What is the Transformative
Solidarity Model?

The Transformative Solidarity Model responds to the question, how do you want to show up? In this moment, in this conversation, in this life. It is about transforming behavior and learning how to move through all the emotions and barriers that come from the process of change. It offers a different lens through which to do life. It asks us to live in the honesty that is not about locating “truth”. To, more often, exist in the space between. This lens requires sitting in the unknowing, in the discomfort of not understanding, the fear of being witnessed; it asks us to reject our understandings of right or wrong and to acknowledge and love ourselves in ways many of us have never experienced. To love others in ways many of us think we are not capable. This model asks us to hold grace for ourselves and others and to risk intimacy and embarrassment, in the pursuit of transformation and systemic change.

What is a system? What are the parts of a system?

An awareness of how systems operate creates an understanding that those who benefit do so only when others are oppressed, systems such as racism, classism, ableism, sexism, etc. These systems are supported and upheld through our institutions, validated by our individual perceptions, behaviors, and choices, and through our implicit biases.

Our systems: racism, capitalism, sexism, ableism, etc. all work and are organized in the same way.

There are institutions that define our rules and regulations. Institutions like marriage, gender, race, class, etc. These institutions inform both how we can be an individual, how we relate to each other and how organizations and corporations relate to each of us.

If we want to change a system, we need to understand its parts. The Transformative Solidarity Model offers one way to understand the parts and create systemic change.

In the Transformative Solidarity Model, the three phases: Awareness, Action, and Integration are our map. 

They help us determine where we are and where to go next.

Transformative Solidarity Model showing the relationship between the three phases. Detailed description below image.

(Image Description: A large, black circle with three words and blue arrows placed around its edge. Each word is purple, framed by a thick, black lined rectangle. Around the edge of the circle are the three phase. If the circle were a compass then at North, is the word AWARENESS. Southeast is the word ACTION. Southwest is the word INTEGRATION. Between each word is a blue arrow indicating a The clockwise movement around the circle. Another black line, on the inside of the circle, curves inward between AWARENESS and ACTION, with another blue arrow indicating a clockwise movement between Awareness and Action. Between Awareness and Integration is another inward curved line with another blue arrow, indicating a clockwise movement between Integration and Awareness. This diagram model is meant to represent the conversation between the three phases, as well as indicate Awareness as the touchstone for the other two phase.)

The Five Guiding Principles with icons - image description below

Image Description: Centered at the top of the image are the words: The Five Guiding Principles. Below are each of the Five Guiding Principles and their icons. From left to right, on the first row: An open book outline icon with Honesty written below, An outline of a leaf with leaf veins and the word Grace underneath, and last is An outline of an open hand with a heart floating above it and the word Vulnerability beneath. On the second row are the final two guiding principles. From left to right: An outline of a magnifying glass icon and the word Witness beneath it, and next an outline of two hands shaking and the word Commitment beneath it. 

The Five Guiding Principles: Honesty, Grace, Vulnerability, Witness, and Commitment are what help us determine how to get where we want to go and how to do what we want to do. 

Without the Five Guiding Principles I believe we will continue to stumble in repeated patterns of privilege and oppression

Transformative Solidarity Model Overview

The Transformative Solidarity Model visual breakdown. Image Description below

Image Description: A large, black circle with three words and blue arrows placed around its edge. Each word is purple, framed by a thick, black lined rectangle. Around the edge of the circle are the three phases. If the circle were a compass then at North, is the word AWARENESS. Above Awareness is text framed by a box with white background, I want/need to learn something new.  Southeast is the word ACTION. Below Action is text framed by a box with a white background, this is how I am learning. Southwest is the word INTEGRATION. Below Integration is text framed by a box with a white background, I have learned and now I am learning again. Between each word is a blue arrow indicating a The clockwise movement around the circle. Another black line, on the inside of the circle, curves inward between AWARENESS and ACTION, with another blue arrow indicating a clockwise movement between Awareness and Action. In the space between awareness and action there is bolded text in black that reads, I want/need to learn something new, again. Between Awareness and Integration is another inward curved line with another blue arrow, indicating a clockwise movement between Integration and Awareness. In the space between Integration and Awareness there is bolded text in black that reads, There is more to learn and deeper layers to go. This diagram model is meant to represent the conversation between the three phases, as well as indicate Awareness as the touchstone for the other two phase.

