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This profile has not been updated since Feb 22, 2020.
You are here: Home / Users / Sunshine Jones

Sunshine Jones

Sunshine Jones has been involved in social, racial, economic and eco-justice activism her entire adult life. She discovered the work of Joanna Macy almost 40 years ago now and began integrating Joanna’s Despair and Empowerment work into her peace and justice group work in the early 80s. Joanna’s naming “the heart that break opens can hold the entire universe” was a transformative moment for her, as it was the first time her pain for the suffering in the world and of Gaia was offered up as interrelated to her depth of connection to the web of life. She came to trust the intelligence within her heart break. As a mother, grandmother of five, partner to her beloved wife, lover of Peace, Mercy, Justice, Heart-Centered Living and Gaia, Sunshine seeks to live awake and as a healing force in a time of great peril and emergent possibilities. Her offerings to the world are grounded in a creation spirituality, and inter- spiritual orientation and she brings years of experience in sacred activist circles. Sunshine seeks to foster an intersectional decolonized consciousness in her The Work that Reconnects group facilitation and cherishes working with both a co-facilitator and with the innate intelligences of each person in the group. Her forty plus years of facilitation include: integrating WTR teachings and processes into her group work as a Marriage and Family therapist, Relationship and Heart Math Coach; group work as a community activist and solidarity worker; three decades of facilitating seasonal Gaian ritual circles; and over fifteen years of mentoring and facilitating LGBTQI youth groups. Sunshine has a particular passion for intergenerational activism on behalf of our shared Gaian community of life.

Why I am called to facilitate the Work

I have experienced for myself and witnessed others’ transformative journey through pain into inspired action through engaging with the Work that Reconnects. As we collectively face into a time of global life systems emergency or as some refer to humanity’s planetary initiation, as an elder, I am called to serve life through bringing this work to the many circles I connect with and especially to young people on the front lines today who need support in metabolizing what is before them. I feel poised through my life work for collective liberation through conscious activism, my academic background in systems and skills as systems therapist, my training in grief and individual and collective trauma and my inter-spiritual orientation to “be with” people as they embrace all that they love in our precious life on Earth, face into and grieve the great collective wounds of racism, ethnic cleansing, mass poverty and what we have done to our Mother and open themselves to Deep time, with its many vast resources and new ways of seeing. In my experience, these resources – being re- sourced—nourish us in such a way that we can strong-heartedly "be with” this time of great passage and collectively and courageously go forth knowing we are each given what is our to offer a world in great need of fierce-hearted love and reparative healing salve. “Some of us hospice workers, some of us midwives,” (Joanna) all of us needed.

How I see the Work serving the Great Turning

The teachings and exercises offered through the Work that Reconnects with its collective processes breaks through the obedience to, the deadening of and isolating individualism of Industrial Growth Society with its pillaging of people and our planet through business as usual. Through the Work that Reconnect processes we can reawaken to and heal those parts within ourselves and in the collective that have been buried, exiled, othered. We rediscover our larger ecological selves with its multiplicity of intelligences and reconnect with our creativity and with our human and more than human siblings, recognizing the vital gifts of diversity. Re-sourced, we claim our joy and our courage to stand with and for all we love and for that which we have exiled. We can then choose to take part in the Great Turning toward regenerative and equitable ways of living. Together, we are emboldened to lean into emergent possibilities for our whole earth community of life during this time of Great Unraveling. We free up the very feedback loop necessary to preserve the Gaian life that courses through each living being.

Audiences I work with

Specific groups you work with (i.e. activist, youth, community-based, religious, academic, etc.)
I am passionate about working intergenerationally and with young people. Penny Andrews, my co-facilitator, and I are in the process of developing WTR workshops for faith communities in our area and have plans for an upcoming workshop for a Unitarian Universalist Congregation. I am also planning to offer a WTR workshop for Grandparents and/or Parents on what it means to be raising “children of the passage” (Joanna). From my experience of a life time engaged in social and eco-justice activism, I will be offering WTR to activist groups.

