Applications Open!

Golden Repair: Sanctuary Space for Reparations Leaders

Summer 2025 – with Rev. Joanne Braxton, PhD and other specialists

 
 
 

Golden Repair: Sanctuary Space for Reparations Leaders

Golden Repair: Sanctuary Space for Reparations Leaders will bring a small group of reparations leaders together for an intensive online fellowship. This gathering is an offering—sacred space for repairers and justice workers to come together in community, to tend to our own spirits as we tend to the world—especially in these times, which ask so much of us. Through collective care, reflection, and renewal, we make golden repair/soul repair and find the strength to continue—together in community.

THe Work of Reparations

The work of Reparations led by Black people in these United States is challenging and at times exhausting. Often, we find ourselves too depleted or distressed to sustain leadership commitments without impairing our own health and effectiveness. Many of us come to the work of repair from a place of our own injury, or from our awareness of having seen systemic harm and injury and been unable to prevent it. We are, in many cases, broken vessels in need of repair.

Kintsugi, or golden repair, is a Japanese art form that repairs broken pottery with gold to make of these broken shards an enduring work of art that is more beautiful and stronger than the original. Our gold comes from restorative and contemplative practices rooted in spiritual traditions.


Circle of Care Model

Based on the tested model of a rigorous Luce Foundation funded Circle of Care piloted by the Braxton Institute during the COVID-19 pandemic, this is our third Circle of Care. Though spiritual and artistic disciplines and contemplative practices, 2025 Golden Repair Fellows will share the fine art of witnessing our own and each other’s moral suffering and practice extending compassion to others as well as to ourselves.

We use the word “spiritual” to mean the ways we tend to parts of ourselves that are about our deepest essence, our core beliefs, our moral character, and ethical lives, and that which relates to spirit in the widest sense. We welcome people of any, multiple or no spiritual or faith tradition to join us. Those who have given so much time and energy fighting for our liberation need spiritual rest and rejuvenation.

 
 

Sanctuary Space for Reparations Leaders

In this sanctuary space, we will offer experienced facilitation, generative support through ritual, listening and visioning, and resources for practical care and self-stewardship, in affirming environment. Using a variety of modalities such as those shown in the Braxton Institute Collective Healing from Collective Trauma diagram above, we learn to care for ourselves and for each other for as long as the work of Reparations lasts, mending and healing our broken places and purposefully bringing others into the sanctuary of our collective care.

With the guidance of seasoned practitioners and specialists in trauma-informed care, we will explore these questions together:

  • How do we as committed leaders come to understand the contours of our personal integrity in the context of struggle and trauma?

  • What spiritual disciplines and practices---among them journaling, life writing, sitting meditation, ritual, prayer, and embodied experience--- can we employ to increase our capacities for staying grounded and balanced, especially when we are tired or when we are afraid?

  • How do we cultivate and model moral courage and the strength to resist in a way that diffuses conflict or makes it more manageable?


DATES and Program Requirements

Selected applicants will have ongoing 1-1 support as well as an individual orientation with the facilitator, Dr. Joanne Braxton, before the Circle begins. 

Participants are required to attend the first session and asked not to miss more than two sessions overall.  Those who participate fully will receive a $500 stipend for their time. Here are the dates of the Summer 2025 Golden Repair Circle of Care, including the facilitator 1-1 sessions:

Facilitator 1-1s will take place between April 29, 2025 - May 8, 2025.

All sessions will take place from 6:00-8:00pm EST on the following dates:

Wednesday, May 14th
Wednesday, May 28th
Wednesday, June 4th
Wednesday, June 18th
Wednesday, June 29th
Wednesday, July 9th
Wednesday, July 23rd
Wednesday, August 6th

Please observe the application deadline of April 15, 2025, as we expect to receive more applications than we can accommodate in this cycle. For more information, contact Dr. Braxton at: jbraxton@braxtoninstitute.org

Disclaimer:  We are not a substitute for therapy and not a substitute for professional mental health care. Those seeking mental health care should reach out to a mental health care professional.