving.
ABOUT SHAWNA
As a kid I knew I didn’t want anyone else to define me. I was a Black and mixed race city girl, moved to rural Vermont from New York City by intrepid parents at the age of nine. For years I did not feel at home. I wanted the world around me to be better. A place where ‘different’ kids didn’t feel so weird and left out. A place where everyone felt safe, no matter the color of their skin or gender. A place where we can all be our whole selves. Be who we be. A place where we are all free.
I have explored questions about how to create this world for the past decade. My commitment to collective care and thriving has grown with life experience. For the last 8 years, embodied learning and practice has been at the heart of all my work, whether I am coaching individual leaders, facilitating group strategy or team building or teaching emerging leaders to be curious and create new possibilities for a healthier, more just and joyful world.
