Heal Your Way Forward — show up in your humanity.
Lead with empathy.
Heal Your Way Forward Collective is a Black-led peer support, recovery, and antiracist collective dedicated to healing ourselves from systems of oppression, slowing down the urgency of racial justice mobilization to make the work sustainable.
Membership $22/month · Pay as low as $1 · Unlimited scholarships
There is no progress without space to show up as our whole selves. Healing our way forward is not a passive process, it is an act of resistance.
DCC Practice
Sessions & Gatherings
Drop into a practice session, in-person, virtual, or hybrid. Suggested $22 per session. Free for HYWF Collective members. No one is turned away for inability to pay.
12 Week Relational Skills Playground — Conflict is the Teacher
Starts June 2 · Join anytime, replays available · Book clubs, teachings & DCC intensive
A 12-week relational skills playground where conflict becomes the teacher. Includes book clubs, teachings, and a DCC intensive to put your antiracism learning into practice. Part of HYWF Collective membership.
Become a MemberAddiction to Whiteness
Class sessions: June 14 or June 18 · 1pm PT / 3pm CT / 4pm ET
Whiteness is not a people. It is a system of collusion: a set of spoken and unspoken agreements that protect power at the cost of humanity. Like any system that hijacks threat detection, reward pathways, and safety, it functions like an addiction. In this practice group you'll deepen your understanding of the history and impact of whiteness, practice somatic pauses, build common connections, and learn strategies for interrupting and dismantling whiteness within you. Practice. Repetition. New associations, until your nervous system learns a different program.
Sign UpMonthly Basics
4th Friday · 4–5:30pm PT / 7–8:30pm ET
Explore the basics of DCC while building community. Guided exercises emphasize self-connection and practical relating skills you can use right away.
RegisterHow to Say (and Hear!) the Hard Thing
1st Monday · 5–6:30pm PT / 8–9:30pm ET
Practice expressing difficult truths free from blame, and receiving them with grounded, empathetic presence.
RegisterReflect & Request: a Self-Connection Deep Dive
Monthly on the 28th · 9–10:30am PT / 12–1:30pm ET
Slow down the self-connection process, unpack judgments, build awareness of feelings and needs, and shape clear requests for the month ahead.
RegisterRadical Permission to Play
2nd Saturdays · 11am–1pm PT / 2–4pm ET · 3rd Tuesdays · 4–6pm PT / 7–9pm ET
Examine the ways we block joy and play, and translate them into the unmet needs beneath. Sustainable resistance through pleasure.
RegisterFounded in 2017.
Built for the long haul.
Founded by myisha t. hill as Check Your Privilege: and now rooted as Heal Your Way Forward Collective: this community has always been dedicated to the deep, sustained work of healing ourselves from systems of oppression. We integrate neuroscience, mindful self-compassion, and healing justice to help white folx and bodies of culture build the nervous system capacity needed for accountable, long-term liberation work.
We understand that healing oppression is somatic, not just ideological. We reject urgency culture and performative activism. Instead, we trade urgency for momentum, using nervous system regulation, meditation, movement, and community care to break cycles of white fragility, saviorism, and burnout before they begin.
You can't mobilize for liberation from a dysregulated nervous system. This is where we begin.
- Educating ourselves toward liberation: centering Black liberation as the pathway forward
- Honoring our interconnected ancestors: naming the truth of the land we occupy and practicing land back
- Centering the voices of Black Indigenous bodies of culture: amplifying those most impacted by systems of harm
- Dismantling oppression within ourselves: unlearning what we've been conditioned to believe
- Building beloved community: through mindfulness and self-compassion
- Using Direct Compassionate Communication: as the pathway to deepening authentic relationships
- Creating bridges to healing: through art and movement as transformational practices
Care is practice. Not a game.
We're a relational skill playground, a place to put your antiracism learning into practice.
Liberation is a care practice where we work to dismantle the myth of individualism and build the relationships that sustain us through systems designed to keep us separate.
Two pathways.
One collective commitment.
HYWF Collective's programming centers the Collective membership and the Direct Compassionate Communication framework, two interconnected pathways for healing, practice, and liberation.
