About

Tuesday, January 29, 2008, 10:43 PM

A project never changed the world. Self-reliance is self-sufficiency economically….And taking your own decisions…managing your own affairs. ….just having more income does not make you more concerned about other people. You have to organize around certain values – Ela Bhatt

We may say that we serve and are at the service of community or some such, but even that needs to be liberated. Serving needs to be liberated from any hierarchy- neither charity nor servitude nor obligation….not even a hint or whiff. Serve piko a piko (belly button to belly button), all a he also (face to face), until we cannot tell who serves whom and we are served.- Norma Wong

The fingers of people are not all the same length – A. Ol’oiloisolo Massek and J.O. Sidai, Maasai proverb

Only what is really oneself has the power to heal. – Carl Jung

What would it mean if we could find a way to be together that didn’t rest on agreement. – Adam Philips

Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. – Edward Abbey

Always be passionately aware that you could be completely wrong. -Dian Marino

I am Nanci, a Chinese-Syrian poet, adult educator and strategist from Halifax, Nova Scotia, K’jipuktuk, unceded unsurrendered ancestral homelands of the M’ikmaq. Originally from Port Colborne, Ontario, my family and ancestors are spread wide.

I am mindful that if I graduated from high school today I wouldn’t be able to afford to go to university. This has made me passionate about fairness, especially around money, education.
For years, I worked to bring connections between voice, choice and bodily safety especially for women and girls including a peer coaching and consulting group for over a decade and close to that amount of time at Coady Institute. This work led to support cooperatives, coalition-building, alternative economic models, community land trusts, organizational governance, strategy support, gender, equity, and anti-racism work.

A role at Tatamagouche Centre, a justice and spiritual oriented retreat centre from 2020-2024 took me away from these web spaces. I still facilitate and provide strategic support part time to organizations and collectives. Have also begun some personal training coaching for strength and wellness.

A poet, I also believe deeply in sharing our stories, dialogue and meaning-making. For me, these are key to bridging, changing norms and narratives, healing but also just plain connecting and seeing one another. Published “Hsin” in 2022 and it won the JM Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award.

More than half of my time, I rest, play, get outside, write poetry. I sing in two choirs which qualifies as play. Sit down and try to make sense out of all of this, write. Meditate. Volunteer. And sometimes I just play.