Located among pristine woodlands in the Ryerson historic home in Riverwoods, Il., Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods promotes the importance of nature for nurturing personal and community wellbeing, cultivating creativity, and inspiring learning.
March 16 @ 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm
Initiatives
Health Equity and Nature AcceleratorRemembering the Woods: Ancestral Memory Circle
Remembering the Woods: Ancestral Memory Circle is a guided virtual gathering that invites participants into a space of reflection, remembrance, and racial healing. Rooted in the project Radical Hope in the Woods, this circle honors the deep and complex relationship between Black Americans and the natural world.
Through storytelling, mindfulness, and shared dialogue, participants will explore how the woods served as places of refuge, resistance, and spiritual connection for enslaved ancestors. Drawing from slave narratives, folklore, and oral histories, this experience reframes nature as sacred space of memory, wisdom, and liberation.
Participants will leave this virtual Lunch and Learn with a renewed sense of connection to the land, deeper awareness of ancestral resilience, and an invitation to continue reclaiming nature as a space for rest, belonging, and radical hope.
Together, we will:
-Reflect on ancestral relationships with land and survival
-Engage in grounding practices that reconnect us to nature
-Explore folklore and stories that carried hope and freedom coded
-Begin a journey of collective healing rooted in remembrance
Special thanks to support from Healing Illinois.
Healing Illinois is a racial healing initiative of the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) in partnership with the Field Foundation of IL.
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