Awareness is when you know or realize you want or need to learn something.

Action is how you are learning.

Integration is having learned and now learning again. 

Sometimes as we are learning something new, we might make mistakes, we might get something wrong, or something unexpected might happen and each of these experiences will send us back into awareness – where we want or need to learn something new, again. And then back into Action with an expanded way of learning.

As we spend time between Awareness and Action, at some point, we reach Integration. Because as we learn something, or integrate it, that opens us up to the deeper layers of what we are learning and how we are growing. And so, this takes us back to our Awareness again. And then Awareness leads us back to Integration and it also leads us back to Action.

Awareness is our touch stone for this work. When we try to bypass awareness, we often make mistakes and sometimes cause unintentional harm. 

In this process all three phases are often working together. As though they are in conversation with one-another. We just have to show up and engage with the conversation.

So, let’s expand this model through the system of racism.

Why do I choose racism to focus on?

  1. I’m a firm believer that when we work to liberate Black people and People of the Global Majority, we will all be liberated.
  2. In the hierarchy of privilege and oppressive systems – whiteness always gives an extra layer of support and protection.
  3. White Supremacy is violent, and we need to actively dismantle this.

The Transformative Solidarity model expands awareness to three levels: 

Awareness of the Individual, Interpersonal, and Institutional.

Awareness of the Individual

Awareness of the Individual is holding an awareness of the differences in experiences between those with white or light-skin and those who are Black or have darker skin.

Awareness of the Individual is more than a self-awareness. It is holding the awareness that regardless of privilege or oppression we are all an other to someone else. Awareness of the Individual is inviting the other closer, within ourselves and with each other.

Not other as in otherness but other as in curious. As in who are you? And who am I?

A few questions and ponderings to ask ourselves:

What are our histories and experiences that might inform our way of being and beliefs?

Story Time:

Around 24 I was working as a production assistant on a movie set and a co-worker and I got into a verbal altercation. His choice, during this fight, was to scream at me, “he, she, whatever” and threaten physical violence. My choice, later, was to be sure when I retold this story to participants in my trans allyship workshops that this coworker was a big Black man. So that I could justify my fear and garner more sympathy. This feels shameful to admit, but it took me at least a year to realize what I was doing and the biases I was carrying and perpetuating, and the ways in which I was trading on my privilege. I had to sit with that honesty and face what I had to unlearn.

What are our
choices and behaviors that might be incongruent with how we experience ourselves?

Story Time:

During a time when I was lacking in awareness of how I was being perceived and the new buffet of privilege I had access to (as a perceived cisgender man with light skin privileges), I had an internship at the Gay and Lesbian center to develop a training on trans identities. My internship supervisors were three transwomen of color. I worked hard on this design. I was proud of it and had received much praise and encouragement. I went into the meeting with my supervisors expecting much of the same. But what actually happened is they tore my training apart, line by line, while also dressing me all the way down. They, rightfully, called out my place of privilege as a light skinned trans man, they called out the use of trans trauma to teach cis people, I mean I did so many things wrong and thought I had been doing so many things right. Turns out once I did an inventory, all those who were praising me were white cisgender people. When our oppressors praise us for our oppression, something is amiss.

What are our
emotions and feelings when faced with our complicity in oppression?

Story Time:

I had to learn to understand the tightness that would arise in my body whenever the topic of race or racism came up. Even if I’ve always been on the side of anti-racists. I had to look at the fear, guilt, shame, embarrassment, and desire to be liked and a good person. The Five Guiding Principles are what helped me process and hold all these emotions so that I could continue to grow and become.

I share these stories in the hope that it opens space for your stories.

