We are the Joyful Liberation Collective ✨🙏✊

Words matter. Here’s why we chose our name.

By Kim Thai (she/her)

Dear friends, 

 

I’m so happy to share the name of our new organization — Joyful Liberation Collective. We have spent months sitting with the feedback we received and wanted to make sure we moved through this next chapter, reducing as much harm as possible to make our community radically inclusive. 

 

We chose Joyful Liberation Collective because: 

 

• Joyful: We wanted our new name to embody not only what we want to create in the world, but capture the joy we feel in space together. Often when we are planning, in community and otherwise, our space is filled with laughter and unfiltered, present joy. This is something we want the world to know not just about us, but an invitation we have for the world. 
• Liberation. We knew that this word needed to be in our new name. It is why the teachers, myself, our board and our community are doing this heartwork. In a world where we often feel oppressed by the systems around us, we want this space to imbue this feeling of tangible, everyday liberation. If we are able to do that, then we have accomplished our mission. As we have evolved and grown through the years, we have shared this through mindful and somatic practices, compassionate conversations and communal care. Liberation is the heart, fire, and spirit of what we do. 
• When we combine these two ideas together — “joyful” and “liberation” — we hope it is an invitation to think about how the relationship between these two states of beings arise for you. We know that the road to liberation is not always joyful, and we also know that joy is not always a path towards liberation, but for us as a community this is what we want to explore. We want to bridge the idea of how can we truly be joyful, how can we truly be liberated — and how do those two states work together? Separately? Collectively? For us, it’s important for us to name the relationship between joy and liberation and be an invitation to deeply explore how you can uniquely access these two states within yourself. 
• Collective: We chose “collective” because that’s who we are. We contemplated “Project” and “Space” but neither of those felt like they encompassed the communal spirit that is integral to not just how we community organize and run our programming but what we want to evoke into the world. We know that living in a non-hierarchical system in the world today is idealist, some would say futile, but it is our belief that it is possible because we have seen it. We are a living example that power can be distributed among the many and that it is for the benefit of all to do so. And most importantly, we chose this name because you, our community, are at the core of everything we do. You are why we exist, who we serve. So when we say collective, we mean all of us — including first and foremost you. It is our collective power that will propel us into compassionate and mindful action and change to create the world we want to live in. 

We will be transitioning over everything to our new name in the coming weeks and we are so excited to start this next chapter with you. We can’t thank you enough for being our teachers on this journey; for your compassion, grace and patience. 

 

It is with the utmost honor that we continue to serve you in this moment and the next. 

 

In community,

Kim Thai

 

Founder and Executive Director

Joyful Liberation Collective