ROOTS

Rising Out Of Two Stories
Ages 18-24 (Adults)

Reclaiming Language, Lineage & Land

Intended Outcome: Young adults reflect on their ancestral roots, family history, and the power of naming to reclaim connection, belonging, and identity.

 

• Explores how language, geography, and family stories have been lost or fragmented—and what it means to reconnect.

• Encourages participants to name the cultures, lands, and traditions that feel like home.

• Builds confidence in holding complexity—multiple lineages, stories, and silences.

• Validates longing, grief, pride, and the sacred act of remembering.

​The Politics of Proximity & Privilege

Intended Outcome: Young adults critically examine how proximity to whiteness, wealth, and dominant culture affects their experience—and explore how to move through privilege with awareness and accountability.

 

• Supports honest exploration of access, assumptions, and invisibility.

• Encourages reflection on guilt, defensiveness, and the fear of “getting it wrong.”

• Builds shared language for understanding intersectionality and dual truths.

• Reinforces that acknowledging privilege isn’t betrayal—it’s a step toward deeper solidarity and integrity.

​Navigating Ambiguity in Systems & Relationships

Intended Outcome: Young adults build capacity to live with ambiguity and contradiction—recognizing that clarity doesn’t always come quickly and identity isn’t always cleanly defined.

 

• Validates discomfort, confusion, and evolution as natural parts of identity work.

• Explores the tension of showing up in spaces that weren’t built for you—or claim you in pieces.

• Supports the development of personal values and relational boundaries.

• Encourages curiosity, presence, and critical hope as tools for navigating ambiguity.

Authenticity vs. Acceptance

Intended Outcome: Young adults explore the tension between being fully themselves and being accepted in academic, social, and professional settings.

 

• Unpacks code-switching, cultural compromise, and pressure to conform.

• Encourages reflection on where authenticity feels risky—and where it feels essential.

• Supports development of strategies to navigate visibility, vulnerability, and safety.

• Affirms that acceptance without authenticity isn’t belonging—and both are possible.

Grief, Anger, and Racial Fatigue

Intended Outcome: Young adults explore the emotional toll of navigating race and identity—including grief, rage, and exhaustion—and develop tools to tend to their inner world with honesty and care.

 

• Validates the intensity and legitimacy of racialized emotions.

• Differentiates between personal and collective grief and how they show up in the body.

• Supports practices for naming, expressing, and metabolizing anger.

• Introduces rest, ritual, and embodiment as acts of resistance and resilience.

​Rewriting the Rules We Inherited

Intended Outcome: Young adults begin identifying unspoken rules, cultural scripts, and survival patterns they’ve inherited—and explore which ones to keep, rewrite, or release.

 

• Unpacks generational messaging about success, silence, and assimilation.

• Encourages reflection on whose approval they’ve sought and why.

• Builds agency in questioning rules that no longer serve their liberation.

• Validates that rewriting is not rejection—it’s reclamation.

​Reimagining Family, Community & Home

Intended Outcome: Young adults re-envision what belonging looks like—and explore how to build intentional family, home, and community that reflect their values and truth.

 

• Encourages letting go of inherited ideals that no longer serve them.

• Explores chosen family, cultural dissonance, and the power of redefinition.

• Supports mapping out new models of home rooted in safety, freedom, and connection.

• Reinforces that they get to design spaces that nourish and reflect their full identity.

Healing in the Body​

Intended Outcome: Young adults explore how identity lives in the body—and learn practices to release stress, reconnect to presence, and tend to themselves through embodied healing.

 

• Encourages body awareness as a tool for navigating race-based stress and inherited trauma.

• Introduces somatic practices (breath, grounding, movement) to restore safety and resilience.

• Validates emotions like exhaustion, grief, numbness, and rage as physical experiences.

• Reinforces that healing is not just in the mind—it’s felt and lived through the body.

​​​My Story, My Terms

​Intended Outcome: Young adults practice naming and telling their racial identity story in a way that feels authentic, powerful, and complete—on their own terms.

 

• Encourages ownership of personal narrative through writing, speaking, or creative forms.

• Explores the idea that story is both personal and political.

• Supports participants in confronting stereotypes and self-censorship.

• Reinforces the healing power of choosing how your story gets told—and by whom.

Accountability in My Circles

Intended Outcome: Young adults explore what it means to live their values in community—holding themselves and others accountable with integrity and care.

 

• Encourages honest reflection about power, harm, and repair in personal relationships.

• Builds skills for navigating call-ins, call-outs, and mutual growth.

• Supports the idea that accountability is love in action—not punishment.

• Reinforces that personal integrity strengthens collective liberation.

Leading Without Erasure

Intended Outcome: Young adults explore how to step into leadership roles while honoring all parts of their identity—without shrinking, shape-shifting, or silencing their truth.

 

• Challenges dominant models of professionalism, success, and leadership.

• Encourages naming the parts of identity that are often hidden or downplayed.

• Builds confidence in leading from cultural humility, emotional depth, and lived experience.

• Reinforces that wholeness, not assimilation, is a powerful form of leadership.

Creative Expression & Collective Memory

Intended Outcome: Young adults engage in personal and collective storytelling using creative tools to honor where they’ve come from and how far they’ve traveled.

 

• Encourages creative sharing through writing, spoken word, art, or music.

• Validates personal and ancestral memory as sacred and powerful.

• Supports co-creation of shared cultural artifacts or visual reflections.

• Reinforces that our stories are bridges—linking past, present, and future.

Visioning What Comes Next

Intended Outcome: Young adults look ahead with curiosity and courage—envisioning what they want to build, protect, and pursue in the next chapter of their lives.

 

• Encourages intentional reflection about future roles, relationships, and responsibilities.

• Supports clarity around purpose, possibility, and alignment with values.

• Builds confidence in naming aspirations—even if they don’t fit societal expectations.

• Reinforces that imagination is a critical part of healing, resistance, and leadership.

Declaring My Path Forward

Intended Outcome: Young adults boldly name the practices, values, and choices they’re claiming as they move ahead in their lives and identities

 

• Encourages clarity and intention in naming how they want to show up in the world.

• Supports letting go of fear-based decisions in favor of aligned action.

• Builds language and conviction to declare their path—even if it’s still unfolding.

• Reinforces that the future is something we participate in—not something we wait for.

​Ritual, Witness & Honor What Was

Intended Outcome: Young adults close the ROOTS journey with intentional reflection, collective witnessing, and a ceremonial ritual that honors who they’ve been, who they are, and who they’re becoming.

 

• Supports integration of personal transformation through writing, offering, or action.

• Reinforces that closure can be sacred, joyful, and liberating.

• Validates the weight and beauty of identity work.

• Creates space for gratitude, release, and envisioning next steps in community.