Musing Outloud: A Multigen Podcast for Change

For the final episode of this season, we touch on racial healing at both the collective and personal level. We speak to the importance and power of collective acknowledgement of racial trauma as an essential first step in the process of healing. We offer examples of structural expressions that speak to such acknowledgments. We talk about our own personal journeys around racial healing, specifically lifting up racial healing circles, re-evaluation counseling and somatic practices as examples of our key tools. We share tips for facilitators on how to proactively engage with clients on racial dynamics in organizations and groups. We conclude with the following invitation for our listeners: In what practices have you engaged (or would like to explore) around racial healing?

Resources:

In this episode,  we use the ToP facilitation technique known as the Wall of Wonder retrospective review to reflect on three generational, geographic, and multiracial/ethnic viewpoints on how the concept of race has impacted our lives. Rangineh, Stacey (our guest) and Barbara share stories from different decades, including our earliest experiences of the role that race played in our lives and in relationships with our friends and family. We also explore when and how we began to understand the wider systemic reach of racism. We reflect on our respective recollections and experiences of 9/11 in the USA and the way it expanded our understanding of the depths of racial trauma. We leave our listeners with the question: what is really true about race and racism?

Resources of potential interest:

AfriFuTrinity, A Quantum Cosmic Futures Afri-Sci-Facts Series by Shannon Harris and Stacey Gibson

In episode three, we explore the importance of both educating ourselves AND taking action in the context of racial justice. We begin by honoring US civil rights activist John Lewis. We reflect on our journeys of education and activism and implications for facilitators. We ask listeners to explore these questions:

• For people who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, what would support your leadership and how can others support you?
• For people who do not identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color, how do your education efforts inform your activism in the racial justice movement?

Resources:

In this episode, we define what we mean by racialization and explore our (Rangineh & Barbara's) respective journeys of racialization. We share how we  have come to “do our work” with respect to our racial identities. We briefly look at how five white identity characteristics can affect how we facilitate and how the group perceives the experience. We end by offering our listeners the following question: What are the ways that your racialization has shaped your life? And, if you don’t know, what can you do to begin that journey of inquiry?

Resources we noted in the podcast include:

In our latest episode, we weigh in on where we are sensing and seeing loneliness show up within and around us as a result of the shelter-in-place order, and how we might re-imagine shifting from loneliness and isolation to connection and community. We muse outloud about how we, as facilitators, can create spaces and processes that mitigate loneliness and bring people closer together. Finally, we speak to the role of levity as a way to balance the inner work of addressing loneliness as one of many feelings that may be coming up right now.

In our third episode, we refer to the Strategic Juncture Analysis discussion tool that invites us to ask some critical questions about this moment, and moves us to acknowledge the racial health disparities illuminated by COVID-19. Below we share the eight questions that make-up the tool, while we ponder questions 2 and 4:

• What is our window of opportunity?
• What are the negative consequences of inaction?
• What could be affected or changed in a positive direction 5, 10 or 20 years from now?
• What future desired result or change in the current situation is going to require persistence and perseverance?
• What bold new risks could we explore or take?
• What is working that needs to be carefully watched?
• Where do you see signs of the future happening now?
• What is placing new limits on, or removing old barriers to our future  (constraining and releasing)?

Part 2 of our podcast on what facilitators might reflect on during the COVID-19 crisis. We talk about the importance of what we are learning  and feeling during this time. We specifically acknowledge collective grief (more than individual grief but also sensing the enormity of the world's grief). We also note that as facilitators, it is important to get our groups to step back - step right back to the data gathering  the environmental scanning stage or the retrospective review stage. It is critical that we help others pause, notice we are at the very beginning of the process and it is not wise to move into action too soon.