Endings, beginnings and continuous transformations.
News news news news!
Due to a lack of updates, I will attempt to give an overview of what happened in the last months, travelling from the past to the now into the future.
With the winter solstice in mid–December, our fortnightly sisterhood gatherings ended. It was a beautiful three month journey from the autumn equinox to the winter solstice, walking together through the darkest time of the year, reflecting on what it means to be a woman in today’s world, how to allow the wisdom and power of the natural cycles guide and inform our steps and actions, and how to bring into the world more of empowered and embodied sisterhood so the social systems can shift back into balance.
Opening to the solitude and darkness of winter without fear, following its call to retreat, rest and reflect, trusting that beauty can be born out of darkness.
“By women taking their power back and manifesting it in the world, our ecological situations will be subsequently transformed, bringing balance, generating healing and producing a culture of peace”
Exploring the many voices within and how to discern which ones are speaking, and which one to give authority to. Sharing experiences about decisions coming from head vs heart, and how to align intuition and reason so they can act in unison, allowing for greater coherence and wisdom.
Enjoying the richness of the intergenerational exchanges, cherishing connecting and hearing stories of sisters so similar and yet so different from ourselves and reflecting on how to remain human in dehumanising roles and working conditions.
Exploring feminine approaches to work and structure, and reflecting on prevalent (toxic) masculinity in systems and lives. If we want to be a force of change, to allow the conscious and healthy feminine to work with the conscious and healthy masculine, what do we need to begin building already now - within us and within the systems we operate in?
Exploring common and countercultural approaches to dealing with anger. Harnessing the power of conscious anger as constructive driver of change and transformation.
Reflecting on the difficulty of boundaries and why saying ‘No’ in a loving, respectful yet firm way is often difficult and not accepted for women.
“We’re here to remind each other in those moments when we forget”
In February, our first SP Tribe Journey ended. For me not as expected in The Hague, but instead back in Kraków due to heavy storms blocking and disrupting train tracks on my path. Having only made it to Frankfurt an der Oder with many hours' delay, and without any chance of continuing, I decided to stop and heavy-heartedly return to Poland.
Rodrigo, Markus and Caner met in person in the Netherlands, the rest of the group joined via zoom for the last collective session and a beautiful ending to the 3 months tribe journey.
Due to the depth and richness of the whole journey, I will share an additional post about it soon.
February also saw the invasion of Ukraine by Putin that suddenly brought a war very close to my doorstep, and resulted in an immense influx of refugees into Kraków, Oświęcim and Poland in general.
In response to this, One Humanity Institute co-founder Nina Meyerhof, together with Diane Marie Williams (founder of The Source of Synergy Foundation) and Christine Burych (StarlingBrook Leadership Consulting) decided to start a fundraiser and come to Poland to distribute teddy bears to Ukrainian children fleeing war, as a sign of hope, love and emotional first-aid. Together with Peace Troubadour and Franciscan monk James Francis Twyman, as well as OHI co-founder Domen Kocevar, we travelled to the border twice to hand out teddies to children and families as they crossed into Poland. We also visited shelters and registration centres to hand out even more teddies and to bear witness to the pain, trauma, confusion and approaches to finding ways of dealing with this situation.
Out of the strong international support for our Teddy Bear initiative grew the idea of turning the One Humanity Bakery building in Oświęcim into a House of Hope for Ukrainian refugees - a place of refuge, shelter, transitional housing that also offers purpose: through the co-working space, workshops and trainings, and communal connecting spaces.
We hence stepped up gear, began raising even more money for renovation works to begin in the House of Hope, and were in the meantime joined by international and local volunteers to move the project along.
Now, at the beginning of April, renovation has already begun and we are hoping to accommodate the first refugees within the next few weeks.
While I am busy with the development of the House of Hope in Oświęcim, Rod and I have also continued our easeful and rich co-creations and several offerings are currently on the drawing board of the SP Lab: We will soon share details about an upcoming SP Training of Trainers, another SP Tribe focused around Peace and War and How to listen to all the voices (within and without), an upcoming interview with the Institute of Integral Studies in Freiburg, as well as our offering of continued SP Coaching by Rod, me or both of us.
I have also been in ongoing conversation and co-creation with both The Hague Centre for Global Governance, Innovation and Emergence, and the Centre for Education for Sustainable Development at HU (CESD) in Kairo. The team at the CESD in Kairo and I are designing a few workshops in the near future for when I return to Egypt for a few weeks.
