White People's Inner Work: Using Compassionate Listening to Unpack Our Racist Patterns

Compassion is not just feeling with someone,

But seeking to change the situation.

Frequently people think compassion and love are merely sentimental.

No! They are very demanding.

If you are going to be compassionate,

be prepared for Action.

~ Desmond Tutu

Faciliated by Debby Haase and Yael Petritti

Wednesdays, Sep 16, – Oct 21, 1:00 - 3:30 PM PDT (9/16, 9/23, 9/30, 10/7, 10/14, 10/21)

In this six-week online series, we will co-create a learning space for exploring our implicit racist patterns in the framework of Compassionate Listening, a heart-centered practice of deep listening and speaking from the heart. We hope that our inner healing will ripple out into the world through our actions.

This series is intended to be a place where people who identify as white can unpack their own whiteness, white privilege, white supremacy, biases, white solidarity and white fragility along with other white-bodied people aiming to do this same type of inner work.  Therefore, we have specifically designed this antiracism workshop series with white people in mind. We are offering this as a step toward doing less harm and showing up with more skill when connecting cross racially.

We’ll learn the following Compassionate Listening practices and directly apply them to help us reflect on and uncover our racist patterns.

• Cultivating courageous compassion
• Listening with the heart with healing intention
• Increasing our awareness of and holding ourselves accountable for our own triggers, judgments and biases
• Respect for self and others
• Speaking up from the heart to interrupt racism

Compassionate Listening supports us in helping each other access inner wisdom where new insights can emerge.  From these new insights we can then choose to take compassionate action.

It is important to develop group trust and, since each session builds on the last, we ask that you do everything you can to attend each session. Each week we’ll email you material to read or view prior to the next session. Resources will include a range of topics from a variety of sources.

No prerequisites - All experience levels are welcome.

Testimonials

"I found being coached through the practice of disrupting and interrupting racism and repairing racial harm extremely helpful!  And of course all the other activities were engaging and participatory and embodied multiple ways of learning! Practical, useful and strengthened by the foundations of compassionate listening! yes!!!! thank you!" ~ maureen st.clair

"What a wonderful gift it has been for me to do the kind of work I have wanted to do regarding white privilege for years, but have been unable to find until now. As I said at the close of the class, being heart centered was not what was available when I really wanted to do the work in the early 2000's. I am incredibly grateful to have experienced some of the most skillful facilitation of any group/training I have ever participated in!"

"You did such a good job preparing us for each exercise that we were ready for it (even if we didn't think we were) when it came. I marveled each time at how you were able to meld CL with antiracism work even for beginners to CL. Your skillful planning and experience were quite obvious! " ~ Susan

"All the other lessons were so well considered, beneficial, and full of good learning that built as we went. There is so much good stuff, I can’t imagine how you tried to figure out what to fit in…It was so potent for me to learn that we ALL have stories about how racism has scarred us, how prevalent that is in the culture, and how little we talk about it. It added urgency and universality to this work." ~ LaBrie

"You are each warmly welcoming women,  knowledgable teachers/facilitators, exceptional in your teamwork and in creating a safe space to hold an exploration into the unknown. The work of creating a curriculum of such challenging material and THEN presenting/bringing people together in a zoom classroom to discuss and deepen is beyond my comprehension. To you each, my deepest gratitude and appreciation for your compassionate listening way-of-being, the life, the work - integrating, emerging, evolving. "   ~ Wendy

Facilitators: 

Debby Haase:  After 30 years facilitating groups, remains in awe of the synergistic transformation that unfolds in a space with clear intention.  After careers in systems engineering and co-founding and teaching at Madrona Waldorf School, Debby has dedicated the last 10+ years to her passion for facilitating healing circles. She offers Compassionate Listening, Systemic and Family Constellation workshops, ceremony, Undoing Racism/ White Fragility groups, mindfulness classes for children, and healing circles.  Debby is certified in Compassionate Listening, Restorative Justice peacemaking circles, and Systemic and Family Constellations. She has extensive training in mindfulness, earth honoring practices, energy healing, Sufi heart practices, Waldorf education, and holds an MA in Whole Systems Design and a BS in Biomedical Engineering.  She melds this breadth of experience with her respect for each person’s inner wisdom to co-create an atmosphere ripe for transformation. More recently she has become committed to anti-racism work. Having witnessed the power of truly seeing the humanity in the “other” while on the Compassionate Listening Project delegations to Israel & Palestine and to Alabama, Debby offers Compassionate Listening to help build bridges, undo racism and restore balance in our world.

Yael Petritti:  Before earning a Bachelor's Degree in International Relations at the U.C. Berkeley, Yael was already passionately involved the struggle for civil rights during the 1968 Poor People’s March on Washington, helping build Resurrection City and tutoring children of color whose schools were being desegregated in southern Virginia. Certified as a CL facilitator in 2004, she led and co-led a number of CL delegations to Israel-Palestine where she lived for 29 years. Yael co-authored “Making Peace with Faith: The Challenges of Religion and Peacebuilding (Peace and Security in the 21st Century,”), 2018. She lives in New England where she facilitates CL trainings and volunteers as an Alternatives to Violence facilitator in a men's high security prison. Witnessing the “new Jim Crow” there has brought her around full-circle to rejoin the struggle for racial/social justice here in the U.S. In January 2020, she initiated and co-led the first domestic Compassionate Listening delegation, “Listening in the Heart of Alabama.”  She looks forward to many more such trips to explore the perfect “marriage” of Compassionate Listening and antiracism (and all other “isms”) work in the world. Visit her website here.

Cancellation Policy and Online Details:

Cancellations after Sept. 9th are non-refundable.

This online class will be held on Zoom. Rather than a webinar where you can tune in at your convenience and listen casually, our workshop is highly experiential and requires your full presence, participation and commitment to show up without distraction. We will use break-out rooms, and respectfully request that you attend all sessions possible.  Participants should expect to join our Zoom sessions via computer.  Because we will be using visuals, we ask that you connect to Zoom on a computer with video so you may fully participate in this workshop. Debby and Yael are excited to meet you in the circle. Please let us know if you have any questions - contact us.

**If the lowest ticket price is out of your range, please contact us - we are committed to accessibility.