Coffee and Conversation: Healing toward Solidarity

We live in a difficult political moment. There is much that asks us to look away, to grow numb, and to stay comfortable rather than face what is hard. This August, Mennonite Women USA's Coffee & Conversation asks us to open our eyes, grow strong, and choose solidarity. Amanda K. Gross will spark our conversation, opening up a discussion on what she names Post-Traumatic Mistress Syndrome: the unattended trauma patterns that so often keep white women from showing up fully in anti-racist ministry.

Amanda's work begins with a hard but freeing premise: many of the barriers white women face in standing alongside others are not simply matters of willpower or good intention. They are rooted in trauma, in patterns passed down and absorbed long before there were words for them. This is a call to notice, with honesty and compassion, what gets in the way, so that we might move…