Fierce Vulnerability
Kinship Lab
A 3-month journey inspiring collective action rooted in healing, emergence and deep care
With Kazu Haga, author of ‘Fierce Vulnerability’ & Friends
Across 20 countries, 680 participants gathered in 135 kinship pods to experiment with collective action
Collective insights that emerged
Deepen relationships before taking action
Slowing down offers potential for deeper change
Racial healing work must be integral
Grief and hope belong together
Highlights of the Kinship Lab
Kinship Lab Overview
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Book Club
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Translocal Kinship Pods
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Collective Action Projects
This three-month program offered a deeply immersive journey into the practices of Fierce Vulnerability.
Together, we deepened into the book’s principles through embodiment practices, guest speaker interviews and small-group conversations to support learning and transformation.
Participants were guided in forming kinship pods of 3-8 (in their geographical regions, when possible) to co-create community-inspired action projects.
Projects Emerging from the Lab
Love Notes for the Old Oak
Gina and Joan of Pod #51
When a beloved 100-year-old heritage oak in San Luis Obispo was slated for removal, Gina and Joan created a table beside the construction fencing where community members could write "love notes" to the tree.
Over 75 people stopped within a 2.5-hour period to share memories, gratitude, grief and care for the loss of a living presence that has long been part of the community.
The project continues to evolve through community organizing, local media outreach, public testimony and ongoing efforts to honor and protect the tree.
The Creative Community Care Map
Pod #14 Tacoma Peaks
Inspired by the small acts of care they encountered on daily walks, like little libraries, free seed exchanges, community art, and messages of encouragement, the Tacoma Peaks Pod created The Creative Community Care Map
This living, community-generated resource invites you to document and share visible expressions of care in you neighborhood.
We invite you to bring attention to the visible and invisible threads of care that surround us and share them on the map.
Touching Grief, Planting Hope
Pod #45 Santa Cruz Zen
This pod hosted a ritual of grief and hope. Together community members meditated under the trees and honored their grief for the world while planting seeds infused with their hopes, intentions and visions for the future.
Rooted in the understanding that grief and hope belong together, the gathering created space to imagine the world we are called to help cultivate.
Watch this short video from the ritual.
Summer Solstice | Call to Practice
Pod #16 Hodgepod
At sunset on June 21, you are invited to practice a skill or ritual - breath, grounding, grief ritual or simple pause - and pass the practice around the globe as the Earth spins. Acknowledge your place in the global movement for collective liberation and Beloved Community. Please invite and include others in your network!
Find more information here.
Grief Ritual for Sexual Violence
Pod #26 Cross Bay Drift
This is an invitation to face injustice with courage and compassion through a grief ritual focused on sexual violence and rape culture, as exemplified by Jeffery Epstein and his associates. The same mindset that enables the exploitation of women’s bodies, also enables the exploitation of the earth.
Recognizing how experiences of sexual harm can leave individuals and communities feeling overwhelmed, numb, isolated, or powerless, community members will create spaces where collective grief can become a pathway toward healing, gender justice, and cultural transformation.
Contact Sara Lefkowitz at saralefko@gmail.com for more information.
The 15,000 Poppies Project
Pod #21 Sacramento Almonds
Inspired by the 15,000 Poppies project, pod members are joining a global effort to honor and grieve the lives of Palestinian children killed in Gaza through the creation of hand-folded tissue paper poppies.
Gathering in community, participants fold flowers, share stories, and create space for grief, love, rage, and hope. The project combines ritual, remembrance, and action, inviting people to bear witness to loss while supporting mutual aid and healing.
Join by emailing 15000poppies@gmail.com and stay tuned for a virtual event.
Kin Experiences
“It was a safe cocoon to allow my heart and spirit to emerge.” -Trinity
“This work is so important and perhaps the most important work of our time.” -Ami
“This was the highlight of my week. I look forward to including many ideas into my organizing.” - Rhonda
“I would say that what I learned more than anything is that I can step into this work with greater courage. That my personal healing can be a fractal for collective healing.” - Amy
“Thank you for trusting the community and the process.” -Liz
Program Guides
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Kazu Haga is a trainer and practitioner of nonviolence and restorative justice, a core member of the Fierce Vulnerability Network, a founding core member of the Ahimsa Collective, a Jam facilitator and author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm and Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse. He has over 25 years of experience in nonviolence and social change work. He is a resident of the Canticle Farm community on Lisjan Ohlone land, Oakland, CA, where he lives with his family.
