09/26/2026
I will be turning the Women and Spirituality Conference over to Nell Morningstar. The transfer has been initiated.
You can have your 42-year legacy back. I want nothing to do with it.
I want no part in a legacy where a woman can give the opening speech I gave, and when that same woman utterly falls apart a day later, there is no curiosity and no compassion for what it must have taken to bring her to that point.
I want no part in a community where, as I was already down on my knees apologizing for the ways I caused harm, people continued to tear me apart, and many others stood by and watched it happen.
It may be worth rereading my opening speech. Several of the people I later named in my closing speech were people I had sincerely thanked and honored in my opening, despite ways I had been hurt or poorly treated by them. I was still trying to see the good, acknowledge people's contributions, and hold this community together.
I am not saying that I handled everything well. I have apologized for my actions and for the harm I caused. I have listened to difficult feedback and looked seriously at my own behavior. Accountability matters to me.
But accountability cannot mean that one person must account for every way she caused harm while an entire community refuses to examine how it participated in harming her.
To those of you who saw me and spoke words of kindness and encouragement, thank you! Being seen by you has helped me hold onto myself while experiencing profound communal gaslighting.
I am leaving this conference knowing that I made mistakes. I am also leaving knowing that I tried extraordinarily hard to live the values I spoke about: compassion, accountability, inclusion, truth, repair, and the willingness to look at what exists beneath the surface.
I will carry what I learned from my own failures forward. I hope this community will someday be willing to do the same.
The transfer has been initiated, and there may be interruptions to email and Facebook while everything is migrated. From this point forward, I will not be responding to messages sent to [email protected] or [email protected].
If you would like to reach me personally, you may contact me at [email protected].
At this time, I am protecting myself carefully. I will only engage with communication that is apologetic or encouraging, or with feedback from those who have demonstrated that they are willing to speak speak to my strength and ability as much as my shortcomings. I expect to be treated with humanity and care.
There are people who have been lighthouses for me as I have tried to navigate these dark and extraordinarily toxic waters. I am deeply grateful to you.
I am releasing this conference.
You can have your legacy.
You can have that legacy.
My legacy will be of the phoenix that rose from these ashes and flew off into a much more beautiful future.
Opening Speech Given at the Women and Spirituality Conference 2026 by Rose Kpulo:
Good morning, and welcome to the 42nd Women & Spirituality Conference.
As I look around this room and see all of you gathered here, I feel so much gratitude. Gratitude that you chose to come. Gratitude for the wisdom each of you carries. And gratitude for what becomes possible when we bring our different stories, identities, experiences, wounds, gifts, and ways of knowing into relationship with one another.
Our theme this year is Together We Rise: Honoring Feminine Wisdom and Power. And as I have sat with those words, I keep coming back to two questions: Who is the "we"? And what does it really mean to rise together?
I believe every person in this room is, in some way, a phoenix. Every one of us has walked through fire and risen from the ashes. Some of those fires are visible. Some are deeply private. Some were created by circumstances beyond our control, and some came from choices we made ourselves. And yet we rose.
We survived something. We learned something. We became something. And hopefully, we carried some wisdom out of the fire with us.
But spirituality cannot only be about our individual rising. Because if I rise while someone beside me is being pushed down, are we truly rising? If my fight for liberation does not include fighting for other marginalized groups liberation, is that liberation? If I find my voice but cannot make room for someone else's, what have I actually found?
There is extraordinary beauty in spiritual community. There is healing here. Ancient wisdom. Joy. Ceremony. Connection. And there is also a shadow side to spirituality. When unexamined it can be a tool of furthering the patriarchy and colonization.
Spiritual language can become another way of explaining away suffering. Ideas like manifestation, abundance, personal responsibility, or creating our own reality can contain wisdom AND they can also cause harm when they ignore trauma, poverty, racism, colonization, disability, gender oppression, and the very different circumstances into which human beings are born
We do not all begin from the same starting place. Acknowledging that does not diminish anyone's strength. But it does require expansion of our compassion and action.
