Courage of Care Coalition

SUCCULENCE

A HEALING AND INTEGRATION PROGRAM FOR RELATIONAL FACILITATORS AND LEADERS

Nurturing the Keepers of Our Movements

Tuesdays, September 2nd - December 16th, 2025
*Special Closing Session Thursday, December 18th
12pm Eastern / 9amPacific

Succulence is a healing and integration program for relational facilitators, coaches, trainers, teachers, educators, leaders and others who work to make our organizations, communities and movements for healing, justice and liberation more resilient. The program acknowledges the toll of care-work on our relational tenders and that we, too, need spaces where we can show up fully in service of our own healing and integration. 

The name succulence aims to capture the juicy, abundant joy inherent in healing work, while recognizing the ways in which many of us have learned to survive within systems of scarcity. 

May our collective healing benefit not only our beloveds but all those we serve and hold space for in the name of freedom. 

read more about our approach, Courage RISE

Why This Program

We are being called to wake up and to uphold the values of love, justice, live-giving joy and inclusivity in the face of threat, oppression, violence and apathy.

To lead with love requires that we be love. For many of us, that requires that we do our own self-healing and tend to our traumas, wounds and internalized forms of oppression in order to be present to and of greater service to others and our world. 

This program is designed to help you: 

    • strengthen your relational compassion practice in ways that are sustaining and generative and protective against burnout; 
    • identify habits, patterns and structures that inhibit care and connection; 
    • integrate tools for self- and collective-healing and transforming trauma and oppression; 
    • tap into renewable sources of joy, hope and resilience that sustain you in the work; and
    • clarify and align your personal and professional work with your highest aspirations and intentions.
register

Who Should Attend

This course is for folks committed to the at times deeply uncomfortable work of personal and collective healing in service of collective liberation. We find this course helpful for folks who are often called to hold space for others as teachers, coaches, facilitators and healers. Folks seeking to heal and integrate in service of building more compassionate, counter-oppressive, healing centered and visionary practice containers for others are most welcome.

Please note this is not a facilitation training, but a healing space for folks often called to facilitation roles. The program is a great complement to our core Relational Facilitators program, and can be taken before or after that training. 

course dates

This 13 session program follows our five-part model, CourageRISE.

The course runs on Tuesdays from September 2nd through December 23rd, 2025 at 12pm Eastern.

There are three live scheduled sessions for the first four modules of CourageRISE. In between each module, we take an “integration” week during which there is no live session. Opportunities for 1:1 sessions and/or hosted sessions with past facilitators will be made available. 

The fall cohort course dates are as follows:

Courage Module

Sep 2, 9, 16*

*Sep 16 is one hour session from 12-1p ET

**integration week Sep 23, no live session

Reveal Truths Module

Sep 30, Oct 7, Oct 14*

*Oct 14 is one hour session from 12-1p ET

**integration week Oct 21, no live session

Invest in Healing Module

Oct 28, Nov 4, 11*

*Nov 11 is one hour session from 12-1p ET

**integration week Nov 18, no live session

Sense Alternatives Module

Nov 25, Dec 2, 9*

*Dec 9 is one hour meeting from 12-1pm ET

**integration week Dec 16, no live session

Embody Beloved Community Module & Closing

*Dec 18 (Thursday), special 3-hour session from 12-3pm ET

Tuition & Payment Plans

 We try our best to make our programs accessible and affordable. Below each tier, you will find an hourly rate that breaks down our costs per live training hour. In addition to 23 live training hours, participants also receive weekly video teachings, guided meditations and other practices, handouts, background resources, and optional check-ins. Our core facilitation team also handles all aspects of program administration.

We offer a sliding scale registration fee for our courses and workshops in service of racial and economic justice.

We understand that access to resources is a result of institutionalized white supremacy, capitalism and colonization. A sliding scale fee structure allows white folks and others who have systematically benefited from these unjust and inequitable systems to practice reparations within our community.

We also know that privilege is intersectional and that not all white folks have access to generational wealth or class privilege. We ask that you take your privilege and access to resources into account when determining your registration fee. 

Sponsor: $1350

Payment Plan: $337.50/month
Participants also receive weekly video teachings, guided meditations and other practices, workbooks, handouts, background resources and facilitator check-ins. 
 
We ask white folks and those with class privilege and access to financial resources to consider paying our sponsor fee. These registrations help us make our sliding scale and reduced options possible and sustainable. Thank you in advance for your generosity! 

 

 

Sustainer (Full Tuition): $900

Payment Plan: $225/month
Participants also receive weekly video teachings, guided meditations and other practices, workbooks, handouts, background resources and facilitator check-ins. 
 

