Hey y’all!
Well I have been building on this learning dream for many years. It began in 2004 with becoming a Spanish teacher and falling in love with sharing what lights me up which was less Spanish grammar and more the layers of culture, history, stories, and magic that makes up the Spanish speaking world. Then the systems in place required that I go to school to learn all the logistics for “educating” which is vastly different than walking alongside humans and sharing what is beloved, which i had been doing for my whole life up to that point. That educating part (two master’s degrees worth and too many years of classroom management) brought me clarity that I was done in the traditional school model and wanted my own kids, who had just entered this devastating glorious world to engage with something that could actually support their community building skills while honoring their love of learning on their own terms.
And so the realm of Self Directed Learning presented itself and we as a family embraced it. That idea about starting a school that comes up at the end of Little Women when Jo inherits Aunt March’s big rambling house was the thread that began the weaving of Nashville Sudbury School and it was just the exact medicine and community that our family needed. We even manifested a big rambling house where our children built the foundations for community and learning that they, to this day, they engage in through all facets of their life. In the time that our community school was alive for us, we served one another well. That was in the before times.
Since 2020, we have been clarifying, reclaiming, futuring and imagining as a collective and as individuals. And the grieving…. We have been grieving and holding one another in grief. And we have been remembering who we were as a collective in times before the madness. As the world speeds up, we see how medicinal the slow times are and we have been shedding so much in a frenzy to either hold the slow close or drive it away because it feels like too much inside us when we stop and really listen, see, learn, and remember the old old old ways. But there is a balance between the ancient and the future, between science and sacred, between the earth and sky, between systems of control and systems of fluidity and in that realm is where I imagine the future. adrienne maree brown is always telling us that someone imagined this world we are in now and it came to pass so we can imagine something else into reality.
My work since 2020 has been in imagining what it could be like if we as a collective embraced the concept of inter-sovereignty. What I mean by that is that we all honor our own radically individuated selves and we create communities where we all can be that and care for one another in that realm, releasing judgement of ourselves and others, loving the fuck out of ourselves and others and being curious about ourselves and others. It’s a big ask. But I find that the generations entering the planet are able to do it and those of us born in the previous millennium have to do the work that can support inter-sovereignty for generations and generations to come. That requires personal work to decondition from a society that has us judging, comparing, and hating ourselves and those around us all the while fear mongering us into compliance and wild expectations that benefit and growing minority on the planet. And we are exhausted and not at all curious as to why things are so divisive.
The personal and collective learning that lights me up in the new times upon which we are just on the thresh hold for is this inter-sovereign curiosity, non-judgement, and unconditional love for myself and everyone I encounter. The most powerful way to embark or this radical sacred journey is community, boundaries, and time. The profit is that we are evolving into the elders that our vastly changing society deserves. We are the Bridge Generations who will hold space for and support our living and future descendants at the end of an era we neither ushered forth nor will be able to rectify in our lifetimes. We can be there fully for those being born onto this vastly changing planet, which means we got some unraveling, unsettling, grieving, and reweaving to do together. It is my personal calling to be in community, bear witness, hold space, and offer resources for nourishment through our reweaving.
I have created the school I always wanted for myself to do this community work. It’s called the Circle of Oaks School of Sacred Revolutions and the first program I am launching is called THE LONG BRIDGE, a 9 month long integrative community and 1:1 practice of personal pilgrimage within, which will support our collective journey without. It begins September 1 and ends June 1 but honestly the Bridge never really ends. There is limited space on this inaugural journey and I have woven the constellations that will be called to walk along side one another on this Bridge. If it’s calling to you then I would love to schedule a time to chat.
The title for this program is in honor of The Root Bridges of Cherapunji, one of my favorite stories of natural, collective, generational, community support. Link to their story here.
If this offering doesn’t feel correct for you but you know someone who it may support, please pass the details along! The best way for me to share what I have going on is through my community which is all of you! Thanks for reading and sharing!
Cheers!
Sonia
#rootdown #riseup #totherevolutions #alldefinitionsapply