Sankofa Seasons: Session 2—The Journey
Schedule
Wed, 12 Jun, 2024 at 06:00 pm
Location
3401 W. Ainslie st, Chicago, IL, United States, Illinois 60625 | Lincolnwood, IL
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Announcing Session 2 of our Community Healing Series: Sankofa Seasons!
This event will take place Wednesday, June 12, 2024 beginning at 6 p.m. A meal will be served to all participants.
This event is free and open to the public. Please register at the following link: https://forms.gle/RR23rN73JU52bjDr7
We have a maximum of 40 seats available, so please register soon!
Sankofa Seasons Session 02
The Journey: Growth and Becoming
In the first session we spent time introducing ourselves and getting comfortable in circle and community (whatever form that takes) and acknowledging the stories connected to our names and our beginnings in the world. We spoke of the things that activated us as children.
In this second session we lean into our learned knowledge and wisdom that comes from our lived experience and the experience of the world we curate from adolescence to adulthood. We spend time recognizing the elder within ourselves and validating ourselves and deciding what needs to be reexamined to empower our own growth.
Come join us as again we share a meal and form circle and community with whomever shows up and spend time being present with the fabric of each other’s stories.
Opening: Return to First story (Invoking our names)
We gather in a circle to do personal introductions. Once again, in addition to a name we create movements that represent parts of us that are unseen and share that and what it represents. If we have those who have done it before, we invite them to start us off by recalling the motions they remember from last time.Once we’ve been through everyone we disperse to table.
Activity 01: First story (Invoking our names)
We gather in a circle to do personal introductions. In addition to a name we create movements that represent parts of us that are unseen and share that and what it represents. Once we’ve been through everyone we disperse to tables.
Remembering:
We look at the collection of named events and created symbols and invite people to recall stories that stood out to them just from the name and the symbol and talk about how they feel resonant or dissonant with the story. We’re looking for moments of overlap where we can build connection. We introduce asking people to give tobacco to each other to celebrate stories that really activated something in you and introduce the idea of illumination to let people know you need someone to listen to something you need to say and hold space for it. Then we move on to our next series of stories and get into small groups.
Activity: 02
Participants spread out and offer tobacco to those who we want to share with in groups of two to three people. We visit with each other and talk about being children and things that made our world bright and what made our world frightening. We identify where we overlap and where we differ and talk about ways of keeping the child in us, and the children around us, tended to.
Activity 03: Listening to our youth
Participants are invited to think of their adolescence and recall a story that sums up their experience of being a teen and their relationship to community. They take a moment to write down a few sentences and create a small pictogram to represent that moment in their life. They are also invited to identify how that experience continues to affect how they engage with the world. After everyone has had some time to write we ask for share out and affirmations and naming of our stories.
Activity 04: Listening to our experience
Some of us have been in the world for a long time, some for a short time, we all carry some sort of eldership that alchemizes what we know of the world. Participants are asked to think of a moment that gave them great knowing or (if they are an elder) something that defines their eldership to them in relation to community. They take a moment to write down a few sentences and create a small pictogram to represent that moment in their life. They are also invited to identify how that experience continues to affect how they engage with the world. After everyone has had some time to write we ask for share out and affirmations and naming of our stories.
Closing:
Having looked at the world through the eyes of youth and lived experience, we close with instructions to listen to someone else’s story of themselves as young adults and how life changed for them as they got older and, if possible, bring them back to the circle. We review the collection of stories and symbols people created and ask participants to talk about what they’ve learned about themselves and each other in this session. In recognizing the fact that we collect many stories and medicines as we grow and move through the world, we ask participants to assemble a small medicine bag from the natural medicines that we will have available.
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Where is it happening?
3401 W. Ainslie st, Chicago, IL, United States, Illinois 60625, 3401 W Ainslie St, Chicago, IL 60625-5105, United States,Chicago, Illinois, LincolnwoodEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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