Colors Without Border’s Gathering Gratitudes!

It was a beautiful intersection of the race equity  and art activism work that I am currently doing with Lelavision, Moving in the Spirit and as member of the Race Equity Committee of the Harbor School.  We are all subject to oppressions – racism, sexism, heterosexism, elitism, classism, Christian hegemony, nationalism, ableism, ageism and colonialism but each oppression is magnified as skin tone darkens as is the stigma and marginalization.  Not just in InterPlay but in so many circles, people of color enter spaces and  scan the room for any other folks like themselves…the ethnic head count.  Is it safety habit or a human factor of needing to belong?  I am so proud of InterPlay for supporting the InterPlayers of color to assert their identity and come together in an act of courage and liberation moving beyond the narrative burden of assimilation to  really deeply explore how the InterPlay forms can be utilized to create safe enough spaces to support difficult conversations and deep healing individually and systemically around race and equity.  YAY InterPlay!!!

Xaxxie-K Sarka writes:

Before I speak about my experience at Colors Without Borders, I would like to make a comment about my experience with the Leader’s Gathering.  When I returned home from the Leader’s Gathering and attended Seattle InterPlay events in which once again I was the only POC, I no longer felt alone.  The beautiful spirits of my fellow POC InterPlayers were in the room with me.  Their presence was so palpable!

The National Leader’s Gathering took place in August.  The following month, on September 11, I officially started my business, Sneaky Deep Collective, whose mission is to market InterPlay on a broader scale.  In order to find the courage to start my business, in which I have a drive to create a more diverse InterPlay community in Seattle,  it was vital for me to have that direct experience at the Leader’s Gathering, which enabled me to have faith that other POC’s could adopt InterPlay as a life practice.

Tears are filling my eyes as I think of what to write, reminiscing about my experience at Colors Without Borders.  I’m not quite sure how to put my experience into words, of what it is like to have an InterPlay connection for the first time with someone who is of the same ethnic background as myself.   For in my home city of Seattle, I am almost always the only Asian at InterPlay events.  I’ve done many contact hand dances over the years, but never with someone who shares my ethnicity.  At the Colors Without Borders retreat, I shared a hand dance with another Asian InterPlayer and the experience felt totally new, like I was doing a hand dance for the very first time.  I couldn’t believe the difference in the quality of my experience!

Colors Without Borders InterPlay Gathering in the DC area