November 2025: Finding Comfort in Discomfort

Hello. We want to begin with a heartfelt thank you to everyone who helped us explore CWC’s Elements of Anti-racism Practice. The conversations over the last ten months have helped us refine the elements into what we hope will be a roadmap for any White person committed to anti-racism and liberation. We look forward to sharing the elements on our website soon.

As the air cools and everything around us seems to be shedding and shifting, we’ve been thinking about how change asks something similar of us — to let go, to reveal, to sit in what’s not yet certain. But what happens when that uncertainty starts to feel uncomfortable? Do we lean in? Shut down? Do we look for someone to make it feel better? Do we step away until the feeling passes?

These questions came up for some of us when we read this social media post by Raven Payment, a digital creator and Co-chair of the Denver Indian Commission. In the post, she talked about refusing to give a traditional land acknowledgment at a recent protest, instead sharing:

"Land acknowledgments have become a ritual of comfort… Words without action are not respect. They are permission for the injustice to continue.” 

Oof. Cue discomfort.

Since before CWC began, there has been a lot of talk in antiracist spaces about how White people need to feel discomfort in order to change. Some spaces even set out to create that discomfort on purpose.

But what we’ve learned is that most of us walk into these conversations already uncomfortable. No one has to manufacture that for us.

So our goal at CWC isn’t to pile on more tension — it’s to create enough ease that we can stay open, curious, and honest. We want to be able to read things like Raven Payment’s post and see possibility amid the (understandable) critique. 

We’ve found that that doesn’t happen in panic; it happens when we feel grounded enough to look at what’s hard. It reminds us of the Learning Zone model:

• In the Comfort Zone, we stay safe but static.

• In the Learning Zone, we’re challenged but still able to engage.

• In the Panic Zone, we can’t take anything in.

  
  

After hosting CWC gatherings for 15 years, we’ve learned how personal that balance is. What feels like the “learning zone” to one person might be the “panic zone” for another. Our collective challenge is to build and sustain a community where that difference is recognized and respected in a way that allows everyone to feel seen and heard.

We want CWC to be a space where people who are at different levels on their anti-racism journeys can gather and feel like they are giving and getting what they need from the community. We think an honest conversation about our relationships with comfort and discomfort can help us do that.

Here are some questions we’ll use to help us focus our thoughts during the second half of this month’s gatherings:

1. When do I notice myself protecting comfort (mine or others’) over curiosity or truth?

2. What kind of discomfort helps me grow, and what kind shuts me down? How can I tell the difference in real time?

3. What does “politeness” look like in me — and what does it protect?

4. How can I support my own and others’ learning without rescuing us from necessary tension?

5. What’s one small “stretch” I’m ready to try in the next conversation?

   
   

CWC has sometimes been criticized for making things too comfortable for White people. And it’s true that comfort has a complicated role in this work. But for many of us, comfort isn’t the goal — capacity is. We can’t transform what we can’t hold.

And remember, the CWC framework is designed so that we can say whatever is on our minds and hearts. If we leave feeling like we weren’t able to say what we wanted to say, we get to ask ourselves whether that’s because of the gathering framework, or because of how we have been socialized to center politeness for the sake of comfort. Maybe the question isn’t “Should White people feel comfortable?” but “Can we find enough steadiness to say what we need to say and keep learning even when we don’t feel comfortable?”

We hope you’ll join us for this opportunity to get more comfortable with discomfort together. And if this topic doesn’t inspire you or you disagree with our framing of comfort/discomfort, come and tell us. What a gift you’ll be giving to the community.

“...discomfort and sense of loss…is not fatal, but a sign of growth.” – Audre Lorde, poet and Black feminist activist