The HYWF Collective Membership
A hybrid community collectively guiding one another on a journey of individual and collective healing. Action-oriented and practice-based, our Guides provide daily prompts, group sharing, and accountability so you are actually implementing what you're learning.
- Weekly Community Direct Compassionate Communication Classes
- Monthly Liberation Sessions with myisha t. hill, Channdika Thayer, and other Guides
- All-Community Book Club
- Access to The Lounge, our private, intentional container for connection
- Access to the Liberation Library
- Hybrid events, in person and online
- Weekly Substack dispatches: reflections, prompts, and calls to action
- Bodies of Culture, a private space outside the white gaze for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, including Gardening and other subgroups
Direct Compassionate Communication
DCC builds on the foundation of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) with a more embodied, heart-forward commitment to showing up in truth and tenderness. It is not a system or a technique to control outcomes. It is a way of being. A practice. A remembering.
- Group practice sessions, roleplay, scenario practice, intentional dialogue
- DCC for Teams, organizational transformation sprints and ERG sessions
- Leadership support and coaching for shared humanity workplaces
- Transformative and restorative justice integration
- Decolonized NVC lens informed by Meenadchi
Honor your healing.
Join us today.
This isn't just a membership, it's a movement toward change. Grounded community, not perfection. Regular gatherings that hold space for grief, joy, conflict, and rest.
Full Collective Access
Open to all co-conspirators committed to liberation and healing work.
- Access to the HYWF Collective Community
- Weekly Community DCC Classes
- Monthly Liberation Sessions with myisha t. hill, Channdika Thayer, and other Guides
- All-Community Book Club
- Access to the Liberation Library
- Hybrid events, in person and online
- Weekly Substack dispatches and member resources
- Exclusive content and actionable resources from myisha t. hill
Collective + Private Space
For historically marginalized communities and organizations who have faced systemic inequality.
- Everything in The HYWF Collective
- Bodies of Culture, a private space outside the white gaze for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color
- Gardening and other affinity subgroups
- Weekly Substack dispatches and member resources
Pay what you can, memberships accepted as low as $1. We offer unlimited scholarships and never turn anyone away for lack of funds. Apply here.
Direct Compassionate
Communication
DCC is deeply aligned with Nonviolent Communication (NVC), developed by Marshall Rosenberg, building on its foundation with a more embodied, heart-forward commitment. It centers honest expression and empathetic listening, weaving in transformative and restorative justice practices and the liberatory lens of Decolonized NVC by Meenadchi.
In the midst of transformative justice processes, dialogue can be tender, raw, and charged with deep personal and systemic truth. DCC gives us a way to move through these moments with both clarity and care, honest without being harsh, present without needing to fix.
DCC is not a system, a hierarchy, or a technique to control outcomes. It is a way of being. A practice. A remembering.
"We're not trying to 'win' communication, we're trying to be human together. And from that space, healing becomes possible."
Direct
Invites us to be brave enough to name what's real, to say the hard things with clarity and integrity, and to receive truth without defensiveness.
Compassionate
Rooted in empathy and a deep respect for the humanity in ourselves and each other. No one is left outside the circle of care.
Communication
Strengthens our collective resilience through real-life practice, roleplay, scenario practice, and intentional dialogue that moves through tension toward transformation.
Relational
Encourages openness, curiosity, care, and repair, allowing us all to take ownership of our part in building beloved community.
Heal Your Way Forward
on Substack
Our Substack is where the liberation journey lives between gatherings, reflections, resources, body literacy, nervous system regulation, and calls to action from myisha t. hill and the Collective.
Subscribe to support the work and get full access to member-exclusive content, long-form essays, and dispatches that go deeper than anywhere else.
Subscribe on Substackhealyourwayforward
.substack.com
Support the work. Get full access.
- Long-form reflections and liberation essays
- Body literacy and nervous system content
- Paid subscriber-exclusive dispatches
- Calls to action and community resources
- Updates from myisha and the Collective
Meet your Community Guides
myisha is the founder and heart of Heal Your Way Forward Collective, a writer, life coach, healer, and activist guiding others in healing their relationships to systems of oppression. Her work integrates neuroscience, ancestral wisdom, and healing justice. She is the author of Heal Your Way Forward and creator of the Direct Compassionate Communication framework.
