The Cave of Summer

Dear Nina and Rachel,
I lit a candle in my altar this morning in preparation to writing this letter to you both as co-facilitators, mentors, sisters - of my heart and soul. I went to bed last night reading your book, Rachel, and your powerful meditations about claiming our divinity as daughters emboldened me to write so thank you!

I've been observing the flow of emails in our cohort and I, too, have been careful (too careful) in responding. But this morning, I woke up with some thoughts that have crystallized over these past weeks and I want to share them.

I woke up with these questions: What would  make me want to go back to another retreat? Do I want to go back to a gathering where the women of color express their trauma and pain under white supremacy, colonialism, and patriarchy and where that pain and trauma is then projected towards individual white women in the room? Do I want to go back to another retreat where I feel that the dialogue never gets deep enough to really address the elephant in the room?

Then the follow up question was: What would you like to see happen instead? And the answer was: I would like to see and hear white women talk about the impact of white supremacy and white privilege in their lives. I want to hear their stories of how they have healed from the violence of the civilizing/whitening process through their own deep ancestral work. I want to hear stories of how they resisted the temptation of cultural appropriation because it is what was easily available for the taking. I want to hear stories of how they are doing "reparation" work that leads to healing and reconciliation.