Support Nisha's Liberatory Coaching Practice

Dear Family,

YOU DID IT!

90 of you helped me surpass my abundance goal of $10,000!

I am humbled and emboldened by your belief in my liberatory coaching practice.

When i applied for this program and launched this crowdfunding campaign, I practiced taking my purpose and legacy work seriously.

Today, I’m deepening this commitment by celebrating our success and visualizing my most powerful self in coaching sessions with visionary BIPOC womxn and non-binary leaders.

In these sessions, we are enough, we are whole, and we are dancing in the Truth of our Divinity.

In these sessions, we and the world are being re-membered and reimagined in ways that liberate us all.

One of my favorite podcasts is Finding Our Way hosted by Prentis Hempill, a writer, healer, teacher, and somatics practitioner. In an episode on Visioning, Prentis explores the following questions with adrienne maree brown, a writer, doula, pleasure activist, and podcast host:

What does a more free future look like for you? What would you risk for it? Who would become in it? What would we do about the harm between us?

I invite you to listen to this expansive and deep conversation linked below.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7HJzEhki2RUIwj8VRassxu

Thank you for supporting my becoming, my risking, and my practice of healing, justice, and liberation.

A new chapter begins!

With love and gratitude,
nisha

Dear Family,

In two days, you raised nearly $1500! We are $160 away from my crowdfunding goal!

WE. ARE. ALMOST. THERE!

This week, I met Daniella Macias, a CHJL cohort member, for the first of 6 coaching practice sessions. Daniella is a descendant of the Tenochka-Nuahuataka Nation from Tenochitlan-Mexico City. She is a healer and program facilitator at homies unidos (http://homiesunidos.org/).

I asked Daniella for coaching on how best to support my son, Nishant, who transitioned back to traditional public school in March after 6 months of homeschooling. Carissa, my partner, and I made this decision when it felt like our bodies could no longer sustain our purpose work and curating Nishant’s learning full time.

I shared with Daniella that I continue to be heavy hearted about sending Nishant to a school which prioritizes control of children and is rooted in assumptions (all children learn the same way, learning happens by teachers inputting information into children’s minds and asking children to regurgitate it back to them) that are counter to my understandings of learning.

In 25 minutes, Daniella helped me tease out that Nishant learns by adventure. She also helped me uncover a false binary governing my practice of mothering for the past 8 years- that I have to choose between Nishant’s freedom and flourishing and my own.

WOW.

Today, instead of hounding Nishant to get dressed, in the hour before school, we danced to remixed pop songs with lyrics inspired by Minecraft, a video game he loves

How wondrous to practice freedom and flourishing together.

Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, "All flourishing is mutual" in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, another core text of CHJL. I invite you to listen to her nourishing conversation with Krista Tippet by clicking this link. https://onbeing.org/programs/robin-wall-kimmerer-the-intelligence-of-plants/

With love and gratitude,
nisha

p.s. In my last post, I referenced a blog post about aspiring to show up in social justice movement spaces with my cup overflowing. I forgot to add the link. Here it is: https://www.nishapurushotham.com/blog/2021/1/20/the-memory-of-thirst

Dear Family,

71 donors. $8, 404. 1 week left.

What an amazing campaign! I am overwhelmed with gratitude for each of you.

Through this campaign, I’ve learned the power of naming what i need and trusting all my relations to help me manifest this.

And now I’m going to lean into this practice even more.:

I’M RAISING MY CAMPAIGN GOAL TO $10,000.

Sarah Jawaid and Damon Azali-Rojas, my liberatory coaching guides, define a need as “something that is essential or important to a person”.

They note that some needs are necessary for survival (air, food, water, sleep etc.) and some needs are necessary for thriving (connection, touch, play, joy, and love).

Family, my coaching certification program is helping me thrive and to share my cup’s overflow with my family, community, and movement partners..

I wrote about my aspiration to show up in this way in this blog post.

Thank you for helping me transform this aspiration into a reality.

Now can you help me tap into a higher vibration of abundance?

Two ways you can help:
- Consider adding 5-10% more to your original gift
- Reach out to 2-3 people in your network and ask them to donate to my campaign today

7 more days. Let’s do this!

With love and gratitude,
nisha

Dear Family,

What moments in your life changed everything?

Who are you becoming?

