cultivating collective care, embodying justice
support and solidarity offering
support and solidarity offering
We need to be resourced and cared for, in order to care for each other and our collective transformation. As Gloria Anzaldúa reminds us: to change the world, we need to change ourselves. For too long liberal “freedom tools” have co-opted liberatory visions of justice. We continue to be entangled and complicit in oppressive systems and logics—often reproduced by social justice organisations and activist spaces. We have been trying to center our individual and collective healing and transformation away from these ways of being and knowing.
Many social justice organisations and activist spaces internalise and reproduce systems of domination and separation rooted in patriarchy, heteronormativity and white supremacy culture. The myth of independence and separability from each other and from nature furthers relational cultures of domination, extraction, exploitation, competition and disposability. We continue to hurt and harm each other in the absence of practices of collective care and support in organising spaces and communities.
As a collective of friends, transformative justice practitioners, nature lovers, grief workers and facilitators, for the past five years, we have sought to honor our need for each other in processes of self-accountability. We aim to practice forms of collective care that support us to actively unlearn, embody and enact other ways of holding change and visions of justice - in our togetherness and organising.
We started the Support and Solidarity Offering (SupSol) in October 2022 to hold a safe(r) and brave(r) space through regular, virtual and facilitated sessions for those working in movements, collectives, and organisations. In the first two cohorts of this offering, we cocreated a vulnerable space for collective care practices of self-reflection, sense-making, response-ability, self-accountability and un/learning about the harms we are entangled and complicit in, including through our participation in the so-called “international justice” space—the landscape of both inter- and non-governmental organisations and institutions that promote penal and carceral forms of state-led justice and accountability.
After a period of shedding and growing, we are now inviting a third cohort of this offering—a coming together with/in and around this moment of immense systemic violence, collective grief and fierce vulnerability in reckoning with and hospicing systems and ways of responding to injustice that not only fail to protect life, but normalise violence.
We need each other to hold space for collective grief as a portal towards an otherwise, through embodied justice and (self)accountability. Only together can we practice the relational work within and between us that we need to co-create an authentic space for connection and nurture cultures of collective care. It is a way to “rehearse the social order coming into being” (Gilmore) and “to collectively envision and practice futures free from oppression” (HJL’s powerful Rehearsing Freedoms project and Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s life-work).
Un/learning, dreaming and practicing together
We will dedicate the first two sessions to learning about each other and gently co-weaving a container and community agreements that centre our individual and collective safety needs and values. Through a slow and gentle process, we hope to seed a togetherness of trust and intimacy that holds our differences and differential positionalities and honours the experiences and longings we bring.
The next four sessions would be oriented around the following themes, based on our ongoing learning journeys in community with others. The final list of themes will be co-weaved with members of the third cohort.
The facilitators will provide (optional) short readings and listening materials and reflection prompts prior to each of the above sessions. For the remaining one or two sessions, we will shape our collective direction together based on our needs and longings.
Our intention throughout this offering is to move at the speed of trust, practicing slowness, emergence and adjustment, and to be guided by the wisdom of our collective process and allow for shape-shifting around the group’s needs, longings and experiences. For example, we may as a group choose to change the order of the sessions, discuss one of the themes for more than one session, replace or drop any of the sessions. We may also choose as a group to close our time together after seven (instead of eight) meetings.
We envision our time together–and togetherness–as a process of collective un/learning around how to:
As part of the check-in circle at each meeting, we will hold space for any personal or collective experiences and reflections that participants want to share, be witnessed by the group with the option of inviting any support from the group.
How we come together
Our time together will span across eight bi-monthly online meetings. Each meeting will last for two hours—practicing slowness and presence with ourselves and each other, our time together will be spacious and expansive by including gentle somatics and breath practices, time for self-reflection, and breaks.
We plan to hold our online meetings on Tuesdays, with the proposed time of 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm CET. If you are unable to make this day or time please let us know (in the form)—if needed, we can try to adjust the time as the group.
We hope to have the first group session in May but may need to adjust this timeline based on the group that forms.
Practicing responsibility and care is part of the intentional coming together that we are inviting. Therefore, we ask for your commitment and reciprocity in showing up (as you are) and in contributing to the co-creation of an intimate collectivity. We of course understand that life happens and we may not all be fully available all the time. Recognizing this reality, we nevertheless invite you to carefully reflect on both your practical and emotional availability and ability to show up for others and collectively hold the space if you decide to join.
