Transformation: Resilience, Tenacity and the Art of never giving up

Facilitating Race and Transformation Processes

Vision board done in 2018

I have been doing race and transformation work most of my life, but professionally as a facilitator now for about 10 years and as an organisational development practitioner for 17 years. I became an activist at the age of 10 after the 1976 riots and the area around our school was under siege from apartheid police forces – At the same time my primary school teacher provided most of my formative political education in essence providing our young minds with much needed decolonized education - my first act of activism was to distribute pamphlets for boycotting Fattis and Monis, a food company that was treating its workers unfairly.

 My grandfather Dr Norman Murison, a community doctor and banned activist in the 1960’s was the other person beside my parents Norma Tobin and Ernest Tobin who were conscientising me and showing me what the apartheid government was doing to our people and our country - we lived close to District 6 and I remember going there when the last houses were being bulldozed and my grandfather told me to take these two photos before these homes too were destroyed. People were still living inside whilst all around them their whole community had been removed through the forced removals of the apartheid government. This was incredibly disturbing and sad to me as we used to take the bus from Walmer estate where we lived with my grandparents to town and watching the buildings being demolished was a traumatic event forever etched in my mind. 

District 6, Cape Town, 1980

 As a student in the 80s most of our schooling was spent boycotting and attending political rallies. It is this activism that I bring into my work and it is the energy of that era of bottom up resistance and organizing that is needed to transform our society today.  

It has been quite a journey for me –  developing my own resilience and tenacity in my early working life working in mostly untransformed spaces in organisations. It eventually led me (after being retrenched) to work independently and build an initiative of my own called Africa Spirals of Change. I now find myself mostly doing race and transformation with organisations and facilitating courses for individuals who facilitate this work. What keeps me going is seeing the profound change when a space is created for an organisation to have an open honest conversation and watching what happens when issues are surfaced for the first time. When I receive good feedback from a client that the process has been the first of its kind and they have never been able to engage in such a way I realise that this is the work I am meant to do. There are moments when I am in a group and feel the magical power of connecting in a deep and meaningful way that gives a sense of release often through intense emotions and expression - it is here that I feel fulfillment and a sense of contribution to people’s lives.  

When I started this work it was exciting to be having the kind of conversations about race that we had never been able to have. Creating spaces for this to happen was a huge part of the work and helping people to have the conversations in honest ways, often as a facilitator playing a role of helping to amplify what the issues were and using various frameworks and methodologies to surface, unpack and get behind the issues. Later we realised that race literacy was critical and we shared various frameworks and models to help people understand the issues. Another component of the work was sharing our painful Colonial and Apartheid history and helping groups to understand our past and how it was still alive in our present. Right now it seems that people have battle fatigue and are tired of talking about the issues – they want to see change and new actions – in essence we want social justice and transformed leadership, transformed organisations - we want to see more black people in key positions in organisations - we want to see all leaders role model transformative approaches. This brings us to the next level of this work which is about what Angela Davis calls ‘dismantling the structures’ which hits to the heart of systems of power and this is where we are needing to develop a new set of interventions to facilitate these kinds of processes. I draw a lot on my organizational development practice which fortunately I had developed over 9 years working at CDRA www.cdra.org.za and systems thinking which is an area I started researching and working with whilst at CDRA.

So as I stand on the precipice of this new edge and field of taking transformation work to the next level, I have come to some realisations around this work and what it takes:

1.     The work is a lifelong commitment - sometimes you may feel like you want to give up this work, but in my case I feel that I cannot - I have to keep on, the future depends on it, and drawing on wisdom that I have read about, if we do not heal ourselves our next generations will carry the pain and burden. This work needs committed people and ever since I set a strong intention and desire to do the work there has always been a need and the flow of clients have been increasing over the years. It means that I am freelance, have my own company and do not have the stability of an organization and unlimited funding to do the work. I have to work hard to sustain myself and my family and fortunately I have associates that I am able to work with and other organisations who have asked me to work collaboratively with them.

2.     For self preservation, health and sanity, sometimes you may need to exit (so this could be an option to save yourself from unnecessary pain)  -  you may find yourself in situations where those who have invited you in find that actually they are not ready for this kind of work or the way you offer it which may be too deep or too challenging for their systems of power or white fragility. In this case I have realized that its easier to exit sooner than later or sometimes this happens naturally where you do not get called back to continue the work or you get ejected. I always believe that when you are meant to work with a client it will happen, and I have learnt never to be disappointed when this happened or when I am not successful when submitting proposals for work.

3.     The work is iterative and unpredictable, we move two steps forward and then sometimes take four steps backward. And sometimes it goes round in circles. It is not always resolved neatly and nicely, maybe a few learnings and lessons may be learnt and some people may become a bit more conscious - but mostly it is messy and often never goes as planned. I always try to encourage my clients to use an action learning approach, to reflect on our experiences, learn from them and move to changed action but often this takes many failures, repeating our mistakes, false starts, trial and error learning, working with those who are resistant and not willing.

