🌱 Liberation, Healing & Reimagining Session 21: Interdependence Is a Birthright - Co-creation with Pieter de Beer
🌿 Transformative Education for Neurodivergent Liberation
"The radical, committed to human liberation, does not become the prisoner of a 'circle of certainty' within which reality is also imprisoned. But rather, he or she enters into reality in order to know it better and to transform it." - Paulo Freire
📌 If you’re just joining us, I recommend reading [Session 1 – Why I’m Leading This Workshop (My Positionality)] for shared agreements and to understand how this space is held. n43
⏳ A Note on Timing
This workshop is arriving a little later than usual. And I want to name that—not as an apology, but as a practice.
Because truthfully? Being late gives me anxiety.
But this isn’t the kind of anxiety born from avoidance or disconnection. It’s the kind that rises when something matters deeply—when we’re choosing integrity over urgency, relationship over rigidity.
This session is about interdependence. About power with in action. And that doesn’t move on a fixed timeline.
It moves in consent. In coordination. In mutual trust.
Pieter and I are in different time zones, with different rhythms—and we wanted this to be a true co-creation. Not a rushed collaboration. Not a performance. A conversation. A weaving.
So yes, it’s late. But only by deadline standards.
By relational standards—it’s right on time.
Let’s begin.
🕵️♀️ A Personal Note
This is the part of the workshop where things shift. Not away from pain—but toward possibility. Not because we’ve "overcome," but because we’ve understood. We've sat with the harm, the erasure, the gaslighting. And now, we begin to ask:
What else is possible?
This is where I shine. Not because I have it all figured out. But because I’ve lived long enough outside the lines to know:
Systems don’t have to be extractive. Relationships don’t have to be transactional. Survival doesn’t have to mean self-erasure.
We can imagine something else. And that imagining begins with this truth:
Interdependence is a birthright.
💞 Where My Heart Lives
If all of this feels personal—it’s because it is.
This is where my heart lives:
In the messy, sacred spaces of relationality.
In the books that held me—bell hooks, adrienne maree brown, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath, Sarah Schulman, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Rainer Maria Rilke, and so many others—when no one else knew how.
It’s in the conversations that changed me.
The truth-telling that softened me.
The love that refused to conform.
When I discovered I was neurodivergent, I didn’t just learn how my brain worked—I began to remember how my heart had always worked. That I needed connection. Reciprocity. Safety. Not just to survive, but to come alive.
And in 2020, I wrote this in my journal to my partner:
Love is a spiritual connection and yearning to be part of yet still observe someone's spiritual journey.
Years later, when he asked me to marry him, I responded with this:
I do not see marriage as a way to gain control or power... It is ultimately about spiritual growth and alignment with our true Selves. A marriage of souls is a commitment to a voyage that begins every day anew... a commitment and curiosity to the wonders of alchemy.
I share this not to idealize love, but to witness what it can become—when it's grounded in mutuality. When it's rooted in autonomy. When it’s a power with.
Because interdependence isn’t just structural. It’s spiritual.
Some say we can only truly love another once we’ve learned to love ourselves. Others say love itself can be the mirror that helps us learn. I think both can be true.
What I’ve come to believe is this:
We do not meet love somewhere. It does not arrive to redeem us.
Love is in us.
And when we uncover that truth, the beauty of it all is astounding.
Love is an action.
A practice.
A birthright.
🧗The False Promise of Independence
Western society rewards a narrow version of "success": autonomy, independence, doing it all on your own. It’s a model that not only erases collective cultures—it also isolates and shames anyone who can't or won't fit that mold.
Neurodivergent people are particularly impacted. Our rhythms are not always linear. Our needs are not always visible. And our brilliance is often relational, intuitive, emergent.
But when I reached out for support—through Vocational Rehabilitation, through community development networks, through job programs—what I found wasn’t mutuality. It was hierarchy. Checklists. Scripts. People trying to help "from above."
And that doesn’t work for my mind. Or my values. Or my nervous system.
I don’t need a savior. I need a co-creator.
🪜 A Power-With Orientation
"Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion." - bell hooks
I am a "power with" kind of human.
Not because it’s trendy. But because I literally cannot function in top-down systems. My nervous system revolts. My clarity dissolves. My energy disappears. I go from vibrant to shut down in the span of a single meeting.
This isn't dysfunction. It's discernment. It's the wisdom of a system that knows:
Power over is killing us.
It's killing the planet. It's eroding trust. It's making belonging impossible.
And if we want to create spaces of healing, education, transformation—we have to start with power. We have to build models that are consensual, relational, co-created.
That’s why interdependence is not just a preference. It’s a necessity. It’s a design principle. It’s the only way forward.
🔬 Real-World Reflection: My Experience with Vocational Rehab
I’ve spent two years in a Vocational Rehabilitation program.
I showed up to every meeting. I named my needs. I did the paperwork. I sat through the assessments. I brought every part of myself to the table.
And still, it wasn’t enough.
