The Gift of Wit(h)nessing Transitional Moments Through a Contemplative Arts Co-Inquiry

In this article, we offer glimpses of a contemplative arts co-inquiry that we recently undertook: our primary purpose was to wit(h)ness one another as we reimagine our lives and work. Briefly, we are white, Canadian-born female professors of European settler heritage living on the traditional lands of the Indigenous peoples of Treaties 6 and 7, and Metis Region 3 and 4, who have been living in the transitional spaces of leaving the academy for the past two years. We share a deep personal and social commitment to engaging with contemplative arts practices in relational ways in our daily lives, as well as in our teaching and research. We became interested in wit(h)nessing one another through a co-inquiry that offered the opportunity for us to explore more deeply the transitional spaces we now occupy—and to foreground the inter-relational healing aspects of the process, both personally and in relation to the potentialities