Responsibility is not the same as guilt. We take up responsibility for things all the time that are not ours. Think about climate change, or mass incarceration, or poverty. And so many of these are inheritances – things older and bigger than us that people before us handed down to us. The same is true in families - the unhealed wounds, the inter-generational traumas, the unsaid skeletons in the closets.

Ancestors - people who came before us, many of whom we are biologically descended from but others included by love, solidarity, or shared experience. We are the inheritors from ancestors, many fondly remembered and many keenly detested. Ours are dynamic relationships with them and history informing our present actions and the future. So what is it to be responsible to what we’ve inherited now in times like these?

Join BEHOLDEN in a transformative circle dialog using practices and ethics from restorative justice to explore accountability from ancestors and responsibility from ourselves. We will explore how to position ourselves in a crisis-ridden time to be of use and to forego guilt and shame in order to nourish maturity and courage.

These evenings will be lead by Dr. Noël Amherd, Restorative Justice Practitioner and Trainer, Initiated Babaláwo (Ifá priest)