Other parts we hold and questions to ask in Awareness of the Individual:

  • What Privileges do I have? What Oppressions? How do these inform my movements, choices, and feelings?
  • What are my triggers? How do I respond to intense experiences or emotions? What happens when I am triggered or in a trauma response? Am I still able to engage with the topic or person in front of me?
  • What are the biases that I know I carry? (explicit biases)
  • What are the biases I might have because of where I’m from and what I have been taught? (implicit biases)
    • This can be a hard one because it can come right up against our desires to be good people and to be seen as good people.

Those of us with privilege have a responsibility to transform the ways in which we move and are complicit in the systems of privilege. Because we are all complicit in some form. And whether we want to or not, those of us with privilege will always benefit from the oppression and subjugation of others.

We must ask ourselves, am I trading on my privilege?

  • Do I know I get a higher salary or opportunities than my peers of a different race or gender?
  • What choices do I have or get to have because I inhabit a privileged identity?
    • How often do I allow myself to lean into that privilege and those choices/options without awareness?

Awareness of the Interpersonal

Considering these questions allow us to form our Awareness of the Individual and informs and guides our Awareness of the Interpersonal. For example – if you’re carrying biases about an Other, whether aware of those biases or not, they will show themselves in the choices we make or the Actions we choose. If you are carrying a bias that you are better because of your white skin or cisgender identity or because you are able-bodied or neurotypical, those biases will also show up in the ways in which we engage and the Actions we choose.

Holding the Awareness of the Individual within the Interpersonal offers the opportunity to make a different choice. To challenge the privileges we carry and the ones to which we are complicit. It allows us the opportunity to listen, change, and transform ourselves and our organizations. Which offers opportunities and possibilities to come together in Transformative Solidarity. Because we know – systemic change only happens when we come together.

Awareness of the Interpersonal is not simply just about how we relate to each other. It is also holding the awareness of how our organizations relate to us. Often the culture of organizations mimics the culture of society, a privileging of masculine and white, able-bodied, cisgender etc. identities.

Awareness of the Interpersonal opens space to witness the different ways organizations and business relate to us based on our identities, perceived or otherwise. 

Questions to ask:

  • Do a brief evaluation of your organizations, or school programs, or businesses. Who are the people in positions of power and higher rank? How is that different from who you serve? Which cultural ways of being are privileged or acknowledged by default?

  • What are the subtle differences in how people are treated? What are the similarities among those treated well and with grace for mistakes or missteps.

  • How might we use our privilege, and the power that comes with it, to create change? How might we listen differently to those who suffer where we are supported?

  • In what ways are we willing to give up the power that comes with privilege? In what ways are we willing to challenge our own place and risk a different experience?

If what is honest is that our allyship comes with stipulations that our lives don’t change, then we will continue to maintain complicity hidden behind performativity. We will continue to march in the streets and then return to our places of power, our places of privilege and wonder why the world won’t change. We will continue to praise those in the marginalized and oppressed identities for continuing to fight and create change, while we comfortably rest on the cloud cushions of privilege, access, and choice.

Awareness of the Individual and Interpersonal offers opportunities, possibilities, and guidance to change these ways of being. To challenge, confront, and dismantle the systems.

Awareness of the Institutional

But the question remains, “Where did these choices come from?”

Our ways of being an individual and relating and engaging with each other are defined by Institutions.

In the Transformative Solidarity model Institution refers to the way in which society is organized. I’m talking about Institutions like, the institution of marriage, education, the institution of gender/sex and sexism, and the institution of race and racism.  Institutions define how we can be and engage based on arbitrary designations chosen to support those in power.

Awareness of the Institutional asks:

  • Why and how do our societies become the way they are?

  • Why do we, as humans, as individuals, do the things we do?

  • Why are things “just the way they are”?

Here is one way to engage these questions: 

Visual depiction of Awareness of the Institutional. Image Description below.

