Integrity in the In-Between: Grace, Not Guilt for Justice-Driven Organizations

In this episode, Maureen reflects on the gap so many justice-centered organizations face between what they say they value—and how it actually feels to work inside them.

She explores the concept of Intersectional Integrity as a practice—not of perfection, but of presence.

You’ll hear reflections on:

• What it means to lead from alignment rather than collapse
• How shame functions as a tool of white supremacy culture
• Why relational accountability begins with honesty about ourselves

Maureen also shares a deeply personal story about her time in these organizations—naming how power, shame, and internalized white supremacy shaped her behavior, and how she’s learning to return to her values with more care, embodiment, and truth.

This episode uplifts the voices of Black women (shout out to EbonyJanice who taught me to "Listen to Black women") who have long modeled this kind of integrity through rest, ritual, reflection, and refusal—including Tricia Hersey, Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Ashley Marshall, and more.

This is not a call-out. It’s a calling back.
Into honesty.
Into alignment.
Into grace.

Links + Resources:

• Learn more or bring your team into this work 
• Subscribe to the weekly newsletter for tools, reflections, and practice prompts

cultivatingintersectionalleadership.com

This week´s reflections:

• Where in your work are you moving in overwhelm and/or on autopilot—and what would it take to pause and explore the impact of that on your choices, intentions, and (re)actions?
  
  
  
• How do your experiences with intersecting identities—both targeted and non-targeted—shape how you show up, protect yourself, or take on responsibility?
  
  
  
• In the midst of urgency, pressure, or fatigue, what might shift if you were fully in integrity with your beliefs and values?

Transcript

Integrity in the In-Between: Grace, Not Guilt for Justice-Driven Organizations

Hi friends,

Welcome back to Eyes on Whiteness.
This is a space for reflection, not performance. For practicing the work of transmuting white supremacy and patriarchy—from the inside out.

This is Maureen, your host and this week, I want to speak directly to those of you working in nonprofit and justice-centered organizations.

I know what it’s like to carry a mission that feels clear, fierce, and aligned—
 and then to look around at the internal dynamics, the meetings, the silences, the miscommunications— and feel the ache of “this isn´t aligned with who we say we are.”

That ache is real.

And if you’re feeling it—not because you’re doing it all wrong, but because you care deeply—this episode is for you.

You’re not alone. And you’re not behind for feeling the gap between your values and your reality.

Before we go further, I want to ground us.
If you’re able—drop your shoulders. Unclench your jaw.
Soften your eyes.
Take a breath that belongs just to you.

You don’t have to be anywhere else right now.
You don’t have to fix anything.
This is a space to return. To feel. To notice.
To be with whatever’s alive in you—no performance, just presence.

This week, I am inviting us to ground in something Diedra and I call Intersectional Integrity

Not as a label.  But as a practice—a way of being that honors both who we are and what we’re connected to.

Intersectional Integrity is about how we stay in relationship.
To our values.
To one another.
To the communities we serve.
And most importantly, to ourselves.

It’s about choosing alignment—over and over again—with a clear awareness of our intersecting identities.
Of how we move through power.
Of how oppression, privilege, safety, and silence show up differently for each of us.

It honors that some of us are navigating systems that weren’t built for our safety or our brilliance.
And that even those of us working toward justice can replicate harm when we don’t pause to reflect.

Intersectional Integrity invites us to do just that:
To pause.
To notice when urgency, guilt, or collapse has pulled us off center.
To name where disconnection has crept in—from our bodies, our values, our relationships—and to choose to return.

It’s not about being perfect.
It’s about being present.
It’s about returning to ourselves and our values with compassion for our context, with clarity about our impact, and with care for the people around us.

It’s not easy.
But it’s sacred.

And that’s the invitation this week:
To move with intention.
To reflect with honesty.
And to come back to alignment—not through shame, but through grace.

