Harmony & Healing: National Day of Racial Healing Community Circle

Join Us for a Powerful Evening of Connection and Healing

We invite you to an intentionally diverse community circle to mark the National Day of Racial Healing. We will gather to nourish our hearts, bodies, and spirits as we share homemade food (made with love), acknowledge our shared humanity, celebrate our innate connection to one another, and sing simple songs to harmonize and deepen our commitment to racial healing and collective liberation.

Gather at 6:30 PM to connect and enjoy a meal (cookies & casseroles!) together before we begin the community healing circle. Through community singing, storytelling, and facilitated sharing, we will create space to foster closeness and belonging with those who we may perceive as different from us.

Meet your hosts:

Andrew Hairston, civil rights attorney, writer, socialist, Pr*son abolitionist, and storyteller, Andrew Hairston will share an original story written exclusively for this occasion, offering insight and inspiration for the work of racial healing.

Sarah Bentley, community song leader and activist, will facilitate community singing throughout the evening (all voices welcome).

Robin Bradford, trained grief tender and interfaith chaplain, will guide intentional conversations.

• Participate in a thoughtfully structured community healing circle that fosters open dialogue and deep listening, creating a safe and brave space for authentic and vulnerable conversations about racism and racial healing.
• Share personal stories (with a partner and the group) to build trust, understanding, connection, and collective healing.
• Listen deeply to stories that reflect our shared struggles and aspirations.
• Build authentic relationships that bridge divides and support the journey toward a more just and equitable world.
• Connect authentically with your own truth and the truths of others.
• Sing in community (guided by a trained song leader) to experience the unifying power of community singing.

• Let’s join our voices in harmony and solidarity to honor the National Day of Racial Healing and strengthen our collective journey toward racial equity, justice and liberation.
• In these challenging times, singing can often speak louder than words in soothing individual and communal suffering. 

Statement of Solidarity: Heart Body Song strives to create a safe space for all and in order to do this must acknowledge the harm that people of color have experienced and in some cases still endure. For community singing to be fully inclusive and safe for marginalized people, Heart Body Song is committed to standing/singing in solidarity by taking an anti-racist stance in organizing and facilitating all of our events. Community singing is a form of collective healing and without intentional action, the white supremacist inertia of our society will continue to perpetuate harm to those who are most oppressed. Without this stance, the community singing movement's aspirations for a peaceful, loving, and sustainable world will only remain a reality for the people living in white skin.

Host or Publisher Heart Body Song ~ Sarah S. Bentley