We ask white folks and those with class privilege (eg raised in middle-upper class homes and/or making over $62,000 per year), access to financial resources and/or access to organizational professional development funds to please consider paying the full course fee. We also ask all white-bodied participants being sponsored by organizations to attend pay the full course fee. 

 

Solidarity Rate: $450

Payment Plan: $112.50/month
Participants also receive weekly video teachings, guided meditations and other practices, workbooks, handouts, background resources and facilitator check-ins. 
 

We invite folks with less class privilege, financial hardship and/or those representing historically marginalized identities for whom the full tuition rate is not possible, to register at our subsidized solidarity rate. 

 

Global South Rate: $150

Payment Plan: $37.50/month

Participants also receive weekly video teachings, guided meditations and other practices, workbooks, handouts, background resources and facilitator check-ins. 

We invite folks of the global majority living and working in the global south to register at our solidarity rate. 

 

***Please note that no refunds will be given for failure to attend or complete the course. Folks registering via payment plans are also responsible for completing full tuition payments. Please be sure you can participate fully before signing up.***

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Financial Assistance Available

We are committed to ensuring that our programs are accessible to all. We understand the challenges of doing this work in a deeply unjust racial-capitalist system.

 

Courage of Care facilitators and operations are compensated primarily through program registrations. We do not receive external funding or grants. While we try to raise funds to support our sliding scale offerings and scholarships, we do not have a sustainable scholarship fund. The discounted rates that we offer are often also a discount on the pay that our facilitators receive. 

Reciprocity is one of our core community practices and we invite you to determine what financial contribution you are able to make to the program. While we do not offer full tuition coverage, we are open to specific tuition reduction requests as well as work exchanges for partial tuition relief. We can accept proposals for payment plans provided they are completed during the term of the program. 

We also ask that you consider the following guidelines when requesting additional support:

    • You are experiencing unemployment or houselessness, and/or
    • Your paycheck barely covers or does not cover your basic needs of food, shelter, water, clothing, medical care, social engagement and rest for you and your family, AND

    • You do not have access to organizational professional development funds, sponsorship, savings or other forms of financial support to cover the cost of the training.

request financial assistance

The Emerging Leaders Fellowship

We are thrilled to offer up to 2 Fellowships to emerging young adult leaders (18-25). We are excited to support young leaders in learning tools that enhance their capacity to hold space in organizations and movements. Fellows will receive free tuition to attend the program. We have been blessed to learn in multi-generational space and wish to grow and strengthen this tradition.

Fellows will attend all program trainings and will also participate in conversations with members of our Elders Wisdom Circle. 

apply

The Elders Wisdom Circle Fellowship

We wish to honor the wisdom and lived experience of our elders. We are excited to offer 2 circle fellowships to *grown* folks who wish to participate in our program as both elders and learners. We have been blessed to learn in multi-generational space and wish to grow and strengthen this tradition.

Wisdom Circle members are invited to attend the training in its entirety for free as our guests and to participate in conversations with our Emerging Youth Leaders.

 

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Brooke Lavelle

she/her

Brooke is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of Courage of Care. She has been a student of Tibetan Buddhism for over 25 years, and has been teaching relational contemplative practice for nearly as long. She loves (re)introducing practitioners to relational compassion and devotional practices, and is keen on helping both new folks ignite their practice and seasoned practitioners work with transforming obstacles to love on the path. She has a Ph.D. in Buddhist contemplative theory and embodied cognition, and grounds her practice in the body and in context. She loves to work with individuals on shifting frameworks in order to open up possibilities for practice and new avenues for relating more authentically and lovingly. And she loves the micro-relational work she’s constantly engaged in as a leader of a community house and urban farm in Brooklyn, NY. 

katie robinson

any pronouns

katie robinson (any pronouns) is a writer, scholar, and interdisciplinary artist devoted to the exploration of what is present and possible outside of the white supremacist colonial imagination. Their essay, “Here’s How I Let Them Come Close,” a meditation on encounters, extraterrestrials, and the creative process, was featured in A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars from Milkweed in 2023. They are currently a PhD candidate at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where they are writing a dissertation at the intersections of depth psychology, decoloniality, and police and prison abolition.

Maha El-Sheikh

she/her

Maha El-Sheikh

With 20 years working in the international humanitarian sector, Maha’s work currently focuses on the social injustices underlying our global crises. She brings her experience in studying and teaching trauma-informed yoga, somatics, and meditation to explore the interconnection of healing, social transformation, and justice. She is core faculty at Courage of Care where she partners with relational facilitators and leaders in the economic, racial and climate justice movements. She also partners with international humanitarian groups to reimagine aid through compassion-centered, counter- oppressive frameworks.

After the Course

Our Succulence Program serves as a solid foundation for our Relational Facilitators Program. The Relational Facilitators Program is a ten week program that typically runs every spring and fall. Check our calendar for offerings.

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