As EbonyJanice Moore taught me, Listen to Black women

This week, we’re doing just that.
We’re turning toward some women who have shown us what it means to practice alignment—not perfection. To rest. To root. To return. 

These women remind us that Intersectional Integrity isn't abstract—it’s lived.

It’s not just what we think or say—it’s what we practice in our rest, our resistance, our breath, and our boundaries.

So in the spirit of listening to Black women, here are some brilliant  models who have long shown us what alignment can look like—across difference, under pressure, and with deep love.

Tricia Hersey – The Nap Ministry
Tricia reminds us that rest isn’t a reward for productivity—it’s a right.
In her work and in her book Rest Is Resistance, she names grind culture as a tool of white supremacy.
But more than critique, Tricia invites us into ritual: to stop, to nap, to dream again.
In a recent interview she said:

“This culture has taught us that the only way we are worthy is by doing. Rest is not just about naps—it’s about refusing to center grind, urgency, and exhaustion as your worth.”
 That’s Intersectional Integrity.
 Honoring the limits of the body. Listening to the spirit. Trusting that presence is enough.

Jasmine Marie – Black Girls Breathing
Jasmine is a breathworker, space holder, and founder of Black Girls Breathing.
She reminds us that breathing—literal, collective breath—is a tool for liberation.
Not just because it calms the nervous system, but because it reconnects us to our own knowing.
In her interview on Brown Ambition, Jasmine said:

“Breath is how we come home to ourselves—especially in a world that tries to displace us every day.”
 She’s not just offering wellness. She’s building infrastructure for Black women to exhale.
 That’s Intersectional Integrity.

Ashley Marshall – Radical Rest Advocate
Ashley’s work during Black History Month was a radical declaration:
We don’t just need more knowledge of the past—we need more rest in the present.
She said:

“Rest is not a retreat from justice—it’s how we stay in it.”

 Ashley reminds us that when we step back to care for ourselves, we’re not dropping the work.
 We’re protecting the part of us that’s capable of sustaining it.
That’s Intersectional Integrity.
Naming what we can no longer carry, and choosing not to collapse, but to recalibrate.

Rev. angel Kyodo williams – Zen Priest, Justice Teacher
Rev. angel lives at the intersection of spiritual discipline and social justice.
She teaches that without inner work, our outer work is brittle.
In her interview on The Good Life Project, she said:

“We can’t build a new world with the same wounded tools that built the old one.”
 Her practice of embodied presence, right speech, and spiritual activism is a masterclass in Intersectional Integrity.
 It’s about rooting deeply enough within that we stop replicating harm—even in the name of justice.

Naj Austin – Ethel’s Club
 Naj created Ethel’s Club as a wellness and creative space for people of color to gather, exhale, and be.
 In her interview on Slow Stories, she talks about slowness as a strategy—not a flaw.

“We created Ethel’s Club so people could bring their full selves into a space and not be asked to explain it.”
 That’s what alignment looks like.
 Not just naming values—but designing spaces that make those values real.

Salsa Soul Sisters – Movement Elders & Space Holders
 Before we had language for “trauma-informed spaces” or “liberatory leadership,” we had the Salsa Soul Sisters.
 Black and Latina lesbians who created safety, solidarity, and sanctuary for each other in the 1970s.
 Their legacy is this:
 We don’t wait for permission to be whole.
 We create the space we need—and we do it together.

These women aren’t perfect.
 They’re in process.
 They’re brilliant examples of what it means to pause, to reflect, to return—and to do it with integrity.

Their wisdom isn’t just something to admire. It’s something to practice—in our own way, from our own place.

So now, I want to offer you space.

Space to reflect.

Not for answers. But for the kind of honesty that invites us back into intersectional integrity—with our values, our roles, and our full selves.

Here are this week´s reflections…

You don’t need to answer these with a notebook or a polished sentence.
You might take them on a walk.
Move with them in your body.
Sketch or paint something.
Breathe with them in silence.
Let them live in you, in any way that works for you, for a little while.

