MEET CHERRI JACOBS PRUITT

I am a Colorado native, the youngest of five children. Both of my parents had disabilities: my mother lost her hearing due to whooping cough as an infant, and my father became paralyzed in both legs due to a spinal column tumor in his early twenties. We were also one of the few Jewish families in our predominantly non-Jewish, white, middle-class neighborhood. Growing up in this environment fostered a sense of otherness but it also helped me to cultivate a deep appreciation and curiosity for diverse perspectives.

My work is rooted in the understanding that we are energetic beings living within a vast energy field. This concept is supported by extensive research and forms the foundation of my approach. In every aspect of our world, the desire to feel connected to this energy – which at its most basic level is the space between two people - is paramount. To achieve the connection we all yearn for, we must first feel safe. A journey that moves towards what Dr. Riane Eisler, internally known author and futurist, describes as the Partnership end of a social lens continuum helps support this connection. In this context, Partnership refers to the ground-breaking work of Dr. Eisler whose multidisciplinary research of societies from across the world, and dating back to the Neo-Paleolithic, identified a spectrum of possibilities that she named the ‘Domination-Partnership social lens a continuum. How a society orients on this continuum will shape how power and relationships are expressed in all aspects of that society – including family dynamics and how children are raised, how we define and view gender, what are the values of our economic systems, and what are the narratives and stories that pervade a society. Partnership-based values support societal structures with shared power dynamics, respect for diversity and human rights, equal valuing of the male and female – in both roles and values - and narratives and stories that reinforce empathy and nonviolence.