This is the season of transition that every species participates in!  Everything around us is growing pollinating and responding with unbelievably bright enthusiasm to grey skies and rain.  And what about us? This life-changing May Brilliance Remastered has a number of ways to honor transition and to prepare for the best summer ever! Scroll down or click on the links below to learn more about:

Locally Grown Garden Walks Continue

Special Online Office Hours in May

Community is Not A Luxury Summer Cohort Sign Up

Summer Lovin’ Custom Organizational Retreats in NC

Remastered Tools 101 Downloadable Course

Garden Walks Continue!!!

I enjoyed April’s Garden Walks so much that I am continuing to  celebrate my favorite season in Durham, focusing my energy on the community I love!!!!!  Are you or someone you know someone who could benefit from a personalized Brilliance Remastered Conversation this Spring?

Maybe you are about to graduate from something or about to embark on your own social justice minded project.  Maybe you are ready to have a breakthrough around making your creative or intellectual work more community accountable.  Maybe you are hoping to launch an art project that will make our world a better place.  Maybe you need to quit your job and are looking for a way to transition out.  Maybe you want to make your side project the center of your life.  Maybe you just know a walk and conversation with Sista Docta Lex about your passionate work would increase its value for our whole community.  If that is you or someone you love you should sign up for a garden walk!  (Also if your accessibility or allergy needs call for it we can certainly sit in a garden or walk near a river or do something else.)

So here is how it works!

1.  Sign up for one of only 6 available one hour walks (Monday and Wednesday afternoons from May 8-27)

2.  Send an email to Lex at brillianceremastered@gmail.com about what you are up to right now and your hopes and dreams for our conversation.

3.  Recirculate the love!  Donate $50 to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind (the same donation that folks not lucky enough to live in or near Durham pay for a phone consultation) OR donate $25 and a delicious healthy vegetarian meal that can feed Lex and Julia!

Talk with Lex During Transition Time: Special May Office Hours

Since May is a time of major transition for many intellectuals, during May 2013 I will be conducting special online office hours on Wednesdays 10am-2pm EST free for existing participants and at the regular hourly ($50) rate for new folks!

The theme for May’s office hours is transition.  Has Spring outside shown you how much you have grown inside this season?  Have you outgrown a previous intellectual/activist role and into something new?   Are you starting a new organization? Are you graduating from a program and thinking about how to prepare for what is next?  Are you simply determined for next semester to be significantly more sustainable and community accountable than this semester has been.   Holler at your girl

Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with the subject heading “office hours” to sign up.

Community is Not a Luxury Summer Cohort:

It is about time to sign up for the Community is Not A Luxury Summer Cohort!!!!

“Look how you print yourself on my heart.” -Audre Lorde

This intermediate stage of the coaching curriculum trains you to implement and build a community of accountability outside of the limits of your university setting.  Community accountability is what distinguishes meaningful intellectual labor from elitist word games.  This coaching module is for scholars who are committed to making a difference in the lives of the communities that inspire them and also activates community as a superpower to sustain your wholeness and to support and celebrate you in your degree process.

The cohort model allows a set of aligned visionaries to experience the life-changing curricula and to benefit from one-on-one attention from Sista Docta Lex while building community with each other.   Doing it together also allows Brilliance Remastered to provide this service at a lower rate.  (However the one-on-one version of this curriculum is still available for those of you who want me all to yourself!

Cohort Participants Commit to a 3-Month Experience with:

• weekly transformative assignments
• bi-weekly google-hangout discussion sessions with fellow cohort members facilitated by Lex
• weekly email check-ins with Lex
• access to Lex’s online office hours
• song dedications and motivation

all for $750 per participant.  Payment plans are available.  I am committed to making this accessible to you!

Participants join the cohort through a phone assessment conversation where we will determine the best way to engage the curriculum.  Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com to schedule a phone assessment for $25.  More on phone assessments here.

