Community Love: A Tribute to Those Who Support and Uplift Our Communities - Jennifer-Lee Koble, MSW

Every newsletter, I like to share about a practitioner whom I believe my readers would benefit from knowing. The good work that they do in the world inspires me, and this month I am writing to share with you a bit about my friend and colleague Jennifer-Lee Koble, MSW.

Jennifer-Lee (she/ her) is Métis/Cree and of mixed European ancestry. She belongs to the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan and is a member of the Métis Nation of British Columbia. She is a proud mother, auntie, sister, daughter, niece, cousin, partner, and friend.

It’s humbling to reflect on the ways our paths have woven together over the years.

I first met her when she attended a yoga class I was teaching at the now shuttered but always beloved Ocean & Crow Yoga studio in 2014. During that time, I distinctly remember her approaching me to gently ask about the meaning and origins of Anjali mudra at the end of a class. “Who does this belong to?” she asked. What stayed with me wasn’t just the question she asked—but how she asked it: With care, with courage, with the assumption that I could meet her there. That moment shaped something in me. This was the beginning of a deep inquiry into my role as a white bodied yoga teacher and how I had been complicit in acts of cultural appropriation.

At the time, I didn’t fully realize how formative that kind of dialogue would become in my work, both personally and professionally. In many ways, it laid the foundation for how I’ve come to understand the necessary discomfort of reckoning with whiteness—not as a one-time awakening, but as a continual, relational, embodied practice. One that requires community, accountability, and a whole lot of unlearning.

Jennifer Lee collaborated with myself, Yoga Outreach and Dr. Jessica Barrudin in the First Nations Women’s Yoga Initiative, a trauma-informed curriculum and training that prepared First Nations women and two spirited people to practice and offer culturally-responsive and trauma-informed yoga programs in their respective communities. As a community leader/co-facilitator, Jennifer-Lee held a safe container for our participants as they navigated the pandemic and its impact on their communities and culture.

Jennifer-Lee also generously agreed to be interviewed for a Masters Thesis that I collaborated on entitled Building Capacity For Trauma And Violence-Informed Care And Deconstructing Oppression In Women’s Health Care with Dr. Vanessa Brcic.

I sometimes walk side by side with Jennifer-Lee as she holds space for myself and other therapists and activists in a monthly consult circle where we reflect upon how colonization impacts our lives, work and the planet, each bringing our own questions and truths to the space between us. These circles are an anchor for me and a place for me to ask, “What are you responsible for?” They are an invitation toward deeper integrity.

Participating in her AIR (Anti-Indigenous Racism) workshop was a part of that ongoing work for me. The space offered a rare and needed container to name and hold the grief, guilt, fear, and fragility that often arise when we truly begin to confront our complicity in systems of harm. But even more importantly, it helped me reconnect with my own humanity in the process. The AIR Workshop wasn’t just a training or intellectual exercise. It was a call to come back into relationship—with history, with community, with myself.

I think that’s one of the core truths I keep returning to: reckoning is relational. Healing is relational. The path of wholeness and truthfulness requires us to be in relationship with each other.

So thank you Jennifer-Lee. For being part of my journey. For asking hard questions. For showing up with an open heart. I am who I am because of the people who have held the mirror with compassion and courage. May we keep doing this work together—not perfectly, but persistently.

Find out more about Jennifer-Lee Counselling & Consulting by clicking [here].