"Root To Bloom" - A Program Born from My Healing Journey
Like many passionate providers, I thought vocalizing my needs would get me somewhere. But I’m about to share a story about the many years (10+) of a swerve-y, chaotic, and down right traumatic career path.
Each season we hire community healers, & wellness practitioners as guest speakers to add to the wealth of resources around us. Here we are in the EcoCenter with movement healer, Sammay Dizon.
I used to be a community-based service provider and vocal advocate for diversity within land-based organizations. I spoke out, led efforts, formed groups and containers to drive the narrative of “lack of diversity” and hold myself to the fire, challenging my higher ups and the authorities-that-be, for more inclusive space for people like me and the communities I serve, who often looked like me. But I quickly learned through many failed attempts and fallouts that this wasn’t where my fire for change was going to be affective.
Sadly, like many other passionate (I would even say wounded) providers, I thought vocalizing my needs would get me somewhere, but it only left me burnt out. I was left with bigger questions about “Who am I in this work?”, “Why do I feel the need to stay?”, and the most challenging, “Why can’t I be who I am and focus on the actual work of creating change for my community?”. Well, the story I’m about to share below is a story of many years of the unfolding story that answered these questions. And when I say many years, I’m talking about 10+ years of a swervey, chaotic, and down right traumatic career path.
If there’s anything I hope you gain from reading the origin story of Root To Bloom, its that
(1) the path to your true purpose is hella long and arduous. If it’s not, you probably have more to learn and grow from
(2) when you finally surrender and listen to more than your experience, meaning your listening to your heart, your ancestors, your guides beyond the Earthly realm, you begin to listen to the forces of nature that have always been guiding you since you were born. You begin to trust the things that are beyond this world and magic begins to unfold.
So, I’m grateful you can take the time out to hear how this program speaks so much to my journey of healing as woman of color in environmental education work and that’s it is possible to create beautiful things for the people to meet their blooming!
🌺 Years ago when I started my non-profit environmental justice career I worked as a Program Manager in San Francisco's Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhood. I thought it was my dream job and I would be there for a long time. Little did I know, the day I walked into the office on my first day...I was walking into what would be a 2 year nightmare. The organization's leadership had crumbled 2 weeks prior to me starting. Ironically the park site, Heron's Head & the EcoCenter's education programming centered the historic toxicity of SF's Southeast. I was teaching about toxicity and experiencing toxic work environments at the same time.
I don't know if you've ever experienced a level of workplace toxicity that causes you to flee from the community and distance yourself for your own safety and well-being, but I spent many years away from the community except for the few trusted relationships I kept close as I transitioned and explored other avenues of my career.
Almost 10 years after that job I found myself on the same park site, different professional path as an entrepreneur but still working with nature, focused on providing a healing learning space for community-based service providers. I couldn't believe that the path I walked to come back to a site that caused me so much harm would be a place that would not only provide healing for me, but also heal the providers in the program.
Our program theory of change disrupts the cycle and value on productivity in our providers with self care and healing practices
I am always in awe of Root To Bloom being in my life. Being my life's work. It could be that my healing needed this program to be designed to disrupt the toxic work environment of valuing productivity with valuing self care and provider well-being. Because from my experience, I knew that the productivity value that plagues many community-based service centered organizations can perpetuate capitalism’s engine of seeing people as a commodity of labor instead of seeing them as stakeholders of our greater community’s long-term health and wellness. I always wanted someone to acknowledge this in the organizations I worked in, especially those that targeted marginalized communities. So, in the Root To Bloom Program I made sure we talk about colonization’s design to keep us locked into productivity so that we don’t attain the awareness that we can value ourselves as gifted contributors to our own needs for a healthy and fulfilling life. Because if we attain such power, we can’t be controlled.
It always strikes me as my radical stance on loving my community by being able to create this program to say these things and teach emerging leaders to reclaim their power with tools we share in the program. Because I’ve been a product of burn out and being outcasted, “laid-off” or ostracized from leadership in previous organizations where I’ve attempted to integrate these values as was retaliated against in some form or fashion. But something many years ago kept me tethered to my beliefs and stayed steadfast in my search to find a way to still say these things and have autonomy as safety. It just so happened I needed to leave the non-profit structure and create an entity that, to be real, only I can fire myself from, lol!
Root To Bloom has unfolded as this safe place and container for fierce providers like me to have a home for processing and understanding our intergenerational traumas without retaliation or stigmatization; something I wish I had especially when I was providing direct service to adjudicated youth. Now, I have so many people, spirit guides, ancestors to thank for this. More importantly I can thank myself for saying yes to a path most wouldn’t dare step into. That inner voice of my WARRIOR SELF was definitely wounded but committed to my true purpose and I mostly send her rest and gratitude these days.
