Root Cause Collective

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Designed to create an ecology of wellness for the whole being, the Root Cause Collective offers preventative, liberative and interdisciplinary wellness services for organizations, leaders, individuals and families.

Abolition is spiritual work, and we are still being called.  As the centennial celebration of Black History Month comes ...
02/26/2026

Abolition is spiritual work, and we are still being called.  

As the centennial celebration of Black History Month comes to a close, we honor Henry Highland Garnet, a pastor who understood abolition as sacred work. 

Garnet’s ministry was inseparable from his politics. From his church, he sheltered fugitives, organized communities, and preached a theology that refused to separate faith from freedom. He believed that spiritual conviction without action was empty, and that liberation required courage, disruption, and collective responsibility. 

In a time when punishment, containment, and displacement are framed as solutions to social harm, Garnet’s legacy reminds us that abolition has always been about more than dismantling systems. It is about building moral, spiritual, and material conditions where people can live with dignity. 

This lineage matters to us. At Root Cause Collective, we believe abolition is not only a political commitment, but a spiritual one, an invitation to create systems grounded in care, accountability, and collective healing rather than control. 

Reflect with us: How are you being called to practice abolition as care, as faith, or as responsibility to one another? 

Harriet Jacobs reminds us that abolition has always been deeply personal. Her writing revealed how slavery reached into ...
02/24/2026

Harriet Jacobs reminds us that abolition has always been deeply personal. 

Her writing revealed how slavery reached into bedrooms, families, and the most intimate parts of Black life. She told the truth about survival, about what it meant to resist systems designed to control not just labor, but bodies and belonging. 

For us, her legacy reframes abolition as the right to safety. The right to home. The right to live without constant surveillance or fear of separation. 

As families today face detention, displacement, and state violence, Jacobs’ words echo across time: freedom without safety is incomplete. 

This is abolition as a practice, rooted in care, dignity, and the protection of Black life. 

Throughout the month of February we’re sharing abolitionists known and unknown, past and present whose work have shaped Black futures across time. 

How are you claiming your freedom this month and beyond? How are you ensuring safety for yourself and your neighbors?  

Liberation cannot be controlled. This is something Ella Baker deeply understood.  While others sought power, she investe...
02/19/2026

Liberation cannot be controlled.

This is something Ella Baker deeply understood.  

While others sought power, she invested in people, organizing quietly, challenging hierarchy, and building movements that could survive without a single face at the center. She believed freedom wasn’t enforced from the top down, but practiced together, day by day. 

For us, Ella Baker’s work reframes abolition as community infrastructure. It asks us to move away from systems that rely on punishment and policing, and toward models rooted in shared responsibility, care, and collective wisdom. 

Abolition doesn’t require heroes. It requires people who trust one another enough to build something new together because we cannot do this work alone. 
This is abolition as a practice. 

Throughout the month of February, we’re sharing abolitionists known and unknown, past and present whose work has shaped Black futures across time. 
In what ways have movement leaders shaped your perspective on community care?  

Liberation cannot be controlled. This is something Ella Baker deeply understood.  While others sought power, she investe...
02/19/2026

Liberation cannot be controlled. This is something Ella Baker deeply understood.  

While others sought power, she invested in people, organizing quietly, challenging hierarchy, and building movements that could survive without a single face at the center.

She believed freedom wasn’t enforced from the top down, but practiced together, day by day. 

For us, Ella Baker’s work reframes abolition as community infrastructure. It asks us to move away from systems that rely on punishment and policing, and toward models rooted in shared responsibility, care, and collective wisdom. 

Abolition doesn’t require heroes. It requires people who trust one another enough to build something new together because we cannot do this work alone. 
This is abolition as a practice. 

Throughout the month of February, we’re sharing abolitionists known and unknown, past and present whose work has shaped
Black futures across time. 

In what ways have movement leaders shaped your perspective on community care?  

We are entering the Year of the Fire Horse 🔥🐎 Named in the lunar tradition as a time of speed, volatility, courage, and ...
02/17/2026

We are entering the Year of the Fire Horse 🔥🐎 

Named in the lunar tradition as a time of speed, volatility, courage, and movement that refuses containment. 

Fire Horse years don’t reward careful leadership. They demand intuitive leadership. 

This is an off-script moment. What has worked before will not carry us through what’s unfolding now. 

Transformative times are where prophetic leaders thrive: the dreamers, artists, futurists, and bridge-builders who can imagine new routes while still quarter-backing systems as they move toward the end of their era. 

This time calls us to reach back for what has sustained us while building something that has never existed before. 

At Root Cause Collective, we are naming four areas we believe community, social change leaders, and anyone feeling the fire of this moment, should prioritize this year. 

Not as trends, as survival, discernment, and strategy. 