4.     Change can be driven from the bottom up and it can start anywhere where there is strong intention and commitment - It is easier when leaders are fully on board but this is not often the case and often leadership needs the most transformation. I have worked in organizations where one committed person is able to start something small and it is able to grow incrementally and slowly develop over time. I often see amazing initiatives start with the least likely people and slowly through their own awareness they are able to grow an increasing circle of like minded people and together they create the pressure needed to change the system. 

5.     Self care is so critical - both to encourage and teach it to others (create spaces for self care) and then for self - what has worked for me is to engage in creative, deep soul care work. I have done this work with some amazing friends who have exceptional skills in this area and we have been able to draw strength from each other in decolonized spaces where we are able to draw from deep wells of indigenous knowledge and practices that often we are able to intuit together. Michelene Benson has been a co-traveler and soul journey guide in this area. http://www.mdbenson.co.za

 Mandala I drew after a meditation and journalling in a Mandala session facilitated by Soul Journey Guide Michelene Benson.

6.     Lifelong learning is part of the work of a facilitator - Connecting with those who are doing the deep research in transformation and finding spaces to share our experiences. The work of Dr Sarah Henkeman has been critical to me as a teacher, friend and colleague in this space. The book 'Disrupting Denial: Analysing Narratives of invisible/visible violence and trauma' has been a pivotal turning point for us in bringing our narratives and stories and making sense of them through this analysis. I have been both inspired and healed through Dr Henkeman's work. I am bringing it into all my processes because it helps people to understand the enormity of the undertaking of transformation. Here is the website of her work and more about the book  http://healingviolence.co.za

7.     Reaching out across the world to others doing this work - FB has been an incredible resource to me - I started a page called ‘Transforming Diversity’ and this has allowed me to be exposed to such exciting humans of all walks of life, some of who are activists, practitioners and writers. Also in this space, connecting to indigenous wisdom across the globe has fed my soul and given me a sense of purpose and being part of tribes of people of colour who are doing their work to change the world and reclaim spaces. Learning from the work of others has enriched my practice enormously and made me realise that I am not alone. 

8.     Co-facilitation or working alone? – I have done some of my best work on my own in the last number of years and even though it is challenging it allows me to access my deepest wisdom and bring my energy and self naturally into the process without having to navigate another person’s personality, energy, will, history and psychological make up. I have also found beautiful synergies with colleagues where we are able to easily find a flow and complimentary offerings whilst respecting each others’ gifts. As a person of colour, working with white co-facilitators is often exceptionally demanding on the psyche and sometimes results in situations where bringing your own offering especially in this field of transformation is one of constantly navigating a space whilst also becoming aware of roles, rank and how power manifests in the facilitation team, and whose voice dominates. Yet on the other hand in order to do the work you have to role model and attempt to provide a possibility of team work that may be missing in the system that you are working in. In this case sometimes you may have to do an incredible amount of work as a co-facilitation pair to overcome the challenges and transform your working relationship. Here the very things you may be teaching to groups eg. internalized dominance and oppression; decolonizing spaces you will find yourself being faced with and perhaps this offers you great opportunities to practice what you preach. In some cases it is often clients that request a team that is representative in other words a black and white facilitator – for various reasons clients feel comfortable and safe knowing that both races are represented. Increasingly I find this is changing, the more people know the work that you are able to do and what it is you bring to a process that is unique and different to what others bring in relation to your specific skills set and background experience, often they are quite happy having one facilitator.

Finally I have learnt and continue to learn that each moment presents one with an opportunity to learn, transform and improve. Becoming more resilient is about using your capacities and intuition to build yourself each day so you awake a better version of yourself, but also being mindful that we all have our shadow sides and we are all capable of projecting onto others those areas of our lives we have not dealt with. At the same time we need to be gentle with ourselves and strive for connection with those who feed our souls because we will have times when we dip into depths of despair and sometimes those moments offer us our best moments for learning.

 Just as we as facilitators are continuously holding spaces for others we have to be mindful that we too need holding – whether it is having a late night cup of tea with my mom  Norma Tobin which is one of my greatest supporters and sources of strength; or held in the warm embrace of my partner Ashley Paulsen who has spent many an evening with me in our backyard outside lounge listening to my facilitator stories, venting and offering a listening compassionate ear; or conversations with my daughter Shezan Paulsen who is my greatest most honest critic and also a wise soul; my sister Julie Neftd who is always willing to listen and provide a perspective; my grandchildren Sitarah and Ariana who help me to play and have fun without a care in the world; friends and colleagues too many to mention who are always willing to debrief over coffee when I feel the need. I feel blessed to be surrounded by many who hold space and strengthen me to be able to do the work that I do.

And if no-one is around I always have my books and my journals (reading and writing has always been a catharsis for me); or my music and dancing (my souls form of expression to feel happy and free); nature ( the forest, river or the ocean is my preferred source to draw from).

I have also realised that because the work is so demanding and you are with groups alot of the time, being alone is vital for my soul to regenerate and in the silence I find great peace.