Image Description: There is a large black circle. Centered on the inside are the words, Established Identities (The Norm), Accepted/Expected Behaviors. At the top inside of the circle in bolded, all capitalized text and underlined it reads, Privileges. Below that in smaller font it reads, How do you know it is easier when in the norm or when performing the established identities and behaviors? Outside the circle on the bottom right in bolded, all capitalized text it reads, Oppressions. Below that in smaller font it reads, How do we know it is more difficult when in the margins or when perceived as not performing the established identities and behaviors?

Step One: 
What are the established identities (or the norm) and what are the expected and accepted behaviors?
Step Two: 
What are the privileges for being in the norm?

How do you know it is easier when in the norm or when performing the established identities and behaviors?
Step Three: 
What are the oppressions when outside the norm or on the margins?

How do we know it is more difficult when in the margins or when perceived as not performing the established identities and behaviors?

Let’s apply this to the Institution of Racism:

Step One:

Established Identities (Norms): White, Euro-centric

Accepted & Expected Behaviors: White Supremacy Culture Characteristics

Step Two:

Privileges:

Educational & Work Opportunities, Access, Benefit of the doubt, Management Positions, Cultural Holidays and Heritage are celebrated, Acceptance, Choices and Options.

Step Three:

Oppressions:

Unemployed, lack of access to meeting basic needs, assumed guilty, harsher punishments, shame or worse for traditions, lower ranked employment positions (usually service positions), 

We know the established identities and behaviors are whiteness and white supremacy culture, we know that the closer you are to maintaining, becoming or performing these identities, the greater opportunities you will have, the more safety. We also know that the further away from these identities and accepted and expected behaviors you are, the more repercussions you will face, simply for existing. These repercussions are often violent and deadly. Institutions teach us through violence, coercion, and manipulation what not to be, what to strive to be, and what identities and ways of being to protect. Most of us do this without even thinking about.

When we have identified these different parts then we are better able to place ourselves within this institution. Better able to see the ways in which we benefit because others suffer. We can only begin where we are. And holding an Awareness of the Institutional allows us a greater ability to know where we are and opens the possibilities of creating a shift within these designations, and hopefully, removing them entirely.

How does the Institutional affect the Individual and Interpersonal?

When we hold an Awareness of the Institutional, we are better able to pinpoint/discover the ways of thinking and being we’ve been taught. The Awareness of the Institutional offers opportunities and possibilities to make different choices and change “the way things are.”

For example, as I’ve grown and learned, I know now that I carried many ignorance’s and biases. I internalized homophobia, transphobia, and racism.  I had to sit with the honesty that I had privileges that carried me where others were forced to carry oppressions. I had to find grace for myself, my experience, and my learning. I had to lean into vulnerability and feel and experience all the emotions and honesty that I was facing. I had to allow myself to be witnessed, so that I could be reflected back to myself to learn, grow, and change. And I had to remember that commitment is choice and I had agency in this process of transformation. I had agency in how I show up.

Because of the ignorance’s and biases I carried (both against and for), I avoided many subjects, conversations, places, and experiences. When my life, seemingly, started to change as I became Kyle, I was ignorant of the place of privilege I was now inhabiting, that of being perceived as a cisgender man and light-skinned, which effected the ways in which I engaged with others. And I was called out for it. Rightfully, so.  Because of my ignorance’s I couldn’t be aware of the systemic inequalities I had been benefiting from.

As I have come to hold a greater awareness of the Institutional, I am better equipped to see injustices where I was once unable. Which means I am also better equipped to respond to them.

Action & Integration

Our Awareness of the Individual, Interpersonal, and Institutional guide us through Phase 2: Action. In Action, we ask just one question. At which level of awareness can I create change to be in Transformative Solidarity, that is realistic and sustainable? We refer to our Awareness and the Five Guiding Principles for guidance and support.  

Actions I took at the Individual level were to begin educating myself and learning as much as I could about the topics I was scared to talk about and sitting with facing the biases I had been taught to have and to search for the ones I was unaware of. And at the Awareness of the Interpersonal, one of the Actions was to begin to challenge when I was given more space or support than others, to reject the moments when I was trading on my privileges, to learn when to shut up and listen and when to speak up and challenge, and I had to learn new ways of engaging, and face the fear that I would mess up, again and again.