They didn’t know what to do with someone like me. Too articulate to be seen as disabled. Too sensitive to be seen as strategic. Too much. Too complex. Too... something.
I asked for mutuality. They gave me metrics. I asked for relationship. They gave me referrals. I asked for a space to co-create. They gave me a job developer who was paternalistic and ableist as f*ck (sorry not sorry).
This is what happens when support is built on hierarchy instead of relationship.
And still, I hold hope.
Because mutual aid exists. Because community care exists. Because systems don’t have to stay this way.
📊 Reimagining Support Through Interdependence
When I say interdependence is a birthright, I mean:
We are not meant to do this alone.
We are not burdens for needing each other.
We are not failures if we can’t meet capitalist timelines, expectations, or deliverables.
Interdependence is not dependency. It’s not codependence. It’s not a lesser version of independence.
It is a different paradigm.
One rooted in:
Mutual consent
Ongoing negotiation of needs
Respect for difference
Shared responsibility
🧵 A Collaborative Reflection with Pieter de Beer
As this session emerged, I felt the call to open it wider—to invite another voice into this space. Pieter de Beer’s work has long echoed through my own thinking on power, complexity, and relational design. What follows is his reflection on interdependence as infrastructure, offered in full.
His words don’t just complement what you’ve just read—they deepen it, extend it, and offer new language for truths we both hold.
Interdependence Is Infrastructure
Collaborator’s Reflection
Let me begin with this: I did not come to interdependence through ease. I came to it through rupture. Through all the places where support in my life broke down, where care for my needs was conditional, where power meant silence or shapeshifting or shame. Through every institution that mistook my complexity for a liability, and every moment, I wondered if being “too much” simply meant I was not made for this world.
And then I realized: Maybe this world is not yet made for us.
We are not the problem. We are the signal.
We are the reason the next world must be different.
Power Isn’t a Thing You Hold
I’ve spent years studying power. But not the way most people do. I don’t see it as a thing someone holds or uses. I see it as a pattern of coordination; a process, a relationship, not a resource. It shows up in how systems connect or collapse. In how people listen or override. In what gets centered and what gets erased.
So when we speak of Power Within, Power To, Power With, Power Through, or Power Over, we are not just naming philosophies. We are naming modes of relation; threads of coordination that shape whether life is possible, or extractive.
Most of us are raised within Power Over systems. We internalize the idea that help must be earned, that support is a debt, that success means not needing anyone. This is structural violence. It teaches disconnection as discipline.
However, other forms of power don’t dominate; instead, they liberate.
Power Within: The Root of Self-Honoring
Power Within is the recognition of your own worth, your own internal compass, your own emotional sovereignty. It is the quiet knowing that you do not need to become legible to be valid. That your sensitivity is not weakness, but wisdom from the body.
For many neurodivergent people, Power Within is eroded early. We are taught that our perceptions are off, our reactions are too much, and our feelings are inconvenient. Power Within becomes fractured under constant correction.
But reclaiming Power Within is the foundation for every other form of non-dominating power. It is what lets us say, “This hurts.” “This matters.” “I will not disappear for your comfort.”
Without Power Within, interdependence becomes codependence. With it, we enter relationships from a place of dignity, not depletion.
Power To: The Capacity to Act Differently
Power To is the ability to take meaningful action. Not a performative action. Not an action that conforms to scripts. But action that emerges from intention, imagination, and alignment.
For many of us, Power To is systematically denied. Not only through physical barriers, but through narrative ones: the idea that we are too complex, too fragile, too dependent to shape the world.
But when Power Within is strong, Power To follows. We begin to imagine beyond survival. We begin to design. We begin to act from the deep belief that our choices matter. Not in isolation, not just personally, but structurally.
Power To is not about individual will. It’s about the capacity to coordinate possibilities. It’s what lets us build something new. Not just in theory, but in practice.
From Control to Coherence: Power With
Power With isn’t just a softer option. It is a radically different design. It doesn’t erase difference; it holds it. It doesn’t assume agreement; it cultivates trust. It doesn’t depend on force; it depends on relationships.
Power With asks:
How do we move forward when our needs diverge?
What kind of care honors autonomy and connection?
How do we stay in coordination without disappearing into consensus?
When I say Power With is infrastructure, I mean it quite literally. It’s a structure of feedback. Of honesty. Of co-presence. It’s the shape of systems that don’t break under human complexity, because they depend on it.
Power Through: The Emergence of the Collective
Power Through is not mine or yours. It is what moves through us when systems of trust are intact. It is what emerges when we let go of control and allow coordination to adapt, improvise, and resonate. This is how creativity works. How ecosystems function. How mutuality becomes transformative.
Most institutions are allergic to Power Through. They want predictability, not emergence. But emergence is the only path forward in a world this complex. We must learn to trust it.
Power Through means we stop seeing leadership as authority, and start seeing it as facilitation. It means we stop designing for certainty and start designing for responsiveness.
This is the power that makes culture. The power that makes healing contagious.
It is the power that remakes the world through us, not despite our differences, but because of them.
