Celebrating Better Selves Fellows
“Walking down the meadow to the barn, silence creating space in my spirit, sharing meals mixed with laughs and deliciousness on the tongue and in the heart, feeling liberation and solidarity...It’s given me the space to be in my power, grieve, and rebirth myself.” – Anika
“Death of a paradigm, unlearning muscle memory, building a bravery refex…I am learning that there is enough of me that “works” to create the diference I seek.” – Christian
“I often talk about planting seeds for trees that I won’t ever see the shade from, but lately I feel like I’ve run out of seeds... [Since this fellowship], I’ve learned that there are so many people like me fghting the same fghts.”
– Benhameen
“This retreat allowed me to recharge essential parts of myself and the things I love about myself. A part that’s felt further away. I’ve had the chance to slow down and reconnect with myself in relation to the land.” – Crystal
“Precious, sacred, joyful, easeful, collective, connective, a profoundly beautiful opportunity for deep listening...I feel grounded and expansive, restful, more clear about myself and my relationship to my kin, both human and more-than-human.” – Jen
“This retreat was everything I needed to return to the revolution – without rest, great food, and blissful silence the new world will remain beyond our reach. This retreat brought the new world closer into view.” – Dãnia
“Really connecting to nature, reverence for the sacred and the ritual…[and] connecting networks of people together for mutual and community protection.” – Trina
“This experience was a return to my full self expression. Including pause, love and compassion...I had the space to think, feel, and have the spaciousness and clarity to imagine.” – Jo
“This week was a ritual of love for myself. Spending so much time with other BIPOC folx, but especially so many Black folx, was healing and joyous...I’ve begun to reconnect with parts of myself that had been dismissed or suppressed for years.” – Nia
“This retreat healed my burned out body and spirit. And it helped me fnd my voice again without fear and perfectionism restricting it. I feel I know my purpose and am full and restored.” – Simone (right, with Roman, left)
“The best rest was in the presence of others. Co-presence invites the depth of safety we need when we experience the world falling apart. [The fellowship] allowed me to be held in a new, diferent way. It’s allowed me to try small experiments in liberation.” – Marianna
“To listen to myself and let the answers come...Life changing, a sense of peace with purpose.” – Rex
Social change requires whole, nourished humans who organize from love, connecting their power through community care rather than individual endurance.
The Better Selves Fellowship is a week of care and support for BIPOC leaders and their allies working for environmental and social change. These are the people who anchor other people. They deserve rest and care. Each already has the wisdom they need to heal and to efect change, but may lack access to things like time, space, silence, and nature that allow for essential pause, focus, replenishment, and connection.
Taking rest when it is needed is itself an act that disrupts the status quo: it disrupts the patterns of work-doextract-until-death that capitalism and white supremacy have inscribed in all of our bodies. By providing human care of each other on a healthy landscape together we model the coda: healing the land through healing one another. Learn more at knollfarm.org/better-selves-fellowship/