A Black and Japanese American woman born in Okinawa and raised in Los Angeles. Aiko is a mother of three, mindfulness teacher, writer, speaker, and consultant trained by UCLA's Mindfulness Awareness Research Center. She has devoted her life to teaching humans how to mindfully confront suffering as part of dismantling oppressive systems.
A creative entrepreneur, multi-medium artist, and business coach who spent 15 years in the Bay Area focusing on youth, women, and staff empowerment at organizations like the YMCA and Mission Girls. Mitzi became a committed co-conspirator with HYWF in 2019, supporting people through human-centered, creative tools for healing.
Beginning her NVC journey in 2008 training with founder Marshall Rosenberg, Jen has been dedicated to the practice, facilitation, and education of NVC since. She collaborates with the HYWF Collective to build fortitude and resiliency in liberation movements through authentic, compassionate communication.
Channdika brings her wisdom and lived experience to the Collective as a liberation guide and Monthly Liberation Session facilitator alongside myisha t. hill. Her presence holds space for the full humanity of everyone in the room, grounding the work in authenticity, care, and collective accountability.
Dr. Yulinda Renee Rahman brings a depth of scholarly and embodied wisdom to the HYWF Collective. Her expertise grounds the Collective's healing justice framework, weaving together academic rigor, lived experience, and a commitment to liberation-centered care for the whole community.
Connect with our Guides inside the Collective community
The people behind the work
A small, mighty team holding the operations, care, and stewardship of the Collective.
What members are saying
"myisha leads with empathetic accountability, creating a supportive and generative space for navigating whiteness."
— Whitney"HYWF supports me in showing up as my whole authentic self with self-empathy, planting seeds that lead toward collective liberation."
— Angie H."My relationships have transformed as a result of being, healing, and practicing in community."
— Sarah L."HYWF is a community where I feel accepted, I feel accountable, and creates the space to share and learn."
— Lori B."HYWF does an AMAZING job at holding space for everyone AND calling people in. Great opportunity to hear different perspectives."
— Jessie B."myisha's commitment to this work and to honoring everyone's humanity is something everyone can learn from."
— Rochael A.No one turned away
for lack of funds.
We believe access to the work of liberation should be for all. We follow the Green Bottle Method, a sliding scale developed by Alexis J. Cunningfolk, and invite white bodies to give at or above their means so others can join free.
We accept memberships as low as $1 and offer unlimited scholarships. No one is ever turned away for inability to pay. Mutual aid is woven into everything we do.
Apply for a ScholarshipReparations in Action
When you engage with Black-led spaces, you're not just supporting a cause, you're contributing to the healing and restoration of a community that has been systematically oppressed. This is more than education. It's a radical shift toward healing.
Unlimited scholarships available. Pay what you can, we accept as little as $1.
Donate to the Collective
Heal Your Way Forward
The Co-Conspirator's Guide to an Antiracist FutureThis isn't just a book. It's a guide, a mirror, and a call-in for white and white-identifying folks who are ready to move beyond performative allyship and into co-conspiratorship rooted in radical accountability, deep compassion, and collective healing.
Written by myisha t. hill, activist, author, and founder of Check Your Privilege. This book meets you where you are and challenges you to grow, feel, reflect, and act with integrity.
- Why your white tears aren't the end, but could be the beginning
- How to listen without defensiveness and act without centering yourself
- What to do when you ghost the work (yes, again)
- How to stay in right relationship even when it gets messy
- What it takes to create a reparative, antiracist future
"This book shows anyone interested in human liberation the way to heal, to hope, and to become true advocates and co-conspirators, not just for justice and change, but for the future of who we are as humans."
— Anna Paquin, Actress and ProducerQuestions, answered with care.
Quick answers about our Black-led peer support work, membership pricing, Direct Compassionate Communication, and how reparations show up in everything we do.
What does “Black-led peer support, recovery & liberation” actually mean?
Who is HYWF Collective for?
How much does membership cost? Are scholarships available?
What is Direct Compassionate Communication (DCC)?
How is DCC different from regular NVC?
What do I actually get inside the Collective?
How is this “reparations in action”?
How do I support the work if I can't join right now?
Ready to heal your way forward?
Join the Collective, practice DCC, subscribe on Substack, or donate to support liberation education and healing justice.