About Us
Our vision for a movement centering the healing and wellbeing of Black, Queer and Trans people is collectively held and we choose to prioritize investing our energies to create nourishing communities and spaces of thriving, ease, abundance and multi-generational healing.
Our Values
Choosing Worthiness
Each of us is worthy of pleasure, care, provision and rest. We do not have to earn it. Ease and joy are our birthright - so we embrace and celebrate our divine worthiness.
Choosing Abundance
We choose to align our resources with our values through abundant investment in the co-creation of a better world. We reject the scarcity framing of deficiency that allows us to scapegoat marginalized communities while prioritizing hoarding.
Choosing Presence
We can be here now, embodying and living into moments of liberation happening all around us. We hold our humanity with tenderness and reverence - resisting the tyranny of perfectionism that diminishes our sovereignty and agency. We practice slowing down so we can be present for our becoming and the building of our beloved collective.
Community Priorities
Black folk are worthy of rest, ease, healing and liberation. Queer and Trans folk are worthy of rest, ease, healing and liberation. There are too few safe harbors for people to experience reconnecting to the Divine and their own immeasurable potential for being and building a world where we can all thrive.
Black Bird Rising’s community is an invitation for us, individually and collectively, to create and find pathways beyond survival and reap our harvest of abundance and multi-generational healing.
Longing for Healing…
A Note from Chantelle Todman, Founder + Convener
In my mid-thirties, the tyranny of living in a system of oppression was more than I could bear and I experienced a mental health breakdown, including deep episodes of depression, anxiety and despair.
At the time, I was desperate to find a space of respite where my soul could receive the nourishment it so deeply needed. Unfortunately no place existed in my city or nearby counties where I, a Black, Queer and Trans-Femme, would not be a target of systemic oppression and violence. While I was able to build a support team for out-patient care, it was exhausting and it left me longing for a more generative and generous place of care for those like me.
The dream for Black.Bird.Rising was planted in the place of my deepest pain and longing. I am full of awe and gratitude for how we - Spirit, my ancestors, my soul and my loved ones - have tended this beautiful dream as it takes flight.