Maria Rogers Pascual spoke with Tannia Esparza, a capacity coach at the LeadersTrust, about the spiritual and transformative essence of her work. Tannia reflected on her grandmother’s enduring wisdom and her calling as a social justice movement doula. She shared how simple, loving rituals, like sweeping the floor, become acts of reverence, grounding her in her lineage and guiding her to accompany leaders with deep care and compassion.

Maria: Let’s start with you, tell me about who you are, a little bit about your story and what’s giving you purpose these days.

Tannia: Who am I these days? I woke up thinking about my grandmother this morning. Rufina Carbajal. She grew up in Palmar Grande, Mexico, which is a tiny little Pueblo about six hours northwest of Mexico City, with maybe 100 people. Everybody knows each other. There’s a weekly gathering of people selling their vegetables. There’s a person who makes cheese, a person who has cows and pigs. There’s a bunch of hillsides where people grow their corn, and there’s a really powerful river coming through it. And this morning, I woke up and I swept my house with a broom, just like my abuelita did first thing in the morning. It’s been the ritual that I’m leaning into right now to invite my grandmother to be with me. She’s in the spirit world, but she has so much wisdom left to share. She’s shaped so much of who I am. 

Maria: That’s beautiful, really beautiful. And I’m curious, how is your grandmother and mother showing up for your heart these days?

Tannia: I mean, I feel like I join everyone else who is grieving right now, everyone who’s hurting and doing our best to keep showing up. And in the moments where I feel like I’m most challenged, it’s when I remember that it’s the everyday beings that save the world. 

It’s the cranes who show up to their sunrise ceremony at the river. It’s the grandmas who sweep their kitchens in the morning and feed their chickens. And I feel inspired by the stories of these beautiful people who raised me, who were facing some of the hardest challenges of their lives, of their eras. And still they had enough love to share, still had babies, still raised grandchildren, still woke up in the morning. I’m leaning into that to fuel my purpose right now.

Maria: Thank you for this Tannia. I know that you do a lot of wonderful things in the world, and I know that being a capacity coach with the LeadersTrust is one of them. Could you share a little bit about how you came to this work and what it means to you?

Tannia: A dear friend connected me to the LeadersTrust team. I was being invited to support people in New Mexico, which is where I live. This has been a place that has really helped me feel what belonging means. Belonging to land, even though I’m not from here, as a child of migrant parents. Because I’ve been welcomed, received and loved by this land, I feel like I have sacred responsibility for the beings here. 

And so when I was invited to hold space for groups who are doing beautiful birth justice work it just felt so fully aligned. And so I said, Yes! 

I stay here because of all the beautiful, generous people who are part of the LeadersTrust network. I don’t get to engage with other free radicals, by that I mean independent consultants like myself very often. We’re like the dark matter of our justice ecosystem. Being part of this community has helped me overcome feelings of isolation and find meaning in my role within this ecosystem.

Maria: I think a lot of times when we talk about our program, it’s difficult to share all that is underneath the hood. And we use the term accompaniment to describe the approach. What does that accompaniment look like for you in practice? 

Tannia: I know accompaniment (or accompañamiento) through my training as a birth doula. The role of a doula is to help hold what can be a really beautiful process that can also be an unpredictable time with a lot of vulnerability. Accompaniment asks everyone involved to let go of any kind of perfection, to attune to what we already know on our own and together. 

Accompaniment is about witnessing, moving with leaders who are holding multitudes and offering presence, space, and care. 

And I can say that one of the most transformative relationships that I’ve had as a capacity coach at the LeadersTrust has been with an organization of migrant farm worker women in rural California who actually remind me so much of the women who helped raise me. They are fierce and generous, and have never received any kind of institutional support for their work.

For me, it’s been more about witnessing, strategizing, sometimes holding space, sometimes shining a light on what they already do so well. And it’s such a joyful thing for me. The magical thing about accompaniment is that it’s not just a one sided thing. Everyone can feel transformed in the process of witnessing someone burst open. There are metaphorical births happening all the time, breakthroughs in someone’s leadership, in our care practices, or when someone shows up more confidently about who they are. 

Maria: It sounds so joyful and meaningful! And I love that you connected it to your story. Can you share a little more about that connection? You’re not just coming to this work from the outside. There’s already a shared experience.

Tannia: Yeah, well, I think that that’s part of it. I mean, the LeadersTrust team does such a beautiful job at matchmaking. You can see what energies might be able to flow well together. And, as you know, I grew up in California, and one reason why my people are in California is because at the tail end of the Bracero program my great uncles and my grandfather came to work the fields. They were migrant farm workers themselves. So when I met this organization, I could see my people in them. I could recognize who raised me, how I grew up, their way of speaking, their way of being. 

Maria: What does the accompaniment work look like right now with the migrant organization you are working with? 

Tannia: For me, it literally means knowing how people are doing. It means when people have enough trust in you to tell you “this is the most vulnerable thing that I’m holding right now”. This particular group has never articulated their work in “nonprofit speak.” They don’t come with jargon. They come with story after story, after story.

They might not have the visibility that gives them credibility. It wasn’t surprising to learn that, like a lot of institutions hadn’t heard of them, they’ve heard of them as individual people who are amazing. And so I quickly realized that part of my work with them was about supporting them to shine a light on what they’ve already been doing, and in a way that other people can understand, yes, and for them to be able to share that story. 

Maria: Tell me a little more about what came of that accompaniment?

Tannia: Lately I’ve been supporting them with some grant writing. They just landed three major grants! We’ve been doing training on grant writing and navigating relationships with funders while we’re submitting proposals and reports and building organizational infrastructure like: where do we store our files? How do we update our website? How do we keep our people safe? How do we make sure that people get paid for the work that they’re doing? 

And it’s this small, unsexy stuff that feels like the tending, like the sweeping of the kitchen floor. And there’s so much honor in that. These seemingly small things, make really big things happen. I’m proud of us. They’re my teachers too.

Maria: How have you been transformed by this process?

Tannia: I’m not officially part of their team, but I feel so deeply connected to them. I care about them, and I know that they care about me too. 

I think I have a different understanding of the power of what I can offer, of that unsexy sweeping-of-the-floor work that I can offer that is consistent, that shows up, that is reliable. And in this world, in this moment of so much chaos, having a source of stability that says “I know that I can count on you” goes both ways. It feels so nourishing to know that your floor is going to get swept too.  

It’s a relationship of belonging. When you’re really accompanying somebody from a place of “I’m not trying to fix you. We might not know things on our own, but we might know them together…” There’s so much power in that.

Maria: Yes! I can feel it all, feel the love and I’m so glad that you’re feeling affirmed for sharing your gifts too. As we close, is there anything else that you’d like to share or call people into action on?

Tannia: I realized that the role I’ve been in for the past six years has been the role of a movement doula, a social justice movement doula, and part of our work is to be able to feel for the big awareness, and put our energy, our gifts, into where they are most needed. 

Doula work is about care– and all of us need care. And I think my call to action, my continual reminder for myself is to lean into caring and being cared for. 

And in our everyday lives, in our very simple, simple ways, we can cultivate the kind of thriving that our people need, deserve and will have in the future. 

Lean into letting our people hold us. Lean into letting the lands wherever we live and feel belonging, to hold us because we’re not moving through this thing alone. We’re going to move together.