We Are The Culture Makers
We are the
Culture Makers
A Year of Radical Encouragement + Personal Power Building
This is for the culture makers with big dreams who are here to make things happen
Despite grappling with self-doubt, shame & the negative voices inside your own head.
Wondering if you're worthy, over-giving, questioning if you belong at the table, and feeling like you have to do everything yourself are NOT your natural inclinations.
They're the voice of an unjust culture working through you without your consent.
And...no more.
Let's change the channel.
Let's unlearn this toxic social conditioning
and reaffirm + revalidate ourselves...
...so we can shrink our self-doubt and grow our power.
Personal AND Collective
Hello, Power
We are the culture makers and we are coming for you.
Meet the Team
I'm Kelly Diels [She/Her]
I'm an educator, coach, and culture maker. (My clients will tell you I'm a professional encourager.)
I've written for Jezebel, Salon, and Alternet and been interviewed for Forbes (about being an "XL boss"!).
For the last decade, I've taught culture-makers how to build their personal power and platforms; spoken on stage about change-making leadership and culture-making; and advised feminist organizations.
I'm the founder of We Are The Culture Makers. I designed the curriculum, teach the video lessons, and teach & coach live in the our month-end group calls.
I'm Trevia Woods [She/Her]
I'm a mixed-race woman with Indigenous ancestry and nearly two decades of experience in bodywork, education and community-building. I help women remember their power and build powerful healing practices without culturally or spiritually appropriating.
I facilitate the live Study Group Lessons and facilitate the online group in Mighty Networks.
I'm Ntathu Allen [She/Her]
Hello! Hugs, and Hi. I'm Ntathu Allen, and I am a Writer, Meditation & Yoga Teacher. I help culture makers and leaders tend their nervous systems and their spirits so they can keep personally flourishing while contributing their gifts to our world.
I teach the weekly yoga breathing and meditation sessions.
Our practice is rooted ininclusion + justice
and dismantling all forms of oppression (no white feminism, thankyouverymuch).
We Are The Culture Makers is about power. We are going to learn how to:
- Get free of shame and abuses of power
- Build personal power so we can use it to rise in our careers + lives
- Better spot power dynamics and navigate our positional power
- Steward power responsibly
- Share power
- Network + band together to use power like the Culture Makers we are.
Women + Power
An immersion in relentlessradical encouragement + shame-relief so you can grow and use your culture-making power
We are the Culture Makers
An online, 11-month immersion in radical encouragement, power-building, and growing your culture-making ecosystem of support.
Wrap yourself in 360º and 365 days of Radical Encouragement
Here is the schedule
Please Note:
There are no meetings in July and December
Week 3 is Integration Week - there are no live meetings except Meditations
And yep, everything is recorded so you can dip in and out on your schedule 🙂
Monthly Topics
Shame is actually a COLLECTIVE issue. Women are constantly striving fix 'individual defects' that are actually systemic problems downloaded onto our shoulders. To get free of that, every month we'll do a deep-dive analysis of A Big Issue that women usually think they're doing all wrong. (Spoiler alert: you're not.)
Monthly Video Trainings
PURE JET FUEL. Every month, you'll receive at least three (and sometimes four) video lessons. All the lessons for the month are released together on the first Monday of the month, so you can watch them all at once or pace yourself. Each video is meant to be your dose of Radical Encouragement. Get practical tools and inspiration so you can get out of shame and into power.
Monthly Teaching/Group Coaching with Kelly Diels
Every month, you can attend a 90 minute LIVE teaching/group coaching call with Kelly Diels. She'll re-cap the month's lessons and coach members who volunteer to be in the 'Love Light'. Apply for group coaching spot, get feedback and insightful reframes and advice, share your reflections, set goals, and make personal connections with your fellow culture-makers.
Group Coaching/Teaching Calls with Kelly take place the 4th Thursday of the month at 9am and/or 4pm PST. Drop into either, or both! (And yes, there will be recordings if you can't make it 🙂 )
Study Group Sessions with Trevia Woods
Join Trevia Woods and your peers to watch the lessons together and discuss in a Q+A. Having these 90 min discussion group appointments on your calendar means you've set aside time to actually process the lessons (no more worrying about getting behind!) and then go deeper, with a group Q+A.