Summer Lovin’ Organizational Retreats in NC

Another part of the Brilliance Remastered Durham Advantage!  Summer 2012 is all about the brilliance of deepening and strengthening relationships.   As part of my long-term investment in the important and experimental community institutions in and around Durham, NC  I am offering custom organizational retreats focused on relationship building for shared leadership and long-term victory.

Drawing on a unique curriculum based on Audre Lorde’s body of work these retreats will be customized to the emergent breakthroughs of your organization or group and will use embodied, creative techniques that will allow your group to access many dimensions and generations of wisdom.  These retreats are an especially timely opportunity for organizations transferring leadership, working through conflict, changing structures or just getting started.

To see if your organization is a good match for some Summer Lovin’ and to start a conversation about designing a retreat set up a phone consultation.

Remastered Tools 101 Available for Do It Yourself Download!!!!

After the major success of the Remastered Tools Webinar Series,  I am offering them as downloadable courses that you can do anytime with my love and support at about half the rate of actually taking the webinar.  Get started now with Remastered Tools 101 with special audio support, brilliant poems and mantras by the Remastered Tools 101 graduates and full access to my online office hours included!

Remastered Tools 101 Course for Community Accountable Intellectuals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Remastered Tools 101 is an opportunity to examine our relationship to knowledge and our theories of change as they relate to the work we do as scholars and the work we empower with our scholarship.   We will investigate how dependence on systems that are NOT community accountable are cultivated even in the most seemingly radical fields and support each other in creating visions for our own community accountability.

I also have a couple coaching slots so if you want to set up one on one coaching set up a phone consultation so we can see if we are a perfect match and as always if you want specialized feedback on your thesis, dissertation, statement of purpose or syllabus hit me up for a PhDoula belly blessing!  Hope to hear from you soon!

Love,
Lex

Since May is a time of major transition for many intellectuals, during May 2013 I will be conducting special online office hours on Wednesdays 10am-2pm EST free for existing participants and at the regular hourly ($50) rate for new folks!

The theme for May’s office hours is transition.  Has Spring outside shown you how much you have grown inside this season?  Have you outgrown a previous intellectual/activist role and into something new?   Are you starting a new organization? Are you graduating from a program and thinking about how to prepare for what is next?  Are you simply determined for next semester to be significantly more sustainable and community accountable than this semester has been.   Holler at your girl

Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with the subject heading “office hours” to sign up.

Drawing on a unique curriculum based on Audre Lorde’s body of work these retreats will be customized to the emergent breakthroughs of your organization or group and will use embodied, creative techniques that will allow your group to access many dimensions and generations of wisdom.  These retreats are an especially timely opportunity for organizations transferring leadership, working through conflict, changing structures or just getting started.

To see if your organization is a good match for some Summer Lovin’ and to start a conversation about designing a retreat set up a phone consultation.

Love,
lex

Another part of the Brilliance Remastered Durham Advantage!   It is SPRING!!!!  I am celebrating my favorite season in Durham, focusing my energy on the community I love!!!!!  Are you or someone you know someone who could benefit from a personalized Brilliance Remastered Conversation this Spring?

Maybe you are about to graduate from something or about to embark on your own social justice minded project.  Maybe you are ready to have a breakthrough around making your creative or intellectual work more community accountable.  Maybe you are hoping to launch an art project that will make our world a better place.  Maybe you need to quit your job and are looking for a way to transition out.  Maybe you want to make your side project the center of your life.  Maybe you just know a walk and conversation with Sista Docta Lex about your passionate work would increase its value for our whole community.  If that is you or someone you love you should sign up for a garden walk!  (Also if your accessibility or allergy needs call for it we can certainly sit in a garden or walk near a river or do something else.)

So here is how it works!

1.  Sign up for one of only 6 available one hour walks (Monday and Wednesday afternoons from May 8-27)

2.  Send an email to Lex at brillianceremastered@gmail.com about what you are up to right now and your hopes and dreams for our conversation.