The meetings will happen online from April through July, after which you will have the option to join the SupSol community and connect on a ~monthly basis with previous cohorts. Our time together online will culminate in an invitation for those interested to come together in person in a self-organised way (with solidarity support from between us).
We will coordinate and exchange as a group through a Signal group so that we can also connect and support one another outside of our planned sessions, and beyond this offering.
The space will be held by Lisa, Lily and Val from the emergent justice collective.
*val (they/-) is a queer non-binary organiser, facilitator, and transformative justice and grief practitioner of ukrainian-russian ancestry, who spent eight years living and loving in Palestine and has been building community and mutual aid networks in Athens, Greece in the last five years.
**lisa (she/her) is a facilitator, grief practictioner, spaceholder, surfer, dancer and recovering lawyer of German ancestry from the North Sea.
***lily (they/-) is a queer weaver, cold water plunger, sun seeker, (still) practising international lawyer drawn to transformative justice, the otherwise and healing while hospicing.
A space for us
This is a space that centres the experiences of those who are part of social movements, collectives as well as other groups and institutions, who are engaged in struggles against systemic violence and for justice, broadly defined. This includes those part of activist groups and research in and around the areas of social justice and human rights, international criminal justice and conflict accountability, migration justice, gender and other areas of intersectional justice, and who long for support and community in their experiences of defying and resisting liberal frameworks and colonial worldviews.
We are hoping to invite 7-10 persons to join this third cohort of the SupSol offering. We dream of a cohort composed of individuals who are in practice of holding space for change in themselves and others including by being vulnerably open and actively engaged in inner work as part of their journeys around social transformation.
We acknowledge that we all have different boundaries and are on different (non-linear) journeys. We feel like our ‘selection’ can therefore only be made subjectively, and we wholeheartedly welcome your active input and feedback throughout this process.
Offering and solidarity contributions
This space is an offering to our communities. We hope to bring together as many of us so that we can hold each other and be more resilient together.
As facilitators with ejc, our time and labour are rarely remunerated as most of our wage labour is outside the collective, and the collective currently has no funds (and has ever only received one small grant).
Still, some values of equity and solidarity are very important to us, especially that
1) participation in this offering is financially accessible for everyone and that your needs around sustainability are acknowledged
2) our love labour is valued, and our needs for sustainability are acknowledged.
We therefore warmly encourage you to make a solidarity contribution according to the sliding scale below and we trust you to honestly and genuinely situate yourself on that scale (prices are for the entire offering):
Pay 20-40 EUR if you are unemployed, studying or have a very low income and no assets
Pay 40-80 EUR if you are on very low income with some assets
Pay 80-120 EUR if you earn less than 20,000 EUR before tax
Pay 120-150 EUR if you earn between 20,000-30,000 EUR before tax
Pay 150-200 EUR if you earn more than 30,000 EUR before tax
Pay 200-500 EUR if you earn more than 70,000 EUR before tax
How to join
If you are interested please share with us about yourself and your needs and longings around collective care and what practicing embodiment and transformative justice means to you by filling out this form by Monday, 13 April 2026.
If you have any questions or requests please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at lisa@emergentjusticecollective.org, valentina@emergentjusticecollective.org and lily@emergentjusticecollective.org.
After we close the expressions of interest, we will schedule individual ‘discovery’ calls to share our needs and longings, to answer any questions and to receive your suggestions.
We ask that you only express interest if you have the capacity and time to join most of the sessions every two weeks over the course of four months. Showing up (as we are) is a commitment of mutuality to ourselves and the group that is precious especially in this tender time of hurt and fragmentation.
Many social justice organisations and activist spaces internalise and reproduce systems of domination and separation rooted in patriarchy, heteronormativity and white supremacy culture. The myth of independence and separability from each other and from nature furthers relational cultures of domination, extraction, exploitation, competition and disposability. We continue to hurt and harm each other in the absence of practices of collective care and support in organising spaces and communities.
As a collective of friends, transformative justice practitioners, nature lovers, grief workers and facilitators, for the past five years, we have sought to honor our need for each other in processes of self-accountability. We aim to practice forms of collective care that support us to actively unlearn, embody and enact other ways of holding change and visions of justice - in our togetherness and organising.
