Learning Library: adrienne marie brown's "Holding Change"

A little over a year ago, I was able to participate in a virtual convening with philanthropy colleagues from across the state on Edgar Villanueva’s book and action around “Decolonizing Wealth.” I’d read the book the summer before, on a road trip through the Black Hills and Badlands of South Dakota – a landscape with so many visible reminders of Indigenous communities' wisdom and the harm enacted by white supremacy culture. My reading encouraged me to reflect on my own growing unease around my experiences as a grantmaker. I felt inspired by Villanueva’s call to disrupt the dynamics of wealth and power. I remember highlighting in our cohort call how meaningful it was for me that Villanueva addressed the role of grief in healing, and the necessity of sitting in that discomfort.

A few months after that convening, I was dismissed from my foundation role for creating “unnecessary tension” within the organization. For pushing for salary transparency, and more flexible pandemic work accommodations, and failing to honor hierarchy. It was a painful experience, and I’ve spent the past year processing and attempting to both heal from and assess whether there is any place for me to work within institutions. I’ve also felt held by a network that sees the value I bring to our community, and the people who have invited me in as a collaborator.

Reading adrienne maree brown’s “Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation,” I was stunned by the book’s wisdom around the emotional and interpersonal context in which emergent and adaptive change happens. The book centers primarily on work within social justice movements and contains excellent tools for both assessing a group’s capacity for change and addressing the power of dynamic tensions to drive change.

Holding Change is a handbook for facilitators who are working to adopt emergent strategy – principles and practices that acknowledge and moves with the ever-evolving nature of change work. And it’s offered in language of Black feminist activists who embrace the connection between community work and ideas around embodiment* and basic needs and boundaries.

In her own voice and by calling in a chorus of her contemporaries, brown gives readers a poetic balance of practical steps for facilitating mediation, and the underlying mindsets that make holding “brave” space possible. A few of my many highlighted passages:

“Authenticity is having integrity between what you say and how you are or what you do. Intimacy is closeness present when you can be yourself, be honest about your needs, and share the layers and details of what you are feeling and why you behave the way you do, particularly when you feel mistaken, hurt, or not in control.”

[plug: I really love The Birkman Method® for helping people name their needs!]

“Any meeting or gathering is a place to practice the future together in the most tangible ways.”

“Often, a small step needs to be repeated, become a practice, in order to produce a new capacity, or shape in the group, or even in just one person.”

Malkia Devich-Cyril on the Five Gates of Grief: “On the other side of change is loss. To reimagine and reshape the world, grief is a skill we need.”

N’Tanya Lee on Principled Struggle: “What we aim for… is to be able to speak the truth to other human beings, attuned to the impact, and in a spirit of moving together toward shared understanding and unity.”

Micky ScottBey Jones on Invitation to Brave Space: “Doing the work reveals more of the work to be done in us.”

Prentis Hemphill on Setting Boundaries: “Boundaries are how you guide and protect your life energy. The skillful use of boundaries allow us to create proximity, intimacy, distance.”

If you’re doing collaborative/collective work, or navigating a tension point within your organization/movement, I highly recommend this book as a partner and guide.

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Shoutout to my former grantmaking peer Kelly Thompson for first recommending Emergent Strategy to me. Find more from the series here.

Also recommend Love and Rage by Lama Rod Owens for others in the change sector who are moving through difficult emotions.

And, the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden is a fabulous spot to do deep reading and reflection in mid-February.