Four Phrases for the Crunchy Moments: Equity Practices for Co-Building Brave Spaces
From RCC’s October 20, 2026 Community Roundtable, facilitated by Nanci Lee
Every retreat center has them: the “crunchy” moments. Nanci Lee uses that word for the stage just before conflict, when a microaggression, a misstep or an unspoken tension hasn’t turned into something bigger yet but could. In this Community Roundtable, Nanci, former Executive Director of Tatamagouche Centre in Nova Scotia and a former longtime member of RCC’s stewardship committee, shared a framework she has been refining for years. She then opened the floor so retreat center leaders could test it against their own experience.
Four plain-language practices
Nanci has worked with many conflict resolution frameworks, including Nonviolent Communication and Dialogue for Peaceful Change. Her aim here was to boil them down to four phrases simple enough to remember in a hard moment. As one participant put it, they aren’t simple to do, but they are easy to remember.
“I hear you.” Nanci called this one perhaps the most important. We become divisive quickly when we dig into our positions and stop listening. “I hear you” means restating what the other person said, in plain and factual terms, before responding. This matters most for people in positions of power, who need to acknowledge how that power affects whether others feel able to come to them directly.
“We have you.” This goes beyond saying “we’re welcoming.” It means doing everything you can, in the food, the symbols, what’s on the walls and what’s in the bathrooms, so people feel the place is theirs too and don’t have to leave parts of themselves at the door. Nanci also named the tension in this practice: in working to center equity-deserving groups, a center can unintentionally make longtime communities feel they no longer belong. The challenge is to center some without “voting others off the island.”
“I wonder…” This is the practice of keeping your curiosity alive even when you’re triggered, angry or frustrated. For leaders it starts with grounding your own body first. Nanci stressed that a wondering should follow a clear statement of fact. For example: There’s a lot of urgency behind how this is happening. I wonder if there’s another way through that gives us time to slow down and have wider dialogue.
“My bad.” This means taking personal responsibility and, in leadership roles, organizational responsibility too. In Nanci’s experience, conflict is almost never a simple binary. Harm can be real, and many things still contribute to the storm. The more each of us owns our part, the better our chances of right relationship. When harm happens, plainly naming it, accepting responsibility and apologizing both personally and on behalf of the organization opens a real path to repair.
Nanci added that these are practices, not workshop takeaways. “You’re never going to get this stuff in a workshop or even a retreat,” she said. The circles that do it well practice it regularly, until it becomes part of who they are.
What the community heard
“We have you” is a promise. Several participants said this practice stood out most because of the commitment behind it, which is like saying I’ve got your back. That’s exactly why “my bad” matters. If you promise to hold someone and don’t, you need to know how to repair, and how to stay in right relationship even when the repair isn’t accepted. As Nanci put it, no one expects you to be perfect, but people do expect to see you trying.
Trust is the missing fifth practice. One participant compared “we have you” to a trust fall: the first thing you ask is do you have me? Building trust is what makes the other four practices work. Nanci added a key distinction: repairing mistrust is different from building trust.
Your building has to match your words. Participants recommended the book Designing for Belonging and noted how easily a center’s physical space can contradict what it says it offers. For example, an all-gender restroom shouldn’t be tucked away somewhere far from the others. The group also noted that many trans communities now prefer “all gender” to “gender neutral.” Another idea: a sanctuary kept free of symbols, with a chest of items from different traditions so each group can make the space what it needs.
“I wonder” works everywhere. Participants talked about using “I wonder” questions instead of leading with consequences, including with people who are afraid of or opposed to change.
Who educates whom? The group talked about how fast language changes and how hard it is to keep up, even when you’re trying. Most people offer grace when they can see you’re genuinely trying. And while it’s no individual’s job to educate others about their own experience, every community needs educators, and good educators deserve to be paid. Bringing in educators to support staff and guests is the kind of resource-sharing the RCC network can offer.
Where does “holding” end? Retreat centers know this tension well: guests or staff sometimes ask for more than a center can give, and an old wound can be reopened in the process. When the answer has to be no, what’s the “yes” that points toward support elsewhere? Nanci said being transparent about limits is part of building the container, and sometimes the honest “my bad” is: this is where our ability to hold ends.
When the phrases get misused. Participants noted that “my bad” is often said flippantly. Nanci agreed that any of these phrases can be misused, and that even curiosity can be passive-aggressive (“I wonder if you could take this down a notch”). One of the hardest habits to break is saying that’s not what I intended. Nanci’s answer was that intention isn’t impact, and that this is exactly where “I hear you” comes first. Participants also talked about accepting that we can have the best intentions and still get it wrong, own it, and try again.
Sacred ground
Nanci closed by reminding the group that many retreat centers are spiritual places, and that the traditions they hold have taught people for centuries how to be in community through hard things. “It’s messy,” she said, “but it’s also beautiful, and it’s sacred, spiritual ground.” What she heard from the room was a call for grace, for ourselves and each other, that goes hand in hand with taking responsibility.
Watch the full conversation: Community Roundtable: Equity practices for co-building brave spaces
Coming up at RCC
Preparing for an Insurance Claim: What Every Retreat Center Should Know
A six-part series on The Humble Board with Lon Swartzentruber, starting next month
Have an idea for a future Community Call or Roundtable, or know someone who should lead one? We’d love to hear from you. Join or renew your RCC membership to support these conversations.
