Common Threads Reading Group
Common Threads is a community-rooted reading group where we gather to explore radical texts that speak to healing, justice, identity, intersectionality and collective care. Together, we trace the threads between personal experience and systemic change, holding space for reflection, dialogue, and deep connection.
At Common Threads, we believe in the power of shared reading as a practice of resistance, resilience, and community care. We engage with books that challenge, nourish, and inspire — weaving our learning into how we live, relate, and dream. This is a space for curiosity, co-creation, and collective growth.
Apply now for the Autumn season!
This is an online gathering that meets fortnightly for anyone interested in reading books about social justice, activism, community, intersectionality, embodiment and liberation.
We gather twice monthly on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month on Zoom from 7.30 - 9pm UK time.
We generally read a couple of chapters per session.
The group is run a little like a sharing circle, so there are no interruptions when someone is talking, and we do not give advice, we just share from our own experience. There is no obligation to speak or share, if you do not feel comfortable. I will pepper our discussion with questions about your own experience, to help us dive deeper into the issues. I will also send out some notes from my own reading ahead of each session. Even if you haven’t managed the reading for the session, you are encouraged to come along for the discussion anyway.
If you’re interested in joining us for our autumn season, fill in the contact form below.
Dates for the Autumn season:
We will gather twice monthly on the second and fourth Wednesdaydays of the month for 3 months. We meet on Zoom from 7.30 - 9pm UK time. Sessions are never recorded.
The dates for this next round are:
Sept 10th & 24th
Oct 8th & 22nd
Nov 12th & 26th
We generally read a couple of chapters for discussion in each meeting. This allows us to dive deeper into the issues and how we might bring them into our everyday lives.
Our Autumn Book:
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne marie brown.
Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This is a resolutely materialist "spirituality" based equally on science and science fiction, a visionary incantation to transform that which ultimately transforms us.
Practicalities
Cost
Common Threads Reading Group is run on the Buddhist principle of dana which means generosity or mutual support.
Voluntary contributions are gratefully accepted by PayPal.
Suggested: a sign-up donation of £42 for the Autumn season (covering all six sessions).
If you are able, please make a donation that feels good to you. You are welcome to attend whether or not you are able to donate, and if you are in a secure financial position right now, please consider supplementing others in the community who cannot afford to donate.
I am open to donations up front or in installments, whatever works better for you.
Group Size
The group will be capped at 15 members. Please share if you know someone who might like to join.
Who This Group is For and General Group Culture
This group actively welcomes members with different spiritual / religious backgrounds (and none), sexualities, gender identities, races/ethnicities, and socioeconomic realities. Trans folks are welcome here. The expectation is that we come together to share our experiences with the themes raised by each book in a supportive container, respecting and holding each other’s diverse experiences and opinions with mutual respect and kindness. I request that we do not offer unsolicited advice, we simply witness the individual expression of our experiences.
Commitment
To journey through each book together as a supportive cohort, please understand that you are signing up for all of the sessions in the current season, even if you are unable to attend all of them.
Optional WhatsApp group
There will be an optional WhatsApp group for more sharing and community between sessions.
Type of Books Read
We read books on social justice, collective liberation, community, intersectionality, white supremacy, climate justice, and disrupting capitalist systems of oppression.
Examples of future books we might read include:
Active Hope by Joanna Macy
Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism by Vanessa Machado De Oliveira
Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
Embodied Activism: Engaging the Body to Cultivate Liberation, Justice, and Authentic Connection by Rae Johnson
A Decolonial Feminism by Francoise Verges
Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici
Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne marie brown.
About Michelle
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Michelle Teasdale (Yeshe Lhatso) (she/they)
Michelle is a 48yr old queer Buddhist. She is an avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction, and an experienced circle holder. It is her intention that this reading group is a safer space for queers, trans folks, people of colour and those with neurodivergences. If there is anything you would like to know, or need from her to help you feel safe and better meet your needs in the session, as much as is possible, please get in touch.
How to join the Autumn season
If you’d like to join our upcoming cohort that starts in September 2025, fill out the form below and I’ll aim to get back to you within a couple of working days.