Welcome Gweyn!
I live in Sonoma County, Northern California and I am a recovering “woke-aholic” white millennial with a deep well of compassion for all of us allies on the awakening path. In 2018 I was working as a Community Development and Marketing Consultant for global movements seeking to connect people to each other and their places through education, events, and training.
Through my friendship with a person of color sharing their experiences of racism, I began seeing the pain of racism and my part in it. For about a year, I tried what any normal privileged person in our culture of separation would do–I tried to use my mind to dissect and understand every aspect of racism’s history and function to control and manage my guilt instead of feel it.
I jumped on the #allyship bandwagon and applied this pain avoidance strategy, hoping to god that there was a quick fix. Spoiler alert: there are no quick fixes to problems of the heart. I am not proud to say that I envisioned allyship as the peak destination at the top of “Good White People” mountain and thought I could get there and stay safe by reading the most books, knowing the correct uses of all the terms–and of course telling everyone when they used them wrong–and being incredibly awkward around all people of color to make sure my internalized racism never slipped out sideways. If they don’t see it, it’s not there, and I won’t have to feel the pain…right? I’m one of the good ones. But…now I know better and I feel more deeply. I’m just like everyone else. And for all non-linear, messy, healing journeys, we have to feel it to heal it. That is real growing up. Healing racism is no exception.
My house-of-cards conception of allyship fell apart when my massive undertaking to establish a race and class diverse land-based community in white and wealthy Sonoma wine County, California dissolved. As the sand slipped through my fingers, I couldn’t avoid confronting the felt truth in my body any longer. Thankfully, during the development–and demise–of this project, I was working as an Inclusion Program Manager with Rev. Dr. Aliah MaJon, my now mentor and dear friend at The Shift Network. Through our work together building bridges, I grew my leadership capacity–digging into the discomfort to reveal hard-won gems of liberating truths.
I am so grateful to have the opportunity to share with you with my skills in curriculum development and facilitation, marketing, and community curation. Even beyond these, perhaps the most valuable gift I can offer you–our Ally Ring community–is an encouragement to fail, sometimes spectacularly, and get back up to try again. Not in the pursuit of being right, but in truly righting the injustices of racism. To see mistakes as opportunities for growth. And that fierce kindness and humor are never, ever, to be underrated.
And in the end, I’m here to learn from YOU and grow together so please don’t hesitate to reach out to share what is inspiring you, what questions you’re chewing on, and what trends you’re seeing in the constantly evolving edge of allyship. You can reach me at gweyn@allyring.com.
When I’m not working with Ally Ring, I’m active in the community as an artist, facilitator, and educator. I’m passionate about creating jewelry from natural materials and reviving ancestral skills/ nature connection. Here is a photo of a sheep hide tanning workshop I held in 2021 at the Grief-to-Action camp with Holistic Resistance, a racial justice facilitators and educators and singing group. These sheep hides will be used as soft landing pads for people of color to be held in an earthen dome. You can find out more about their incredible work here: https://www.holisticresistance.com/
