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Delving into Difference & Accountability

During these historic times, many of us are asking ourselves: What anti-racist actions can we take today and everyday as we move forward? How can we become effective allies to those “under the boot?” We, at Reauthoring Teaching, are also asking ourselves: How might we link with other narrative initiatives to support each other to make unique contributions, remembering we are stronger together? The Delving into Difference & Accountability Curating Team is taking an active role in updating favorite text, video and audio resources listed below. We also include Collab Salons with particular relevance. As follow-up to Narrative Camp, we’ve committed to further developing inclusive, anti-oppressive practices at our future Reauthoring Teaching gatherings. Having sent out a Cultivating Anti-oppressive practices survey to Camp participants, we would like to share these questions with everyone. A recent Blog post includes a “Black Lives Matter, Ending Policy Brutality & Standing up to Justice” statement by Our Board; several Board members participated in B Herring’s Delving into Difference Consultation Group, which will run again beginning September 2020. We are learning as we go, and invite your participation as we prioritize white people educating ourselves and together taking specific actions that embody the values and practices around difference, race, power and accountability that we believe in.

Delving into Difference & Accountability

Team of Curators: Kathie Adams, Stephen Gaddis, Barbara Herring (Coordinator), Mona Klausing, Kevin O’Bryan, Rocio Ocampo-Giancola, Akansha Vaswani

Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Do not become bitter or hostile. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. We will find a way to make a way out of no way.” – John Lewis

Black Lives Matter, Ending Police Brutality, Standing Up for Justice
Reauthoring Teaching Board Statement

Black Lives Matter. Matters. Narrative Therapy has “mattering” at its heart. It has always been about helping people re-story and restore their lives according to their own deeply held values, according to what matters to them. We’ve long sought to support people in finding ways to resist the individualizing, psychologizing, decontextualizing, and pathologizing descriptions of their struggles that much of the world—and much of our field—reproduce and reinforce.

But the time has come for us to acknowledge the insufficiency of our past efforts. At the heart of this shortfall is that White people often fail to grasp the painful reality that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) know that their very lives, their very bodies, let alone their stories, are treated as if they don’t matter. They don’t matter enough for healthcare to be as sufficiently available, and they don’t matter enough for their murderers to be held accountable. These are not stories, but facts that stand out in stark relief in the context of COVID and state-sanctioned murder.

While we can continue to be proud of creating and offering narrative practices that make these facts more visible, and proud that we help people re-story their lives in political and social context, and proud of the support community that we’ve created for doing our difficult work, we must do more. A popular lawn sign challenges us to do better: If you can’t breathe, I can’t breathe. We at Re-authoring Teaching rededicate ourselves to making this lawn sign feel true to the community we are and the communities we serve. This will require more seeking out and listening to the voices of BIPOC in our community, more programming that is focused on community work as well as clinical practice, and still more. Now is the time…..

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Groups,  Communities & Events

Delving into Difference Consultation Group

For the second time, B. Herring will be offering this consultation group for people who are interested in having perhaps difficult or uncomfortable conversations around difference with regards to race and privilege in the therapy room

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BIPOC Narrative Community