mycorrising HEALING
with Estephanie Martinez-Alfonzo
Cultural & Structural Healing
Mycorrising's most holistic offering is a conscientious, collaborative strategic development of both internal cultures and structures for your organization. Mycorrising can support that work through a 5 year invested process. Emerging from Organizational Mirroring with a clearer understanding of self, we can find paths together that will foster the kind of cultures and structures that best serve our intentions. This involves facilitated development and implementation of organizational trainings, cultural events, suggested and co-created curriculum, structural analysis and reframing, mechanism development, feedback systems, strategies for conflict resolution, book clubs, and ongoing personal and organizational support. Mycorrising provides a gentle guidance and accountability that can mean the difference between an organization following through on this world-healing growth or stalling out while not reaching the deeper, more potent undercurrents that truly carries us through this fruition.
the weave of grief & growth
If you’re considering this level of investment, you are already deeply committed to the work of healing, reconciliation, and liberation for us all. You’re aware that we are all in the process of excavating our genuine selves from generations of oppression and violence. That process is joyful, and also full of grief. In its rawest form, the pain we feel as we peel back the layers that conceal our whole and healed self is the manifestation of our love for the world. It is our love for all that we can feel is missing, for all that we have lost, for all we have yet to find, and for the uncertainties that threaten what we love. It is our love for our people, our world, and the illimitable power of life. The pain we feel as we change and heal towards alignment with these things is our humanity.
clearing our eyes
This scale of grounding and growth is an ongoing investment. Organizational Mirroring is the first step, it lays a foundation- if we can’t collectively see where we’ve been and where we currently stand, we are likely to perpetuate the same harms we are nominally trying to heal. Perhaps worse, we’re likely to inadvertently appropriate the language of healing and liberation to perpetrate these harms. This mirroring process generates an awareness of what each of our roles are, holistically. We see ourselves and one another, in all our trauma and strength and beauty and growth. This clarified collective awareness includes shared organizational maps and vocabulary, so that we are all on the same page and seeing the same realities.
organizational culture as a container for collective healing & growth
The heart of this work is cultural. It’s the conscientious, strategic development of an internal culture that creates a more supportive, trusting, and safer workplace where everyone can thrive. Subtle racism no longer feels like a POC problem, sexism is no longer subconsciously relegated to being a women’s issue: these patterns are seen and felt as what they truly are: caustic to the health of our community, which we are all responsible and accountable for.
Our workflow and structures will seamlessly interweave with the practicing culture when approached holistically. The collective body of staff becomes more closely aligned with their shared values and practices, and the organization’s self-image is accurate and grounded with integrity. Organizations participating pro-actively naturally become leaders, modeling inspiring and replicable pathways for future generations . Such organizations have flows and rhythms like organisms, they naturally breathe, in and out of the environments and broader communities that they are nested in.
vulnerability as our future
During the collaborative implementation of newer and more supportive practices, we will inevitably stumble. Unlearning, relearning, and practicing with one another will bring layers up in one another that have been harmed, and have harmed. We will hurt one another, and that’s not a deviance from the work; moving through this is the work. Together we will define support and create mechanisms for conflict resolution. We have to give space to the parts of us, organizationally and personally, that have been silenced and unseen. We will utilize tools and approaches to navigate our harms and discomforts in a way that builds familiarity with tools and processes, and builds trust. The trust we build in these states of messy human-ness helps us truly heal. When we know that we have a container that can hold our genuine selves, then we can begin to trust and rely on one another in a much older, more powerful way. We begin to catch a glimpse of what it means to be part of a village.
grounded and guiding
This process is evocative and provocative. It’s inspiring and threatening on many levels of self. It can feel destabilizing, both for an organization and for individuals. Don’t worry! I’m there to ground us. One of my roles is to hold a point of stability, to help keep the process rooted and focused on our shared, clarified vision. We are constantly balancing the macro and the micro. My perspective can help stabilize this balance; recognizing patterns and areas of growth while keeping a check against the dangerous modern trend of overstating harm. It’s very easy to confuse our anxieties, insecurities, and emotional triggers for threats. Conflict is not abuse, and that conflation is just as poisonous to communities as the previous social and professional trends of ignoring harm.
My next role is as a guide. While each organization’s path is not linear and never the same, I help navigate switchbacks and pitfalls around this work. Together we’ll identify next steps. My familiarity with this landscape will helps us move with grace and efficiency towards our goals.
If this level of investment speaks to you, reach out and introduce yourself. I’d be happy to share more details of this process with you. Or to know a little more about me, watch my presentation “Naturally Fostering Diversity for Collective Liberation”. That’s a good next step; it will give you some insight to my thinking and approaches.
Please read my Boundaries for Collaboration page to better understand how we might move forward.
Whether you chose to pursue this work with me or others, you are so needed in this world. Thank you so much for your contributions and work towards all our collective futures!
Let’s Work Together
Unceded Penobscot Territory
Wabanaki Dawnland
Unity, ME 04988
IG: @mycorrising