Living the layers of change

Within, Between, and Beyond

Throughout my 20s, I was fortunate to be shaped by dozens of friends and a handful of chosen mentors. I am still unpacking the influence of my friends during those years; the many ways they nurtured my spirit and gave me courage to dive into new adventures. 

The effects of my mentors were more straightforward. While my friends were holding my hand, my mentors were supporting me in very specific domains. Their influence was focused, purposeful, and distinct from one another. 

Each of these mentors deserves their own dedicated posts, but I’ve chosen to write about them side by side. That is how I learned from them and, ultimately, this congruence is what led me to build out Layers of Change.

Amazingly, I met my mentors in the same year, 2004, and learned from each of them for more than a decade. 2004 was the year I graduated from college and moved out of Hyde Park, the neighborhood that had been my Chicago base up to that point. In hindsight, it was also the year that much of my deeper learning began, where I started to understand how to harness my energy, build relationships across communities, and influence the city where I lived. 

Going Within

I had my first internal martial arts lesson with Dr. Paul Hannah in the summer of 2004.

Formally trained as an M.D. and a practicing child psychiatrist, Dr. Hannah is an incredibly skilled practitioner of Tai Chi, Baguazhang, and Qi Gong. These are three different internal arts traditions, each with its own universe of styles, and I will share more about them in future posts. For now, know that they share a common goal of helping the practitioner to refine their energy by better integrating their mind, breath, movement, and ultimately, their soul.

For years I would go to the basement of Dr. Hannah’s beautiful Chicago home and learn more about how to connect with my own core being. I first entered that home as a 21 year old, recently graduated, with a big frenetic energy. I was in my bounce-off-walls stage in life, where I struggled with sitting  still and being present. 

By the time I moved to San Antonio, 11 years later, I had learned a lot about slowing down, at least on the outside, so that my energy could begin to harmonize within. While teaching me a wide range of stances, kicks, joint openers, walking movements, and dynamic exercises, Dr. Hannah helped me to rest within myself. Even more powerfully, he showed me how to deepen that work on my own. 

More than just a portfolio of movements, Dr. Hannah taught me practices and principles that sharpened my inner attitude and continue to uphold my journey through life.

Connecting Between

Just a few months after meeting Dr. Hannah, I met Cheryl Graves and Ora Schub while doing a fellowship at an employment agency for people returning from prison. It was my first job after college and I was charged with leading an ‘Alternatives to Incarceration’ project in a community that was being decimated by our criminal justice system. 

Every Wednesday evening for two months, a group of 50 neighborhood residents and I gathered in the basement of a local church. Working in teams, we started to re-imagine and re-design the justice system in ways that would better serve them.

Shirley Jones was a respected community leader in the area; she was a grandmother for many and an informal “Mayor of the neighborhood.” All of the work we did in the church basement was enabled by her track record and relationships. She was my partner in peace for the project and quickly became a friend, introducing me to her family, taking me to her church, and letting me take the occasional nap on her couch. 

Providentially, Shirley also introduced me to Cheryl and Ora, whose life mission was changing the way justice works for young people. Cheryl and Ora were champions of something called restorative justice, which was an entirely new notion to me. They graciously agreed to join the Wednesday evening planning sessions to support a team working to repair relationships after harm occurred, without relying on the formal legal system.

Cheryl and Ora had recently founded an organization called the Community Justice for Youth Institute. Around the time we met they were spinning it out of Northwestern University, which had helped incubate their work. I was honored to become one of their founding board members. In my many years on that board, I learned how to build working relationships in a whole new way; not for the sake of any project, but for the inherent power and beauty that came with each new connection.

Their organization, CJYI, became the little engine that could for Chicago’s restorative justice movement. Working with a handful of other trainers, Cheryl and Ora trained thousands of Chicagoans in the philosophy and practice of restorative justice. Their work emphasized building the capacity of communities to heal, repair harm, and hold each other accountable, without relying on the punitive institutions that dominate the public safety landscape. Their work didn’t just shape me, it influenced a generation of community, non-profit, and systems leaders.

Thinking Beyond

Shortly after finishing those Wednesday evening planning sessions, I had my first phone call with Dr. Nik Theodore, a professor of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I had applied to the school’s masters program before graduating from college, but deferred admission to accept the fellowship work. Nik was assigned as my advisor upon admission.

As my fellowship was coming to an end, I reached out to Nik for the first time. He graciously offered me a research assistantship at the Center for Urban Economic Development, where he served as the Executive Director. By January 2005 , I was starting two new chapters, studying planning and policy studies and a new job supporting economic development research.

Nik became a powerful influence on my thinking. He was my boss, my instructor and, eventually, my dissertation advisor. More than any single lesson or lecture, he influenced me by his prolific example. In his work, Nik bridges theory, policy research, program evaluation, and social movement advising. He lives multiple meaningful careers in one; an approach that keeps his mind busy and his ideas relevant.

Throughout my time in grad school, Nik taught me that practice requires intentional reflection. Without some degree of structured thinking to accompany our social change efforts, they are unlikely to have the intended effects. And, quite often, they can have unintentional impacts that go against the drive that caused us to act in the first place.

As I deepened my work in restorative and youth justice, Nik continually made the case that scholarship mattered, something that my action-oriented spirit did not easily value. Thankfully, I finally embraced his point and got serious about studying mass incarceration, which I came to recognize as one of the most sophisticated forms of systemic racism society has ever created.

Living the Layers

Paul, Cheryl, Ora, and Nik helped me to understand the many layers that make up our world. They showed me the threads that span ourselves, our relationships, and our systems. From them, I started to see the way that the internal, interpersonal, and institutional threads must be woven together in order to create lasting social progress.

In a time of historic fragmentation, ‘Layers of Change’ is a call for integrated social change. The framework is based on twin beliefs: 1) Lasting change requires work at multiple levels, and 2) Integrating these levels is the core of transformation. 

We cannot afford to ignore ourselves, our ways of relating to others, or the organizations through which we scale supports, services, and solutions. The quality of our energy, the health of our relationships, and the outcomes of our systems all have immense significance. If we ignore any one of them, then the others are bound to suffer.

While intimately related, progress in any one of these domains does not guarantee progress in the others. Each is essential and unique, carrying its own challenges, anxieties, and pitfalls. And each holds its own invitations towards mastery. 

Every day of our lives is an opportunity to accept those invitations; the call to meditate, pray, and/or practice; the urge to share power and truth with others; and the desire to strengthen the structures that can help to carry the weight of the world. 

We become more integrated when we routinely answer each of these invitations and, in turn, help our world to do the same. That is how we access our power, grow our hearts, and expand our reach. It’s how we live the layers.