3.  Recirculate the love!  Donate $50 to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind (the same donation that folks not lucky enough to live in or near Durham pay for a phone consultation) OR donate $25 and a delicious healthy vegetarian meal that can feed Lex and Julia!

That’s it!!!!  Looking forward to your locally growing brilliance!!!

Love,

Lex

Been There Lecture #2  Dr. Anjail Ahmad  Tuesday, April 16th 7pm ET/6 CT/ 5 MT/4 PT

Dr. Ahmad is a poet, educator and activist writing, speaking and teaching in venues throughout the United States. She received her PhD in African American Literature and 20^th Century American Poetry from the University of Missouri-Columbia, her MA in Creative Writing from New York University and her BA in Creative Writing from Agnes Scott College.

She is also a blind woman advocating for disability justice in collaboration with a diverse community of disabled activists in Greensboro, NC and a Mobile Homecoming superstar.

Her areas of interest include: African American Literature and Oral Traditions; Twentieth Century American Poetry; The Poetics of Resistance in African American Poetry; Spoken Word and the poetics of Performance; Poetic Entrepreneurship; E-Texts and Publication; Women’s Voices; Social Justice and Disability Rights Advocacy

She has written two books of poetry, is published widely in journals and has won numerous awards. She teaches writing classes at North Carolina A&T State University where she is also Director of Creative Writing. In 2010, she has used her depth of writing knowledge and experience in working with writers to found The Fractured Writer: A Creative Resource for Writers (http://www.thefracturedwriter.com). She also leads writing and publishing workshops and sees clients in her home office in Greensboro, North Carolina where she offers training, coaching, consulting, and mentorship to groups and individuals of all ages.

As Artistic Director of The Fractured Writer aka The Loving Boot Camp for Writers, she leads writers through the Sunday 5-Week Writing Intensives, a year-long, workshop series designed to support writers through the completion of a writing project.  In her unique approach to creative writing, she offers a blend of spirituality and creative pragmatism to writers seeking to transform their creative ideas  and aspirations into work suitable for publication and performance.

This workshop is free for one-on-one and cohort coaching clients.  Other geniuses are free to sign up for the lecture with an email about your interests to brillianceremastered@gmail.com by April 14th and a donation of $20-50 to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind

Last night was the final performance of the Need Ensemble streamed live on the internet and then dissolved into the ether.  Thank goodness for poetry. Thank goodness for our profound past and future presence.  Thank the Lorde for this moment.  Last night we celebrated, affirmed, showed in our bodies what this week has given us.  Testifed and held hands across space and time.   We also engaged Audre Lorde’s poem “Call” where she repeats that the rainbow serpent representative of all the unnamed and forgotten dieties aka Aido Hwedo is coming.   What is the name of the divinity that is coming for us?

Response

“We are learning by heart

what has never been taught.”

-Audre Lorde “Call”

light is coming

justice is coming

peace is coming

fearless mothers and happy babies are coming

gardening time is coming

fresh spring days, long summer nights, cozy winter cuddles and fall leaves are coming

a safe harbor is coming

a soft place to fall is coming

release is coming

reprieve is coming

a party with cake is coming

celebrating your miraculous body-self every morning as soon as you awaken is coming

khahlia is coming!

clean ocean water is coming

miracles are coming…

a lifetime of labors of love is coming

new adventures are coming

more understanding, more grace, and more listening is coming…

more feminist visionaries are coming…

fully accountable telepathy is coming

more community-building (like this) is coming

Audre Lorde's Poetry in Motion (Indeed)

The brilliant and brave Brilliance Remastered Need Ensemble has me wide open, reaching into my dreams and the dreams of my ancestors.   Last night after working with Audre Lorde’s Coal and my brother Seneca’s teachings about the relationships between dreams, wisdom and nightmares we wrote this poem together.   May you be as open to it as you need to be.

We Are the Open We Need

“Love is a word, another kind of open.”