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Kaira Jewel Lingo is a Dharma teacher with a lifelong commitment to spirituality and social justice. Her work continues the Engaged Buddhism developed by Thich Nhat Hanh, and she draws inspiration from her parents’ lives of service and her dad’s work with Martin Luther King, Jr. After living as an ordained nun for 15 years in Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastic community, Kaira Jewel now teaches internationally in the Zen lineage and the Vipassana tradition, as well as in secular mindfulness, at the intersection of racial, climate and social justice with a focus on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, and activists, as well as artists, educators, families, and youth. Based in New York, she offers spiritual mentoring to groups and is author of We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons in Moving through Change, Loss and Disruption and co-author of Healing Our Way Home: Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors, Joy and Liberation. Her upcoming events and teachings can be found at www.kairajewel.com.
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Francis Weller is a writer and soul activist who has worked as a psychotherapist for more than 40 years. He's the author of many books and projects including the beloved grief text, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief.
Francis is currently on staff at Commonweal Cancer Help Program. He also founded and directs WisdomBridge, an organization that offers educational programs that seek to integrate the wisdom from indigenous cultures with the insights and knowledge gathered from western poetic, psychological, and spiritual traditions.
His most recent collection is In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty.
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The second daughter of Chinese immigrants, Vickie Chang was born and raised in the SF Bay Area. Her work as a psychologist, facilitator, and writer is guided by Chinese ancestral wisdom including Buddhism and Taoism; Indigenous teachings; and 大地母親 (the Great Earth Mother), including the mountains Tuuyshtak, 武當山 (Wǔdāng Shān), Arunachala, and the Sangre de Cristos. Some of her teachers include West African (Dagara) elder Dr. Malidoma Somé, Jicarilla Apache elder Dr. Eduardo Duran, and Anuttara Lakshmin Nath. See more on her background and work at www.vickiechangphd.com
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LiZhen Wang drinks from a mighty confluence of ancestral traditions: Daoist-Buddhist practice, ancient astrology, and the most primal ritual of all, mothering. She is an astrologer as well as Co-Director at the School of Unusual Life Learning (SoULL), where they offer nature-based, life-cycle teachings that ease existential suffering in a time of systems collapse. Experiencing her mother’s death was one of the greatest spiritual revelations of LiZhen’s life. It has opened them to the incredible richness of a life that includes, not avoids, death.
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Oren Jay Sofer teaches meditation and communication internationally, integrating classical Buddhist training with Nonviolent Communication and Somatics. He holds a degree in Comparative Religion from Columbia University and is a Certified Trainer of Nonviolent Communication and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. Oren is the author of several books, including the best-seller Say What You Mean and Your Heart Was Made for This. A husband and father, he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and teaches worldwide through courses and guided meditations. www.orenjaysofer.com
Special Musical & Poetry Guests
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Wholeheartedly fed by the folk and gospel traditions, MaMuse (Sarah Nutting and Karisha Longaker) create uplifting music to inspire the world into thriving. Interweaving brilliant and haunting harmony with lyrics born of honed emotional intelligence, MaMuse invokes a musical presence that inspires the opening of the heart. Playing a family of varied acoustic instruments including upright bass, guitar, mandolins, and flutes, these two powerful women embody a love for all life. The synergy that is created through this musical connection is palpable and truly moving to witness.
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Lu Aya is a co-founder of the Peace Poets and a father, son, brother, cousin, nephew, poet, student, educator, emcee, musician, facilitator, freedom singer, friend and cultural worker. He sees all of these roles as sacred spaces to listen, love and learn more and more, day by day, how to embody healing. He believes that the foundation of working for liberation is always here and now with all our relations.
