We’re delighted to feature Tecca Thompson, sharing the story of Safe Space Circle, an eight-week program for children that grew out of a meeting with community crisis responders who were concerned about dynamics that were negatively impacting the children living in their housing complex.
The Circle Way provided some funding support for this initiative, and as we’re in our year-end fundraising campaign, we invite your contributions to help us continue our work growing more circle practitioners accessing this essential practice, more circle initiatives unequivocally affirming turning to one another, and more circle stories from across the world.
English captions are available on the video
Video transcript:
Diane Jordan:
Good morning, everyone. Thank you so very much for being here today. I am joining from Cincinnati, Ohio, where the sun is sort of cloudy. We're going to have a lot of rain today, but that's all right, the brightness is going to come from all of you. So I will be your moderator today introducing you to our wonderful storyteller, Tecca Thompson. So Tecca, as you prepared to share your story with everyone, could you first tell us a story about who you are in the world? Just who are you in the world today?
Tecca Thompson:
I would love to tell you a story. I love showing up in story. So exciting. So I'm going to start from here. If we were in-person, this would be my talking piece today, it's a little, pink Cadillac, and I use this often as a talking piece because it reminds me of my grandfather, my grandfather and my whole family. My grandfather brought his wife and they all came to Mansfield, Ohio during the Great Migration, but they were headed to Detroit, actually, and they were coming from Mississippi. They were headed to Detroit and somehow someone got sick and they stopped in Mansfield. Some of the brothers went on, some of the sisters went on, but my grandfather and my grandfather landed in Mansfield, Ohio.
What my grandfather did in Mansfield was he became the hub of our family. So what he did was he would bring family members up from the South and they would stay in his house, either until they had enough money to purchase their own home or build a home, and then they would go out and then he would bring another family. So he became the hub of our entire family. I love to share his story because my grandfather was this natural storyteller who could captivate audiences and bring them in, and just pull them into him just by telling his stories. No matter where he went, people would crowd around to hear his stories, and that's my lineage. That's where I come from, so story lives in me.
But my grandfather had this huge personality in the 50s and he was driving around Mansfield in a pink, drop top DeSoto Cadillac. My grandfather was the picture of “look at me”, but the resiliency behind that was that he worked in a tire factory, but it was a way my grandfather drove around to say, I have this great big personality. He wore a hat, he wore suits, he smelled good, he smoked a cigar, and he was just a whole vibe in a statement, but it was him thumbing his nose up at the ideal that Black folks could not be their own resources. They had a family garden, he had provided a way for everyone to have these houses, and they were thriving during the 50s. So it was like, who is this Black man, six foot tall, driving around our city with this drop top? So he showed up in a very big way.
My grandmother on the other hand was very quiet, very creative, and she was a natural space holder. My grandparents owned six homes of their own and my grandfather used to carry two wallets. That's my legacy, six houses and two wallets. It's a legacy of abundance. He carried two wallets, one because he had ones, fives, and tens, and twenties, and in the other one fifties and hundreds in his other wallet, so there was abundance there.
So I love to start with that story because there was a time when I couldn't tell stories, my stories were locked inside of my body, but I had to find a way. It's like you have this gift that God has given you, you know that's what you're called to the earth to do, stand on stages and tell stories, but it's locked inside of your body. It was very painful. My grandmother was a space holder. She had hospice for people in the community. When I learned that my grandfather, that they had six houses, I always thought my grandfather acquired them. But no, my grandmother actually acquired some of these houses through her space holding when people passed away, they gave her the house.
So I am a storyteller and a space holder, those are my God-given superpowers. The interesting thing is that when I was growing up, I was kept separate away from my grandparents because my mom and dad had a messy divorce. So I didn't really grow up with my grandparents, but during the pandemic, and we slowed way, way down, my ancestors came to me and said, "Look, we see this in you and this is who you are." So here I am today and I said that I was going to tell the story of these glasses. Anytime you see me, I'm going to show up in a big way because I'm my grandfather's child. So I'm going to have on some big glasses, some colorful earrings, and some big hair because it's in me to show up in that way because that's the way he showed up when he was driving around in his pink Cadillac in Mansfield.
So I'm a storyteller and a space holder among some of the things that I do. I hold space for Black and women of color unapologetically. I think it's a gift to humanity that when we can hold space for people who have been othered in a way, and Black women have their own way of the way we walk through the world, when we can hold healing space for them, they can show up in their fullest capacity in the world, and that's what we need. As we move to the next place in humanity, we need everyone showing up in their most authentic self with their full powers. Sorry about that, y'all.
