CHJL: Our Love Letter to the Movement 

Dear Movement, 

This letter is inspired by all the spaces I’ve been a part of that profess justice for all. This is a letter to all of us who have suffered in the name of collective liberation, but got lost along the way. This is a letter to my past self. You cried so many tears for so long and were made to feel like you were reading things wrong by the people who were supposed to guide you. I love all the parts of you. Thank you for not giving up on this work.    

First, I must name my broken heart—all of our broken hearts. It is through you that I saw the harm hidden in the liberal, latent white supremacy culture propped up and protected even in social justice spaces. I saw well-meaning white people perpetuate paternalism in their hiring practices and lack of salary transparency. As a woman of color, I was forced to consider my value as I was offered less money than my male counterparts. Informal relationships between male leadership and other male staff led to a gendered atmosphere of exclusion. Leadership told others I was too sensitive, implying that I should be tended to with kid gloves. 

To the movement, you broke my heart when my Muslim identity was seen as a helpful token story to add diversity to the meeting and show others that you were doing things right. You broke my heart in the countless hours I spent ruminating and reflecting on what was happening with you and whether I should say something. I couldn’t turn it off. These were countless hours of emotional labor I lost when I could have been doing, well . . . anything else. You sent me emails and called me after 9 pm on weeknights. You encroached on every part of my life, tapping into the wellness of my family by forcing your way through my boundaries. And if I didn’t answer, you questioned whether I loved you and asked if I was really ready to progress to another position.

You flooded me with grief, insecurity, and fear. Due to exclusion from actual leadership decisions and tokenism, I felt unworthy, not enough, and it was unclear to me how to “perform” better. You made me feel like I was deficient. It all became about winning—but I don’t know if you cared about how I got there, how we got there. To me, winning means no one gets left behind and that we are whole along the way. That we don’t sacrifice our well-being for the sake of moving a policy. I’m clear I’m whole now and moving toward greater wholeness. This letter is a step toward that wholeness.

And for all of this, I deeply thank you. You pushed me to the brink, until I was on the verge of burnout, until I had to contend with my values and how I wanted to be in alignment. You forced me to see who I really am and how I wanted to feel inside THIS body, with this heart. 

Thank you for all the good moments, too. You brought me hope on hard days. You showed me the power of transformation through policy wins that changed the lives of many formerly incarcerated community members by removing the felony box on job applications. You taught me how to crumble the walls that separate us by race, class, gender, status, and so forth. You taught me so much about power. 

I love you for all of these reasons and more. You do change people’s lives for the better. You are the strength of a well-timed story of someone directly impacted to move a politician in favor of community action. You are the picture of Black and brown individuals sitting together at a table asking fierce “why” questions to a county supervisor. You are the celebration of turning six nonviolent felonies into misdemeanors. You are the drumbeat of feet marching down a boulevard demanding justice for the murder of Black lives by police. You are the reminder of a strategy session with the mayor’s staff on how to make the most robust justice reform policies. You are the tenacity of a door knocker during Get Out the Vote. You are the resilience of a single mom bringing her baby to a leadership meeting on how to get more affordable housing in the neighborhood. 

I want you to know that I need things to be different for me to feel like I’m growing in this relationship. I need more from you. And I’m willing and ready to bring my best Self for you too. 

You are the blood that pushes life-giving change in this country. But never forget, you need a heart to circulate the blood. I’m your heart. We are your heart. Here is how you can have more of me in you. 

I want you to value the work and lived experiences of BIPOC leaders. I want you to invest in my sustainability. I want you to value interdependence, collaboration, and abundance. I want you to value my life, my wholeness, my healing, and my liberation. I want you to see me. Like, really see me. I want you to be centered on this idea of Self, beaming with curiosity, creativity, and connection. 

This whole school, Coaching for Healing, Justice, and Liberation, is the love letter. Developing a Liberatory Coaching approach is rooted in naming all of the harm experienced by BIPOC leaders and transforming it, so that it’s grounded in ancestral wisdom that is given back to movement work, like a magical golden lantern lighting the way. 

Liberatory Coaching is about centering justice, healing, and liberation. Regular coaching that supports people to be their best selves is not enough, because it values the individual as the end goal. We must be able to name how white supremacy and settler colonialism and other forms of oppression impact a person’s ability to believe in their wholeness, possibility, and resourcefulness. Our work is to uproot oppression, to remember the ways of the past that worked for our ancestors, to love ourselves right now, and to light the way for future generations.     

The stakes have never been higher for stepping deeper into healing, justice, and liberation. With the uprisings across the country, the united states plunging into fascism, the climate crisis continuing to gain steam, and the divide between the richest and the poorest continuing to widen as COVID-19 rages on, the time is now. 

I know it will take work from me to communicate, move through my past hurt, and it will take work from you to understand and reflect too. If you do this, what’s possible for all of us? It’s the stuff of epic love stories that span lifetimes and generations.  

Will you take my hand? 

Sarah