Testimonial from Denicia, Season 2 graduate
Allowing myself the surrender to other messages in my dreams or the synchronicities showing up in my everyday walk are just some of the reasons why I think Root To Bloom holds such a special vibe and space for the community that surrounds it. Together with my co-creator and conspirator, Kisai of CommUNITY, this program has consistently shown us the power of creating something so unique and exactly what we would have wanted as frontline staff; a holistic and transformative space where we could truly just be and heal.
And as we’ve begun to open our space for the fourth year of Root To Bloom, I’m reminded again of the power of my healing journey to heal some of our community’s deepest wounds. I can’t say that my healing has ended. I don’t believe its even possible to “be healed”. So as long as I’m on this Earth, my healing will continue on. But what I do know is that after these many years of diving into the scary parts, moving through the roller coaster of life and leadership, there are moments that I’m reminded all of my struggles and experiences can serve me later by showing up as healing for others. I just have to keep listening, keep trusting.
So I’ll leave you with some of the coach-y type reflections you can take as you continue on your journey of self discovery and healing in hopes that your journey can find a point of coming full circle. And I hope you can share your thoughts and responses with me below. I’d love to engage with your story of healing.
Click this image to listen to our IG Live session sharing the magic that birthed our program and its impact on our community
Reflections to Reclaim Your Purpose & Power:
🤔 If you were to spend a day doing exactly what brings you complete alignment with who you are and your natural born gifts, what would that day be like and more importantly how are you feeling throughout that whole day?
🤔 If you can speak truth to your power, as in say ALL THE THINGS you want to say to your current workplace/community about what real change looks like, what would you say? Make sure it’s as raw as you would say it if you had all the freedoms to say it all the way you want to say it!
🤔 What do people tend to say or witness in you when they describe who you are or what your leadership is like? You don’t have to agree or believe them because these can be signs of your true gifts and purpose in life whether you like it or not!
THANK YOU FOR READING MY STORY!
IF YOU FOUND THIS RESOURCE HELPFUL
PLEASE SHARE WIDELY TO YOUR NETWORKS & FRIENDS
Comment below to dialogue with me!
The Greatest Threat to Colonization is the Indigenous Woman: Part 1, Black Liberation
To understand a world in the midst of racial, social, and environmental transformation we must look into the belly of the beast and work to understand where the beast comes from, how it functions, and what its agenda is. The forces of Colonization and White Supremacy are those beasts. And the greatest threat to that is WHO WE WERE BEFORE those forces came in. Here’s part one of how I’ve lived through and view this battle.
To understand a world in the midst of racial, social, and environmental transformation we must look into the belly of the beast and work to understand where these negative forces come from, how it functions, and its agenda. The forces of colonization and white supremacy are those forces. And the greatest threat to that is WHO WE WERE BEFORE those forces came in. Here’s part one of how I’ve lived through and view this battle.
Quick Google Search
What I’m about to share with you is what my eyes have seen, what words I’ve listened to, what life experiences have taught me about our humanity and the state of the world today. My views are a result of the guidance from many of my teachers and elders, schooling, educating youth, as well as my abilities to see things this way. I’m grateful fro all of those gifts and I welcome dialogue around this post.
MY LIVED EXPERIENCE
When I was in my mid-20’s I was dating a Black man. My father caught wind of this and give me the silent treatment for about 6 months. I had no idea what his reason was for the silence. Then my mother asked me one day, “Do you have a black boyfriend?” I confirmed. And the next thing she said shocked me, but didn’t throw me off completely. She said, “Well Dad’s not talking to you because he doesn’t want Black in the family.” My response was, “Wow, you both are racist!” I felt safe enough to continue with her by telling her, “I don’t get why you think this wouldn’t happen when you raised me here in the Bay Area.” Even though in the back of my head I knew racism was very much alive in the Filipino culture, and in particular, anti-Blackness.
This was a “crucible moment” in my life that taught me that anti-Blackness was global. Because up until that point I was a brown girl navigating my life as a Filipino American. I wasn’t yet exposed to the histories and the stories of anti-Blackness outside of the United States. But it was clear to me in that moment in my parents’ faces, in their words, knowing their migration story, and the belief in anti-Blackness that it was an ideology they adopted from somewhere else. But where did they learn this? Back home in the Philippines? Or was it something they learned after immigrating here? I didn’t care to ask at that time. I was too disgusted and disappointed.
We never resolved anything around this situation, but I knew that for myself, resolution was not even an option. I had to just continue on with my life however I chose because I chose my free will.
OUR TRAVELING DNA
As a socially conscious educator and ecologist, my lens has always been one of curiosity and connection. I see things in terms of systems, inter-relatedness, and interdependence. So, personally as I went about my years teaching our youth, expanding my experiences, and getting to know me, who I am, and where I come from (because a lot of my work placed me in direct interaction with racism), I decided to take my own DNA test for ethnicity. This is where I began to understand my family’s history as well as our identity as it related to colonization.
