BEHOLDEN exists to cultivate courageous transformation—empowering individuals and communities to heal and reimagine their relationships with land, lineage, and one another. We practice accountability as repair rather than punishment, restoring connection through listening, relationship, and making amends. Through restorative and relational practices—including wilderness fasts, storytelling, ritual, online and in-person courses, workshops, and retreats —we nurture healing modes of being that honor the interconnectedness of all life.

We envision a world shaped by the courage to transform—where people live in right relationship with the Earth, each other, and what we’ve inherited from the past. We aspire to cultures of imagination and care that dismantle harmful systems and cultivate new forms of belonging, justice, and collective flourishing rooted in the renewal of life itself.

Our organization’s work is grounded in a shared commitment to healing, accountability, and relationship. These values guide our decisions, our partnerships, and our presence in the communities and ecologies we serve. They express how we strive to live and lead — with integrity, courage, and care.

Accountability as Repair
We honor accountability as an act of repair, not retribution. True accountability is relational—requiring courage, humility, and the willingness to listen, make amends, and restore connection.

Ancestral and Ecological Relationship
We root our work in relationship with those who came before and for the other-than-human living world that sustains us. To be good ancestors, we must also become good descendants—nurturing [nourishing] the land, air, waters, and all beings who will follow.

Decomposition and Transformation
We understand decomposition as sacred work—the breaking down of harmful systems, patterns, and identities so that new, life-affirming ways of being can emerge. From the compost of collapse, we cultivate possibility.

Integrity and Courage
We tell the truth, even when it disrupts comfort or power. We practice integrity not as perfection but as alignment between our values and actions, meeting change with discipline, care, and grace.

Justice and Belonging
We weave balance and belonging into the very fabric of our organization—into how we lead, decide, relate, and imagine. Healing is not an initiative; it is the ground we stand on. We work to decompose systems of oppression from their roots, transforming the inherited structures of modernity that have shaped our world. Our commitments are informed by a clear-eyed understanding of the histories and ongoing violences that define our social landscape. We do not look away. We cultivate a practice of accountability that ensures historically marginalized voices are not only represented but centered in shaping our collective path forward.

Community and Interdependence
We nurture relationships of reciprocity, responsibility, and mutual care—recognizing that our well-being is inseparable from that of our communities, ecosystems, and the more-than-human world.