We started the Support and Solidarity Offering (SupSol) in October 2022 to hold a safe(r) and brave(r) space through regular, virtual and facilitated sessions for those working in movements, collectives, and organisations. In the first two cohorts of this offering, we cocreated a vulnerable space for collective care practices of self-reflection, sense-making, response-ability, self-accountability and un/learning about the harms we are entangled and complicit in, including through our participation in the so-called “international justice” space—the landscape of both inter- and non-governmental organisations and institutions that promote penal and carceral forms of state-led justice and accountability.
After a period of shedding and growing, we are now inviting a third cohort of this offering—a coming together with/in and around this moment of immense systemic violence, collective grief and fierce vulnerability in reckoning with and hospicing systems and ways of responding to injustice that not only fail to protect life, but normalise violence.
We need each other to hold space for collective grief as a portal towards an otherwise, through embodied justice and (self)accountability. Only together can we practice the relational work within and between us that we need to co-create an authentic space for connection and nurture cultures of collective care. It is a way to “rehearse the social order coming into being” (Gilmore) and “to collectively envision and practice futures free from oppression” (HJL’s powerful Rehearsing Freedoms project and Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s life-work).
Un/learning, dreaming and practicing together
We will dedicate the first two sessions to learning about each other and gently co-weaving a container and community agreements that centre our individual and collective safety needs and values. Through a slow and gentle process, we hope to seed a togetherness of trust and intimacy that holds our differences and differential positionalities and honours the experiences and longings we bring.
The next four sessions would be oriented around the following themes, based on our ongoing learning journeys in community with others. The final list of themes will be co-weaved with members of the third cohort.
- Experiments and longings of peer and collective care and mutual aid ~ What is the muscle memory we need to move through conflict and deepen relationships? How are repair and self-accountability practices of collective care? How can we practice mutual aid responsibly and resiliently? How do we nourish solidarity practices that orient towards community and centre care (also for the heartbreak around the loss of community)?
- Decolonial solidarity ~ How do we show up for each other in solidarity around conflict, harm and violence in ways that honour our interdependence and centre care? How is freeing us what we need in order to free Palestine, Sudan, Congo and other places? How do we orient towards “hope is a discipline” (Mariame Kaba) and decolonial love (Sarah Ihmoud) in times of colonial violence through the resources and abundance within and between us?
- Hospicing modernity ~ What is the hospicing of dying systems calling on us to practice around our complicity in these systems? How do we recognise and navigate our complicity with humility, compassion and self-accountability?
- Collective grief tending as embodied justice ~ How is grief a portal for flow, growth and transformation that connects all life amid loss? How and why do we need to tend to our personal and systemic grief and rage as a liberatory practice of visioning an otherwise?
The facilitators will provide (optional) short readings and listening materials and reflection prompts prior to each of the above sessions. For the remaining one or two sessions, we will shape our collective direction together based on our needs and longings.
Our intention throughout this offering is to move at the speed of trust, practicing slowness, emergence and adjustment, and to be guided by the wisdom of our collective process and allow for shape-shifting around the group’s needs, longings and experiences. For example, we may as a group choose to change the order of the sessions, discuss one of the themes for more than one session, replace or drop any of the sessions. We may also choose as a group to close our time together after seven (instead of eight) meetings.
We envision our time together–and togetherness–as a process of collective un/learning around how to:
- Support each other through deep reflective and compassionate listening, peer care and collective care practices.
- Hold space and care for difficult experiences and big feelings related to the violence of oppressive systems and the harmful practices in our communities.
- Care for and honour the generative and transformative wisdoms held by our bodies, inner-worlds and belonging with and to each other in our interdependence.
- Nourish practices of collective care that not only help us survive, but that allow us to thrive in our interdependence.
- Co-create counternarratives that resist the harms of liberal freedom tools and legal frameworks and our cooptation by them.
- Engage in collective embodied un/learning to exchange knowledge that orients us towards liberation and nurtures and grows abolitionist and transformative justice visions and longings.
- Interrogate—with tenderness and radical compassion—our respective positionalities, privileges and relationalities with a view to enabling us to practice self-accountability and collective responsibility.
As part of the check-in circle at each meeting, we will hold space for any personal or collective experiences and reflections that participants want to share, be witnessed by the group with the option of inviting any support from the group.
How we come together
Our time together will span across eight bi-monthly online meetings. Each meeting will last for two hours—practicing slowness and presence with ourselves and each other, our time together will be spacious and expansive by including gentle somatics and breath practices, time for self-reflection, and breaks.