My initial DNA results
While I was waiting for my results to come in from Ancestry.com I began asking my parents how much they knew about our ancestors. To my surprise, neither of them could tell me much more past their grandparents’ names (my great grandparents). Not much was recorded. If I wanted to dig deeper into their stories I’d have to actually go to the Philippines, maybe go to the Catholic Church for records. What was also striking for me was to see that all of my relatives had Spanish names, not Malay or indigenous in origin.
A sudden wave of emotion and information came to me and I realized
(1) they lost so much including the ability to retain indigenous names (i.e., because of assimilation),
(2) what they endured compared to what I’m enduring in this life was so much more deeper and heavier on their soul and
(3) what they endured brought me and my family to be here, now. I couldn’t help but be sad about this. But it also ignited more curiosity about ancestry, migration stories, and global race relations.
Shortly after my results came in I picked up this book by Christine Kenneally, “The Invisible History of the Human Race”. It was common knowledge to me that all of us have that <1% African DNA in us, but she confirmed it for me when she opens her Chapter 12 on The History of the World,
“When you visualize the human tree, picture its trunk firmly planted in African soil. Modern humans emerged there several hundred thousand years ago and lived only there from 250,000 years ago for at least 150,000 years - much longer span of time than we have lived across the globe.”
The chapter goes on to describe where this <1% comes from and how the band of humans that made the migration out of the land we know of as Africa remains in our DNA today. Kenneally goes on and says,
“Around sixty thousand years ago a small band of them - perhaps not much more than one thousand to two thousand five hundred individuals- went traveling. We don’t know why they left or if they had any sense that they were going somewhere new, but we do know their decision kicked off one of the biggest events in the history of the human genome.
Those who remained are the ancestors of most of the one billion people who live in Africa today. The small band that left are the ancestors of everyone else in the world, and the suite of NDA they carried was only a small sample of the variety of human genomes that existed in Africa at the time of their departure. Indeed, we know the migration occurred because even now we can see that the genomes of everyone in the world outside of Africa is a subset of the genomic variation still found in Africa.”
So basically what that book was telling me was that we all come from the land which we call Africa. Which means, WE ALL COME FROM A MOTHER FROM AFRICA. As trivial as it may seem, realizing it like this blew my mind!
ANTI-BLACKNESS
So, we all come from a Black mother. The DNA shows us that she is our most common ancestor, whoever that woman was on the land we know of as Africa. But this revelation always brought me back to this perplexing ideology of racism that globally, being Black, especially was bad.
Why is it that you can find anti-Blackness around the globe and ingrained in the beliefs of many cultures? Because I couldn’t see that there were other examples of other races being seen as so inferior in the same way. Well, the first reason is probably obvious: colonization.
THE COLONIZED MIND
There’s no other way colonization can happen successfully unless you also control the minds of the people that come from that land. Not only in Africa, but in all colonized countries (most land masses) if you don’t have pride in yourself and the land you come from, you won’t fight for it.
Colonization’s goal is to separate people from their connection to their land therefore severing a connection to themselves & their identity. This is how the colonizer can take all the power over that land and its people.
For Africa, it’s our human origin. It’s where our expansion to create and populate the rest of the world comes from.
There is a certain power that exists when you know you come from a story that began creating this world.
And that’s the type of power the colonizer DOESN’T want you to have.
The second reason is our need to …
RECONCILE WITH OURSELVES
This one is the more spiritual and existential reason.
It wasn’t until I had this frank conversation with a peer healer and Ancestral Healing practitioner, Dumbei Okonji, where I realized what the ultimate teaching was around anti-Blackness. I shared what I knew about migration, DNA, indigeneity, connections to our land and ancestry, and asked her frankly,
“But why Black? Why do we hate on Blackness so much and why is it uniquely global? I just don’t get it.”
And her profound response,
“Well when it comes down to it, we just don’t like who we are.”
Knowing this, I began to understand the deeply seeded weaponry of self hate. The more we choose to accept and adopt all forms of self hate, the more we perpetuate our separation from each other, fulfilling the colonizer’s agenda.
BLACK LIBERATION
When the evidence showed me the origins of humans coming firmly from Africa, I began to understand the importance of Black Liberation.
To support and advocate for Black Liberation is to connect us back to who we are as humans.
And this can be a form of radical healing
Knowing the history of Black people over time, what they’ve endured, their ancestral story, and the impacts that continue to destroy and perpetuate destruction due to enslavement and colonization, lives within their bones, blood, and DNA of their descendants. WE are all their descendants.
Over time, as our origin from Africa migrated out to populate the rest of the land globally, our lineages began with our own indigenous mothers, giving each lineage their own origin story. Each of our lineages have their own grandeur family tree deeply rooted and planted in the land that we each came from. This also helped me understand the importance of indigeneity as the greatest threat to colonization, but that’s for Part 2!
So, in partial conclusion, this exploration of my own individual identity has opened up so much learning and unlearning about who I am and how my identity can show up event in how we relate with each other.
I hope you’re able to gain a little bit more for yourself after my share.
Please comment and add to the conversation in the comments below!