• Where in your work are you moving in overwhelm and/or on autopilot—and what would it take to pause and explore the impact of that on your choices, intentions, and (re)actions?
  
  
  
• How do your experiences with intersecting identities—both targeted and non-targeted—shape how you show up, protect yourself, or take on responsibility?
  
  
  
• In the midst of urgency, pressure, or fatigue, what might shift if you were fully in integrity with your beliefs and values?
  
  
  

There’s no one right way to reflect—just the willingness to return to yourself.
To listen inward.
To practice what you believe—with grace, not guilt.

For me, this reflection is personal.

I’ve spent most of my adult life working inside nonprofits and justice-rooted orgs—first as a school leader, then as a coach, facilitator, and strategist. Many of those spaces were led by Black leaders I deeply admired, and still do. And still, I often found myself facing the same dissonance I name today.

Public values that said “liberation.”
Internal cultures shaped by urgency, hierarchy, and silence.
Decision-making that centered optics over relationship.
Harm that was replicated—even in spaces that preached healing.

And I’ve played roles in that harm, too.

As a white woman in BIPOC-led spaces, I often defaulted to safety.
I stepped back. I offered “solutions” instead of asking better questions.
I performed clarity when I could have been pausing for reflection.
I deferred out of fear—not discernment.
And I stayed quiet when something didn’t feel right, because I didn’t trust that my perspective could belong.

And let me be clear: some of that stepping back was appropriate.
 It was principled.
 My role, as a white person in Black- led spaces, is not to dominate the conversation.
 But over time, I realized I wasn’t just stepping back—I was disappearing.
 Disengaging.
 Choosing silence not out of humility, but out of shame.

And shame didn’t make me more aligned.
 It made me collapse.

I’ve had to ask myself again and again:
 Where am I abandoning myself in the name of being good?
 Where am I conflating discomfort with unworthiness?
 And how is that still centering whiteness, even when it looks like deference?

There were times when I saw patterns—of harm, of urgency, of hierarchy—and I didn’t speak.
 Because I thought: Who am I to say something?
 Because I feared being fragile.
ALSO sometimes in the moment, it was because I hadn’t slowed down to ask if what I was feeling was actually about my identity—or about integrity.

This is where Intersectional Integrity becomes more than a concept for me.

It’s where I had to pause and look within.
 To get honest about how my own internalized racism and anti-Blackness might be shaping the critique.
 To ask: Is this projection? Protection? Reaction? Or real alignment?

And that meant returning to my breath.
 To my nervous system.
 To the parts of me that wanted to fight, flee, freeze, or fawn.

It meant checking in with the scared little girl in me—
 The one shaped by trauma, by gendered harm, by experiences of gaslighting and power abuse— and having the courage to ask her gently: What do you need right now?

Because sometimes, my freeze isn’t white fragility.
 It’s trauma.

And sometimes, my silence isn’t humility.
 It’s collapse.

And I’ve had to build a practice—a healing practice—that starts with grounding before I respond.
That centers discernment over reactivity.
That lets me ask:
What would it look like to stay in integrity here—not just for others and our collective commitment, but for me?

Because my integrity doesn’t depend on someone else’s readiness to receive it.
 It depends on my willingness to embody it.

I want to offer one more moment of reflection—this time with deep gratitude to my friend and sister and thought partner Sonya Renée Taylor, who offered me a profound and loving call-in recently.

We were in conversation about some really intense harm I recently experienced, and I was pondering what accountability might look like, and Sonya reflected something I didn’t even know I was doing. She pointed out that when I experience harm, especially in high-stakes or justice-rooted contexts, I often move into action quickly—without fully accessing or processing my anger.

That landed. Because I know this about myself.
 I’ve learned through trauma that anger wasn’t safe.
 That expressing it could rupture relationships, or make me too much.
 So instead, I’ve often skipped over the anger and gone straight to fixing, strategizing, “fighting for justice.”