We plan to hold our online meetings on Tuesdays, with the proposed time of 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm CET. If you are unable to make this day or time please let us know (in the form)—if needed, we can try to adjust the time as the group.
We hope to have the first group session in May but may need to adjust this timeline based on the group that forms.
Practicing responsibility and care is part of the intentional coming together that we are inviting. Therefore, we ask for your commitment and reciprocity in showing up (as you are) and in contributing to the co-creation of an intimate collectivity. We of course understand that life happens and we may not all be fully available all the time. Recognizing this reality, we nevertheless invite you to carefully reflect on both your practical and emotional availability and ability to show up for others and collectively hold the space if you decide to join.
The meetings will happen online from April through July, after which you will have the option to join the SupSol community and connect on a ~monthly basis with previous cohorts. Our time together online will culminate in an invitation for those interested to come together in person in a self-organised way (with solidarity support from between us).
We will coordinate and exchange as a group through a Signal group so that we can also connect and support one another outside of our planned sessions, and beyond this offering.
The space will be held by Lisa, Lily and Val from the emergent justice collective.
*val (they/-) is a queer non-binary organiser, facilitator, and transformative justice and grief practitioner of ukrainian-russian ancestry, who spent eight years living and loving in Palestine and has been building community and mutual aid networks in Athens, Greece in the last five years.
**lisa (she/her) is a facilitator, grief practictioner, spaceholder, surfer, dancer and recovering lawyer of German ancestry from the North Sea.
***lily (they/-) is a queer weaver, cold water plunger, sun seeker, (still) practising international lawyer drawn to transformative justice, the otherwise and healing while hospicing.
A space for us
This is a space that centres the experiences of those who are part of social movements, collectives as well as other groups and institutions, who are engaged in struggles against systemic violence and for justice, broadly defined. This includes those part of activist groups and research in and around the areas of social justice and human rights, international criminal justice and conflict accountability, migration justice, gender and other areas of intersectional justice, and who long for support and community in their experiences of defying and resisting liberal frameworks and colonial worldviews.
We are hoping to invite 7-10 persons to join this third cohort of the SupSol offering. We dream of a cohort composed of individuals who are in practice of holding space for change in themselves and others including by being vulnerably open and actively engaged in inner work as part of their journeys around social transformation.
We acknowledge that we all have different boundaries and are on different (non-linear) journeys. We feel like our ‘selection’ can therefore only be made subjectively, and we wholeheartedly welcome your active input and feedback throughout this process.
Offering and solidarity contributions
This space is an offering to our communities. We hope to bring together as many of us so that we can hold each other and be more resilient together.
As facilitators with ejc, our time and labour are rarely remunerated as most of our wage labour is outside the collective, and the collective currently has no funds (and has ever only received one small grant).
Still, some values of equity and solidarity are very important to us, especially that
1) participation in this offering is financially accessible for everyone and that your needs around sustainability are acknowledged
2) our love labour is valued, and our needs for sustainability are acknowledged.
We therefore warmly encourage you to make a solidarity contribution according to the sliding scale below and we trust you to honestly and genuinely situate yourself on that scale (prices are for the entire offering):
Pay 20-40 EUR if you are unemployed, studying or have a very low income and no assets
Pay 40-80 EUR if you are on very low income with some assets
Pay 80-120 EUR if you earn less than 20,000 EUR before tax
Pay 120-150 EUR if you earn between 20,000-30,000 EUR before tax
Pay 150-200 EUR if you earn more than 30,000 EUR before tax
Pay 200-500 EUR if you earn more than 70,000 EUR before tax
How to join
If you are interested please share with us about yourself and your needs and longings around collective care and what practicing embodiment and transformative justice means to you by filling out this form by Monday, 13 April 2026.
If you have any questions or requests please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at lisa@emergentjusticecollective.org, valentina@emergentjusticecollective.org and lily@emergentjusticecollective.org.
After we close the expressions of interest, we will schedule individual ‘discovery’ calls to share our needs and longings, to answer any questions and to receive your suggestions.
We ask that you only express interest if you have the capacity and time to join most of the sessions every two weeks over the course of four months. Showing up (as we are) is a commitment of mutuality to ourselves and the group that is precious especially in this tender time of hurt and fragmentation.