*Deep breath*…here we go. I’m sharing this before my logical mind tells me it’s a really bad idea…

12th May 2025 will see Emerging Proud, re-emerge, with our first live gathering since 2020!

We will ‘re-union’, find out where we all are now, including some of the international EP chapters, the projects that were seeded at the launch in 2017, and re-visit what resources are most needed for people undergoing a transformational crisis. Who’s up for the crack?

Image courtesy of Liisa Ekossari

Many of you in this community will be aware that Emerging Proud has been quite ‘dormant’ since 2020, and it’s time to be more open about why that is.

The pandemic unfortunately had a devastating impact on the charity which had seed-funded some of our projects, and that, coupled with the fact that the majority of work had been done voluntarily, led me to burn out, and everything ground to a halt. My apologies to all of you if that was disappointing. In all honesty, looking back I think I was completely overwhelmed. I had no idea what I was doing – I started a social movement with no experience and (naively) no idea where it was going to lead. As it grew and grew, and the ball gathered momentum, I felt totally out of my depth. I remember a moment when I was chatting to an anti-psychiatry ally after a conference in London, and they told me they’d just got back from an event in Israel where people were talking about Emerging Proud… it was terrifying to think I’d unleashed something that felt completely out of my control. Now that I know nothing in life is in my control, it doesn’t feel quite so daunting!

Our last in-person event was held in Jan 2020 with Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) authors Dr Lucy Johnstone and Prof Mary Boyle, the outcome of which led to an addendum being created for the PTMF about spiritual emergency (Click here to access the report from the event). The outcomes from the event are still very much needed, and exciting developments are happening regarding some of them – more on that in due course.

As we all know, there’s always a silver-lining after challenging times. The last 4 years have gifted me time and space to do more self-development work, get more grounded, and gather some empirical evidence on which to base the rationale for what Emerging Proud was already doing. And so here we are, re-emerging from another chrysalis…

This time around I want to ensure that the momentum of the movement is as sustainable and accessible as possible. One way to keep the ball rolling is setting up an online membership site to replace this website, which would enable the following:

• More interaction opportunities for the EP community
• An evolving vault of resources that support the emergence journey
• The possibility to offer webinars / live online sharing spaces
• An annual event which is free to access, making it accessible for the most marginalised

All of the Emerging Proud offerings to date have been created collaboratively with the EP community – this couldn’t happen without all of you – so if anyone has any better ideas about how we could best move forwards, please do feel free to let me know!

For now, I’m leaving you with a song that makes me think of all of you in the EP community – until we can do it again in person in 2025, feel free to have a boogie! Much love, Katie ❤