The 1st and 2nd Thursdays of each month, at 9am and/or 4pm PST. Drop into either, or both! (Or catch the recording, later.)
LIVE Guided Meditations with Ntathu Allen
Every week, Ntathu Allen leads a LIVE "Return to Love" meditation and yoga breathing session. Each guided meditation is specific to our monthly theme, so you are mindfully and continuously absorbing + reinforcing your new intention and mindset. Also: our work as culture-makers can be challenging. Ntathu offers these sessions so you have a standing date with yourself to rest and replenish.
Fridays at 1pm PST -- or listen later, to the recording.
Co-Working Sessions
Having a standing appointment already scheduled in your calendar to work on things that matter to you is one of the ways we make miracles happen. Join us for the optional co-working sessions every Saturday from noon to 2pm PST.
Mighty Networks Group
One of our measures of success is this: Did each member make one real friend? And, are the members self-organizing? That's the kind of real, deep ecosystem we're trying to grow here. So come on over to the online group and post questions, make requests, offer support, and get to know your like-hearted peers and colleagues in real time. This is how you start building your culture making ecosystem of support.
Integration, Rest & Replenishment
The third week of every month is INTEGRATION WEEK. We set aside this time to integrate what we're learning, and rest and replenish. That means we have no study groups or co-working sessions. Use the time to catch up, reflect and go deeper, or take time to yourself. The Friday meditation sessions will still take plce because this week off from everything else can be an especially good time to refill your cup.
No Meetings or Live Meditations in July and December (video lessons will continue to go out). We value rest and restoration, so we will take a break as a group in July and December.
REPLENISH
Live, weekly meditation & yoga breathing with Ntathu Allen.
So your spirit is tended while you mindfully and continuously absorb + reinforce your new intention and mindset.
Your Live Guided Meditations with Ntathu take place every Friday at 1PM PST. (Or listen later, to the recordings.)
Your 11 Months
Module 1
We Are The Culture Makers.
Learn the T.R.U.E.× framework for building your analysis and shifting your perspective. It's a self-coaching tool you can use to ground yourself, dissolve shame that's NOT YOURS TO CARRY, and get into your power. You'll use this self-coaching tool across the year as the foundation for your power-building and culture-making work.
Module 2
Time.
Maybe you're not being unproductive or managing your time badly. Maybe something else entirely is going on -- and knowing that, plus some new time-tools, will help you move differently in the world. No maybe about it.
Module 3
Power.
There's a reason women are often uncomfortable with power: because it has been used against us. But power doesn't have to be coercive; it can be generative. This month we'll learn to assess power dynamics, shift them, and use new power tools to grow life-giving forms of power so we can use it to change our lives and our culture.
Module 4
Money.
Maybe you don't have a 'money story' (or maybe it's not even relevant!) but there's a serious gender wage gap and an even bigger wealth gap -- both of which are even more acute for women who are racialized or experiencing multiple marginalizations. THAT is usually the reason we're under-earning and not building wealth.
Module 5
Body + Femininity.
Beauty standards in Western culture aren't about aesthetics; they're about power. They're inherently white supremacist, ableist, ageist, sizeist and MISOGYNIST. They also represent the socially acceptable, indirect path to power for women. Ouch. This month you'll get inspiration, tools + strategies for building power DIRECTLY, on your own terms, by liberating yourself (and your social media feed!) from oppressive norms and your own internalized biases. (It's not a coincidence, for example, that once I stopped dieting and put that energy and focus into my work, my career took off.) This is about creativity, strategy and liberation. We're going to navigate bodies + beauty, powerfully, as culture makers. Because you're a subject, not an object.
Module 6
Likeability.
Mandatory likeability is a weapon used against women to prevent us from speaking up and setting boundaries (there's a social penalty for being 'difficult'). At the same time, some women use likeability as a socially acceptable method for building gendered power (witness the rise of 'Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brands' and Ivanka Trump in the 2016 election). This month we'll dissect likeability so we can make deliberate, nuanced, strategic and LIBERATORY decisions about how we show up. We'll put plans in place to undercut possible push-back, and we'll stop feeling bad about our conditioning to be likeable, because it's not our fault. (My resistance game is strong 90% of the time, and even so, I still smile on command. We are all works in progress.)
