KIESHA B. FREE | Values

 Be Aligned 

Hello Potential Collaborator!

Please note that I live and work in service of a vision for our future where real compassion and care for humanity are more prevalent than oppression and greed.

The beliefs & values below are important guides for not only what I create, but also for how I show up, who I work with, and why I do this work at all. I seek to be in integrity with these core principles, allowing them to shape the projects I embrace and the relationships I nurture along the way.

If you’re holding these values, or open to growing with them, you’re in the right place.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about me and my work.

Kiesha B. Free

Ways of Being

How I show up in my work & life

  • I believe in honoring the full self. I hold compassion for the curated, survival self - but I work to unlearn performance and lean into real presence. Authenticity, for me, is about behaving in alignment with my inner truth.

  • Courage is choosing truth even when it shakes. It’s showing up vulnerable and honest. It’s about being willing to speak up, push back, or make change when things aren’t ok. I prioritize courage for myself and I honor it in others.

  • Not the sentimental kind - but the radical, justice-rooted kind. Love is my practice. It shows up in how I hold space, how I tell stories, how I build relationships. It’s the foundation of every offering I make.

  • I prioritize mental, emotional, and spiritual health in the way I work and live. I do not operate as if I am a machine, nor do I ask that of others who work with me. Wellness is also communal: it thrives where people feel safe, valued, and resourced. I do not over-function for entities who interrupt the wellness of others with unreasonable demands.

Ways of Relating

How I engage with community & systems

  • I am committed to dismantling structures of harm and building systems that center fairness, access, and justice. Social equity requires that we not only honestly acknowledge power imbalances - but actively work to redistribute power and resources in service of collective well-being.

  • Compassion is the willingness to see people fully, meet them where they are, and hold space for nuance, contradictions, humanity, and healing. This requires patience, grace, and a practice of being compassionate with myself as well. Compassion fuels connection. And connection fuels change.

  • I reject the idea that domination, extraction, or control are necessary for progress. My work resists white supremacist and colonial mindsets and instead champions ways of being that center reciprocity over hierarchy. Much of my work seeks to stand in the gaps left and heal the wounds caused by the agents of these oppressive forces against humanity. I stand in solidarity with oppressed people around the globe.

  • Nature is our teacher, mirror, and family. I aspire to slow down, listen to the land, uncover the lessons we bypass and honor the rhythms of the natural world. Because liberation must also include our relationship with Earth.

Ways of Visioning

How I imagine & build what’s next

  • Liberation is both the path and the goal. I believe in creating spaces (on stage, online, and in community) where people can nurture their spirits and release the exploitative narratives that try to keep them small in service of systems of oppression. Liberation means we get to be whole - on our own terms.

  • Queerness is key to my lens, my freedom, and my resistance. It shapes how I see the world, how I love, who I learn from, and how I build community. Queerness invites us to imagine beyond binaries and boxes and live into new more truthful possibilities for identity, relationship, expression, and care.

  • Building a dreaming practice is how we escape the trap of “the way things have always been.” I value creative, generative, future-thinking energy that helps us envision and move toward what else is possible.

  • I honor the wisdom of those who came before me. Those whose survival, stories, and sacrifices made my existence possible. My work is rooted in deep respect for the past: for the ancestors I know by name and those I only know through feeling.

    I believe the future is strengthened when we pause to listen to what the past is still teaching us. In this way, I carry history forward - not as a burden, but as a guide.