Change Is Possible: A Body Based Approach to Healing Racialized Trauma
& Cocreating Anti-Racist Culture
Groups for White Folks
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FALL 2025 October 9-Dec 11, 2025* Thursdays 6:30-8:30pm 9 WEEK Series *Not meeting Nov 27 *Back up date Dec 18 Location: Montpelier Area (Maybe: INDOORS- The Everything Space- 15 State Street #303) Facilitator: Amanda Franz or Hazel Turrone Registration Info:
More Info:
Cost: Sliding scale $180-550
Absentee policy:
Info About Purchasing the Book:
Covid-19 Expectations:
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FALL
Oct-Dec 2025 Pre-registration required by Sept 25.
Questions? Please contact the facilitator of the group you are interested in. Amanda: amandamfranz (at) gmail.com. HOMEWORK for first group meeting:
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Meet Your Facilitators:
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Abbi Jaffe / AJ (she/they)
(White, queer, Jewish, living on unceded Abenaki land in Montpelier Vermont) Abbi is a politicized somatic movement educator/therapist, social worker, trauma informed bodyworker and is training as a Real Dialogue Specialist. Abbi co-runs The Everything Space, a somatics studio dedicated to social and environmental justice in Montpelier Vt. Abbi stewards Reciprocity: Vermont Embodiment Center in Underhill Vt. Abbi co-created and co-teaches the professional development course Growing Resilience: Being Trauma Informed. Abbi is a former Parallel Justice Specialist for Victims of Crime for the City of Burlington. As a long time wilderness guide, Abbi has been leading people on expeditions in the wilderness and within themselves since 2000. Abbi is a certified Somatic Body Practitioner, a certified Somatic Movement Educator/Therapist through ISMETA, and has a Bachelor's of Social Work from the University of Vermont. Learn more here. |
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Amanda Franz (they/she)
(White, cis-passing queer, Germanic and Czech ancestry, living as a renter on unceded Abenaki territory in Vermont) Amanda is a politicized somatics educator/therapist, embodiment activist and changemaker working at the intersections of somatics, the trauma informed movement, social justice, environmental justice and cultural co-creation. They/She is a certified Somatic Body Practitioner and is an ISMETA certified Somatic Movement Educator/Therapist, as well as a certified Level II Collab trainer and facilitator. She/They collaboratively run The Everything Space, a somatic education studio weaving together personal growth and dynamic social change, co-creates/facilitates curriculum on Growing Resilience through being Trauma Informed, and co-leads a collective community Garden Project that reimagines community through tending the non-human Alive and growing food and medicine together. Amanda is committed to learning and unlearning the lived and woven places of privilege and oppression, embodied and enacted in each of the sites they hold influence. Guided by their positionality and through trauma informed/resilience oriented, anti-racist and decolonial practices, Amanda is invested in re-culturing whiteness, redistributing power, and re-centering relationship to address the past and present harms they have perpetuated. Her work weaves together many revolutionary forms as threads of a deep listening to the self as body in service of the Great Turning. She holds a BA in Visual Arts from Oberlin College and forever holds the big skies of Missouri (lands of the Osage, Kickapoo, Peoria and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples), the place of her birth, dear to her heart. |
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Hazel Turrone (she/they)
(White, queer, cis-passing, neurodivergent, European descendent) Hazel is a trauma-informed, collapse-aware, intuitive body-centered holistic health practitioner, animist, ritualist, facilitator, mediator, educator, mutual aid organizer, gardener, artist and dancer who dwells on the unceded land of the Abenaki in Vermont. They are touched by the messy complicatedness and tender complexity of our humanity and in awe of the exquisite beauty in all life. At the core of their own personal life journey and the work they offer to clients and students is a dedication to embodied liberation - dismantling the entangled layers of generational trauma, systemic oppression and our socialization so that we can reconnect to the relationship with our body wisdom, each other and the land. She believes that like the mycelial web that is at the root of a healthy forest ecosystem, cultivating healthy relationships is essential for healing, creating radical change and surviving in these times. Over 30 years of wanderings, wonderings, training and experience have been woven into Hazel’s offerings which are rooted in Intrinsic Liberation. |
Testimonial:
"The information and guidance Resmee Menakem shares in My Grandmother's Hands is hugely relevant to our collective moment- a paradigm shift on how we approach racial justice and the social/cultural/personal/ancestral healing we all so deeply need in our hearts, communities and bodies.
Abbi Jaffe embodied the ethos of this movement with utmost care as she led our study group, modeling careful listening, gentle presence and deep commitment to this work. I've learned so much from her and hope to continue.
The group provides an intimate space to do the tender work of being with our own discomfort and learn from our body's wisdom, while in connection with a consistent support network, so that we may slowly discover how to show up in a gentler way on this earth. The experience deepened my sense of belonging to the human experience in all its complexity, wonder and grief.
Some weeks I felt overwhelmed trying to make it to the group, but once I sat down on the land and was offered space to calm my body, I recognized it was a very wise choice to have made it. Honestly I'd love to do the group again!"
~K, 2022 White Folks Group Participant
Ancestor Potluck:
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Many groups end with a potluck where folks bring a food item their ancestors (if known) would have appreciated eating.
Pictured to the left is a potluck one group shared. The stories about the foods and the ancestors they were connected to were as nourishing as the food. |
In Honor, Memory and Dedication to Sister Sankofa:
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This offering, in its depth of heart, was spearheaded by Sister Sankofa in 2019. She co-organized these groups and invited people in. She is now of loving memory and we will continue our dedication to collective embodied liberation in her honor. We love you Sister Sankofa.
Learn more about Sister Sankofa here. “Through my faith in possibility and love for humanity, I aim to build bridges for people to embrace change through the power of healing racialized trauma, one person at a time. Through my journey healing from racialized trauma and white supremacy culture, I have become more confident and conscious of how to construct my own empowering narrative and collaborate with others working towards transformative justice.“ ~ Sister Sankofa |
