inside Brushwood

The Work is Love: Showing Love to Our Community Programs Team

By Ashley Cullen-Williams

I have to admit something—teamwork hasn’t always been my thing. In the past, I didn’t have strong teams around me. I didn’t experience collaboration as something life-giving. If I’m honest, I resisted it. I thought it slowed things down. I thought it made things messy. I thought it required more energy than it returned.

Then I came to Brushwood.

And something changed.

Walking the trails, watching the trees through the seasons, has changed how I understand connection.

A forest does not rush its becoming. It honors cycles.

There is a season for planting, a season for growth, a season for shedding, and a season for stillness. Still beneath every visible change, the roots remain intertwined. Nutrients are shared. Protection is offered. The system sustains itself because it is connected.

No tree thrives alone.

That is what I’ve witnessed in our Community Programs staff.

Like winter roots below frozen ground, much of their work happens unseen—planning, adapting, checking in, preparing, supporting one another when the days feel long. In spring, their ideas bloom into programs that welcome young people and families to explore creativity. In summer, they hold space for growth and joy outdoors. In fall, they harvest lessons learned and plant seeds for what’s next.

There is a rhythm to it.

A trust in the process.

A willingness to show up for each season without ego.

And this feels like Brushwood’s season.

A season to anchor in our mission.

A season to intervene when the community needs call us forward.

A season to convene partners and neighbors around a mutual purpose.

A season to model what healing, justice, and environmental connection can look like in practice.

A season to support—steadily, consistently, with care.

Our Community Programs staff embody this season. They are rooted enough to anchor. Courageous enough to intervene. Open enough to convene. Clear enough to model. Steady enough to support.

They have changed my understanding of teamwork. Healthy collaboration does not drain you—it fortifies you. It makes you more resilient in harsh climates. It assures that when one branch bends, the forest still stands.

This February, as we talk about love, I’m thinking about love as commitment. Love as consistency. Love as collective flourishing.

To our Community Programs staff: Abbey, Jess K, Jess R, and Eddie,  thank you for being interconnected. Thank you for capturing our story; committing to people; creating transformative experiences; and always being curious with care!

Thank you for tending the soil even when no one is watching. 

Thank you for helping this community not only survive its seasons but flourish through them.

As bell hooks reminds us, “Love is an action, never simply a feeling.”

And your work is love in action. 

When the Land Speaks on the World’s Biggest Stage: Super Bowl Reflections

By Ashley Cullen-Williams

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance wasn’t just a musical moment — it was a reminder that land holds memory.

The imagery of sugarcane fields immediately evoked the Caribbean’s colonial past. Sugar cane is not a neutral crop. It represents forced labor, extraction, and economies built through enslavement and exploitation. By centering this landscape on one of the world’s biggest stages, Bad Bunny invited viewers to sit with the reality that culture and wealth are often rooted in histories of land and labor.

One of the most striking choices was that the “plants” on the field weren’t props at all — they were people. Human bodies became the landscape. What could have been a limitation turned into a powerful metaphor: the land has always been shaped, worked, and sustained by people. Nature is not separate from humanity — it is inseparable from it.

Layered into the performance were visible power lines and infrastructure — subtle, but intentional. The grid represents modern dependence, extraction, and control: who gets power, who loses it, and whose land is sacrificed to sustain systems far away. These lines cut through natural landscapes just as colonial and industrial systems have long disrupted Indigenous and island ecosystems.

Together, the sugar cane, the people-as-land, and the power grid told a fuller story. Land is farmed. People are used. Energy is extracted. And yet — culture survives. Community persists. Joy and resistance still take up space.

At Brushwood, we understand land as a teacher. This performance echoed that truth. When people are treated as props, the land suffers. When land is overexploited, people suffer too. Healing — ecological, cultural, and communal — begins when we remember that people, land, and power are deeply connected.