Why My Group Retreats are Exclusively for People of Color
I work with clients from all walks of life and a few of the a white Women on these streets have been my private clients and they know how I work and have had amazing breakthroughs from my work.
I have spent years explaining why Black Women need safe spaces and why my group retreats are the way they are.
We unpack race trauma and how we feel as Black Women and I don't ever want to have a situation where a White Woman cries because they feel attacked because they haven't done their work on race. I refuse to make my retreats the space where we have to tiptoe around them to code switch or educate them as we unpack our trauma and make them feel better.
We have seen this time and again, even in so-called safe spaces that are mixed.
In my experience, even the most awesome allies, have a lot of race stuff they have not dealt with and in such situations can use white tears and years of programming to get Black Women to center them. So to avoid retraumatizing any Black Woman or Man, I keep my group retreats exclusive to Black and Brown people.
Due to years of slavery, apartheid and colonization, most Black bodies are triggered by whiteness and the unconscious micro aggressions and are not comfortable being fully themselves in the presence of White bodies and I refuse to have hypervigilant Black people at my retreats.
It's also why I choose the countries I do for retreats - I want us to feel safe walking around, laughing and chilling, without worrying about microaggressions. Countries where we won't constantly be made to feel apologetic for existing.
If you are White and triggered by my stance on hosting retreats just for women of color, I want to ask you to be more concerned about how whiteness traumatizes Black bodies then with terrorizing me for creating safe spaces for Black Women.
A few White Women have reached out and asked for something similar and to have retreats with me, I am happy to do that - this is why I created the individual VIP retreats.
That way if you trigger anyone, it will just be me and I am not exposing any other Black person to that trauma.
I am here to help women of color heal trauma, not retraumatize them.
I consider my work to be the work of a lifetime and I know this to be my mission on this planet, so this work is sacred work for me and I know that sometimes equity can feel like discrimination to those that have only known privilege.
Racism is a huge part of the trauma that people of color (and even White people) need to unpack and process and it is at the core of our money wounds.
And if you think ancestral money trauma has nothing to do with race and you have been working on healing trauma and never unpacked race dynamics and looked at your privilege as a White person, I have news for you about your healing journey...
