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You’ve Got to Say NO to Say YES (or, Saying NO is Awesome)
by Cristien Storm and Kate Boyd Co-founders of If You Don’t They Will First Posted on North Atlantic Books site August 9th 2018 In our workshops, we support participants in developing creative and fierce ways to identify, interrupt, and counter white nationalism in their particular contexts. Different groups develop different strategies to say NO including: …
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Avoidance is Not a Boundary
By Cristien Storm and Christina Malecka Boundaries are personal, subjective, and at times messy and confusing. What works for one person may not be an option, – or even accessible – for someone else. We will use different boundaries at different times depending on who and how we are in the world. While people set …
Relationship Ground Rules
Originally posted on North Atlantic Books September 06, 2018 Every relationship is different. Some people love ground rules and find them super helpful. Other people think relationship ground rules are unnecessary and even punitive—like a chore wheel that gets posted on the fridge and forgotten about until a conflict arises and one partner uses it …
Inside Komen’s NGOized Culture
Cristien Storm & Kate Boyd First Published: Against the Current, No. 169, March/April 2014 EVEN IF YOU’VE never been to a Race for the Cure, you can picture it… There’s a party goin’ on right hereA celebration to last throughout the yearsSo bring your good times, and your laughter tooWe gonna celebrate your party with …
Having Uncomfortable Conversations
By Kristin Beck and Cristien Storm Original post on North Atlantic Books Authors Blog August 17, 2018 Reposted here with revisions Power matters. Whether or not we have it, can access it, how we use (or choose not to use) it, the impacts and collateral effects of power are of tremendous importance. Unfortunately, when someone …
Hello & Welcome to a place where some of my writing lives…
However self-sufficient we may fancy ourselves, we exist only in relation – to our friend, family, and life partners; to those we teach and mentor; to our coworkers, neighbors, strangers; and even to forces we cannot fully conceive of, let alone define. In many ways, we are our relationships. –Derrick Bell
Self Care for Activists
One goal of Empowered Boundaries is to expand on mainstream notions of self care, which tend to be centered primarily on individual wellness and personal health. There is nothing wrong with focusing on individual well-being. However, individualist approaches often ignore how deeply interpersonal and interconnected care, healing, and recovery are. When I taught self-defense classes at Home Alive we …
Reflections on Sexual Harassment and Community Care
One of the things I loved about teaching self-defense at Home Alive was witnessing the creativity people tapped into when asked to share ideas, stories, and imaginations of fierce and even playful self-defense strategies. It was inspiring and humbling to hold space for people to let go of fear and move into possibility. Play is not something …
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Coping in a Culture that Often Times Blames the Victim
Coping in a Culture that Often Times Blames the Victim It is astounding to me, as someone who has taught self-defense and boundary setting for over two decades, the myriad ways we find to blame victims of all kinds for the violence and abuse they survive: from tropes about revealing clothing justifying sexual assault, to …
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