Over a long weekend in August, frequent UFE collaborator Luana Morales hosted the Interdepence Restival, an annual gathering she founded, in Western Massachusetts. The focus of the Restival is to restore and bring healing to people working on the front lines of social justice movements.

Interdependence Restival 2025 practitioners and participants. Luana Morales is in the second row to the left of the altar table. Eroc Arroyo-Montano is in the back row, seventh from left.

Morales is the Co-Director / Community Care Weaver for the Movement Sustainability Commons, a project of Resist. She is also a Birth, Death, and Ancestral Healing Arts Practitioner, and regularly co-facilitates UFE’s biannual Trainings of Trainers. I was there as an invited facilitator and practitioner.

Participants at the Restival were a couple dozen organizers in economic justice, racial justice, immigrant rights, queer liberation, and related liberation movements. These organizers are the people who do the day-to-day work of holding organizations together and mobilizing communities to change oppressive conditions. They are called upon to help solve community problems emergent and persistent, to be strong when others are hurting and scared, to find a way through conflicts, and so much more. 

At the Restival, participants came together for intentional rest, to spend time in nature, to engage in facilitated dialogue and circle work together, and to participate in optional sessions with healers from many traditions.

I am grateful to have been a part of the team that worked with movement organizers to bring healing into movement. 🖤