OUR MISSION
The Center for Slow Relation is a place of liberatory care rooted in Embodied Poetics, Afroecological Rematriation, and Healing Justice. We serve Southern artists, activists, land stewards, holistic spiritual and healing practitioners, and leaders across a host of frontlines. We strengthen the cohesion of interdependent movements using creative, spiritual and somatic tools, land-based sustenance offerings, and care through a Dis/abled Black Feminist lens.
Serving as a site of pollination for justice-centered ecosystems, we model transformative care and fugitive imagination to embolden the work of radical folks. We nurture sustainable methods of capacity building for a diverse body of leaders and their varying levels of ability, protect the cultural & spiritual traditions of Black diasporic lineages, and draw inspiration for how to shape these offerings from the land upon which we guide this work.
OUR STORY
Our Sacred Prescription
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Our Sacred Prescription *
Beneath the Magnolia tree,
Ancestors spoke:
“Freedom ain’t a destination, but a praxis. Intimate, intentional, and at the speed of
the collective. We will not arrive at liberation’s door by way of resistance alone. No.
We must embody freedom. Sweetly. Fiercely. Rigorously. Together. That is the way.”
Amidst eras of urgent organizing, valuable tools like political education, fugitive action through protest, guerrilla campaigns, and other forms of resistance sputtered and faltered. Again and again — through the Ferguson uprisings, the 2020 George Floyd protests, the fight against Cop City— we watched treasured resistance networks fracture not from lack of will, but lack of capacity.
All around us, resources are abundant: the land beneath our feet offers us medicine, sustenance, and connection to our own bodyminds. Our siblings alongside us can keep us grounded, safe, and uplifted. And the poetics of our culture— the creative and erotic energies that connect us to the legacies of resistance and indigenous wisdoms of our ancestors— are more than enough to keep our feet moving toward liberation on the horizon. So why does everything feel so impossible?
One problem was clear: we had nowhere to rest, repair, and foster audacity and imagination in between our battles. The Center for Slow Relation was built to heal that fissure. Founded in 2026 by poet, herbalist, and cultural worker Aurielle Marie in East Atlanta, The Slow Space is a somatic care center, community garden, gathering ground, and creative practice field rooted in Black and Afro-indigenous spiritual, agricultural, and creative traditions of abolition and liberation. Its founding community is Atlanta's social justice ecosystem — organizers, artists, activists, and cultural workers who carry the weight of resistance in their bodies and have historically had little access to the land-based, relational, and wellness-related care that makes long-term liberation work sustainable.
Inspired by the sacred magnolia tree—the eldest flower of our natural world whose botanical lineage survived an ecosystem devoid of pollinating bees— our dedication to the land, to fostering creative practice, and to intentional somatic care is a return to the oldest and most sacred tools of human relation.
At The Slow Space, helping our folks through tools rooted afroecological practice, intentional relation and somatic wellbeing is how we give back to the land and ourselves. We offer an invitation for community members to come home to the body and stay there.
We believe this re-matriation is how we insulate radical ecosystems against State Violence, interpersonal ruptures, and the many fault lines we face in this political terrain. It is how we pollinate like the Magnolia, even in circumstances that seem impossible. We support the whole selves of community leaders; artists, healers, and practitioners who fight systems of inequity through their work. Through our offerings— conflict mediation, food sovereignty collaboration, disability justice informed care work, creative incubators, and more— we meet our folks in the fullness of their beings. Our goal is to foster a wider spectrum of capacity for each Center visitor to align their visions of a freer future with intentional actions in their work, homes, communities, and interpersonal relationships.
At The Center, we are adamant that political activation without access to what we call sites of pollination— places to rest our nervous systems, repair communal fractures, and return to a more rooted pace of movement— will continue to fail. Without pollination, a plant can not multiply, and the species dies. So like the Magnolia, The Center for Slow Relation is an offering that evolves for the current climate— both literally and politically.
We prioritize interpersonal repair and accountability, communal models of care that go beyond crisis aid, and re-matriate the root systems that keep us powerfully bound together. That is the pace of The Slow Space— through our events, land stewardship, peer mediation, and somatic support via a hoodoo-based spiritual and practical modality.
This is our work. Like evolutionary change, we are slow and intentional. Measured not by days or weeks, but by generations. Come, put your hands in the dirt or your pen to the page with us. Read on the porch. Breathe slow. Rest. And then, go do your mighty, dangerous work. Our world depends on it.
How We Do Our Work
The Center’s commitment to healing justice is inextricably linked to spiritual ecology, to creative innovation, and sacred stewardship.
Our gardens and programs are offered in service to our local justice-oriented ecosystems, and are vital resource to literary, liberatory and otherwise fugitive folks across Atlanta, The South, and beyond.
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The Nervous System, like any ecosystem,
is delicate. Too many points of stimulation or too few resources throws the body-mind connection out of balance. This imbalance, known as dysregulation, is a primary symptoms of capitalistic and fascist violence. Community leaders, artists and practitioners are least likely to take their time, slow down, and re-attune to the body’s needs when experiencing dysregulating violence within our work. The Center for Slow Relation is committed to de-centering capitalist time, allowing our relationships to move slowly, gently, and at the rate of the collective. Our creative and somatic programs help our visitors and members slow down and shift to a more righteous pace.
Righteous Time
At The Center, we are adamant that political activation without access to what we call sites of pollination— places to rest our nervous systems, repair communal fractures, and return to a more rooted pace of movement— will continue to fail. Without pollination, a plant can not multiply, and the species dies. So like the Magnolia, The Center for Slow Relation is an offering that evolves for the current climate— both literally and politically. Our offerings are wide, community-informed and deeply integrated. Our Sacred Conflict Mediation services support individuals, nonprofits, and organizing coalitions through tension using bilateral stimulation, grounding, narrative sharing, and herbal support from the Clifton-Hamer Hoodoo Gardens — named for Patron Saints Lucille Clifton and Fannie Lou Hamer. Ring Shout Sundays gather artists and community members monthly in call-and-response song, free writing, and shared meals grown onsite. Magnolia Circle convenes intergenerational organizers — from the Civil Rights Movement through the Movement for Black Lives — in structured monthly dialogue on voting, gender, sexuality, class, and racial identity, building toward a collaborative space where wisdom flows in both directions. This is how we shift our landscape.
Radical Relation
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The Clifton-Hamer Hoodoo Gardens — named for Patron Saints Lucille Clifton and Fannie Lou Hamer, two women who tended art, people, and land with equal devotion — are the living center of The Slow Space's stewardship work. The front gardens grow produce and food that feeds community members directly. The hoodoo gardens, tucked behind the praxis cove, cultivate medicinal and botanical plants: rosemary, bay leaf, hyssop, yarrow, echinacea, tulsi, and ceremonial herbs used in Afro-indigenous practice. Our offerings are grown in small batches, harvested by hand, and processed into tinctures, teas, herbal steams, and consecrated items through the Magnolia Muse Herbal Apothecary — distributed at little or no cost to organizers, artists, and neighbors. Our stewardship is rooted not in production but in care: of the land, of the plants, and of the people they serve.