By Erin Anderson

This month, we’re calling something in.

Not a trend. Not a rebrand. A return.

At Eadem Arbor, we’re shifting the way we speak about justice, yoga, healing, and liberation—not to sound smarter or more relevant, but to sound more true. Because we’ve noticed that even though we’ve been using these words for decades, they still haven’t stuck in the marrow of society. And we have to ask: why?

Words like liberation, inclusion, embodiment, healing—they still carry power. But they’ve been stripped of context. Co-opted. Echoed without integrity.

We cannot begin to speak of ‘communal ecology’ if we still refuse to see how we’ve hoarded power and space… These new words are sacred—but they are earned. There is heart work involved - a feeling of the truth of the word and the ask behind it.

There are two ways people often approach language in our current culture:

1. We discard what feels overused.

2. We create something new to signal belonging.

It’s a pattern we see not only in language—but in how we relate to people. In colonized cultures, we’re taught to sever instead of tend. To leave behind instead of lean in.

We place our parents in homes—not always out of malice, but because the systems around us make interdependence feel impossible.

This isn’t about shame. It’s about noticing.

Noticing what we’ve normalized—and wondering what else might be possible.

This isn’t to say that, in some circumstances, leaving isn’t the right or necessary choice for you or your family. But too often, we are forced into that choice—pushed by systems of housing insecurity, economic disparity, lack of access, and cycles of abuse. And all of these pressures are products of a colonized culture.

So, we’re starting to ask ourselves a deeper question:

Is the shift really about language at all—or is it about changing our patterns and behaviors?

Language does matter so let’s start there. Because colonizer language has always been a weapon. It was never neutral. It was designed to divide, to dominate, to make people and places “other.” So yes, we need language that can heal. But not just new words for novelty’s sake. Language that roots us in love. Language that remembers.

Black culture has long shown us what it means to make new language out of survival, brilliance, and creativity. But often, what feels new is actually a return. A remembering. A rhythm in the bones.

So what does the shift back to the sacred really look like?

Maybe it looks like:

• Creating new language rooted in truth and relationship

• Returning to ancestral ways of speaking, of being, of naming

• Using structured words—but filling them with love and accountability

• Listening. Not just speaking.

This is not about making justice prettier.

It’s about making it truer.

“We are crossing the bridge even as we build it…

This shift in language is not a performance of certainty—it is a practice of reaching.”

So we offer you this living lexicon—not as a list of replacements, but as a constellation of ideas we’re working through in real time:

• Communal Ecology

• Relational Constellations

• Somatic Stewardship

These words aren’t “answers.” They’re inquiries. Practices. Invitations.

A Necessary Reckoning

This reimagined language is not a shortcut. It is not a hall pass around the heart work.

Especially for white-bodied folks—those of us whose ancestors and cultures created, maintained, and benefited from systems of dominance and hierarchy—this shift in language must not become a bypass.

We cannot begin to speak of “communal ecology” if we still refuse to see how we’ve hoarded power and space.

We cannot embody “relational constellations” without first reckoning with how we’ve demanded comfort over truth.

We cannot talk of “somatic stewardship” if we’ve never acknowledged how our bodies have been conditioned by supremacy, or how our nervous systems continue to replicate control.

These new words are sacred—but they are earned.

If we skip the work of justice, equity, and accountability, we risk turning soulful language into spiritual performance. And that, too, is a kind of violence.

We believe that BIPOC folks—though we cannot speak for them—are often more ready to move toward collective healing because they have already lived through and within the costs of our dominant systems.

White folks must meet this moment not with defensiveness, but with devotion. Not with guilt, but with grounded humility. Not for redemption, but for right relationship.

This work begins in the body, but it must move through the breath, the heart, and the relationship. Because heart work is the hardest work. And it’s the only way we earn our place inside this new vocabulary.

At Eadem Arbor, we also recognize that we are not “there” yet—because there is no final destination, no pristine arrival point where the work is done. We are crossing the bridge even as we build it, learning in motion, and unlearning in layers.

