Michelle Tsutsumi

I love collectively tending to safer spaces that can hold the tension of curiosity and care. Grace Lee Boggs’ teaching that we can “transform ourselves to transform the world” informs my practice. I am of Norwegian, Swedish, English, French, and Japanese ancestry and currently live rurally in Secwepemcúl’ecw, close to what is colonially known as the Village of Chase.

Growing up as a ‘City Kid,’ my past work life was focused on body-centred trauma counselling in Alberta. After burning out, then living, working, and regenerating in Tokyo (sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it?), I returned to Syilx territory where my father grew up. This is where I fell in love with organic farming, growing food, and got more deeply involved in community organizing. I am endlessly curious about organizational culture, shared/collective leadership, and facilitating processes that support belonging, creativity, care, and poised patience (slowing down, yet ready to pounce when needed).

In February 2022, I embarked on a six-month learning and healing journey through communal somatic abolition work with Resmaa Menakem, Jennifer-Lee Koble, Jayoung Ahn, and Education for Racial Equity. This is based on teachings about white body supremacy, the many ways it shows up, an ongoing embodied practice of pausing, slowing down, and checking in with what’s surfacing. We were grouped in triads with similar bodies of culture to meet monthly and share in this process together, in community, which has been incredibly powerful. Although the formal part of the program is complete, our triad continues to meet. This has helped me to move through layers of intergenerational and personal grief. This triad, and a couple more that I am in, support how I am able to show up in various contexts as a facilitator. I weave together sensorimotor psychotherapy theory, Cultivating Safe Spaces (Elaine Alec and Naqsmist), Liberating Structures, and sociocracy (distributed, consent-based governance and decision-making) in my facilitation work.