Reflection Week 2023 musings under the Lion’s Gate Portal
I write this piece on the day the stars align allowing for the Lion’s Gate portal to open; a formation in the sky that signals a time for creating the possibility of bringing our wildest dreams into existence.
In preparation for my manifestation practice this evening, I am currently sitting and thinking back to Reflection Week 2023 and dreaming wildly over my iced coffee with three Splenda and a splash of Oat Milk. This time last year, I eagerly scribbled my manifestations onto bay leaves (like a cute witchy twink on TikTok taught me to), burning them under the pale moonlight, dreaming up the new stretch of my life journey that I am currently living.
At this age, I am not sure what I believe in, but I’d be doing myself an injustice to not believe in my ability to manifest anything my creative brain can think of.
This year, I’m a new auntie, having welcomed my first baby nephew into this world just two weeks ago. Before baby Joaquín came into our lives, I had never truly understood what it was like to love something so wholly before it even arrived. On that scorching hot July day in South Texas, as I held my sweet nibbling in my arms for the first time, the words that I sang softly to him became prayers.
The commitment to usher philanthropy and the rest of the world’s movements through a Just Transition was no longer an inspirational hope for the future. It became the dirt under my fingernails, the beads of sweat on my brow and the unending commitment to REST and care for myself no matter what. It became the future world that I get to hand over to my sweet ancestor to care for once I leave. If I have anything to do with it, it will be a world thriving at the creative hands of community power with the freshest air to breath, water to drink, and food to eat.
We use Reflection Week as a way to disrupt our normal schedules, get creative with how we plan our work days, and reflect on our organizational goals, values, and how our work helps to advance the Just Transition.
We use Reflection Week as a way to gather evidence to support our understanding of how transforming workspaces centered around worker’s rights and needs can help us build regenerative economies.
This year, we also leaned into the teachings of Tricia Hersey, the author of Rest is Resistance by pulling out five practices from The Nap Ministry’s Rest Deck: 50 Practices to Resist Grind Culture for staff to experiment with over the week. These practices range from guided meditations to creative day-dreaming exercises in nature. Throughout the deck, we receive poetic reminders that we are worthy of rest and that our collective resistance to grind culture is critical to uprooting white-supremacy and capitalism.
It inspired us to explore schedules that accommodate our different needs, and create plans for how we sustain our energy and care for ourselves and others.
During the week that we returned from Reflection Week, staff shared that being intentional with finding time daily to connect with nature even if it is staring out of a window, mixing up “work from home” days by working at a cute coffee shop, or infusing creativity and well-being practices into our daily schedule was super inspiring and helpful.
And we learned that even with full invitation and supportive office infrastructure, it can still be hard to engage in this intentional practice of rest. In this extractive economy, it could be guilt, it could be caretaking responsibilities, it could be so many different things that make it hard to prioritize rest. And that’s just fine. We continue to practice and shape the structures that we need to grow our rest- muscles stronger.
I have been exercising my rest muscles all of my life. My mom has a collection of photos of me sleeping as a kid because I always seemed to be asleep. I was the moody teenager who slept through most of high school and as a neurodivergent adult, naps are a huge part of my practice. I nap to regulate my nervous system, and to reset after long stretches of Zoom calls and when I’m activated. It helps me to transition from work to home life and be able to offer my loved ones more than just scraps at the end of a long day.
It is with that experience and deep training that I continue to build out this space for our staff, finding creative ways for us to do this work boldly while ensuring we always have the energy we need to face our work.
Baby Joaquín arrived a month early so he sleeps most of the day. What a gorgeous reminder that with a lot of community care and multiple generations of love surrounding you, it is possible to surrender to the rest you need. The world will catch you and cradle you and love you while you do it.
Pictured above, baby Dino at a loud Mexican BBQ, unbothered and sound asleep in a stroller.
With cozy wishes,
Dino Foxx
Director of Imagination & Culture