To hold space means to be physically, mentally, and emotionally present for someone. It means putting your focus on someone to support them as they share their perspective(s).
Holding | Space: De|Centering Whiteness
is a comprehensive dialogue and artifact-based program designed to support white people, specifically (but not exclusively) white women, in deep and authentic racial identity exploration as a starting point for actively engaging in anti-racism.
I have ten years of experience facilitating discussions, storytelling practices and exercises, and examinations of social identity/ies to draw from and share in order to support your own work and journey.
The spaces I seek to hold will be spaces of both learning and, more importantly, unlearning. I will be a source of support, a sounding board, a resource-center, a coach, an educator, and a disrupter alongside you.
In order to authentically engage in anti-racist work, we have to begin with our own racial identity stories; we must consider how race has informed our lived experiences (both consciously and unconsciously, explicitly and implicitly) and subsequently, how we see and understand the people and world around us.
While it is imperative that we as White folks find other White folks to do this work with (it’s not on Black folks and other people of color to support us, to carry us, to validate us), we must engage with texts and creations by Black folks (and other people of color) to begin to understand how Black people understand and see their own lives, through their own eyes. We have to engage with texts that challenge Whiteness, White supremacy, White privilege, etc.
We all need spaces and opportunities to process these texts, to think through them, to ask questions; to interrogate how we have been socialized and influenced by media images and messages to make assumptions about “the Other.” White people need to be in community to talk about our Whiteness, our role in perpetuating racism, of upholding racist policies and practices, and how we can work to be actively anti-racist every day. This is on us: to do this work and engage in action together.
This multifaceted program includes:
A free bi-weekly newsletter with original content, resources, information, critical questions and reflection prompts
One-on-one coaching sessions
Small group hands-on discussions about Whiteness, identity, race, class, gender, etc.
Racial Identity Exploration Workshops for groups of friends, families, companies/organizations/staff, etc.