Critical Thinking as a Tool for Racial Justice

In anti-racism work, white people rightly defer to the leadership and accountability of people of color. In this moment, we are deferring to the leadership of Black people specifically. But what do we white people do when there are multiple Black people telling us to do different things?

Here’s the thing: Black people are not a monolith, and deferring to their leadership does not mean that we stop thinking critically. Obedience is not the answer. Liberation allows for and requires that we all show up in our messy-ass whole humanity for the work.

When you hear a call to action from a Black person, pause for a moment and think critically about the request: What is the objective of this request? Does the request achieve its objective? Why is it important? Why might you choose otherwise?

If you’re not sure, talk to a fellow white person about it, preferably one who’s been in the work for longer than you. Make a choice because you understand what you’re doing and why. “Because a Black person said so” is not a good enough reason.

You are allowed to disagree, but DO NOT ARGUE WITH BLACK PEOPLE about tactics, especially not on the internet. It’s not our place. If you disagree, walk away. Put your phone down, or call a white person. We cannot waste the time of Black people fighting for their lives with our unsolicited opinions.

Anti-racism work takes all of us, and it takes a “diversity of tactics” (a concept from Malcolm X and Howard Zinn.) That means we all show up when and how we can for a common goal, even if we have different ideas about how to get there.

Critical thinking about race is a skill and it takes practice. You might feel a sense of relief when you get instructions from a Black person, like, whew, finally, someone’s telling me how to fix this thing. But our responsibility is not simply taking orders. We have to decide how we’re going to show up for liberation. 

Notes to self on unlearning whiteness

When talking about race feels big, scary, or nervous-system disrupting, it’s because you’re engaging with centuries of ancestral trauma and aggression wrought by your ancestors and your living family members. And also by you, despite your best intentions. It feels big because it is big.

You are going to fuck up. This inevitability does not excuse you from the work. Your paralyzing shame about this fact is an impediment to justice. Accept this reality and get to work.

You are entitled to humanity even though you are not entitled to goodness. From bell hooks: “How do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”.

Watch the videos or don’t. But whatever you choose, don’t look away. Go to the artists. Hear Nina Simone singing Mississippi Goddam. Read Nikki Giovanni poems, or Ross Gay, or Sharon Bridgforth. Re-read Kiese Laymon’s How To Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. There are ways to comprehend Black pain without consuming it.

The emergency is chronic. Don’t let getting caught up in the online uproar replace taking clear, tangible actions in a long-term way. It can seem disheartening to work this way; you crave catharsis. And yet, this, from adrienne maree brown: “Small is good. Small is all”.

You don’t get cookies. Stop wishing for acknowledgement and absolution from people of color. And also, it’s only human to need encouragement. Ask a white person. We can and must cheer each other on.

Watch vigilantly for your own self-protective tendencies. Despite years of effort, your heart yearns to seen as good. This shows up as risk-aversion, and an avoidance of putting yourself on the line.

Grief is part of liberation work. Much has been said about white tears, so don’t weaponize them, but for god’s sake, cry them. Let that shit out. It’s been bottled up for hundreds of years, and now here you are, willing.

Despair does not become you. We are not entitled to hopelessness. This world can and will change and it will be because we demand it do so. Don’t lose sight of that. Keep imagining other worlds.

You never get to quit the work of liberation. Once you accept this truth, it gets lighter because you have less to prove.

How To Call Out Racism If You're a White Person

Any which way a person of color chooses to call out racism on the internet or in real life is not really any of my business. There are lots of valid reasons a person might be forceful in their approach: because they need to vent, because they need to have their voice heard, because their anger is valid and yearns to be seen. If you’re calling out behaviors that directly affect your identity, you’re entitled to do that whichever way you want, and as a white person, I’m not here to minimize those feelings or attempt to tone police. 

But when the issue at hand is one that doesn’t negatively affect your life in such a daily, personal way, like in the case of a white person pointing out racism, I’m of the opinion that we should approach a call-out quite differently. In this case, our main priority ought to be the most effective call-out possible, one in which a person’s analysis is advanced and their enthusiasm for justice is increased. 

Nuanced side note: I do believe that as a white person, I am affected negatively by white supremacy. I believe that men suffer because of patriarchy. I believe that cis-people are also hampered by cisnormativity. But people with privilege are not negatively affected in the same ways as people those systems are set up against. Systems of oppression dehumanize us all, but they affect us differently, so our behavior needs to reflect those differences. 