So that is why I hold that space, but also hold the same space for first responders, crisis workers, and folks who work in the margins with the people who are in the margins. I hold that same healing space for those folks as well. So that's my story of how I'm showing up in the world right now.
Diane Jordan:
Thank you so much, Tecca. So we all were enthralled with hearing, reading the stories of the work that you're doing in community. So could you tell all of us how you arrived at the idea of circling with girls in the housing community?
Tecca Thompson:
So the project that I did was a Safe Space Circle at the Legacy Pointe Housing, I want to say Complex. It's not a project, it's not a project, it's apartments that anyone can rent. But how I got there was that I was doing space holding for a group of ladies who actually live in the housing complex in Legacy Pointe, Columbus, Ohio. Legacy Pointe, just to give you a little bit of the history, is in Poindexter Village. In the 1940s, again during the Great Migration, Poindexter Village was the second housing project that was ever developed in the United States, the first one in Columbus, and it was a response to all of the Black families that were moving to the North from the South. But it wasn't like when you think of housing projects today, you think, oh, this is a place where folks with low income are residing and all of the things that come with that. But back then, before Legacy, before Poindexter Village, the projects were built, Black folks were migrating to that area, called a Blackberry Patch, and they were thriving.
So this housing complex has a rich, healthy history of thriving Black families, hardworking Black families, where Black businesses were also thriving. They were artists and activists, and just a wealth of good things happening in that complex. Well, in 2014, they tore their 35 buildings across 27 acres. They demolished all of the buildings except for two. Urban Institute partnered with the city and they wanted to kind of bring back the legacy of Poindexter Village, so they built two housing complexes. However, the area is nothing like it used to be. There's a lot of violence and a lot of crime in the area, the Urban Institute, and there are many people in the community that hold on to that legacy of what was there before, and they're so proud of where they came from, and so a lot of them live in the housing complex.
I got there because when they first opened, it's now called Legacy Pointe, shortly after they opened, they had an incident of violence where 92 families were impacted. It involved some gun violence. No one lost their life, but it was a trauma. In Columbus, they have a trauma response team called Columbus Care Coalition. So what Columbus Care Coalition wanted to do was take residents from inside of Legacy Pointe, train them to respond to trauma within the complex. I was working with those four women to help them with some nervous system regulation so that when they responded to the community, and the trauma and the violence and the things that were going on, that they could come back and regulate themselves.
Through that relationship, I've been working with them for two years, we decided that the children in the apartment complex needed something. So we began to, with the help of Tifani Kendrick, the case manager and building manager, we began to come up with this idea of creating a program for the girls over the summer because they were starting to show some of the signs of what was happening around them, which is violence and conflict amongst these young, little girls. So we said, "Let's do a program," and they invited me along to do a Safe Space Circle within the program because we met with these girls for four hours every Wednesday for nine weeks. My piece was in the middle of a larger program. We like to say that we use collective facilitation because we brought in all these different people to pour into these girls, but I got the chance to actually introduce them to circle and to some of the concepts of circle, and it was amazing.
Diane Jordan:
Thank you so very much. Just so exciting. So what are some of the stories that you have learned over the last eight weeks? I think you had four-hour meetings. Could you just share some, and I think you brought some pictures with you, so if you'd like to share the pictures now too, but we'd love to hear the stories associated with the time you spent with the girls, some of the ahas that you had, they had. Just bring that experience to life for us.
Tecca Thompson:
Okay, and you know what, before I do that, I want to talk about two things. One, Aminah Robinson, I don't know if any of you all know, but she was an artist that came out of Columbus, Ohio, and she lived in Poindexter Village. I mean, she is amazing. She was amazing. She's just an example of the people who were coming out of Poindexter Village. She would capture the moments of Black love in community through her art and she would share that art as a way of showing the richness of her community. She loved, loved, loved her community, and she wanted that to show through her art.
One of the projects you'll see in the PowerPoint that I prepared, we had someone come from the Museum of Cultural Center, which is right in Legacy Pointe, and we made these books out of paper bags because one of Aminah Robinson's things is that you can make art out of anything, there's nothing that can ever be wasted. So we made these beautiful books with the girls out of a paper bag and it was really quite fun. So that is an example of the collective facilitation that we did with the girls.
I'm going to start my PowerPoint and share some of the pictures and some of the stories and then talk about some of the ups and downs and some of the things that just kind of blew me away as well. So I'm going to share my screen and we will get started here with some of these pictures. All right, here we go. Maybe. There we go.
