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Collective Liberation and Work That Reconnects
How do we create group spaces that are truly safe, inclusive, and transformative—especially when patterns of harm still show up within them?
Coming Together in the Great Turning is a practical, deeply informed guide for facilitators ready to engage the realities of power, oppression, and group dynamics—while building spaces rooted in collective liberation and care.
Building on the legacy of Joanna Macy's Work That Reconnects, this book supports facilitators in moving beyond intention into skillful, grounded practice. It addresses the real challenges that arise in workshops and group settings—and offers clear, compassionate pathways toward more just and resilient ways of working together.
What You'll Gain
- The confidence to recognize and respond to patterns of harm as they emerge in group spaces
- Practical tools for trauma-informed, anti-oppressive facilitation
- A deeper understanding of how systemic oppression shows up interpersonally and collectively
- Strategies for shifting from disconnection and harm toward "interconnected systems of support"
- Approaches to fostering trust, accountability, and meaningful participation.
Rather than offering abstract theory, this guide draws from decades of lived facilitation experience to help you navigate complex group dynamics with clarity and care.
Practical Tools for Real-World Facilitation
This book offers grounded, field-tested approaches to:
- Facilitating workshops that actively address power, privilege, and inclusion
- Recognizing and interrupting harmful dynamics before they escalate
- Integrating trauma awareness into group process and leadership
- Creating containers that support emotional safety and authentic participation
- Working skillfully across differences, identity, and lived experience.
If you've struggled with how to hold space for difficult conversations—or how to respond when harm occurs—this book provides concrete guidance you can apply immediately.
Who this Book is For
- Facilitators of the Work That Reconnects seeking to deepen and evolve their practice
- Workshop leaders and educators working with groups in social, environmental, or community contexts
- Activists and organizers building collaborative, justice-centered spaces
- Practitioners committed to anti-oppressive, trauma-informed facilitation
- Readers ready to engage both inner and collective transformation.
A Continuation of a Transformative Body of Work
This book builds on the foundation of Joanna Macy's Work That Reconnects and the widely influential Coming Back to Life, extending that lineage to meet the realities of today's social and ecological challenges.
Drawing on a global network of facilitators and practitioners, the authors bring together decades of experience to support the ongoing evolution of this work—integrating social justice, collective liberation, and group process into a coherent and practical framework.
Grounded in Experience and Practice
Aravinda Ananda, Molly Young Brown, and Kurt A. Kuhwald bring extensive experience as facilitators, educators, and leaders within the Work That Reconnects community. Their work spans decades of supporting individuals and groups navigating the emotional, social, and ecological challenges of our time.
A Practical Path Forward
In a time of overlapping crises, the ability to come together with honesty, care, and skill is essential.
This book offers a way forward—helping you facilitate spaces where people can face difficult truths, build connection, and move toward collective liberation.
For anyone who's been drawn to the beauty and power of the Work That Reconnects, this book is a timely adjunct, providing tools, practices, framing, and facilitation tips to help make the Work more accessible to people of many ages and identities. Given the genius of Joanna's work, it merits all the care, framing, and insight that may be readily accessed in these pages.
—Nina Simons, author, and Co-Founder and Chief Relationship Officer, Bioneers
I'd place this book next to Coming Back to Life on the shelf, not as a replacement but as a companion that brings the work into this new era with clearer eyes and a wider web. It remembers that forests fall when people are devalued, and that people fall when forests are cut down. It treats liberation not as a metaphor, but as the ground we plant in.
—John Seed, founder, Rainforest Information Centre, and long-time facilitator, Deep Ecology and the Work That Reconnects.
Brilliant, helpful, and kind. The authors lovingly guide us through difficult truths on the path towards collective liberation. They provide diverse historic, cultural, and practical examples for growing the capacity of the Work That Reconnects to be more effective in creating deeply interconnected, just, and inclusive spaces. This book is a valuable resource for anyone working with groups to co-create a flourishing world for all.