This shift in language is not a performance of certainty—it is a practice of reaching. And we know that at times, we may falter. We ask our community to hold us accountable, not out of perfectionism, but out of shared commitment. We are committed to repair, to listening, to course-correcting when needed. This work is generational, cultural, and continuous.

Each generation must take up the labor of unbinding what no longer serves, of loosening the grip of inherited systems, and of recommitting to what it means to be in just and sacred relationship. We are beginning again, on purpose.

History on Beginnings

There’s a reason why Eadem Arbor is written in Latin, and a reason why so many English words trace back to Latin roots. Latin was the language of the Roman Empire—one of the earliest large-scale colonizing forces in the Western world—and it became a linguistic foundation for colonization through both empire and church.

As Rome expanded across Europe, Latin replaced or absorbed many indigenous languages, a pattern later mirrored in how English and Spanish spread across the globe. In fact, Latin directly gave rise to the Romance languages—Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and many others—and heavily influenced English through conquest, scholarship, and religious doctrine.

The Roman Catholic Church further entrenched Latin’s dominance, using it as the language of liturgy and theological control for centuries. So when we invite people to explore the root of a word, we are not just talking about etymology—we are talking about power. The reason we return to the Latin root is not to glorify it, but to acknowledge its role in displacing the indigenous languages we all once spoke.

We return to the root in order to dig beneath it. Because now, we are in the soil. And the soil holds memory. The work, then, is not just linguistic—it is ancestral, ecological, and spiritual. It is about returning to the languages beneath colonizer language. To what was buried, and still breathes.

With love & gratitude,

Eadem Arbor

DEFINITIONS

In addition to “Diversity and Inclusion” → Communal Ecology → Ecological Freedom

Definition: Ecological Freedom is the interdependent, love-rooted practice of co-creating conditions where all beings can live in alignment with their inherent dignity, purpose, and relational responsibility.

It is not freedom as personal license—but freedom as collective flourishing, rooted in care.

Ecological Freedom understands that liberty without love is domination, and that no one is truly free unless all are engaged in the shared labor of tending, balancing, and belonging.

This freedom doesn’t extract. It doesn’t hoard. It listens, yields, nourishes, and adapts.

It is freedom with, not freedom over.

Why This Works: “Communal Ecology” reframed diversity and inclusion from static representation into a living system of mutual influence and belonging.

Ecological Freedom takes this further—it reframes freedom itself, not as an individual right divorced from others, but as a relational and ethical practice.

In a culture that equates freedom with unchecked autonomy, Ecological Freedom dares to say:

“There can be no freedom without love.”

And love, here, is not sentiment.

It is an ethic of interdependence.

A devotion to each other’s liberation.

A willingness to prune what overgrows and to water what’s been neglected.

This language is urgent because:

Freedom” has been weaponized by supremacy and colonial narratives to justify domination.

Ecology” reminds us we belong to a system larger than ourselves, and freedom must operate within those bounds.

This phrase demands that we ask: What does my freedom cost others? And what is the quality of my participation in our shared humanity.

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Instead of “Safe Space” → Relational Constellations

Definition: Environments where individuals orbit one another with fluidity, where needs and boundaries are allowed to shift, and where care is defined not by control but by mutual awareness and intentional proximity.

Why this works: “Safe space” can often imply a fixed guarantee—when in truth, no space is inherently safe for everyone all the time. Relational constellations offers a more dynamic model of care. It accounts for the ever-evolving emotional and social landscapes of a community, where people are free to express needs, draw boundaries, and reorient based on truth—not performance.

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Transitioning from “Embodiment” → Somatic Stewardship

Definition: A practice of tending to the body not simply as a vessel of sensation, but as a living archive of history, intuition, and adaptation. Somatic stewardship centers responsibility—for what we carry, what we release, and how we relate to others through our physical presence and nervous system patterns.

Why this works: “Embodiment” has become a buzzword that risks oversimplifying the depth of what it means to truly inhabit and care for our physical selves. Somatic stewardship calls us into accountability. It implies long-term commitment, responsibility, and reciprocity—exactly what is needed when we begin the work of healing.