But as Sonya reflected, when that impulse to act bypasses my own embodied truth, it can replicate harm. And as a white woman in communities of color, this was critical to examine.

What felt like alignment was sometimes urgency.
 What felt like justice was sometimes performance.
 Not performative because I didn’t care. But because I hadn’t felt my feelings yet. I hadn’t rooted.

This beautiful and loving feedback gave me the opportunity to do practice my own intersectional integrity:
To look within.
To name my patterns.
To sit with what was present in my body.
And only then, to consider how I want to show up in community.

That conversation shifted something big in me.

Now, when I feel that pull to act, to fix, to “do something”—especially in moments of rupture or harm—I ask myself:
 Have I felt my anger yet?
 Have I let it move through me, not to explode or collapse, but to inform my truth?

And if not, I pause.
 I let myself feel.
 Because that’s what integrity requires—not just alignment with values on paper, but with what’s happening in my body, my history, my impact, and my relationships.

As Diedra always says:
 When you point one finger outward, there are three pointing back.

And I’m learning—still—that this isn’t about shame.
 It’s about return.

So to Sonya—thank you. For your truth. For your tenderness. For modeling what love and accountability can really look like.

This is what it means to be in the practice.

That’s what Intersectional Integrity means to me.
 It’s not an identity I hold.
 It’s a practice I return to—again and again

Now, let me be clear….there are times now when I do speak up.
 When I name harm with care.
 When I challenge the misuse of values—even by people with the best of intentions and even by folks who have targeted identities where I have non targeted identities.
 And it’s not because I think I know better.
 It’s because I’ve done enough internal work to know when I’m grounded.
 When I’m clear.
 And when something still needs to be said.

I’ve also learned that this work is rarely linear or easy.
Sometimes it’s a pause.
Sometimes it’s a boundary.
Sometimes it’s an apology.
Sometimes it’s an email I pause to send because I’m not in my body yet.

And over time, I’ve begun to ask these same questions at the organizational level too.

How are we making decisions?
 Who is protected when we say nothing?
 Are our internal policies aligned with our external messaging?
 Do we have rituals that support repair?
Or do we only talk about values at staff retreats and never in our day to day collaboration?

If you’re leading or supporting a nonprofit or justice-rooted org—here’s what I invite you to reflect on:

• What are your protocols for harm—not just punishment, but repair?
  
  
  
• Do your internal team rhythms allow space for reflection, or just reaction?
  
  
  
• Are people rewarded for alignment—or just for urgency?
  
  
  
• Do your most impacted staff have actual power—not just visibility?
  
  
  

Intersectional Integrity, at an organizational level, isn’t about never getting it wrong.
 It’s about having practices in place that let you return when you do.
To your people.
To your purpose.
To the version of culture you say you’re building.

For me, this practice is daily.
 And it’s saved me—from collapse, from complicity, from losing myself in the very systems I’m trying to change.

And I’ll say this, too:
 Every time I’ve come back into alignment—no matter how clumsy, no matter how late—
 I’ve remembered why I’m in this work.

It’s not for perfection.
 It’s for the commitment to care, liberation and community.

Thank you for being here.
 For being in the work. For staying in the reflection.
 And for not giving up on your own becoming.

This is not about getting it right.
 It’s about returning to what’s real.
 It’s about showing up differently, together.

And if this reflection stirred something in you—please share it.
 With a colleague. With your team. With someone you trust.
 Not to preach. But to practice.

And if your nonprofit, pod, or org is longing for a way to slow down and re-root—
 Cultivating Intersectional Leadership might be your next step.
It’s not a training. It’s a rhythm. A process. A pause.
And an invitation to transmute the culture we’ve inherited into something more human, more relational, and more real.

You can learn more or join a pod at:
 www.cultivatingintersectionalleadership.com

Until next time—
 Keep breathing.
 Keep returning.
 And keep practicing—with grace, not guilt.

This is Eyes on Whiteness.
See you soon.