So of course, you've all seen this picture, but this is where it started. I wanted to create a space that drew the girls in and through everyone, most of the folks on the call, we were able to do that. This is where some of the funding went, or most of the funding, we created this space that the girls could have as the center and the focus. I believe that places shape identity and imagination and understanding, and that is really what we wanted to cultivate. So this was our circle and this is where we went, and the girls just love this carpet. It was very cool to see them.
So here we are in formal circle. A lot of times our circle looks like this. That is Ms. Tifani, I had to step away for a minute, so she stepped in and we were having a discussion. It's so interesting, the talking piece. For some of these girls it's the first time ever being in circle, and so if there wasn't a talking piece, they'd be like, "Uh-uh. Where's the talking piece? We need to have the piece." So it was really a great experience to introduce them to some of the practices of circle.
I believe that what happened over the eight weeks, and I say nine weeks because we did a week of orientation, is that through the consistent coming to the carpet, coming to the circle, we began to build this fabric of safety and intentionality, but the girls began to expect it, they knew. So it created a ritual that I believe helped them to express themselves more and to really feel that, hey, this is a safe space for us to be in.
I don't know why, this is one of my favorite pictures this summer and every time I see it I get a little emotional because for me it just brought back memories of being at my grandmother's house because we always had to take our shoes off. But in the taking off of the shoes at the door, I knew viscerally that I was safe here. So when I walked over to the door, because this is right at the door, and saw all the shoes, it just brought back so many memories. I was kind of reminiscing and thinking that these girls must feel safe here because they come in and they take their shoes off. So this was one of my favorite pictures of the summer, was all of our shoes at the door. Those are my dirty, white shoes right there.
So this is Shelbi Toone, this is what I was telling you about. So sometimes circle looked like this. It was very dynamic. We would go in and out of circle from the carpet, it would be in and out and moving through. So this was one of our guest facilitators that came to hold the circle space for our girls and she brought, over here you see all of these beautiful materials to make these books from just scraps and buttons and all of these really cool things, but in her presentation also helping the girls to understand you are legacy, you are a part of this rich history that has happened on this land. As you can see, they were all in. They loved it, absolutely loved it.
So for that day, you can't see it, but there's the Sankofa up here, that was my talking piece, just reminding the girls to go back and get the lessons from the past. Then of course, this was my book and the girls got this little card about Aminah Robinson. They learned the history of that and the land, and it was a very beautiful day, and fun for the girls too because they got to make their books and they were all in every minute of the presentation.
So these are my girls. I teach unarmed self-defense, empowerment self-defense, and I was trained last summer with 13 other Black women. It was a project to increase the number of women of color instructors so that we could go into the community and offer these classes, empowerment self-defense, to women who, one, are the most likely to be victimized, but also the least likely to have a class. So in addition to the circle that I was doing this summer, I was also doing a community give back because I received a scholarship to go to this program. So this summer I offered this class inside of our circle, but all summer long I was doing classes in the community for free or low cost. So here I am, this was after our class. Their T-shirts say, "Empowered and worth defending." They earned those T-shirts through completing the class, which was also a gift from the funding that we received, so you all helped us to purchase those shirts.
But the significance of the shirts is this was our community day, this was our give back day to the Poindexter community, and so we had the girls wear their shirt as a symbol of our circle and leadership that they were learning within the circle because the entire program was called Legacy Leadership Program. My Safe Space Circle was inside of that. So what happened when we went out into the community? They were leaders within the community. Here they are with their shirts on out. We gave out over a hundred book bags that were supplied to us by various donors. So lots of folks from the east side of Columbus, and of course everyone in the apartment complex came out and we just had a fun day, but our girls were out there leading and showing everyone what they learned in the circle.
Then we did another community day and we had life-sized chess, I don't have a picture of that, and again, some of the elders from the apartment came down and you could see our girls sitting at the table playing chess with everyone in the community. It was quite a beautiful thing to say and I believe that that was an extension of circle.
We did a journaling exercise one day and I asked them to journal in their journal what was their hope for the school year. And one of the little girls, she asked me how to spell expelled. So what that said to me was very telling that these girls in this circle have behavior problems, because her hope was that she didn't get expelled this year, but we didn't see any behaviors like that in our circle because we had these expectations and the circle held us in those expectations. We had problems, but we repaired them within the circle and we gave them the skills. We used a heart-to-heart kind of iMessage ways that we talked to each other. We gave each other physical roses one night when we had ruptures in community where they had to apologize to one another and also give each other affirmations.
