Echoes Across Time: A Love Letter to Our Origins
In the quiet depths of Oakland's redwood forest, where ancient trees hold centuries of resistance in their rings, AllThrive was born from a fierce necessity. It was 2016, and as hatred cascaded down a golden escalator into our national consciousness, we witnessed the ripples of fear touch every meditation mat, every juvenile hall classroom, every space where we taught mindfulness to communities bearing the weight of systemic trauma.
We were mindfulness teachers then, believing in the power of breath to transform lives. But breath alone couldn't answer the questions emerging from our students' hearts, couldn't address the systemic roots of their pain. As bell hooks reminds us,
“Without an ethic of love shaping the direction of our political vision and our radical aspirations, we are often seduced, in one way or the other, into continued allegiance to systems of domination.”
So we chose Love. Not the soft, passive love of retreat, but the active, engaged love that hooks speaks of – the kind that demands we show up fully, that we create spaces where both healing and truth-telling could coexist. We gathered under towering redwoods, sharing meals, stories, and the profound understanding that our collective wellbeing was inseparable from our struggle for justice.
When COVID-19 swept through our communities like a storm, we witnessed love transform into action as organizers defied shelter-in-place orders to ensure their neighbors survived. In their courage, we saw Freire's vision of popular education come alive – communities becoming their own educators, healers, and advocates. Through loss and grief, through virtual spaces and vaccine equity initiatives, we grew stronger, wiser, more deeply rooted in our conviction that sustainable change requires sustainable changemakers.
Today, as we face another season of political upheaval, we carry eight years of crisis response wisdom in our bones. We are no longer just survivors but architects of community care, builders of resilient spaces where truth and tenderness intertwine.
This newsletter is our invitation to continue this journey together, to tend to our movement with the same fierce love that brought us here. For in the end, as hooks teaches us, love in action is always about service, about recognizing our interconnectedness. And in this recognition, we AllThrive.
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