embodiedfutures

[embodiedfutures]

Welcome back, my love. Day 5:

What does it mean to dream the future into being?

A vision statement is not just a declaration—it is a promise, a reaching, a whisper of what could be. It is the world not as it is, but as it must become.

EFC’s vision took root in many hands, shaped by conversations, challenges, and deep reflection. We knew that what we were crafting had to do more than set direction—it had to hold possibility.

In our earliest days as BFP, our vision was urgent, clear:

Better Future Program envisions a future in which youth are not only empowered to challenge oppressive hierarchies each day, but to create innovative and inclusive frameworks of community care and intersectional justice.

It was built in crisis, designed for survival. And yet, as we transformed, so too did the futures we sought to cultivate.

We began asking: What if our vision was not just about resisting harm, but about building beyond it? Not just about empowerment, but about inheritance? Not just about safety, but about the soil in which freedom dreams bloom?

We listened—to each other, to our elders, to the echoes of those who dreamed before us. We held questions in our palms, turning them over like seeds:

Is a safe space where we want to stop? “Safe space” implies the presence of danger elsewhere, the specter of what looms outside. What does it mean to move beyond mere refuge?

Are we dreaming this world, or are we living IN it? If our vision stops at imagining, we have already failed. It must be embodied—a breathing, tangible thing.

What does it mean to cultivate? To nurture? To bloom? We wanted language that held care, that made clear we were not just providing space, but tending to something living.

We landed on words that felt like earth beneath our feet: blossom, cultivate, lineage, freedom dreams. We rearranged, rewrote, stripped away what was unnecessary until we were left with something that felt true:

To birth a world where the infinite freedom dreams of our youth’s most vulnerable communities and their lineages blossom, cultivated through the transformative resources and relationships EFC curates, critiques, and creates.

We chose “birth” because it speaks to both the labor and the miracle of creation.

We chose “blossom” because we do not dream in abstractions—we dream in fruition.

We chose “lineages” because we are not untethered; we are carried forward by those who came before us.

We chose “cultivated” because the futures we long for require tending, require care, require soil rich with possibility.

This is our vision—not of what we do, but of what we become.

A world where dreams are not silenced but sung.

A world where futures are not dictated but inherited.

A world where freedom is not just imagined but made real.

This is what we build toward. This is what we are birthing.

The question now is—what do you dream?

— Reaux (she/they), Founding Executive Director

[embodiedfutures]

How do you write a mission statement that says everything you need it to say—without saying too much?

When we set out to define the Embodied Futures Collective (EFC)’s mission, we knew one thing for sure: we couldn’t be everything.

BFP had tried—not out of aimless ambition, but out of what felt like necessity. As an organization run entirely by multiply marginalized youth, we lived with a daily urgency that those with privilege often only experience during heightened political crises. Everything felt necessary to tackle because everything was, in fact, tied to our survival.

But trying to do everything took its toll. Our old mission statement reflected this:

Our mission is to globally expand peer-led political education, support, and imagination for marginalized youth.

It was beautiful, ambitious. But it stretched us thin. It framed our Liberation Library—the resource hub we were most known for—as just one of many things we did. And that wasn’t sustainable.

So, the first step was to refocus. What was the one thing we wanted to build our organization around? The answer was clear: the Liberation Library, of course. Our 3,000+ free resources!

From there, we asked: what makes this library different?

We wanted to emphasize that it wasn’t just an archive of resources—it was a radical, living, breathing body of knowledge rooted in lived experience, history, and critical thought.

And so, after rounds of edits, word-swaps, and deep discussions, we landed on this:

Our mission is to intentionally cultivate an accessible, global library rooted in revolutionary, decolonial, and embodied wisdoms.

We loved it. It felt true. But then came the question of accessibility.

My father—who has guided me through every business interaction since BFP began—gave his assessment immediately: "These big words are going to turn people away."

And he wasn’t wrong. Decolonial. Embodied wisdoms. They are words that hold depth, but for those unfamiliar, they can also feel intimidating. But as one of our youth put it: "I like that mission statement—it’s vague enough to leave room for a lot of practices & intentions."

So, our Collective sat with two new tensions:

Accessibility vs. Intentionality. How do we make the statement easy to understand without watering it down?

Rigidity vs. Openness. How do we define our work clearly while still leaving space for growth?

For now, we have chosen to keep the words as they are. We want to test this version first—to challenge our youth to rise to it, rather than assume from the start that it is too difficult. But we are not leaving them to figure it out alone. Instead, we have committed to making these words lived. Everyone in EFC is prepared to explain what these words mean—to ensure that when people ask, we don’t just define them, we embody them.

If, as we grow, we find that the language truly becomes a barrier, we are open to evolving it while staying true to our core intentions. But for now, we are choosing depth with guidance over simplification.

Decolonial. Embodied. Wisdoms. These words are layered, intentional, and sometimes, intimidating. But they are also necessary.

