Tending to the Wounds Within the Village: On relational rupture and loving accountability

Over the past few weeks, I’ve found myself in tender conversations with other Black women—leaders, visionaries, builders, practitioners, and advocates. They shared stories of harm experienced not in white-led institutions, but in Black-led ones. Their stories reminded me of my own.

 These aren’t easy stories to hold. There is something disorienting about relational rupture—those moments where trust is broken, values are misaligned, and care is absent, especially when the person who caused harm looks like you.

 In my experience, it takes deliberate acts of care, affirmation, and tending to the wound in order to avoid an infectious state–one where the wound becomes a default posture: steeped in unhealthy suspicion, distrust, and internalized anti-Blackness. (“That’s why I don’t do business with us…” “You can’t trust us…”) 

We don’t like it there. And we deserve better.

A few practices that have supported me:

Affirmation Ya’ll, when I tell you Liberated Love Notes was for me first? I mean that.Some of my favorite ones to return to when I’m navigating relational rupture remind me: I am loving, gracious, and invested in the growth of those with whom I am in community. And I will not internalize or own others’ work as my own. They are not my work. I am mindful enough to recognize that change takes time, and I do not need to bear the burden of waiting. I do not feel compelled to stay in environments, nor do I feel bad for leaving those that do not serve my humanity and who I am. I strive to unapologetically build community with other Black folks at work and beyond. I reject notions that suggest Black spaces are taboo or insignificant. In fact, they are necessary to my ability to thrive.

Write a Letter I wrote a letter to the women—not to send—but to affirm myself, to get it out of my head and my body. I named the harm. I named the misalignment. It was freeing. I also recorded a few voice notes to process aloud. Remembering as a Grief Practice Sometimes I return to old writings, projects, or memories from the time when the relationship felt whole. I remember what was nurtured. I cry and smile. I feel annoyed and proud…all at once.It helps me hold the complexity. To grieve and give thanks. Engage with Loving Community I didn’t want my default posture toward Black women to be shaped by deficit or fear.As much as my body remembered the rupture, it also had the power to remember rightness.So I surrounded myself with people, spaces, and practices that felt like balm. Those that reminded me of what loving community can feel like.

Leadership as a L.O.V.E. Practice

Practical strategies for reimagining leadership in ways that honor our humanity and collective well-being.

Principle:

Lineage & Legacy 

We don’t name harm to shame. We name it to contextualize. We understand that much of what shows up in our leadership–control, extraction, manipulation, silence—is not innate to who we are. It is inherited, shaped by systems of racial trauma, internalized white supremacy, and intergenerational survival strategies.

And still…we are more than what we’ve inherited. We affirm that we come from people who knew how to love, tend to, and be in right relationship. This is not about excusing harm, rather, placing it in context so that we might return to ourselves.

Perhaps this sounds like:

• “We come from people who loved deeply, who built community under unimaginable pressure. I believe that’s still in us… And, this doesn’t feel like that.”

• “I’m trying to make sense of what happened, not from a place of blame, but from a place of understanding—how this might be connected to the conditions and systems we’ve inherited or internalized.”

• “This behavior doesn’t reflect who I know us to be, at our core.” 

Liberated Love Notes

Affirmations For The Culture

I am mindful enough to recognize that change takes time, and I do not need to bear the burden of waiting. I do not feel compelled to stay in environments, nor do I feel bad for leaving those that do not serve my humanity and who I am.

In the spirit of loving accountability,

Brittany Janay