I see a lot of newly-awakened white people getting angry and impassioned about the racism of other “less woke”  white people. It’s a typical stage of learning about racism as a white person to become zealous and, at times, self-righteous. (Find the essay From White Racist To White Anti-Racist from Tema Okun for more about these non-linear stages.) I understand that impulse deeply and have enacted myself it at times. I also see the very particular opportunity white people have to advance the cause of racial justice, and that opportunity requires us to temper our aggressive approach.

White people have a particular role to play in antiracism movements. We have an ability to be taken seriously where people of color are dismissed. We can be loud and pointed without being brushed off. The consequences for standing up against racism are typically less severe for white people. When we do this well, we can help to take some of the burden off people of color to always be the ones pushing back. When we do it poorly, we create more of a mess for them to clean up. 

I’m writing this as a queer, genderqueer, currently-able-bodied, working-class white person. I’ve called out racism in ways that were sloppy and self-righteous. I’ve sought applause from people of color. I’ve wanted acknowledgment for my “wokeness.” I will continue to make mistakes. 

I’ve also had some deeply transformative moments building analysis with other white people where we were both changed. I learned many of these strategies from the people who have skillfully called me in, both people of color and white folks. I’ve also learned from my experiences putting them into practice within my own family, friendships, and creative collaborations. 

Here are some tips I’ve compiled for how to most effectively call out racism if you’re a white person. While this piece is addressed to white people from a fellow white person, the strategies herein could apply to anyone who is calling things out that aren’t about your identity (eg, a man calling out misogyny, etc.) This list is by no means exhaustive. I welcome feedback, suggestions and additions! 

Check your intentions. Are you calling people out because you want to look like a good white person, or because you actually want to advance the cause of racial justice? This is so simple, and yet it’s so easy to forget. It’s one that I’m constantly checking myself on in advance of delivering any feedback about racism. 

Orient yourself in relation to the power structure. If you’re a white person calling out white supremacy, name your whiteness. (As an example, I did this in the introduction.) I often see call-outs that don’t orient the writer in this way, and I feel lost as to how to interpret what I’m reading. Naming things in this way might seem superfluous, but it really matters. It shows that we have an understanding of systemic power structures and that you understand your place within them. It also sets an example for other white people of how to talk about whiteness in a helpful way. 

Acknowledge that you are not perfect and that you have room to grow in these areas. The binary nature of systems of oppression has us believing that we have to be all good in order to not be rejected as all bad. One of the most helpful things we can do in calling out racism is to interrupt that false dichotomy and show that we are both trying hard to bring change and also complicit in enacting harm. No matter how long we’ve been “doing the work,” we will still always be benefitting from the system. (See introduction for example.)

Position yourself as a fellow learner instead of as an expert. We are not experts on issues we’re not oppressed by. As a white person, I will never be an expert on racism. Men will never be the experts on patriarchy. Acknowledging this fact is both truthful and strategic. Readers are much more likely to want to listen to you if they don’t feel condescended to. 

Write or talk mostly in first-person pronouns. That is, talk in “I, me, us, we” statements instead of “yous” and “theys.”. It’s tempting to want to distance ourselves from racism as we call it out. It can feel satisfying to point out those other bad white people and position ourselves as better, further along, more evolved. But that falls into the trap of the false good/bad binary. Even when you’re calling out something that you didn’t personally participate in, we’re still complicit in white supremacy. 

Bring as much love, patience and compassion as you can possibly muster to the conversation. People of color are allowed to use whatever language and emotion they want to their message about racism. But when we’re calling out something we don’t personally suffer from, it behooves us to be loving about it. There’s no need to coddle, but we can be strategic about what will be the most effective way to engage. I try to bring the kind of energy I’d want to be approached with when being called out for my own inevitable mistakes. 

Ask yourself if the conversation would be more effective if held privately. If so, do that instead. If there is a person or an organization that is enacting harm, talk to them directly. Call them on the phone before you blast them on Twitter. Start with a call-in and not a call-out. When we have an urge begin with a public call out, it’s often motivated by our own desire to look knowledgeable or righteous on the issue, not by strategy. 

Follow up with folks who dissent. Ask them if they want to talk more about it. Offer to DM or FaceTime with them. Sometimes people will be much more receptive to a conversation if there’s less of an audience for their mistakes. It can be so satisfying to really take someone down in a Facebook comment thread, but does that actually help convince them of your point? 