—Constance Washburn, Founding Weaver of the Work That Reconnects Network, and Co-director, Spiral Journey Facilitator Programs
Coming Together in the Great Turning is an extraordinary, exquisitely articulated manifesto and guidebook for community and cultural transformation.
—Carolyn Baker, Ph.D., Executive Coach and Mentor, and author, Undaunted, Collapsing Consciously, and Savage Grace
Aravinda Ananda is a social ecologist and principal lead at Living rEvolution, dedicated to healing, transformation, and intergenerational, interspecies, and intraspecies justice. She has been a facilitator of the Work That Reconnects for nearly 15 years, co-facilitator of the first five Earth Leadership Cohorts (an immersion in the Work That Reconnects for people ages 18-30), a founding weaver (emeritus) of the Work That Reconnects Network, and a lead convenor of the Anti-Oppression Resource Group. Aravinda is also President of the Board of the Interhelp Network, a nonprofit dedicated to liberatory and transformative group work. She and her partner and child are living the rEvolution in Watertown, MA.
Molly Young Brown, M.A., M.Div. is a facilitator, teacher, life coach, and writer who draws on the Work That Reconnects and the disciplines of ecopsychology and psychosynthesis in order to support people struggling with feelings of despair and helplessness in the face of political, social, and environmental crises. A close colleague of Joanna Macy's for several decades, she is co-director of the Spiral Journey Facilitator Development Program, working toward the Great Turning, decolonization, anti-oppression, and a thriving world for all. She offers personal training and mentoring, and speaks and conducts workshops internationally focusing on self-awareness, transformation, and spiritual awakening rooted in an understanding of the interconnectedness of all life. Molly is the author of 7 books including the two editions of Coming Back to Life and Growing Whole: Self-realization for the Great Turning. She lives in Mt. Shasta, CA.
Kurt A. Kuhwald is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister (retired), spiritual director, transformational coach, elder circle facilitator, and an activist focused on anti-racism, climate change, and low-wage workers' rights. He spent 23 years as a high school special-education teacher and then trained as a psychotherapist in 1985, after which he worked in community, hospital, and private settings. Kurt has facilitated the Work That Reconnects and has worked with the Anti-Oppression Resource Group to bring oppression, power, and privilege issues into the community of WTR. While engaging in this work in the world, Kurt has honed his capacity to support individuals and groups to walk onto that ground where the intersection of care for the world meets inner liberation. He lives in Oakland, CA.
Foreword
Preface - Diversity Welcome to Readers
Introduction
Part I: Context
Chapter 1: Updated Overview of the Evolving Work That Reconnects
Chapter 2: From Interlocking Systems of Oppression to Interconnected Systems of Support
Chapter 3: A Critical History of the Work That Reconnects – Phases of Development
Chapter 4: Work That Reconnects Evolving Commitment to Social Justice Over Time
Part II: Expanding the Frame, Deepening Awareness, Shifting Patterns of Harm
Chapter 5: Expanding the Work That Reconnects with an Undoing Oppression (or Collective Liberation) Commitment
Chapter 6: Seeing and Addressing Patterns of Harm Part 1
Chapter 7: Seeing and Addressing Patterns of Harm Part 2
Chapter 8: Queering the Work That Reconnects
Part III: Anti-Oppressive Facilitation
Chapter 9: Anti-oppressive Facilitation Checklist
Chapter 10: Trauma Awareness, Skills, and Approaches to Group Facilitation
Chapter 11: Addressing ISMs in Workshop Spaces
Part IV:- Cultural Integration
Chapter 12: Cultural Integrity
Chapter 13: Reconectando
Part V: Going Forth in Today's World
Chapter 14: Shocks and Slides
Chapter 15: The End of the World, for Whom? An Afrofuturist & Afropessimist Counter Perspective on Climate Apocalypse
Epilogue
Appendices
Facilitator Assessment Framework
Proposal for Giving and Receiving Feedback About Harm
Example of Anti-oppression Informed Community Agreements, Guidelines, Container
Acknowledgments