Background & Training

Background & training in the Work That Reconnects

  • The Work that Reconnects (2012, 5 days)
    Location: Madison, Wi
    Facilitated by: Joanna Macy, Kathleen Rude
  • WTR Facilitator Development Group (2018, 4 days)
    Location: Online
    Facilitated by: Lydia Harutoonian
    : 2-hour sessions 2 times a month. At present, approx. 32 hours of sessions I have attended live or viewed and studied.
  • Alive and Connected in the Great Turning (using music and exercises) (2019, 0.5 days)
    Location: Madison, Wi
    Facilitated by: Gretchen Sleicher & Annie Zylstra
  • Embodying Purpose: Joanna Macy Book Club on Active Hope with the Purpose Institute (2018, 0.5 days)
    Location: Online
    Facilitated by: Joanna Macy and Jonathan Gustin
    3 sessions (2 hours each)
  • WTR Practice Group (2019, 1 days)
    Location: Madison, Wi
    Facilitated by: Penny Andrews and Sunshine Jones –since January 2020 in transition to more people stepping forward to facilitate
    June 2019 -February 2020 and ongoing. Penny Andrews and myself have been co- facilitating 2-hour practice sessions once a month. Members of our practice group volunteer to lead various exercises in Coming Back to Life. Penny and I are both available for mentoring members if desired.

Other relevant skills & experiences

Creation Spirituality Study and Practice Group called Gaian Circle. Through readings, video and practices we explored the teachings of Joanna Macy (World as Self, World as Lover) Mathew Fox, Brian Swimme, Thomas Berry, Deep Ecologists, Miriam MacGillis 1990 –1995. We met in Madison, Middleton and Hazel Green Wisconsin 1x monthly for 5 years

Experience facilitating WTR events & workshops

Work That Reconnects workshops I have facilitated

  • (Intergenerational) Reconnecting Across the Generations through our shared joy, pain and promise. (2016, 1 days)
    Location: Madison, Wi
    Facilitated by: Various youth mentors
    I used WTR as the foundation and we moved through the spiral throughout the day using- exercises and adapted teachings (for specifically working with teens) integrated with the theatrical arts.
  • Gaian Work that Reconnects (2019, 0.5 days)
    Location: Madison, Wi
    Facilitated by: Yes
  • Work that Reconnects Regional Hub Gathering (2019, 1 days)
    Location: Madison, Wi
    Facilitated by: Penny Andrews
    We moved through the spiral with teachings and exercises as well as did additional workshops on the evolving edges of the Work.
  • Work that Reconnects Youth Climate Summit (2019, 0.2 days)
    Location: Madison, Wi
    Facilitated by: Penny Andrews
    Introductory 2-hour session

Experience facilitating other events & workshops

A sampling: Facilitating women liberation collectives (70s); Domestic violence support groups and women in transition groups (70s and again in the 80s); Despair and Empowerment and Envisioning group (80s); Parenting groups (90-93); Lesbian Parents Group (various topics) 90-94; Lay Minister at Unitarian Universalist Congregation ; Grief circles, Family rites of passage group, Couple relationship groups (through my therapy practice); Gaian Ritual Group, 4x a year for 32 years; Parents of LGBTQ identified youth group, LGBTQ youth “heart, art and activism” group 10 years of facilitation and co-facilitation and 15 years LGBTQ youth mentorship between 2002-2017; Ego to Essence Emergence Groups, 3x 2014-2018

I have integrated WTR practices into my Grief Circles, my Gaian Ritual Group, and my work with LGBTQ youth and have used the movement of the spiral in all three. I also offer individual practices from WTR in my other activist groups when in integrity with the process and WTR, always acknowledging the source.

(WTR facilitation in above answer) In my WTR facilitation I bring an intersectional, anti-oppression and trauma sensitive orientation and I work collaboratively with a co-facilitator. I deeply value the intelligence and heart wisdom of each person in a circle while also seeking to center voices that have been marginalized. One of my strengths is my attunement to the field energy and openness to shift as needed while also holding structure. Another area of strength is my practice of returning to open-hearted curiosity when we come up to an unknown and my trust in the intelligence of the group as it arises. Of great import to my life is accessibility and my commitment to making my offerings in WTR accessible either through gift economy or donation basis.

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User Info

WTR Facilitator since 1900
Languages served: English
Other languages: Spanish
Location: 4333 Crawford Drive, Madison, WI 53711, USA
Age: 70
Contact info
  • Email: [email protected]
  • Tel: 608-4455982
  • Email: [email protected]
  • Tel: 608-4455982
  • Email: [email protected]

The Work That Reconnects Network is a fiscally sponsored project of Inquiring Systems Inc., a tax-exempt 501 (c) (3) nonprofit corporation. EIN 94-2524840. All donations are tax-deductible.

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