Be willing to call out your own mistakes. It’s so very helpful to see someone else name the way they have screwed up or been racist, and to call themself on their own bad behavior. I try to do this anytime I get called out: I talk about it on social media, I write blog posts about it, I bring it up in conversation with my friends. It normalizes our ability to make a racist mistake and to recover from it, to repair harm, to be willing to grow. We need more examples of this done with self-love and without groveling, but with true accountability.

Expect that you will have some haters regardless. No matter how lovingly you formulate your message, there will  be some folks who disagree. Don’t take it personally, and don’t let the seeming failure prevent you from interrupting harms in the future. 

Remember that change often happens inside relationships. Around the time of the last presidential election, I saw lots of calls for radical people to stop being friends with Trump voters, and while I understand the sentiment, I think the approach is short-sighted. We have to be willing to engage people in long-term ways if we hope to help them change their minds. With your conservative parents, with your centrist friends, with apolitical coworkers, the relationship has to stay relatively in tact if you expect for them to engage with you about politics. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have boundaries, and it definitely doesn’t mean you should let them get away with any true fuckery, but it does mean that a willingness to stay connected despite differences is very useful. How likely are they to listen to a person of color about racism? If all the white people banish them, how will they ever change? 

Plant seeds even if you don’t ever get to see them bloom. Change takes time. Not everyone will have an epiphany from one well thought out Instagram caption. Be willing to keep doing the work even if you see few results. Keep showing up for justice. This work is worth it. 

12 ways to show up for social justice in your business

Through my business, I get to practice living in the world as I wish it were: loving, equitable and aiming towards justice. I love being in business for myself, because it means I don’t have to toe the company line or acquiesce to clients’ whims.  The bad news is that so many of the industry norms for online entrepreneurship replicate oppressive models of coercion and manipulation. The good news is I don’t have to participate in them, and neither do you! 

If you’re running a business and give a shit about social justice, there are lots of ways to use the platform you have (however large or small) to support the causes you care about. Here are 12 tips for how to do this effectively, skillfully and consistently. 

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1. Remember that no one was born “woke.” Everyone starts somewhere. Wherever you are in this process of waking up to the injustices of the world is fine as long as you don’t wait a minute longer to do something about it. I like to remind myself that it’s not my fault that the world is screwed, but it is my responsibility to do what I can about it, and that’s usually more than I think I can. Don’t get waylaid by guilt. We don’t have to rush, but we must make consistent, strategic moves. 

2. Establish your position early and often. This work isn’t work that we get to talk about once and put down for awhile til we feel like it again. Talk about social justice on your website, in your newsletter, on social media and in real life. If you’re just trying to capitalize on the hot button topic of the moment, or get social justice Kool-Aid points, you’re missing the point.  It’s not necessary (or possible, for solo business folks like me) to only ever talk about social justice, or to participate in every single moment of online uproar, but it is necessary for this work to be ongoing. 

3. Find ways to connect it to the work that you do. Are you a doula? Talk about Black women’s maternal mortality rates. Are you a visual artist? Raise awareness about the lack of gallery representation of artists of color. Are you a health coach? Interrupt diet culture and fatphobia at every turn. Systems of oppression are operating everywhere, in every field. No one is exempt. 

4. Raise awareness about issues that don’t directly affect you. We must be invested in interrupting oppressions that aren’t part of our daily lives. People with white privilege need to talk about racial justice. Men can interrupt patriarchy. Thin people need to talk about fatphobia. Cisgender women should point out transmisogyny. This is part of how we leverage our privilege for the greater good. 

5. Share the work of people on the frontlines of the issues you’re pointing out. Make a point to find authors who represent the demographic of the particular cause, eg disabled writers on disability justice issues, Black writers on police violence. You don’t have to say anything particularly eloquent or profound about issues that aren’t about you. In fact, you probably can’t! So instead, simply share the work of other people, positioning yourself as a signal booster rather than an expert. If it’s not your issue, be a megaphone, not an orator.

6. Give money to POC-led organizations. This one is simple--you’re making money through your business, so give some of it to organizations doing work that matters. Don’t give randomly. Pick a few organizations and become a sustaining donor. Most groups have a way to set up automatic recurring donations monthly or quarterly. I love supporting small, local organizations who may struggle to find funding over giant non-profits with more access to support. 

