Care can be a power move. So can helping. So can being the one who knows what to say and when. This workshop is a place to look at that.
We will explore over-functioning, containment, and consent-centered practice through somatics and structural analysis. You will learn what over-functioning looks like at home and at scale, the difference between a boundary and a demand, and how to translate a criticism into an impact statement. We will practice together so the learning lands in your body, not just your mind.
This is not a workshop for fixing the people in your life. It is a place to look at your own moves. We arrive, name, feel, step back together.
50% of proceeds from this workshop will go to Drinking Gourd.
Drinking Gourd is a network of Black Queer + Trans land stewards who are building collective infrastructure for holistic earth stewardship, guided by Afro-Indigenous healing traditions and land ways. DG supports and resources building land-based infrastructure that practices new systems of housing, health and healing, food and water sovereignty, art, culture, and education rooted in the values and needs of Black communities.
DG is in the legacy of the Underground Railroad and Marronage, the history of Green Books, and Negro Spirituals: ways of guiding our people to peace, healing, safety, and collectivity while under threat.
Care can be a power move. So can helping. So can being the one who knows what to say and when. This workshop is a place to look at that.
We will explore over-functioning, containment, and consent-centered practice through somatics and structural analysis. You will learn what over-functioning looks like at home and at scale, the difference between a boundary and a demand, and how to translate a criticism into an impact statement. We will practice together so the learning lands in your body, not just your mind.
This is not a workshop for fixing the people in your life. It is a place to look at your own moves. We arrive, name, feel, step back together.
50% of proceeds from this workshop will go to Drinking Gourd.
Drinking Gourd is a network of Black Queer + Trans land stewards who are building collective infrastructure for holistic earth stewardship, guided by Afro-Indigenous healing traditions and land ways. DG supports and resources building land-based infrastructure that practices new systems of housing, health and healing, food and water sovereignty, art, culture, and education rooted in the values and needs of Black communities.
DG is in the legacy of the Underground Railroad and Marronage, the history of Green Books, and Negro Spirituals: ways of guiding our people to peace, healing, safety, and collectivity while under threat.
I’ve been studying my own moves. The ones I make when I’m scared of losing someone. The way care curls into control when I’m tired. The moment a reaching hand becomes a grasping one.
I have done this with people I love. Not always loudly. Sometimes with such articulate vulnerability it passed for virtue. This is what I mean by tender violence: the kind that lives between two people who are honestly trying. We don’t usually call it violence, even though it hurts.
The pain scales. The patterns I run at home show up in institutions, in movements, in public speech. Care that becomes containment. It’s the same shape, written larger.
On May 18th, 2026, I’m hosting a two-hour online workshop called Tender Violence: The Control Beneath Care. This workshop is about subtle coercion in our most intimate relationships.
We won’t look at what has been done to us: we’ll look at what we are doing and how these behaviors are close-up versions of the harm we see at large.
Through somatics, structural analysis, and consent-centered practice, you’ll leave with a clearer sense of what reciprocity actually requires.
Accountability expands agency. Shame collapses it. Together, we’ll learn to step back, witness, and be witnessed.
50% of proceeds from this workshop will go to Drinking Gourd.
Drinking Gourd is a network of Black Queer + Trans land stewards who are building collective infrastructure for holistic earth stewardship, guided by Afro-Indigenous healing traditions and land ways. DG supports and resources building land-based infrastructure that practices new systems of housing, health and healing, food and water sovereignty, art, culture, and education rooted in the values and needs of Black communities.
DG is in the legacy of the Underground Railroad and Marronage, the history of Green Books, and Negro Spirituals: ways of guiding our people to peace, healing, safety, and collectivity while under threat.
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Arrive and settle our digital space
Name what over-functioning is and explore examples
Look at how containment concentrates power
See how the same moves operate at scale
Distinguish boundaries from requests and demands
Practice translating criticism into impact statement
Share observations and ask questions at the end
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A way to hold the complexity of relational labor
A practice in clearer naming
An invitation to stay in contact through conflict
A blend of structural analysis and embodied practice
A place to look at how you might perpetuate patterns
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A way to handle abusive relationships
A license to weaponize this information
A diagnostic tool to use on your partner
Permission to abandon care
A place where you have to perform being healed
A super fun time
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People who recognize themselves as the planner, the smoother, the one who tracks the room
People who have been told they are "the strong one" and are starting to notice the cost
People who keep landing in the same fight in their most intimate relationships
People who have done some work and want to look at the moves they're still making
Therapists, organizers, caregivers, parents, friends, anyone who has built a life around being depended on
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Date: May 18th, 2026
Time: 6pm to 8pm PST
Place: Zoom
Price: $50, half of proceeds to the Drinking Gourd
Replay: Yes, sent afterward
Care can be a power move. So can helping. So can being the one who knows what to say and when. This workshop is a place to look at that.
We will explore over-functioning, containment, and consent-centered practice through somatics and structural analysis. You will learn what over-functioning looks like at home and at scale, the difference between a boundary and a demand, and how to translate a criticism into an impact statement. We will practice together so the learning lands in your body, not just your mind.
This is not a workshop for fixing the people in your life. It is a place to look at your own moves. We arrive, name, feel, step back together.
50% of proceeds from this workshop will go to Drinking Gourd.
Drinking Gourd is a network of Black Queer + Trans land stewards who are building collective infrastructure for holistic earth stewardship, guided by Afro-Indigenous healing traditions and land ways. DG supports and resources building land-based infrastructure that practices new systems of housing, health and healing, food and water sovereignty, art, culture, and education rooted in the values and needs of Black communities.
DG is in the legacy of the Underground Railroad and Marronage, the history of Green Books, and Negro Spirituals: ways of guiding our people to peace, healing, safety, and collectivity while under threat.