Sarah Jawaid, one of the co-founders of Coaching for Healing, Justice, and Liberation (CHJL), asks these questions in Love Letter to the Movement: Using a Coaching Approach to Healing, Justice, and Liberation, a book she co-wrote with Damon Azali-Rojas, CHJL's other co-founder.

Earlier this week, I spent time answering the first question while waiting for Nishant’s track and field practice to end. Forty-five minutes and three journal pages later, I marveled at the number of chrysalis moments I recounted from the first 12 years of my life.

This inner work is preparing me to set a coaching container for coach partners - a container which allows them to show up in their wholeness which includes their moments of breakdown and transformation.

Last Wednesday, in our weekly deep dive session, Sarah guided us in setting the coaching container. She invited us to develop a Self stand, a heartset you embody while coaching. She shared that Self stand includes a body-based movement, a metaphor, and a commitment.

My Self stand emerged as:
I am enough. You are whole. Let’s dance in the truth of our Divinity.

I say it often each day.

To date, 68 of you have raised $8,172. With 11 days to go, we are $328 away from meeting my starting goal!

Thank you, Family!

With love and gratitude,
nisha

Dear Family,

In one week, 65 of you have raised $7,727! Amazing!

I know we will meet my starting goal of $8,500 soon!

This past weekend, I gathered with 34 Black, Indigenous, and Leaders of Color to begin our coaching certification journey. A journey of inner transformation towards collective liberation.

We felt the presence of our ancestors. My ancestor, Susannah, pictured above, was with me.

We experimented with powerful questions - short, open-ended questions that help a coaching partner access their deepest wisdom.

We named ourselves into Circle by honoring how we identify, how we are perceived, and how this shapes our coaching practice.

We practiced and received coaching, listening for presenting agendas and transformative agendas. We offered feedback to nurture growth.

We acknowledged how each one of us is essential to our emerging field of energy and practice. How each one is vital to the universe as a whole.

I was acknowledged as an ancestor in training and sang this song (https://soundcloud.com/user-41641720/im-gonna-be-free) from my Breathing in a New World collection to close our first weekend retreat.

Family, thank you for supporting my life’s work.

21 days left. Let's do this!

With love and gratitude,
Nisha

Dear Family,

Breathing in your generosity and breathing out love and gratitude to you all.

It’s Day 4 and we’ve raised $6,654! We are so close to my starting goal!

What is one small thing you can do in the next 5 minutes to help me get there?

Today is the first day of the Coaching for Healing, Justice, and Liberation Program! In a few hours, my cohort will gather for our first two-day virtual retreat!

This moment is the culmination of many choice points..

Today, I reflect on a choice point in the lives of my father, Samuel and my mother, Kanaka. A choice point which resulted in their coming to Turtle Island in the hopes of better opportunities for my brother, Vikram and me.

This choice required that my father leave a secure government position and hold 3 jobs as a laundry attendant, janitor, and short order cook while going to business grad school. This choice required that my mother leave her parents, the bedrock of her life, to never see her father or siblings again nor return to the land of her birth. This choice led to their experience of a different caste system. To impacts of interpersonal and institutional racism in the workplace and health care institutions on their bodies.

As I embark on this journey of inner transformation to nourish collective healing, justice, and liberation, I bring my father and mother with me.

Thank you for being on the journey with us.

I use somatic practices to create more space for choice in my life and those I work with as a facilitator and coach. I invite you to listen to this powerful conversation on how we can nourish our nervous systems in times of crisis with tayla shanaye, a mother, healer, and researcher.

https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/loam-listen/nourishing-the-nervous-dDJhmT4Kpcj/

With gratitude and love,
nisha

Dear Family,

My heart bursts with gratitude!

In one day, 40 of you raised $5,237 - 61% of my campaign goal!

I hear my ancestors singing Praise Songs in celebration.

Thank you for your contributions and gorgeous messages.

Thank you for sharing this campaign!

Let’s keep the momentum going! Please share this campaign with 3-5 additional people who would feel joy in supporting my liberatory coaching practice!

Together we can do this!

My Coaching for Healing, Justice, and Liberation Cohort meets for the first time this weekend! One of our core texts is Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. I invite you to read and reflect with us!

https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/indigenous-peoples-history-of-the-us/

With love and gratitude,
nisha