Signal, Not Noise
To be sensitive in a deadened system is not a dysfunction. It is discernment.
To need others in a culture of disconnection is not a flaw. It is a remembering.
To long for reciprocity is not regression. It is a glimpse of a better species memory.
Every time you feel “too much,” or “not enough,” or “out of sync,” remember this: the system was not built for your thriving. You are not failing to function; instead, you are functioning in refusal.
That refusal is sacred. And it is powerful.
Interdependence Is the Architecture of Belonging
So when I hear your story, and by this I mean not just your pain, but your clarity, I don’t just feel resonance. I see design. I see patterns that refuse to be erased. I see living models of Power Within, To, With, and Through.
And I see this truth: We are not meant to do this alone.
Because interdependence is not the opposite of independence. It is a different world logic. One that says:
Support is a human right, not a transaction
Care is a system, not a sentiment
Power is a thread, not a throne
This is how we reclaim interdependence: not as a fallback, not as softness, but as strategy, as survival, as the sacred logic of life.
And when we build together from that truth, we don’t just survive the system.
We change what power even means.
🌿 Weaving Ourselves Into the Fabric of Change
Reading Pieter’s words, I don’t just feel agreement—I feel activated.
They remind me that this work is not about theory alone. It’s about practice. About building systems of support in our homes, our communities, our movements, and our institutions. Systems that reflect the power through us, not over us.
It’s not always easy. But it’s possible.
And each time we choose mutuality over control, we lay another brick in the path toward collective liberation.
🫱🏽🫲🏼 We are Stronger Together
I used to think I had to do it all myself.
That if I just worked hard enough, healed deeply enough, masked thoroughly enough—I’d be fine.
But the truth is: I wasn’t meant to do this alone. None of us are.
I created The Compassion Collective because when I discovered I was neurodivergent, I knew instinctively that individual resilience wasn’t enough. I needed something more than self-regulation, more than internal coping. I needed co-regulation. I needed community.
And not just any community—a mutual one. A place where care flows in all directions. Where power is shared, not imposed. Where we could build a new culture together, one grounded in belonging, integrity, and liberation.
The Compassion Collective became that place.
We are a cooperative. A decentralized, non-hierarchical community where people retain ownership of their ideas, their labor, their stories. We use consent-based decision-making (where everyone’s voice matters, and no one is overruled), holarchical design (a structure where power is distributed through nested roles rather than top-down authority), and emergent strategy (a way of working that trusts relationships and adapts in real time, as life unfolds).
We are creating systems that align with the values so many institutions only pretend to care about. And we are doing it in real time, in relationship, with all our glorious complexity intact.
This is interdependence in practice—not as a soft concept, but as a radical, actionable framework for how we live, heal, and change the world together.
More to come.
💭 Reflection + Practice: Honoring the Truth of Interdependence
Take a moment with yourself—gentle, honest, unhurried—and consider:
🌀 When have you felt truly seen?
🌿 Where have you experienced “power with” rather than “power over”?
🪞 What environments support your full participation—without masking, minimizing, or shrinking?
💬 Which relationships allow you to name your needs without apology?
These aren’t just reflection questions. They’re invitations.
To notice what nourishes you.
To reclaim the spaces where you belong.
To imagine a world that honors interdependence—not as weakness, but as wisdom.
Now, ask yourself this:
🪷 What’s one small way I can practice interdependence this week?
Maybe it’s asking for help.
Maybe it’s saying no.
Maybe it’s letting someone in—just a little more.
Whatever it is, share it if you feel called. In the comments. In community. With someone you trust.
Because each act of mutual care is a quiet revolution.
And naming what supports you is the first step to reimagining the systems around you.
🔮 What’s Next:
💫 New Sessions Every Monday & Wednesday
This 12-week journey unfolds twice a week—every Monday and Wednesday—with each session building on the last.
You can view the full session lineup here, and here’s what’s coming next:
✨ Session 22 – The Power of Self-Definition
We’ll explore how naming ourselves is a radical act of liberation. In a world that constantly tries to define, diagnose, and diminish us—choosing our own language, frameworks, and truths is power. We’ll look at how self-definition becomes a tool of healing, boundary-setting, and transformation.
💬 Share Your Reflections
This space thrives when we co-create it. Your insights, stories, and resonances deepen the collective learning. You’re invited to share in the comments—or send a private message if that feels safer.
💖 Support the Work
This series is freely offered—because healing and justice should never be paywalled.
If you’re in a position to support financially, a paid subscription helps sustain this labor and expands the reach of The Compassion Collective—a community grounded in equity, care, and transformation.
Every share, every response, every ripple of resonance helps keep this alive.
With love and reverence,
🌿 Shamani of The Compassion Collective
This is incredible. Very very exciting
"To be sensitive in a deadened system is not a dysfunction. It is discernment." - Pieter’s words here really resonated with me as I reflect on my teenage sons’ public school year, which just ended yesterday. I’ve learned so much by listening to them, really listening, and believing them.