So them going out into community, I think, and showing up the way that they did was just a reflection of everything that they learned. Again, they felt safe because we didn't see some of the behaviors that I know that they were having. It was a very affirming space. When I talked to Sarah before, I was explaining to her that this environment that these girls live in, it was very challenging. We had during our circle time girls who were dealing with housing insecurity within their families. So some weeks we would have girls not show up because their housing was in jeopardy. In one session, we had four girls have to kind of navigate raids that happened in their homes, four separate girls, two sisters and then two other separate girls. So that's three raids that happened, but they still showed up.
We didn't talk about those things in circle, they didn't bring those things up, and I feel like we just didn't have enough time to cultivate where they could share those things. But what was very present to me is they kept showing up and they kept bringing their smiles and they kept bringing their hugs. So whatever was happening on the outside, again, this became a haven where they could come and be affirmed. You are creative, you are beautiful, you are smart, you are legacy. You're the next leaders in this community, and we celebrated our girls.
This was halfway through. So we had a Sunday, we celebrated on this day, it was Sundays, and this was one of my little favorites. She was sitting next to me in circle one day and I hadn't had my feet done, my pedicure, and so my feet were looking a little rough. She looked down and she was like, "What's wrong with your feet?" She was like, "What is wrong with your feet?" I was like, "Okay, little girl." I was like, okay, it's all in love, so of course I had to add her. But this day was very fun too, we allowed them to make their own sundaes, and they sundaes were outrageous. Just whatever was on the counter, they put on their sundaes because it was available to them.
I don't have any pictures of our graduation, and that's kind of the end of the pictures. I don't have any pictures of our graduation, but the girls loved the carpet so much that what we ended up doing with the last little bit of funding that we had was we gave every girl a small carpet that looked exactly the same as the one that they had been sitting on all circle. They also got to keep the meditation cushions to take with them. So when we presented them with their carpet, it was like, oh my gosh, almost every single girl said, "Is that for me? I get to take a carpet home with me?" They were really appreciative and were excited to take that home.
We laid the carpet out for our graduation ceremony, and even though we didn't have formal circle, the girls, two things happened when they came in, they were hugging and embracing one another. It was the sweetest thing. When their friends came in, they would run up and hug them. The next thing that I was like, oh... My camera died, y'all. Y'all know I would've been snapping, but my camera died, and it was okay because I was able to be fully, fully, fully present in the moment without worrying about trying to capture the moment. But the other thing is that the carpet was out and they ran to the carpet and they laid on the carpet, and they rolled on the carpet, and they had pillow fights on the carpet before our dinner was served.
So the aha moments for me, what I learned in doing this circle, our girls were ages, I'm want to say we had some second-graders all the way up to some fifth or sixth, seventh, eighth-graders, and sometimes even older girls, because our circle grew. It was not closed, it was open. So we had 10 girls from the beginning, a consistent number for several weeks, and then it exploded to 16 girls, 17 girls, at one point in time we had 20 girls on the roster. It was something that they wanted to come and be a part of. What we were also present to was that the boys were outside of the window and they're like, "We need a circle too. We want to be a part of this."
I sent along updates almost weekly for a while, and then I started to get nervous because our circle hardly ever looked like a circle. There were times when we were in a formal circle and it was good, it was amazing, it was centering for the girls, but oftentimes we were in this organic kind of circle that was in and out and in and out. I just had to let it be. I had to let go, and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm going to be in trouble with my friends because we're not in a circle. We're all over the place. So I had to let that all go, but as I stepped back in my letting go, I noticed that circle was happening outside of circle. Come on, y'all, is that beautiful or what? It was amazing. That blew my mind. I could see that they were living what they were learning outside of the circle and also inviting people in, people who weren't in our circle, inviting them in through their engagement with them, the principles that they were learning. So it was just a really juicy, fun thing to watch evolve.
I would say one of the challenges is that my age, I'm getting older and I couldn't keep up. I couldn't keep it, it was a lot, four hours every Wednesday. I went home just exhausted every night, so it became present to me that I think the next iteration of who I become in this world is to teach others to facilitate circles. Those others need to be young blood. They need to be able to learn. Circle is all in us. Learning it, do you learn it or do you live it? Teaching this younger generation to engage in circle, through circle, to recreate what we did. Later on we did bring on some younger folks, but not in the circle. I think it would've been very dynamic to have some 20 year olds in there, some 18 year olds kind of in that space.
But other than that, I don't think we had any challenges that I would say were challenges. Things came up like girls not being able to come because of life, life was life-ing in for them, but I think it was an amazing experiment. This is the first time, we're hoping to do it again next year. We learned a lot. I don't think that there's going to be much that we change because it was just this emergent thing. We had structure, but we allowed what to come forth whatever needed to come forth in the moment, and I think we benefited from it and the girls definitely benefited from it.