Module 7
Voice + Visibility.
Nearly every woman I've ever worked with thinks they have a visibility problem. What a strange coincidence. So it's not you, individually. What's actually going on is that we are collectively discriminated against and punished for taking up space and asserting boundaries and we know it. This is not to say, "Welp, let's avoid visibility." Instead, this month's culture making reframe grounds us in how important it is for you to surround yourself with people who will reinforce you, encourage you, lift you, and protect you, so that you get more and more practiced and fortified at expressing yourself -- at home, at work, on social media, and in our wider culture. That's what we're immersing ourselves in this month: reframing visibility, reinforcing each other, and practicing using our voices. Because EVERYTHING changes when women tell the truth about their lives.
Module 8
Relationships + Care.
Caregiving is the glue that holds our world together. Care has been constructed as women's work but it is fundamentally human. It's how we survive and thrive. A world that devalues care is not sustainable. Oh, look! This month we're going to reframe care as a source of power and the thing that's going to save us -- individually, and collectively. Even so, we don't owe our unreciprocated + undervalued emotional labour to asymmetrical relationships or power hierarchies, so we're going to work on tools and strategies for navigating this double-bind with nuance.
Module 9
Energy + Rest.
Managing your energy rather than time; knowing your own energy sources and drains; and protecting your energy for the things that matter to you changes everything. As with time, we can protect our energy; unlike time, we can grow our energy. Also: rest and leisure are political. Your rest creates space for the rest of us to breathe, too.
Module 10
Risk + Failure.
I constantly hear about how women are risk-averse, as though it's a character defect rather than a cultural condition. We are constantly scanning for risk because if we don't, we may not survive. It helps us see around corners and take care of people, which are central qualities of leadership and culture-making. Even so, there are strategies and tools you can use to expand your comfort zone so you can rise and thrive at work, in your relationships, and in our world.
Module 11
Leadership.
So many of the qualities that hold families, workplaces, and entire communities together do not get celebrated as leadership - and maybe fetishizing leadership instead of contribution + collaboration is part of the problem. Even so, to rise in our careers and our culture, we need to get credited for our ideas and secure the resources to manifest visions and complex projects (AKA leadership). This month is about questioning traditional leadership and answering it with something better. Us. #WeAreTheCultureMakers
Get Out of Shame and Into Your Power,
Every Day
FAQs
Reminder...
Shame, negative self-talk + second-guessing yourself? It's not just you. It's not your fault.
It's not a personal psychological defect that only you have. It's about power, and it's a collective injury.
This is what happens to women in an oppressive society that constantly undermines us. And...
We don't have to accept it. We can heal it. Personally, and together. Because we are the culture makers. And this is what we do.
I Trust You With
Power + Resources
Let's immunize ourselves against every negative message and disempowering expectation so we can hold power and use it wisely.
Let's grow our power and create the lives + careers of our dreams.
Let's use our power to build a future in which we all flourish.
Because we are
the culture makers.
An Immersion in Radical Encouragement
+ Power-Building
Epiphanies, Insight + Pure Culture Making Fortification.
No homework. No busy work.
It's literally not possible to fall behind.
- Monthly Culture Making Re-frames of The BIG Issues impacting our lives (eg Time, Money, Power, Relationships, Bodies, Leadership, Caregiving, Likeability, Energy, Rest...)
- Inspiring + Wildly Practical
Video Trainings (3-4 per Month) - Live, Monthly Group Coaching/Teaching Calls with Kelly Diels
- Study Group Sessions led by Trevia Woods in Weeks 1 & 2 of each month
- Live Guided Meditations Each Month
(with yoga breathing + meditation teacher Ntathu Allen) - A Mighty Networks group
where you can get to know each other in real time, and start building an ecosystem of support - A Culture Making Ecosystem of Peer Support
his is your invitation to immerse yourself in the radical encouragement + power-building support you need to fuel your rise.
© 2021 KELLY DIELS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. LEGAL.