A Letter from Brenda Salgado
Brenda Salgado
Beloved RCC community,
Happy Spring and I hope this finds you and your loved ones well.
It has been my joy to serve as the RHI program director for the last few years. I offer deep gratitude to RHI’S former director and founder, Victoria Santos, to Ben Scott-Brandt and Erin McAuley for being wonderful RCC teammates and partners, and to the wonderful RCC and RHI stewards and consultants that brought RHI into being. I also give thanks for the wonderful consultants that I have the joy of co-creating and serving with at RHI: Lorren Buck, Marissa Metelica, Arleen Peterson, and LJ Boswell who I have learned so much from and grown with. And last but definitely not least, heartfelt gratitude to the wonderful retreat centers who took a risk and who made time to go on their racial healing journey with us.
We have learned so many lessons along the way, as we shared in personal, ancestral and land healing, opening our hearts to one another in this sacred work. If you have been part of this RHI journey with me and with us, I'm grateful for the opportunity to build relationship, to engage in embodiment practices and to be vulnerable and courageous together on this journey of racial healing and different ways of being in it together.
As Nanci shares, we are in a particular time, and many communities we love are under attack. Sacred refuges are needed everywhere, held in a place of deep awareness and sacred relationship in times of the unknown.
As I have shared before, Indigenous and Toltec prophecies point to this time as a time of great disruption and transition in consciousness. My teachers have shared we are ending the time of the 5th Sun and are on the cusp of the 6th Sun. In this, I am being called by spirit and ancestors to start a new project, the Nepantla Center for Healing and Renewal. The work ahead will create local hubs for embodiment practice and beloved community, a network of these hubs, and a land trust and training center for training in racial/ancestral healing and land listening/healing for land stewards. I am excited and nervous as I take this leap. but also know I am being guided and held by the Beloved Unseen and many partners and co-creators in the human and more than human world.
I feel nourished by the relationships I have made with all of you, your peoples and teams, and your sacred lands. I carry you in my heart with me, knowing the work we have done together has been a deep learning and gift to me, to ancestors, to the land, and to future generations. May you tend to your bodies, hearts and spirits in beloved community in these times, and may our love for one another carry us forward.
I will continue to be a member in this web of RCC, even as I leave this role as Program Director for RHI, and I hve been blessed with wonderful relationships with you. Please do stay in touch if you are called (brendasalgado5D@gmail.com), and hope to see you on the community call April 15th.
Brenda Salgado
