Dr. Durryle

We often celebrate the final construct, theory, or framework—but forget the human experiences that made it possible in the first place.

As scholars, researchers, facilitators, and educators, we gather stories, notice patterns, organize information, and shape meaning. But constructs are not created from nothing.

The stories are the clay.

This visual emerged from my reflections on conceptual clarity, social science, and the ethical responsibilities of knowledge production. Who is asking the questions? Who is doing the observing? Where are we digging for insight? Who gets believed? And can people recognize themselves in the theories created about their lives?

To me, good scholarship should not distance people from themselves. It should help people see themselves more clearly.

The clay gives life.
The hands give form.
Together, they create meaning.

– Durryle Brooks, PhD
Love & Justice Consulting KnowledgeProduction CriticalPedagogy LivedExperience Facilitation LoveAndJustice

I never take it for granted that, when asked, people call me by name and ask for me to show up again and again.

In this moment, when the political landscape is trying us at every turn, I needed people to know that “self-care” was NEVER built to defend against psychological warfare.

Every day, as I come across the news about this administration, the quote from Ms. Sofia in The Color Purple keeps replaying in my head:
“All my life I had to fight.”

And that unsettling truth about being Black and q***r in this country points to the hypervigilance so many of us carry every single day.

So when I developed this interactive workshop, I knew it was a love offering to us.

It was both a recognition of what it means to endure and an acknowledgment of the toll that enduring takes.

This workshop became my way of not only naming that reality, but designing and facilitating a space of relief. Even if it’s only for 90 minutes to 2 hours, it is one of the ways I give back to us.

It is how I, in the ways that I uniquely can, try to help us sustain ourselves and each other through the long arc of struggle.

It is my effort to add my weight toward bending the moral universe toward justice.

Narrative Sovereignty
The politics of interpretation, credibility, and being misread.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the labor of navigating unequal interpretive systems.

How human beings come to know, reduce, distort, recognize, or dignify one another through narrative.

How quickly partial information becomes interpretation.
How interpretation becomes identity.
How identity hardens into social “truth.”

And how some people move through the world with greater interpretive protection than others.

Particularly the intellectual, emotional, and relational work marginalized people often perform to clarify, contest, deconstruct, or reconstruct narratives imposed upon them.

This is an attempt to think through the politics of interpretation:
Who gets believed?
Who gets grace?
Who gets reduced?
Who gets complexity?
Who gets narratively trapped?

And what kinds of relational and institutional practices become possible when we slow down interpretation long enough for inquiry, humility, and complexity to emerge.

Would love to hear what resonates for you.

EpistemicLabor LiberatoryPractice CriticalTheoryOfLove ConflictTransformation OrganizationalCulture

🌿 Some people fill you up. Others draw from you. 🍂
Most relationship frameworks treat this like a moral problem — they’re toxic, cut them off. But movement leaders know it’s more complicated than that. ✨

So I built a tool.
The Relational Capacity Grid™ maps relationships across two axes: 🤝 resonance (the felt experience of mutual recognition, respect, and affirmation) and ⚡ effort (what it costs you to be present).
Your body may experience resonance as ease. It may experience effort as fatigue, tension, or strain. 🌀
Four quadrants:
🟢 Ease + Trust — where your spirit can exhale
🟡 Connection + Cost — love is here, and so is the labor
🟤 Light Connection — pleasant, contained, honor it for what it is
🔴 Relational Cost — heavy labor, often someone you cannot easily leave like coworkers

This isn’t a verdict on the other person. It’s a reading of the relationship in this moment — which always includes you. 💛

Built for movement leaders, organizers, and anyone doing the long work of liberation. Because protecting your relational capacity isn’t just personal wellness. It’s infrastructure. 🌳

Which quadrant are you spending the most energy in right now? 👇
🔗 Workshop, licensing & speaking — link in bio
Liberation BoundariesAreLove LeadershipDevelopment

Introducing the free Solidarity Diagnostic — a tool I built to go deeper than the framework.

I have been in movement spaces my whole career. And I have watched coalitions fracture, partnerships rupture, and relationships require painful repair — not because people did not care, but because we were operating with unnamed assumptions about what solidarity meant and what it required of us.

Here is what I know to be true about myself: there are communities and causes where I am at depth. Where I have time, real relationship, and shared risk. And there are issues where if I am honest, I am closer to performative than transformative. Not because I am a bad person. Because solidarity is not an identity. It is a set of practices — along three dimensions — and depth in one relationship does not transfer automatically to another.

The Solidarity Diagnostic helps you see this in yourself. You score yourself on two different relationships. The comparison is where the real learning happens.
Try it and tell me — how might this be useful for you, your team, your organization, your coalition, or your community?

Free tool — link in bio.
Which relationship are you being called to go deeper in right now?

organizing movements blackandbrownsolidarity liberation freetool

What happens when love is taken seriously in social justice work?

Recently, my session on Utilizing a Critical Theory of Love in Our Social Justice Work received strong feedback at ACPA26…

And now, it’s being invited to reach a broader, international audience through ACPA’s virtual learning series.

I don’t take that lightly.

Because this work isn’t just about ideas—it’s about practice.

It’s about asking:

* What kinds of love are we practicing in our organizations?
* Are they reinforcing harm… or cultivating liberation?
* And how do we actually operationalize love in the face of conflict, burnout, and systemic pressure?

The response to this session reminds me that people are hungry for frameworks that help them do love differently—not just talk about it.

This is what the Critical Theory of Love is meant to support:
A deeper discernment of how love shows up in our policies, relationships, leadership, and systems.

And how we can shift it toward justice and healing.

If this resonates with you…

Bring this work to your campus, team, or organization.

Let’s build practices of love that can actually hold the weight of the world we’re trying to change.

DM me or visit my link in bio to explore working together.