Who Are You? Reflections on the Gather at Well Retreat
Who are you?
It’s the question that opened our Gather at the Well retreat, in partnership with Wesleyan Impact Partners, at the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan, during the first week of August.
Our Community Care Chaplain asked it once. Then again.
Who are you?
Twelve Black women and gender-expansive folks gathered together “in the woods” (insert NeNe Leakes voice here), where we were given permission to take naps, hike, work out, play dominoes and Spades, build puzzles, laugh loudly, eat good food, drink good drinks, and live fully into our being.
Not producing. Not performing. Not saving anybody.
Just being.
Who are you?
It can be hard for Black women to rest.
Zora Neale Hurston famously wrote that the Black woman is “the mule of the world,” and generations later, we are still carrying. We carry the burdens, fears, hopes, dreams, and joys of our families and communities. Black girls are adultified earlier than their white peers. Black women continue to experience persistent wage disparities. We are caregivers and breadwinners, pastors and organizers, aunties and othermothers, leaders and problem-solvers. And all of this is happening while rent is high. Groceries are high. Gas is high. And money is tighter than a pair of Apple Bottom jeans circa 2007.
There is always another meeting, another Zoom call, another email, another text, another person who needs something…
And, and, and…
So perhaps the harder question is:
Who are you when nobody needs anything from you?
Who are you without naming your titles? Senior pastor. C-suite executive. Director. Chair. Doctor. Professor. Parent. Sibling. Child. Caregiver. Leader.
Set them down for a moment.
Who is underneath all of that? What if you are simply you?
Black woman. Human. As Tank and the Bangas remind us, you are a force of skin and nails and heart — 206(ish) bones.
And that is enough.
Who are you?
Black woman, when was the last time you dreamed?
Not the everyday nightmares we are forced to navigate. Not strategic planning. Not the five-year plan. Not imagining how you might fix the church, save the organization, care for your family, or make the money stretch until payday.
When was the last time you dreamed up something simply because it delighted you? When did you last playfully imagine a creative project or a whimsical day date with yourself or your beloveds? When did you last frolic through a garden or a wide-open field? When did you last lollygag through a bookstore, breathing in that delicious scent of unbroken spines and possibility?
When did you last take your bra off, put on something cozy, cook (or order) yourself something delicious, pour a glass of something crisp and cool, and sprawl across the couch with absolutely nowhere else to be?
When did you last let pleasure be enough reason to do something?
Who are you when you are rested?
That is part of what we went into the woods to discover.
Gather at the Well is a nine-month community created by Faith Matters Network for Black women and gender-expansive spiritual leaders to cry, rest, and play. Our retreat marked the beginning of our cohort, creating space for people who spend so much of their lives holding others to experience what it feels like to be held.
And we learned that being held can look remarkably ordinary.
It looked like someone taking a nap in the middle of the afternoon.
It looked like dominoes being taught and Spades games being won.
It looked like thoughtfully crafted three course meals, with sides of hot sauce, and nowhere to rush afterward.
It looked like tears that did not need to be quickly wiped away.
It looked like loud laughter at what we thought was going to be a relaxing body movement workshop.
It looked like celebrating life moments, sharing dreams, and collectively promising to pull up on audacious folk.
Rest did not require silence. Restoration does not always look serious. Sometimes the deepest work happened while we were laughing.
Who are you?
Something shifts when you encounter people who are not interested only in what you can produce for them.
Over those days, we began forming relationships not around our callings, credentials, or titles, but through witnessing the fullness of one another. We created our Well Covenant, promising to be vulnerable, to listen deeply, and to practice unapologetic freedom together.
There is something powerful about being surrounded by people who honor who you are while also making room for who you are becoming.
Which brings us to another question:
Who do you want to be?
Not who your job, family, faith community need you to be.
Not even who you needed to become in order to survive.
Who you want to be.
Maybe restoration is not simply about returning us to ourselves. Maybe it creates enough space for us to imagine ourselves otherwise — to discover desires we buried beneath responsibility, recover parts of ourselves we thought we had outgrown, and dream about lives that contain more than survival.
In the woods, we gathered at the well and let the well remind us who we are—amid the trees, beneath the stars, held in community with one another.
We are people worthy of lives that feel good while we are living them.
And perhaps that is one of the gifts of gathering at the well: sometimes we need to step away from everything demanding an answer from us long enough to hear a different question.
Who are you?
And, Black woman, who might you become if you had enough space to find out?
A note:
Our retreat bags were intentionally filled with treats from Black-owned companies. Please consider supporting them as well.
Tricia Hersey’s Rest Deck (Reparations Club is also a Black-owned bookstore)