Many of us know what it feels like to live within patriarchy as women. We know what it means to have our voices dismissed, our bodies controlled, our wisdom questioned, or our power made threatening. We must use that experience to help us recognize oppression beyond the places where we personally experience it.
Each of us carries identities in which we may experience marginalization. And many of us also carry multiple identities that give us privilege, being white, being cis, being a citizen, being heterosexual, being neurotypical, being able bodied, and more.
Recognizing privilege does not require shame. But it definitely requires responsibility and action.
Perhaps part of honoring feminine wisdom is becoming willing to ask not only: How do I rise?
But: Who has been carrying me as I rise? Whose labor have I not seen? Whose wisdom have I benefited from? Where do I have power that I could use to make room for someone else?
And perhaps most importantly: Can using my privilege for another person's liberation matter to me even when I receive nothing from it?
That, to me, is where Together We Rise becomes more than a conference theme. It becomes a practice.
And that practice begins by acknowledging the land beneath our feet and the histories that made gatherings like this possible.
We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional lands of the Wahpeton people. A land acknowledgement cannot return stolen land. Words alone cannot repair generations of displacement, violence, cultural erasure, and exploitation.
Acknowledgement must be accompanied by action. The Women & Spirituality Conference has committed a portion of its profits toward Indigenous communities and land reparations.
We also acknowledge that the wealth and institutions of this country were built in significant part through the forced labor of enslaved African people as well as indentured servitude of many races. We acknowledge that the consequences of slavery/indentured servitude did not disappear when slavery legally ended. Here, too, acknowledgement must be accompanied by action. The conference commits a portion of its profits toward organizations serving BIPOC communities and working toward racial justice.
These commitments do not mean the work is finished. They are simply one way we practice the belief that our privilege must be used to help others rise. And that brings me back to together.
Together does not mean that we always agree. It does not mean avoiding difficult conversations so everyone remains comfortable. And it does not mean perfection.
Together means we keep learning. We listen. We repair when we cause harm. We become curious when something makes us uncomfortable. We allow ourselves to be changed by one another. And sometimes, we simply sit beside another human being and say: I may not completely understand your experience, but I am willing to listen.
That is the sacred work.
And none of what you will experience this weekend would be possible without an extraordinary amount of mostly invisible and yet sacred work.
I want to offer my deep gratitude to our Stewardship Circle. Peg, Tiffany, Dawn, Theresa, Sara, Nell, Heidi, and Lisa. There are countless decisions, conversations, emails, phone calls, changes, and acts of care behind a gathering like this. I am grateful to each person who has given their time, wisdom, energy, and heart to carrying this conference forward.
I also want to thank our sponsors and partners. Your support helps sustain a gathering that has existed for more than four decades and creates opportunities for people to learn, heal, question, connect, and discover something new within themselves and one another.
Thank you to our presenters for sharing your wisdom. Thank you to our vendors and exhibitors for bringing your gifts. Thank you to our volunteers. And thank you for being here.
Because this weekend is not something we created for you. We create it together.
So over the next two days, I invite you to be curious. Go to the workshop that excites you AND maybe the one that makes you a little uncomfortable. Talk with someone you would not ordinarily talk with. Listen to a perspective you haven't considered. Laugh. Rest. Cry if you need to. Go outside. Put your feet on the Earth. Dance. Learn something. Question something.
Let yourself receive. And look for an opportunity to give.
Most of all, remember that you do not have to become someone else this weekend. Perhaps the invitation is to become more fully yourself while making room for everyone around you to do the same.
Because I don't believe we rise by climbing over one another. We don't rise by deciding who is worthy enough, spiritual enough, healed enough, successful enough, feminine enough, or enlightened enough to come with us.
We rise when there is room for all of us.
We rise when someone's liberation matters to us as much as our own liberation matters. We rise when power becomes something we share rather than something we protect.
We rise when wisdom moves in every direction. And we rise when we remember that none of us got here alone.
So this weekend, I invite you to ask yourself: What would it mean for me to rise? And then ask the harder question: What would it mean for us to truly rise together?
Welcome to the Women & Spirituality Conference.
Welcome to Together We Rise.
