When Care Is Witnessed

Reflections from an Oasis day at the High Museum

Recently I attended an Oasis gathering at the High Museum of Art with a few friends.

It unfolded over the course of a morning and early afternoon, and I left thinking about care in a way that has stayed with me. The day began with a yoga practice held right in the middle of the museum. As we moved through the class, visitors traveled up and down the museum ramps above us. Some paused. Some leaned over the railings for a moment before continuing on.

We were practicing yoga in public.

At first it felt unusual. Yoga is often framed as a private act of restoration quiet studio, controlled environment, a place where the outside world falls away. But this was something different. We were breathing, stretching, softening in the open space of the museum while life continued all around us. And I kept noticing something subtle happening.

The people on the ramps were not on mats with us, but they were still brushing up against the moment. Through something as simple as attention, breath, and the quiet biology of mirror neurons, bodies influence one another.

Care can ripple outward.

Sometimes the act of witnessing is enough to shift a nervous system.

After yoga, the gathering moved into a sound bath. Again, it happened right there in the public space of the museum.

Part of me initially wanted it to be quieter. More contained. I had an image in my mind of the ideal sound bath stillness, silence, perfect calm. But the museum was alive.

Footsteps echoed through the galleries. Children’s voices drifted through the space. Visitors moved around us as they continued exploring the exhibits. And slowly something in me softened. The care wasn’t happening away from the world.

It was happening within it.

Then came the moment of stepping into a large brass bowl. One by one, participants were invited to stand inside as the practitioner ran a mallet along the rim, sending vibrations through the metal.

When it was my turn, the sound moved through the bowl and into my body through my chest, my ribs, my bones. For a moment I didn’t feel like a woman standing inside an instrument.

I felt like the bell.

The vibration wasn’t just around me. It was moving through me. And there I was, standing in the middle of a museum with strangers passing by, friends nearby, children’s voices somewhere in the distance… and I felt deeply held. Not alone. Not sealed off. Held in a field of witness.

Later that afternoon I spent time in the exhibit of Minnie Evans.

Her work is lush, visionary, intricate full of color, spirit, nature, and imagination layered together. Standing in front of those paintings after the yoga and the sound bath, I felt something settle.

Beauty itself can be a form of care. Not decorative care or indulgent care. But the kind that reminds the body it belongs to something larger. The day kept bringing me back to a quiet question:

Why have we reduced care to something we are supposed to do alone? So much of our culture talks about self-care as an individual responsibility, and we feel guilty if we don’t do it right.

Go fix yourself, regulate yourself, and restore yourself preferably quietly. Preferably out of sight.

And yet so much of the care I experienced that day happened in the presence of others.

Bodies moving together.

Sound vibrating through shared space.

Art holding attention collectively.

Friends gathering.

Strangers pausing.

It reminded me that sometimes healing doesn’t require leaving the world behind.

Sometimes it happens because we are held within it.

A Note About My Work

Much of the work I do with individuals, leaders, and organizations sits right at this intersection.

We are often taught that resilience, regulation, and sustainability are individual tasks.

But in reality they are deeply relational. They are shaped by the environments we inhabit, the systems we work within, and the communities that hold or fail to hold us.

Whether I’m working with mothers navigating postpartum, professionals reconsidering how they work, or organizations rethinking the structures that support people, the question is often the same:

What becomes possible when care is no longer treated as a solitary task, but something we build together?

You can learn more about that work through The Shift Shop.

Sometimes the most meaningful forms of care begin with something simple: being witnessed.