Blog # 15 - Notes on Re-Integration

 Summary: We decided to pause our pilot program in October 2024 after a few survivors expressed concerns in a Facebook group about the community’s safety if we were to return to facilitation and/or participation in sacred sexuality or sex positive events. 

 

A Conscious Pause on EP Events


We deeply appreciate those who participated in and supported our pilot event program. This program is an important part of our larger Accountability Process, in which we have been actively engaged for the past 23 months.  


For those who are not aware of the details, we scheduled three pilot events with the intention of practicing what we’ve learned from our Restorative Justice and Accountability Processes. As part of our pilot event program, our Accountability Team (including Kamela Love, Miles Hurwitz, and three additional professional colleagues) reviewed our event materials and gave feedback from a lens of trauma-informedness, gender and relationship diversity, and racial justice to minimize the potential for harm and to maximize the potential for joy and expansion for participants. 


We offered anonymous enhanced feedback forms to increase the likelihood of unfiltered feedback, and those forms were submitted directly to our Accountability Team, not to us. We have been integrating this valuable feedback from the two pilot events we delivered as well as additional learnings from the accountability process related to right use of power when holding role power, making adjustments for participants with special needs, receiving feedback non defensively and validating the experience of the person giving us feedback. We were exploring the possibility of reopening Empowered Pleasure early in 2025 based on having integrated feedback and recommendations from survivors in the original Restorative Justice report, feedback from pilot program participants, and recommendations from our Accountability Supervisors. 


We decided to postpone our third and final pilot event scheduled for early October 2024. 

 

We made this decision after being informed in late August, 2024, that a few survivors expressed that they are deeply concerned about our reintegration process and fear we would cause more harm if we return to serve as facilitators or even participants in sacred sexuality events. These concerns were expressed in a private Facebook Group called Tantra not Trauma (TNT), which is a global, survivor-centered group designed for survivors and their allies to engage in meaningful discussions about violations occurring at sacred sexuality events and to receive support through a sense of community. The posts were brought to our attention by a colleague who indicated that an anonymous poster in TNT expressed concern that the founder of Awaken as Love had invited us to serve as love angels at the Awaken as Love California Tantra Festival. 


While we do not know the details of what was shared in the Tantra not Trauma Facebook group because it is a private group for survivors, we alerted our accountability supervisors to the postings and they have shared generalities with us, only to the degree permitted by the administrators of the group. This was to support our continued accountability and to advise us on the best course of action to stay aligned with restorative justice practices which center the needs of these survivors and the larger sex positive community in Portland.  


In addition to postponing our third EP pilot event, we decided to pause active participation as apprentice faculty for Awaken as Love and other teaching engagements for a minimum of 6 months while we refocus our efforts on continued community healing and re-integration as participants. 


We Remain Available for Conscious Repair Work  


We understand and accept that deep, sustainable healing and repair takes time. We continue to, and will always in the future, remain available for professionally-facilitated, heart-centered repair work with anyone who wants it in the spirit of Restorative/Transformative Justice. 

  

We have had several heart-centered, reparative conversations with a handful of survivors. In the opinions of both us and our Accountability Supervisor, these conversations resulted in a notable level of effective healing and repair. That’s all we will share here because those exchanges are confidential under a mediation confidentiality agreement. 


Any readers who desire information about our accountability process can reach our Accountability Coach, Miles Hurwitz,  and our Accountability Supervisors, Kamela Love and Sherika Tenaya, by filling out our External Accountability Form, which goes directly to Kamela (not to either Cliff or Charity). Our Accountability Team will answer any questions and share information in a way that does not compromise anyone’s confidentiality or sense of safety. For those who don’t know, in addition to being our accountability supervisor, Kamela is a queer, non-binary, polyamorous survivor who works as a Tantra Facilitator, an EFT Trauma Healing Practitioner, and a Certified Transformative Mediator. Sherika is a queer femme, survivor, and member of the Southern Sierra Miwuk First Nation. She is professionally trained as a Somatic Sex Educator and has a background of training in Embodied conflict resolution, the Art of Repair conversations, as well as Nonviolent Communication, Religious Deconstruction work, and Somatic Coaching. 

  

While we were disappointed to learn that some survivors were apparently unaware that we have been engaged in an earnest accountability process for almost two years and some others question our accountability work, we are choosing to see this as an opportunity to provide further space for community healing and to gradually re-integrate as participants and reconnect with many of you whom we have not seen for nearly two years. We realize that reading blog entries does not provide a full perspective on the complexity of our journey and we are appreciative to facilitators who have welcomed us at their events to provide the opportunity to demonstrate an embodied sense of what we have integrated from this accountability journey thus far. 


Intentions During Our Conscious Pause on EP Events:


  1. We are organizing a Community Q&A About Our Accountability Process (Date TBD) via Zoom to answer any questions people in the Portland sex positive scene may have about our journey and to create a conscious space to foster community growth and healing through honest discussion . We plan to have a moderator from the community facilitating questions to a panel consisting of  Cliff, Charity, Kamela Love (Accountability Supervisor), Miles Hurwitz (Accountability Coach), and Jessica Morgenthaler (Survivor Pod Facilitator). This Q/A is intended to center community healing and our hope is that any individuals curious about EP’s journey, best practices in Restorative Justice and Accountability, and/or safer sex positive spaces attend. 

  2. We are re-posting our External Accountability Form on social media and it will remain accessible on our website for anyone wishing to submit a story of harm or concern. Survivors are invited to complete this Google Form either anonymously or with the inclusion of contact information if they wish to receive contact from our accountability professionals to explore options for a heart-centered repair process at no cost to survivors. The form goes directly to our accountability supervisors; Cliff and Charity do not have access to the content and never will. 

  3. We updated our Empowered Pleasure Website with an Accountability Tab (https://www.empoweredpleasure.org/accountability) to increase the accessibility to and visibility of these resources: the original Restorative Justice report with survivors’ first hand stories, a link to our internal Feedback Form, a link to our External Accountability Form, and a link to our Accountability Blog which tracks many important details about our accountability process to date.

  4. Kamela Love, our Accountability Supervisor, is in contact with Jessica Morgenthaler who originally offered to support survivors and gave countless hours of unpaid labor to spearhead the Restorative Justice Process, to get her advice regarding what survivors and community may still need for healing. We are deeply appreciative of Jessica’s continued support and passion for Restorative Justice and community healing and we are so grateful she is joining us on the panel for our Community Q&A event (see #1 above). 

 

Importance of Allyship for Survivors
 

After the original social media conversation in the Empowered Pleasure FB group in January 2023, some survivors expressed that they were harassed and bullied by some community members. We cannot state strongly enough how essential it is to respond to survivors’ expressions of concern in the spirit of allyship, compassion, and support. We denounce any harassment, bullying, or pressure being placed on survivors in our name, regardless of the level of disappointment anyone may feel about this pause in our reintegration process.  


Details About our Inner Experience Coming Soon

We realize that this blog is primarily informative and not reflective of the complexity of our inner experience. We are sensitive to the reality that informational blog postings can reflect a performative accountability process. We have decided to write an additional blog soon in which each of us (Cliff and Charity) will be independently offering a deeper window into the complexity of our independent inner journeys in response to re-integration, the recent expressions of concerns from survivors, and the many questions we still have unanswered regarding ourselves as individuals, as facilitators, and as humans who have done harm to others. 

  

May we all find healing,

Cliff and Charity

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