It is through this process that we come to Phase 3: Integration.

When we’re looking to create systemic change, we must remember that there are three different levels to this system: the Individual, the Interpersonal, and the Institutional. And transforming in and at each one is essential to a systemic shift. The Transformative Solidarity model invites us to place ourselves within this system, to challenge our understanding of self and transforming it to the Individual, as we are not a system without Individuals, and we are not the only self.

It invites us to show up differently in our Interpersonal experiences, to challenge our organizations who easily and often without awareness perpetuate the systemic injustices of our societies. The Transformative Solidarity model invites us to hold the awareness that our ways of being are such the way they are to maintain an oppressive system, to hold the Awareness of the Institutional and reject the rules and regulations each moment there is an opportunity. And I believe if we are paying attention, there are ample opportunities.

I believe if we all strive to take Actions, that are realistic and sustainable, at the level of Awareness of where we are, within honesty and grace, we will be able to create a systemic shift that is lasting.

Awareness gives us the opportunity to begin where we are, to know where to act, and to reassess when something goes awry. Awareness is what leads us into Integration and into further growth and different more sustainable Actions. The Transformative Solidarity Model invites us to engage only as far, or as deep, as we choose, are willing, or able.

When we don’t hold our Awareness of the Individual, not just of ourselves, but of the Other as well, then we will absolutely perpetuate harm and oppressive systems while intending to change them.   What I’ve learned in my time doing this work and living this life is that Awareness is often about the separation of us from the other. The us being the privileged, the ones in charge, the ones with power. What is lacking is that we are all an Other to each other. And if we can reframe awareness from learning about the plight of the marginalized to a curiosity of the Other, the Other within us and the other separate from us, then I believe we can create change in the ways many of us dream. I think this is where we begin to move in Transformative Solidarity, where we embody the call-out that “your struggle is my struggle.”

What We Offer

All offerings are available virtually and in-person. Workshops and programs follow the Transformative Solidarity (TS) Model.

Click below to learn more about each offering

Please note: All workshops include discussions of and challenges to racism. We believe no matter the topic of injustice, without including and addressing racism we will inevitably perpetuate racism and white supremacy. 

These workshops are for those interested in learning a different way to address privilege and create systemic change.

We currently offer TPIC workshops on anti-racism and trans and nonbinary active-allyship. 

Our CE Courses are available for licensed mental health service providers in California working with trans and nonbinary clients.

This CE course invites participants to expand their understanding of Trans & Nonbinary identities and develop skills for therapeutic work.
Our Transformative Solidarity Long-Term Programs are designed with sustainability at their core. Each program is customized based on the needs of your organization, company, or group.

We want you to feel empowered and able to continue the work long after our time together.

We offer one-on-one and group coaching depending on your needs. We are available for private, corporate, and nonprofit consultations. Contact us to schedule your free first 30 minute call.

We utilize the Transformative Solidarity Model to guide you through any changes you are working toward.

What We Offer

All offerings are available virtually and in-person. Workshops and programs follow the Transformative Solidarity (TS) Model.

Click below to learn more about each offering

Please note: All workshops include discussions of and challenges to racism. We believe no matter the topic of injustice, without including and addressing racism we will inevitably perpetuate racism and white supremacy. 

These workshops are for those interested in learning a different way to address privilege and create systemic change.


We currently offer TPIC workshops on anti-racism and trans and nonbinary active-allyship.

Our CE Courses are available for licensed mental health service providers in California working with trans and nonbinary clients.


This CE course invites participants to expand their understanding of Trans & Nonbinary identities and develop skills for therapeutic work.

Our Transformative Solidarity Long-Term Programs are designed with sustainability at their core. Each program is customized based on the needs of your organization, company, or group.


We want you to feel empowered and able to continue the work long after our time together.

We offer one-on-one and group coaching depending on your needs. We are available for private, corporate, and nonprofit consultations. Contact us to schedule your free first 30 minute call.

We utilize the Transformative Solidarity Model to guide you through any changes you are working toward.