For the past few years, Partnership staff have engaged in conversations highlighting the importance of accountability to ourselves and our colleagues. Executive Director Dr. Aleese Moore-Orbih engaged all staff in selecting consultants to assist us in this critical work: Jenn Wynn to nurture team health and interpersonal communication, Dr. Dayanara Marte to facilitate workplace healing. The following are interviews with this group about their support of Partnership staff.

Dr. Aleese Moore-Orbih:

• Why did you initiate the process of organizational healing at the Partnership?
  
  The anti-gender-based violence movement is a trauma-filled eco-system.  It is practically impossible to work within it without experiencing some degree of personal or vicarious trauma.  The Partnership has had its share of trauma this year with racial injustice, a pandemic and organizational transitions. As the Executive Director it is my responsibility to provide opportunities for staff to learn skills and integrate healing modalities into the culture and systems of the organization to counter trauma.  The Partnership’s  commitment to encourage healthy people, relationships, and communities begins with ourselves.
   
• By deepening our understanding and practice of having difficult conversations, how will the Partnership experience growth living into our mission?
  
  It is essential to our integrity that the Partnership live into its principles and values. This  requires new learnings, letting go old ways that are not conducive to the values and trying new ways of being in community. Developing conscious, courageous, compassionate communication skills is just one step towards this transformation. We are learning how to practice and live into our mission to nurture a California free of patriarchal violence and overflowing with love and mutuality. We, the Partnership staff, are becoming a small example of a beloved community.   
   
• “We don’t avoid intensity; we surf intensity together.” came up during one of the sessions. What does this mean to you when you think of the Partnership from an aspirational standpoint?
  
  The anti-gender-based violence field is a movement always changing and evolving. Our approach to fulfilling our mission in this constant movement is to lead by example and not by directives.  The Partnership struggles with the same challenges as our membership.  The best technical assistance the Partnership can provide is to model how to engage, navigate and manage change.

Dr. Dayanara Marte:

• As a consultant who specializes in creating safe spaces of healing within the movement to end sexual & domestic violence, what are the root causes of trauma and in our workplaces?
  
  There are many causes to trauma in the workplace external and internal. As you know the workplace is a microcosm of what is happening in the world. People bring to work their whole entire selves, their experiences good and bad, and their impact them on their mind, body, and spirit. From transitions to lack of leadership, under-resourced, lack of funding, limited staff, political climate to most recently pandemics and quarantines and of course race, class, and gender power dynamics are at the forefront of exasperating a staff that is already coming to work with their own set of traumas.  However, the most sustainable resource a workplace has beyond funding is its workers. At the root of the workplace, trauma is the fact that the majority of frontline workers in the movement to end domestic violence and sexual assault, are themselves, victims of some form of gender-based violence. Without any place to heal they bring it to the workplace and into the relationships with their co-workers. It impacts the way they supervise,  they write grants, treat their clients, organize, strategically plan but most importantly it impacts their mental health until there is breakdown and burnout. Read more.
   
• What are the needs and strengths you’ve observed from Partnership staff members so far?
  
  So far , I want to acknowledge the resiliency and commitment that all of the staff has to both their personal and collective healing because they show up to the task, no matter how they show up, they show up. It is clear that everyone wants to create something, they are just not in alignment yet to what that is. We have been working on bringing back faith and love as communication. Two words come loaded because they are the two most important things that oppression, violence, and trauma take from us. 
   
• What is your method of addressing trauma in organizations, and what healing strategies have you been guiding so far for the Partnership? In this process, what areas of promise have you noticed?
  
  I create sacred spaces of healing, so people ground the healing they are going to do in something bigger than themselves, Organizations are by default spiritual spaces, sacred spaces, altars of sorts. The partnerships is engaging in all the tools necessary to reclaim their spirit, their love back from patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy and it is not an easy task or a one-year journey, it’s a lifetime of work in an ever-changing organization. When people of color create organizations by default they are engaging in healing justice. The act of creating spaces to stand in the social, emotional and spiritual gap created by capitalism and oppression. The act of creating a table where we can sit at with all our traumas and strategically plan another world. These very acts by default make organizations altars. Scared spaces of healing, truth, reconciliation and justice. 

Jenn Wynn

• As a consultant who strives to create a safe and brave learning community that enables transformation, how do you feel connected to the Partnership’s work and values?
  
   I feel connected to and deeply moved by the Partnership’s work and values.  I’m excited about what is made possible in the quest to end intimate partner violence–namely that more love and more learning are made possible.  And love and learning are my deepest held values.  So perhaps it’s not surprising when I say that the organizational value that I’m most excited about in the Partnership’s theory of change is “beloved community.”
   
• What have Partnership staff identified as strengths and needs when it comes to interpersonal communications?
  
  When it comes to team health and interpersonal communication, Partnership staff have identified multiple strengths including their shared passion for the work they do, the fact that there are colleagues whom they deeply admire in the organization, their appreciation for the opportunity to be a full person at work (they feel compassion for their whole selves from their teammates); and their enthusiasm for the internal organizational health work that is now taking place.  The most frequently mentioned needs were increased inter-connectedness across teams (fewer silos), more human connection time not related to work, clearer boundaries (particularly around conflict resolution), and shifting from acting from a place of fear to acting from a place of love. 
   
• How have you supported Partnership staff with understanding the ways each person communicates, and how we can strive toward conversations that build bridges of understanding? What are the areas where we show a lot of promise in having difficult conversations?

I’ve designed each all staff session to increase the shared pool of understanding between colleagues and to fulfill 3 purposes: 

(1) build trust

(2) grow the shared language, skills, and learning community needed to have open and effective dialogue that addresses the heart of the matter with compassion and dignity for all

(3) begin to align on some key ways to live more fully into the Partnership’s name and values

The results from each session’s participant surveys (anonymous) have been very positive.  Below are some of the staff’s comments that reflect areas of promise:

– “I feel better equipped to discuss my observations in a non-judgmental way.”

– “This session left me feeling closer to my colleagues”

– “This is the beginning of real conversations.”

– “I am grateful. The work feels really productive.”

– “My communication/conflict resolution skills are enhanced by the packaging of this presentation.”

– “I love this simple, 3-part model for interpersonal communication. It’s easy to remember and commit to.”

– “I look forward to each and every one of them. Each session I walk away feeling more in my heart, more courageous, more connected…. I feel growth within myself… and I feel like I’m healing of old wounds of a place I worked prior to the partnership…. So I guess I feel more free and confident… which I know will positively impact the work I do and the relationships I have overall…. so thank you…. this is beautiful work.”

• Based on your interactions with all staff, what is the group hoping will be the outcome of our work together?
  
  Based on my interactions with all staff, the group is most hoping for increased togetherness and wholeness–more connection, trust, and collaboration.