Finding Refuge

MICHELLE CASSANDRA JOHNSON is a social justice warrior, author, dismantling racism trainer, empath, yoga teacher and practitioner, and an intuitive healer. With over 20 years of experience leading dismantling racism work and working with clients as a licensed clinical social worker, Johnson has a deep understanding of how trauma impacts the mind, body, spirit, and heart. She has led Dismantling Racism Trainings with large corporations, small nonprofits, and community groups, including the ACLU-WA, Duke University, Google, This American Life, The Center for Equity and Inclusion, Eno River Unitarian Universalist Church, Lululemon, and many others. She published Skill in Action in 2017 and teaches workshops nationwide.

Finally, a skillful, actionable resource that addresses healing beyond merely the individual and recognizes the necessity of addressing the grief that results from impact of social and collective trauma. People both marginalized and privileged will find tangible practices to reclaim the heart and humanity that oppressive systems have sought to rob every single one of us of. Finding Refuge is an essential offering for these times. Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Sensei

Too many of us try to use spiritual practices to lower the charge and weight of our grief. Michelle Cassandra Johnson wisely encourages us to do the opposite to accept, embrace, and metabolize grief's full charge and full weight. Instead of shying away from our breaking hearts, we need to lean in and experience the breaking. Thus, we find refuge not from our grief, but in it. As Johnson wisely reminds us, 'Spiritual practice is about awakening and becoming aware it is not about bypassing our collective trauma.' Resmaa Menakem, bestselling author of My Grandmother's Hands 

Perhaps the greatest task for us in this new era is the work of allowing our hearts to break. In Finding Refuge, Michelle Johnson weaves together a path of practice that becomes a balm tending to our unexpressed grief. She helps us to understand that when we allow our broken hearts to be tended to through practice, care, and attention, we are doing the liberatory work of grieving. Finding Refuge is a gift to anyone lost in sorrow. Lama Rod Owens, author of Love and Rage and Radical Dharma

What Michelle Cassandra Johnson offers is essential--both a sacred space and pathway for our grief to move, change, and transform ourselves and one another. Here, grief is not erased or avoided, rather it is embraced as a throughway to our collective liberation. In Finding Refuge, Michelle reminds us that we have the capacity to hold both the heartbreak and the hope, and guides us back to the refuge of the heart where all