✨ Save this for the days you need grounding 
✨ Comment one word or intention you’re carrying into this Fire Horse year 
 

Today, on the eve of Frederick Douglass’ chosen birth date, we honor a man who understood that freedom was never meant t...
02/13/2026

Today, on the eve of Frederick Douglass’ chosen birth date, we honor a man who understood that freedom was never meant to be solely symbolic, it was meant to be lived. 

Douglass fought for the abolition of slavery with his words, his organizing, and his refusal to accept half-freedom. But his vision extended beyond emancipation. He challenged the systems, narratives, and power structures that made oppression possible in the first place. 

For us, abolition didn’t end with the Emancipation Proclamation. It didn’t end when the news reached Galveston. Nor does it end with reform alone. 

Abolition, today, asks us to imagine safety without cages, and accountability without violence. We imagine systems that don’t rip families apart or criminalize survival, but instead support people living whole, dignified lives. 

This is the legacy we carry forward. This is abolition as practice. 
Throughout the month of February, we’re sharing abolitionists known and unknown, past and present whose work has shaped Black futures across time. 

Who’s an abolitionist who inspires your work today?  
 

Reflections for Winter Solstice Season, in the words of our founder AW Shields. Swipe through to feel the shadows, the u...
12/21/2025

Reflections for Winter Solstice Season, in the words of our founder AW Shields. 

Swipe through to feel the shadows, the unseen, and the gifts they bring, and the nourishment they offer as we close the year and root into what’s next. 

This fall, we had the honor of holding space with the Freedom Community Center (FCC) in St. Louis.  FCC is a Black-led o...
12/16/2025

This fall, we had the honor of holding space with the Freedom Community Center (FCC) in St. Louis.
  
FCC is a Black-led organization rooted in dismantling the systems that harm our people and dreaming up what real safety can look like. 

Facilitated by JoDeanne Francis and AW Shields, this Healing Justice Skills Retreat created space designed for team building, skill building, and leadership development. 

One of the most powerful moments was a gifts-naming exercise, watching each person name the strengths they carry and then witnessing what happens when those individual gifts blend into something even more potent. This led to new insights about staff members, affirmations of one another’s brilliance, and real-time collaboration that revealed just how deeply they show up for community and for each other. 

From fishbowls to role play, to the quiet moments of being fully seen, FCC showed us what it looks like when a team tends to its own soil so it can continue growing freedom for its people. 

Root Cause Collective is available to support organizations and movements committed to justice in sustaining their health while transforming systems. We offer: 
 
• Organizational Wellness Care 
• Organizational Wellness Equity Consulting 
• Retreat Curation 
• Professional & Leadership Development 
• Restorative Repair 
• Space Holding, Ministry of Presence & Event Healing Support/Care 

If your team is ready to deepen its wellness, leadership, or liberatory practice, we’d love to be in community with you. 

All year, The Root Wellness Center has been planting seeds of healing. Every gathering, every cohort, every ritual has b...
12/12/2025

All year, The Root Wellness Center has been planting seeds of healing. 

Every gathering, every cohort, every ritual has been a reminder that healing is not an individual act. It’s something we do in community, in relationship, in rhythm with the earth and our ancestors. 🌍✨ 

The foundation is set, now help us build our dream. We’re working to build a North Carolina based Ecowomanist health and healing hub that draws from the rich tapestry of Black ancestral traditions, spiritual healing practices, and collective community stewardship practices that heal the land and its people simultaneously.  

If this vision moves you, we invite you to donate. 
 
Your contribution keeps our programs free, helps us reach more community members, and fuels our long-term vision: a health and healing justice hub where collective care, ancestral wisdom, nature, and research come together to build intergenerational wellness. 

🌱 Give today at the link in our bio.

 

Earlier this fall, our healer Brianna (she/her) led the National Benevolent Association’s Young Adult Social Service Pee...
10/29/2025

Earlier this fall, our healer Brianna (she/her) led the National Benevolent Association’s Young Adult Social Service Peer Learning & Wellness Group Retreat in New Orleans. It was a space where care workers and spiritual leaders came together to rest, reconnect, and reimagine what healing can look like. 

Across three days of deep work and gentle unlearning, Brianna guided the cohort through: 
 
✨ A re-centering of “loving others as you love yourself,” starting with the self. 

✨ Explorations of the nervous system, stress responses, and ancestral practices for regulation. 

✨ A real-time pivot into embodiment, grief ritual, and solo processing, honoring choice and agency as core to wellness. 

Reflecting on the experience, Brianna shared: 

“I remembered that therapeutic language and the language of somatics overlap, but they’re not the same. And that maybe the greatest liberation is realizing healing doesn’t have to be so complicated. Doing less can still bring us back to ourselves.” 

Gratitude to the team: Mark Anderson, Héctor Josué Hernández Marcial, Bere Gil Soto, and Tania Diaz, for holding this transformative container, and to the cohort for showing up with honesty, curiosity, and care. 
Here’s to the work of restoring wholeness, one choice, one breath, one brave gathering at a time. 💚 
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