Decolonial is what B.A. beautifully described as:

that which seeks to challenge and reject colonial ontologies and epistemologies; holding at its core the intention to restore and reshape knowledge, culture, interpersonal dynamics, and social structures of colonized people beyond the act of contrasting coloniality.

Embodied is what P.N. carefully called:

a state of wholeness, an integration of bodymind, spirit, and inherited relationships. I also consider it as what Robin Wall Kimmerer describes as naturalization.

Wisdoms is what P.H. poetically characterized as:

culminations of information and interpretation, belief and ignorance, hope and rationality and emotionality, circumstances and contexts and cultures.

It is knowledge shaped by experience and history, layered with complexity, and deeply felt. A term that acknowledges not just what we learn, but how we come to understand.

This is the mission we carry forward. A statement that is both rooted and expansive, precise yet full of possibility. It is a reflection of who we are and what we are building—a library of futures, embodied.

What do you think? How do you balance accessibility and depth in your work?

-- Reaux (she/they), Founding Executive Director

[embodiedfutures]

space — a location, a physical dimension, a broad abstract setting

place — space infused with cultural, historical, and emotional significance; what gives a space meaning, personality, and a connection to cultural or personality identity

place = space + meaning

[embodiedfutures]

episteme — knowledge or understanding.

in the context of Foucault: the underlying framework that defines the conditions of possibility for knowledge in a particular historical period. not just about what people know, but about the rules and structures that determine how they come to know it. each era has its own episteme that governs the production of knowledge (e.g., think of how differently we understand biology, economics, or linguistics compared to those in the 18th century). these frameworks operate beneath the surface, often unconsciously guiding what is considered valid knowledge.

shapes the discourse of the time, influencing language, concepts, and categories used in various fields of study. helps us recognize what we consider "truth" or "knowledge" is not universal or timeless, but instead shaped by historical and cultural contexts

[embodiedfutures]

submarine — the histories that lie beneath the surface, buried under water, memory, or empire; honoring what’s hidden, drowned, or illegible, knowing that deep truths often resist visibility. Édouard Glissant calls this the “subterranean memory” that links people across oceans

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repeating islands — from Antonio Benítez-Rojo: a metaphor for the Caribbean; a space where history, trauma, and joy replay not in the same way each time, but rhythmically. repetition doesn’t mean sameness. it means recurrence with variation, like a jazz riff or a storm season

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Black Atlantic — from Paul Gilroy: a cultural and political space formed by the transatlantic slave trade, where Black identity is shaped by oceanic movement between Africa, the Americas, and Europe; a diasporic map of memory, music, resistance, and survival. utilizes the imagery of the slave ship to demonstrate the position of Black people between two (or more) lands, identities, cultures, etc. which is unable to be defined by borders. for more, see: the slave ship

[embodiedfutures]

the slave ship — from Paul Gilroy: demonstrates the position of Black people between two (or more) lands, identities, cultures, etc. which is unable to be defined by borders; a chronotope of the Black Atlantic experience; a liminal space where modernity is forged, where Black life is both erased and foundational; the womb of the Black Atlantic's cultural forms (e.g., music, oral history, spirituals, resistance), diasporic traditions that transcend national borders; a symbol of motion, destabilizing the idea of "nation" as the only container of cultural identity

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Caribbeanist thinking / oceanic thinking — academic and artistic approaches rooted in Caribbean and ocean-bound worldviews; privilege fluidity, relation, and border-crossing over solid, bounded categories like nation or race. what can water teach us about identity?

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transnationalism — the idea that lives, identities, and struggles stretch beyond the borders of a single nation; about the flows of people, culture, resistance that refuse to be contained by colonial or state lines

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critical ocean studies / blue humanities — fields that center the ocean as a space of culture, ecology, memory, and power, not just backdrop; explore how water shapes lives, empires, resistance, and futures, especially in the anthropocene; “blue” as in water as a world-making force

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critical geography — a way of understanding space as political; not just where something is, but how it’s organized by power. who gets to belong where? whose labor built this map? how does geography become an instrument of control or liberation?

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emotional ecologies — how feelings and landscapes interact; the idea that emotions are not just in our heads. they’re shaped by place, history, ancestry, and community (e.g., a swamp might hold grief. a shoreline might hold memory)

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environmental perception — how we interpret the world around us based on cultural, historical, or emotional experience; acknowledges that no two people see a forest, river, or city the same way because our relationships to place are shaped by identity, memory, and survival

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multispecies ethnography — a research approach that includes animals, plants, fungi, and more as active participants in cultural and ecological life; resists human-centered thinking and makes space for kinship across species

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fugitivity -> in Black Studies: a mode of refusal and escape; not just running away, but creating other ways of living outside or beneath the structures of control. inspired by enslaved people who fled plantations, but also used for any subversive, ungoverned life

[embodiedfutures]

maroonage — the act/process of escaped, formerly enslaved Africans forming their own independent communities, often in hard-to-reach places; embodied resistance, autonomy, and ancestral continuity; a literal and metaphorical act of running toward freedom