As we fight for social change, we are continually tasked with healing our ongoing collective and individual racialized trauma as we battle feelings of anxiety and overwhelm. Sometimes we even experience guilt that we are not doing enough because we cannot protest in the streets or simply do more. Overall, we are left exhausted by a very racist world. 

There is something compelling about holding space for the women in your life and allowing them to hold space for you right back. So, I gathered a few women from the Cubicles to Cocktails community and my personal network for a #BlackLivesMatter Sister Circle.

I hope you can use this resource with your own sister circle to facilitate healing racial trauma and organize for change now and in the future. Please feel free to use or modify this resource for your own personal needs. There is no need to ask me for permission to do so. Sharing the process, I followed to lead my #BLM Sister Circle is simply my way of operating in my role as a guide.

Set an Intention 

Start by setting intentions and goals for your circle. Your intentions will help you set your agenda, pace, and activities for your sister circle. My sister circle intended to create a space for us to release negative energy, organize for change, and heal our traumas. Create a sacred space for the evening. If virtual, encourage your circle to do the same. Here are some ideas:

• wearing comfortable, breathable clothing

• finding a cozy spot in your house, maybe sit on a yoga mat/pillow on the floor

• burning a candle/incense, diffusing your favorite essential oils, or saving your space

• enjoying your favorite beverage to relax with

Break the Ice 

One of the things that I’ve learned from my mentor is using a One Word check-in– an exercise where you share one-word describing how you feel about a topic or at the current moment. The One Word check-in is a great way to quickly introduce everyone, break the ice if needed, and then pull everyone into the moment before diving deeper. If the group is mixed with strangers and friends, the exercise encourages everyone to participate and prevents others from placing added value on responses to the infamous question, “So, what do you do?”

Pt. 1 Releasing

Open up your #BLM Sister Circle by first creating a space for everyone to say what is on their minds and share what is in their hearts. You’ll want to intentionally select the first question to spark the conversation and set the mood for the remainder of this portion. 

My opening question during my sister circle was:

Be honest, how are you holding up?

Many of us are receiving an influx of “just checking in” messages from our non-Black friends and colleagues. This is an opportunity for us to finally keep it 100 in a space where we don’t have to emotionally labor to explain ourselves.

Though the conversation will likely organically flow, prepare additional questions to keep the conversation flowing and tastefully change directions so that everyone can have a chance to share what they are experiencing. To create a list of conversation prompts, think about the different yet interconnected experiences and emotions that the Black women may be navigating in your community. 

Here are a few of my conversation prompts that I prepared:

• How has your job been responding to the latest events and the #BlackLivesMatter movement? What role do you feel your job should have in responding?

• The narrative of police brutality heavily focuses on brutality against Black men, erasing or ignoring the brutality facing Black women and members of the LBGTQ community. How have you been feeling or coping with this erasure?

• Have you felt the need to (re)set boundaries with your non-Black friends? 

• How have you been caring for yourself during this time? What do radical self-care and rest mean to you at this moment?

Pt. 2 Organizing

Here is your chance to get really creative and resourceful to help your sisters organize their individual plans of activism. You should get specific on what your goals are for this portion of the sister circle.

My goals were to have each woman in my sister circle be able to:

1. Define our community demands both at a local and national level

2. Explain their individual role(s) in activism for social change

The fight against anti-Blackness, police brutality, and systemic racism is obviously global and national. However, a significant majority of the work must be done at a community, local, and state level to make an impact too truly. Therefore, we must identify what systems need to be changed, policies advocated for, and businesses and officials held accountable within our community both locally, statewide, and nationally. 

we shared the following resources to learn about and discuss our community’s unified demands:

• #8CantWait - a project by Campaign Zero to identify 8 policies to advocate for within your community that is proven to decrease police killings by 72%.

• NAACP: Our Demands - an action update issued on May 31, 2020, to advocate for policies on a federal level and for the United Nations to classify police brutality in the U.S. as a human right violation.

There are many different ways to activate and fight for your community’s demands: calling government officials, boycotting businesses, even physically hitting the streets during protests and rallies. We all have our own lanes to occupy in the ecosystem of social change. Individually, we're all responsible for our own thoughts and actions. We must use our individual actions to contribute towards radical collective goals. Therefore, I centered the principle of “collective individualism”:

We are all parts of a whole. Our individual actions, conversations, behaviors and mindsets can have an impact on our larger society. Collectively, we can make change happen. 

- International Women’s Day organization

I led a moderated discussion and reflection exercise. First, I opened the floor for anyone to share:

“What do you believe is your lane in protesting for social change and justice?”

Then we discussed the resource “Mapping Our Roles in A Social Change Ecosystem” created by Deepa Iyer of Solidarity Is and Building Movement Project. After, we spent time individually reflecting and journaling on what we believe our role is or can be. When we came back as a group, we discussed the answers to our reflection and shared how we can operate in our roles moving forward. 

Pt. 3 Healing

Prayer. Yoga. Music. Art. Meditation. Those are just a few healing practices that we can embrace for everyday wellness and during times of intense collective trauma. For my #BlackLivesMatter Sister Circle, I decided on a group meditation using Dr. Candice Nicole Black Lives Matter Meditation for Healing Racial Trauma to conclude the sister circle. This meditation is amazing, and I highly recommend using it now and bookmark it for the future. 

Before we began our meditation, I asked everyone to write out whatever feelings of heaviness they need to release onto a piece of paper. I provided instructions on how to complete their own releasing ceremony. We then closed our eyes for meditation. After we meditated, we shared our One Word check-out, and all experienced an energy shift. We felt lighter, at ease, motivated, at peace, and whole.