Real talk on living joyfully and truly coming home to ourselves-with reflective self-care practices to help us on our interconnected journeys of liberation
Join three friends, three Black women, all teachers in the Plum Village tradition founded by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, sharing their experience of how mindfulness nourishes their sense of belonging and connection with ancestors. Listen to three voices in intimate conversation, touching on the pain and beauty of their families of origin, relationships and loneliness, intimacy and sexuality, politics, popular culture, race, self-care and healing-no subject is out of bounds in this free-flowing, wide-ranging offering of mindful wisdom.
Authors Valerie Brown, Marisela Gomez, MD, and Kaira Jewel Lingo share how the Dharma's timeless teachings support their work for social and racial equity and justice in their work and personal lives. The book offers insights in embodied mindfulness practice to support us in healing white supremacy, internalized racial oppression, and social and cultural conditioning, leading to a firm sense of belonging and abiding joy.

Valerie Brown is a Buddhist-Quaker Dharma teacher, facilitator, and executive coach. A former lawyer and lobbyist, she is co-director of Georgetown's Institute for Transformational Leadership as well as founder and chief mindfulness officer of Lead Smart Coaching. She is an ordained Buddhist Dharma teacher in Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village tradition. She holds a juris doctor from Howard University School of Law.
Marisela B. Gomez, MD, is a community activist, author, public health professional, and physician scientist. She received a BS and MS from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and MD-PhD, and MPH from Johns Hopkins University. She spent 17 years as an activist-researcher in East Baltimore during and after training at the Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine and Public Health. Past writings address social capital and health, disparities in mental health care in incarcerated populations, community organizing and development, and mindfulness practices in organizing. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Kaira Jewel Lingo is a mindfulness and meditation teacher with a lifelong interest in blending spirituality and meditation with social justice. She began practicing mindfulness in 1997 and at the age of 25 she entered a Buddhist monastery and spent 15 years living as a nun under the guidance of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh (then known as Sister Jewel or Chan Chau Nghiem in Vietnamese). She is also a teacher in the Vipassana Insight lineage through Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Today she sees her work as a continuation of the Engaged Buddhism developed by Thich Nhat Hanh as well as the work of her parents and her father's work with Martin Luther King Jr. on desegregating the South. Now based in New York, she teaches and leads retreats internationally.