So we are actually doing one more thing with this group of girls. We asked them if they wanted to continue, and we've had some back and forth on that, but we are doing a spa day for mothers and daughters at a local spa that's not too far away from Legacy Pointe. I forget the date, it's in October. So we're going to bring all of the moms and the daughters together for some storytelling and just some downtime, some yoga, some breathing, and all of the good stuff. So we're excited that we were able to be able to do this last little thing. Well, we had an amazing graduation. Their graduation was the bomb, we had food.
For those of you who don't know, the structure of our day started with the girls coming in and we just had an open activity just to kind of bring them into the space. So a lot of times we were doing life-size puzzles or playing games, journaling, coloring, because we had girls coming from the east side of Columbus, not everyone was in the housing apartment complex, just to bring them in. Then we fed them a meal every session, which always started with giving thanks for our meal.
Then we always would do some type of movement or mindfulness to regulate nervous systems. Then we would go into an hour of circle and then some activity, creative activity, would kind of follow that. So we would circle and then they would do, like with Shelby they did the books if time allowed, and sometimes the time was meshed. Sometimes Shelby would circle. So we had a lot going on, and graduation was the bomb, we had great food. I don't know, we probably had, the whole community room was filled, I would say there were probably 50 or 60 people there to affirm, and we gave them certificates, so it was really cool.
Diane Jordan:
Tecca, you mentioned that a couple of the girls were experiencing raids, could you expound on that? Just kind of give us some insight.
Tecca Thompson:
So the police raided their homes for suspected whatever.
Diane Jordan:
Oh, for whatever.
Tecca Thompson:
Without just trying... I don't want to-
Diane Jordan:
No, no.
Tecca Thompson:
But yeah, and two of the girls were actually present during, and then they were home alone, but they came to circle that night.
Diane Jordan:
That's great.
Tecca Thompson:
So we knew about it. Stuff like that happens in their environment all the time. We knew about it, and so we were there to hold the space for them. But the other thing that I learned is that we can have all these agendas, but when you create a space where kids can be kids, that's what they want to do. They want to draw, they want to laugh, they want to color, they want to dance, they want to create, they want to rest. They just want to be, and we saw that, so it was quite beautiful.
Diane Jordan:
Thank you for sharing all of that. It just sounds like a safe space was required every moment of every day based on the need, based on the child, based on the circumstances, and that's being present. As you said earlier, it was very emergent as things went on. I certainly wish I could have had one of those sundaes, that sundae with some fruit and some ice cream, and some, I think, blueberries. I mean, everything was in there. Oreo cookies.
Tecca Thompson:
A whole cookie. The idea was cookie crumble, she put the whole cookie in.
Diane Jordan:
Of course, of course.
Tecca Thompson:
I know we're coming to the top of the hour, but that night all of the sundaes looked like that. They were just outrageous. A little girl takes the sundae to the seat and she's just going in on it. Then all of a sudden she's like, "Oh my gosh, my stomach hurts." We're like, "Well, what's going on?" She's like, "Well, at home I don't drink milk." I'm like, "Okay."
Diane Jordan:
Oh my goodness.
Tecca Thompson:
"You probably need to throw that away because that's not going to be good for your belly."
Diane Jordan:
So any final thoughts for us, Tecca, based on your experience? I think you shared a lot about what your challenges were, what you thought you would do next, and training some other people, but any other final thoughts you'd like to leave us with?
Tecca Thompson:
I think that this whole principle of just show up. I think sometimes when we're doing formal circles, we think that we've got to do all this planning and we've got to do all this, we've got to have this and do that. I think sometimes it's just refreshing just to show up, like Quanita Roberson says, "With a poem and a bell, just show up." Sometimes you just have to do that. I just started another circle for girls yesterday in a middle school where there are no teachers of color in the building at all and their student population is 40% BIPOC. So I fought, I proposed a circle three times to the school, and they turned it down three times because we couldn't check all of the evidence-based curriculum stuff. But an agency in the community heard about our proposal and they said, "We want to work with you," and so they got us into the school. So we did our first circle yesterday, it was good.
Diane Jordan:
That's great.
Tecca Thompson Self-Care Facilitator | Storyteller | Community Builder
Tecca Thompson is a trauma-informed space holder specializing in creating safe and transformative spaces. With a focus on circle, somatics, storytelling, and breathwork, Tecca builds communities and fosters healing through shared breath, and the power of narrative. Her work is dedicated to guiding individuals in their healing journeys, promoting connection, and facilitating personal growth and resilience in circle spaces.