Julia (“Yulia”) Smagorinsky is a farmer, mentor, writer, mother, and a facilitator for the Work that Reconnects.
Yulia is a passionate advocate of the rights of nature. Yulia is working toward social justice by sharing access to land, to knowledge, information, food and sources of healing. Yulia is actively supporting the ability of people to grow their own food and to learn the skills to respectfully interact with the Earth. She has experienced the powerful healing that occurs when we show up fully present for each other. Yulia is actively creating platforms and pathways to hold space for others to heal, to listen deeply and to transform.
Yulia is seeking alternative ways of economic interaction, that allow for gifts, donations and the exchange of goods and services. Yulia seeks to actively give back to the Earth by protecting, caring for and reestablishing niches of habitat and food sources for wildlife.
Yulia identifies as a genderfluid, bisexual person and accepts the pronouns she or ki. Ki has been working on disentangling the internalized messages of the patriarchal-capitalist system. Ki is working on strengthening kis feminine power, while honoring kis inner masculine. Yulia is aware that as a white settler on Turtle Island, kis access to true wisdom and traditional knowledge is extremely limited. Ki is aware that the English language is often inadequate to express much of what ki desires to share, learn and understand. Yulia perceives the development of awareness, imagination and language as one of the core objectives of interactive, communal learning.
Why I am called to facilitate the Work
I am called to facilitate the Work that Reconnects because I trust that it is exactly the kind of work we so desperately need in this time of global despair and environmental destruction, ongoing systemic racism and continued colonization.WTR allows for a space to open inside each of us where deep healing, transformation, and shifts in consciousness can occur. I am called to facilitate the Work that Reconnects because facilitating communal healing is precisely what my own inner transformational work has been leading me to. When I am facilitating the Work that Reconnects I know that I am exactly at the right place at the right time, doing what I am meant to do.
The magnitude of the problems we are facing calls for tools to allow us to re-imagine and actively envision a beautiful and whole future. We need to be able to speak our truth, to tap into our emotions as sources of information, speak with each other about what we see, experience and feel, and break through the tabu that prohibits us from naming what is going on.
We need the ability to hold and fully perceive what is, and yet courageously walk through it and develop creative, healing imaginations. I have experienced the transformative power of the work that reconnects again and again.
I believe in the genius of the spiral, its continuous repetition and its fractal properties. The spiral allows each of us to work from exactly where we are at on our own journey. WTR never pushes solutions, never fixes nor advises. WTR is a non-judgemental space that honors each person’s subjective reality. Training our capacity for deep listening and holding space for each other is both an immediate source of healing as well as a building block toward communal resilience.
How I see the Work serving the Great Turning
The Work that Reconnects is serving the Great Turning by supporting each of its three dimensions. WTR supports the emotional resilience of activists. WTR creates healing communities. It allows us to experience new pathways of being with each other, showing up for each other and being with ourselves. WTR opens us to break through socialized patterns of thought that perpetuate the destruction of our world. It supports the inner transformation needed in the Great Turning.
Most importantly, WTR invites us to actively imagine a livable future. This is the foundation of the Great Turning, because we can’t do the hard work to create a livable future if we can’t even imagine its possibility.
WTR allows us to be fully present for the current reality as well as for our feelings, and thus make fully informed decisions. WTR allows us to tap into deep time wisdom - to connect with our ancestral roots and with future beings. It invites us to perceive ourselves in a continuum of time.
The WTR network and it’s body of practices have been continuously growing and adapting.WTR is taking seriously the challenges of white supremacy, systemic racism, ongoing colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, ableism, and other forms of marginalization and power over dynamics. Through the Work that Reconnects I have learned to be on this deeply uncomfortable edge of not knowing what to do with humility and full presence.
Audiences I work with
Adults and young adults
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