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Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation by adrienne maree brown
spicycronereads's review
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
So helpful in preparing to facilitate a workshop with colleagues. Draws deeply on Black feminist and abolitionist politics. But also has nuts and bolts strategies and concrete suggestions for how to do this kind of work.
jw2869's review
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
I've had this book for a number of years and participated in an emergent strategy facilitation training, but haven't had the chance to read the book from cover to cover before now. I truly believe the universe brings you to a book when its the right time to read it because I got so much from it this time around. I'm using the book as a guide through my own professional facilitation work and also to inform how I hold space as a friend, partner, and family member.
For me this book is really about getting in right relationship with change and each other. To center the ways we hold space and create containers around seeing the divinity in ourselves and one another. adrienne maree brown says "to 'hold change' or 'hold space' is to hold both the people in, and the dynamic energy of , a room, a space, a meeting, an organization, an movement. To hold change is to make it easy for people with share intentions to be around each other and move towards their vision and values (facilitate), and/or to navigate conflict in a way that is generative and accountable (mediate)...facilitation is making it as easy as possible for group groups of people to do the hard work of dreaming, planning, visioning, and organizing together."
I really appreciate that the book mixes tactical suggestions, assessments, rubrics and questions, with wisdom from people who have been facilitating for some time. As always Prentis Hemphill and Alexis Pauline Gumbs words served as a re-centering. Their words will definitely serve as a reference guide that I will return to again and again. Some of my favorite quotes and questions from the book are:
"How do we attend to generating the ease necessary to help us move through the inevitable struggles of life and change? How do we practice the art of holding others without losing ourselves?"
"Every facilitator is a doula, easing some necessary rebirth organizational, political, interpersonal, or otherwise for some folks who want change."
"some of us are called to hold the containers in which life transforms and the future unfolds."
"...we begin by listening; we presume our power not our powerlessness; wherever there is a problem, there already people working on the solution; center and follow the innovative solutions that come from those living in intersecting crises, because those solutions work in the widest range of conditions."
"I am a commitment to trusting love the way I trust gravity."
"We learn through an accumulation of lessons. We change through an accumulation of practices...release perfection. The idea of iteration is that we are repeating - not failing, but practicing and learning."
"One of our facilitation roles is to help groups remember that they are not the first humans to try to change the world, have a vision, wrestle with philanthropy, grow, have a financial crisis, have internal conflict, contradiction, and/or combustion, or to end. If groups can grasp that others have tried and experienced all of these things, they can return to curiosity and experimentation."
"You learn to wield your power thru surrender, particularly of limiting internal logic, imposter syndrome and the tools of the disconnected. If you are connected, there is less to figure out, less to analyze. To be a sacred being is to be connected...part of your work is to remind everyone of their sacred selves."
For me this book is really about getting in right relationship with change and each other. To center the ways we hold space and create containers around seeing the divinity in ourselves and one another. adrienne maree brown says "to 'hold change' or 'hold space' is to hold both the people in, and the dynamic energy of , a room, a space, a meeting, an organization, an movement. To hold change is to make it easy for people with share intentions to be around each other and move towards their vision and values (facilitate), and/or to navigate conflict in a way that is generative and accountable (mediate)...facilitation is making it as easy as possible for group groups of people to do the hard work of dreaming, planning, visioning, and organizing together."
I really appreciate that the book mixes tactical suggestions, assessments, rubrics and questions, with wisdom from people who have been facilitating for some time. As always Prentis Hemphill and Alexis Pauline Gumbs words served as a re-centering. Their words will definitely serve as a reference guide that I will return to again and again. Some of my favorite quotes and questions from the book are:
"How do we attend to generating the ease necessary to help us move through the inevitable struggles of life and change? How do we practice the art of holding others without losing ourselves?"
"Every facilitator is a doula, easing some necessary rebirth organizational, political, interpersonal, or otherwise for some folks who want change."
"some of us are called to hold the containers in which life transforms and the future unfolds."
"...we begin by listening; we presume our power not our powerlessness; wherever there is a problem, there already people working on the solution; center and follow the innovative solutions that come from those living in intersecting crises, because those solutions work in the widest range of conditions."
"I am a commitment to trusting love the way I trust gravity."
"We learn through an accumulation of lessons. We change through an accumulation of practices...release perfection. The idea of iteration is that we are repeating - not failing, but practicing and learning."
"One of our facilitation roles is to help groups remember that they are not the first humans to try to change the world, have a vision, wrestle with philanthropy, grow, have a financial crisis, have internal conflict, contradiction, and/or combustion, or to end. If groups can grasp that others have tried and experienced all of these things, they can return to curiosity and experimentation."
"You learn to wield your power thru surrender, particularly of limiting internal logic, imposter syndrome and the tools of the disconnected. If you are connected, there is less to figure out, less to analyze. To be a sacred being is to be connected...part of your work is to remind everyone of their sacred selves."
cebolla's review
3.0
This book was not really for me. It's written well and, as always, adrienne maree brown drops hella wisdom, but it didn't speak to me where my life is right now.