-Audre Lorde “Coal”

ancestors screaming in my ear: open

headache in the center of my forehead open

fears open. hate open. terrors open. light open

pain i can use, open

i been here before, open

got my heart and ears ready to hear whatever you have to say open

remembering grandmothers with cleansing tears open

got my door open come in any time type open

mountains open with wisdom and protection open

rocks under pillows open

letting the light in open

magic portals open

sky open

hitting the ground so that i CAN open

breathing so my breathing can breathe open

alchemizing wasted-blood-into-lifeblood open

spirit emerging through this physical body open

legs open mouth open nostrils flaring open

arms stretched wide ready to receive open

water rum juice and tea bladders open

shamefully open. embrassingly open.

listening to my body, open

ecstatic womb open

birth open

hands open

hands reached out to hold other hands open

hands up to the computer open

heart open

heart mind body break-through open

breaking down emotional walls open

sleeping under the stars open

dancing in the rain open

rural night sky open

tired, good tired open

fed souls–open

chest crackingly open

belly laughing out loud open

eyes open with clarity open

knowing i’m noteworthy open

nobody can see me who i can’t see open

dr. g arms open open

building community open

faith open

bars open

asylum open

borders open

church open

temples open

mosque open

altars open

mounds open

heaven open

consent open

lovers open

words open

need that tastes like love open

futures open

past open

now open

love open

faith open

ritual open

mothering ourselves open

in love with the souls making up this webinar open

seeing my reflection in you, open

saying your name in my prayers, open

seeing your smile open

universe open

we are the open we’ve been waiting for open

we are the open we need

open

Last night was the first session of our  weeklong digital performance intensive honoring Audre Lorde’s “Need: A Chorale for Black Women’s Voices” as a resource for community accountable artist/intellectuals.  Inspired by Omi Osun/Joni L. Jones and the Jazz Aesthetic Manifesto we created this group poem as a performance, practice and primer on what we need in order to be present in our lives and in this intimate work together across time zones and geographical borders.  Here is one arrangement of our poem:

We Know What We Need

i know

i need love

i know

i need to know that

i am loved

i know that

(i need hugs on hugs on hugs)

i know

we need water

i know

we need art

i know

we need our imaginations

i know

we need trust

i know

we need to breathe deeply

i know

we need LIFE

i know

we need to trust the miracles

yes! i know

we need miracles

i know

I’m needing

dancing

i know i

need to forgive

i know i

need to let go

i know i

need to accept that

I exist.

i know we

need to stop being shamed of our natural smells shapes ideas loves

i know we

need to remember what we hid

i know we

need to forgive ourselves

i know we

need to be courageous

i know we

need our ancestors breathing

i know we

need to continue learning

i know we

need to surrender to freedom

i know we

need to cry

i know we

need to work it all out

i know we

need to exhale

i know we

need to laugh… belly laughs…

i know we

need to mother ourselves

I know we

need to (continue to) connect

i know we

need to reach out for support when the terrors begin

i know we

need to hold hands

i know we

need to practice self love

i know

we need each other

we know

we need one another

i know

we need to heal

i know

we need to speak each others names

i know

we need to speak each others names in prayer

i know

we need sacred space

i know

we need ritual

i know

we need space to dream

i know

i need this space

this space!!!!

I know

i needed to come here tonight… this week.

i know

i need this life because i am here

i know

i need to overcome fear of the unknown

i know

it takes presence to perceive the miracles

i know

that i can always find this space when

i need it

yessss

!!!!!!!

Community Organizations in and around Durham, NC

Audre Lorde’s insights for personal growth and transformation apply not only to individual community accountable intellectuals, but also to community organizations at many stages of organizational development.  I am available to customize any of my existing workshops for your organization and to conduct them at a discounted rate…with no travel and housing fees!

And especially for Summer 2013 check out my custom Summer Lovin’ relationship building retreats for organizations in NC!

Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com to set up a phone assessment where we can decide what workshop is best for the growth and development of your organization or group.

Individual Students Based In and Near Durham, NC (Shouts out to NCCU, Duke, UNC, NC State, Durham Tech, St. Augustine, Meredith, Peace, Shaw and everybody!)

• grad students get DEEP discounts on any of the coaching or advising curricula
• get the major benefit of in-person meetings in Duke Gardens, central park, my favorite tea spot and maybe even my porch (sign up here for one of our Spring one on one garden walks)
• get plugged into quarterly mixers I will be hosting for other local community accountable intellectuals
• undergrads get access to in person application consultations and a special “Never Leaving Durham” series of conversations!

Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com to set up a phone assessment and get started!

Colleges and Universities in and around Durham, NC

Hey there visionary administrators, faculty and organizers at NCCU, Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, NC State, UNC-Greensboro, Meredith, Shaw, St. Augustine, Peace College, Elon, Guilford etc.

Take advantage of the fact that I LOVE WHERE I LIVE and offer your graduate students or prospective graduate students my key workshops on mentorship, community accountability, resilience and wellness and more without having to raise a budget for travel and housing!    I am also available to do ongoing work with student groups, and student services units.

Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com schedule a phone assessment so we can scheme up our partnership!!!!

The cohort model allows a set of aligned visionaries to experience the life-changing curricula and to benefit from one-on-one attention from Sista Docta Lex while building community with each other.   Doing it together also allows Brilliance Remastered to provide this service at a lower rate.  (However the one-on-one version of this curriculum is still available for those of you who want me all to yourself!

Cohort Participants Commit to a 3-Month Experience with:

• weekly transformative assignments
• bi-weekly google-hangout discussion sessions with fellow cohort members facilitated by Lex
• weekly email check-ins with Lex
• access to Lex’s online office hours
• song dedications and motivation

all for $750 per participant.  Payment plans are available.  I am committed to making this accessible to you!

Participants join the cohort through a phone assessment conversation where we will determine the best way to engage the curriculum.  Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com to schedule a phone assessment for $25.  More on phone assessments here.

Here are this year’s offerings! Looking forward to working together!

Semester that Changed Your Life Coaching Modules:

Summer 2013 Community is Not a Luxury: Necessary Praxis for Degree Survival*  (Apply by May 20th)

“Look how you print yourself on my heart.” -Audre Lorde

This intermediate stage of the coaching curriculum trains you to implement and build a community of accountability outside of the limits of your university setting.  Community accountability is what distinguishes meaningful intellectual labor from elitist word games.  This coaching module is for scholars who are committed to making a difference in the lives of the communities that inspire them and also activates community as a superpower to sustain your wholeness and to support and celebrate you in your degree process.  More info here.

Spring 2013 “Doing What I Came to Do”: Activating Your Purpose*

*Email brillianceremastered to set up a phone assessment by Feb 15th.

“I am who I am doing what I came to do.”-Audre Lorde

This is the first and most crucial coaching module in the Brilliance Remastered curriculum.  In this coaching process also known as the “purpose-keeper,” I will facilitate and support you in remembering/crafting and supporting an intentional, generative, empowering and energizing greater purpose for your intellectual work.   This process will give you a touchstone for every step of your intellectual work, giving you consistent access to the superpower of PURPOSE which will provide energy and perspective when the going gets tough.  More info here.

Fall 2013 “My Words Will Be There”:  Eternal Strategies for Sustainable Community Accountable Scholarship

This advanced stage of the coaching curriculum is exclusively for graduates of the Doing What I Came to Do and Community is Not a Luxury coaching curricula or scholars who have defended their dissertations or already have PhD’s and are at a transition point in their careers.  This coaching process will provide you with the tools to build a sustainable ecology for your own scholarship that does not depend on the economy of the university.  This is a crucial tool-set for scholars who want their work to live in community organizing, to be interdependent with educational institutions, or to create their own educational/activist institutions.  More info here.