7. Consider ways to lower the cost of your offerings for marginalized people. In the online biz world, the standard protocol is to offer a few teasers of your services for free but keep your best work behind a more expensive paywall. We can interrupt this norm with our business structures! Consider scholarships for folks living at the intersections of multiple marginalized identities (who often have access to fewer resources).  Offer up no-questions-asked sliding scale spots. Make the process of accessing these spots simple and dignified for everyone involved. Don’t keep your best work for those with the most money. 

8. Don’t charge more for payment plans. You might also offer long-term payment plans--and set your overall prices high enough to do so without charging fees for accessing one. Why would you financially penalize the people with the least money? These folks are more likely to be people of color, women, disabled, queer, rural, etc. Don’t nickel-and-dime the folks who need more time to pay. 

9. Put a non-discrimination policy on your website. You might assume that your potential clients know that you care about social justice, but if you don’t say so, why would they? Draft a non-discrimination policy that states your goals of interrupting oppressions wherever possible, commitment to inclusiveness, etc. This doesn’t need to be in legalese, and in fact, is probably more compelling in your own voice than in jargon. Put it in your website footer, or on your about page, or in your FAQs. If you’re a services provider, add it to your client contracts. 

10. Commit to a practice of accessibility. Use image descriptions on social media photos. Use captions on your videos. Provide transcripts for podcasts. Consider accessibility requirements when hosting in-person events, and at the very least, include accessibility notes in the event info (ie, “The event is held on the second floor; an elevator is available.”) You don’t have to do it all at once. It might not be possible, for instance, for a solo entrepreneur to add captions to five years of past YouTube videos. But you can start adding them to your videos going forward. Start where you are, but keep moving forward. 

11. Volunteer your skills where applicable. Are you a copywriter? Edit resumes for folks reentering the workforce. Are you a massage therapist? Provide chair massages at a women’s shelter once a month. Are you a personal chef? Send excess meals to the member meetings of an organization you care about. Plug your existing skills into places where they’re useful. Reming yourself that volunteering isn’t about benevolence but solidarity.  

12. Remember that none of this is for the optics. If you’re doing this work to look good, people will see through you. If you’re hoping to assuage your own guilt about your privilege, you won’t last in these practices. “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” --Lilla Watson and Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s

This list is by no means exhaustive! What other ways are you showing up for justice through the platform of your business?

How I Met My Inner Child

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“Are you scared?,” I said aloud into the darkness.

“Did that startle you?” The train whistled again deafeningly. The same sound had woken me suddenly moments before. My heartbeat was speeding and my palms were instantly clammy.

“It’s okay to be afraid.”

I was talking to myself.

“It’s okay to be afraid,” I repeated. “I know it sounded scary and loud in the middle of the night, but it’s just a train. Trains come at all times of day. I know you were startled, weren’t you? We’re okay. We’re okay.”

For years the phrase “inner child” made me roll my eyes and squirm. It seemed like new age self-help nonsense and I wasn’t interested. I went to therapy, sure, but that was serious work. The idea of an “inner child” seemed frivolous at best, and painfully awkward at worst.

But that night, alone in my hotel bed in a small city in Mexico, I accidentally met my inner child.

I had been having panic attacks relentlessly for the past few months. I was staving off the death rattle of my five-year relationship; I had recently started to come out of denial about the abuse I’d endured in childhood; Trump had just been inaugurated. In short, my mental health was fishtailing. I would have a few good days and then, apropos of seemingly very little, I would spin out for interminable stretches of time, into the grey, buzzing haze of debilitating anxiety.

My trip to Mexico was an attempt to escape: my relationship, my country, my reality, myself. Which is how I found myself on a beautiful vacation in a tropical paradise sweating, panicking, and talking to myself because a train had whistled too loudly in the middle of the night.

I pushed back the woven rainbow blanket and kept talking all the way to the shower.

“It’s okay to be afraid. We’re okay. It’s okay. We’re okay.”

As soon as the coolness of the water hit my skin, I wept. I cried onto the Talavera tiles until I was spent, then staggered back to sleep, soaked.

I don’t remember the next day or the day after that. I don’t remember much of that vacation, to be honest. When I came home, I kept trying to explain to friends what had happened that night, why such a seemingly simple and kind of weird occurrence was notable.

“I don’t really know who I was talking to, or who was doing the talking, but it felt really good.”

“It was like something in me softened, something that’s been hard for a long time. It’s like my heart was butter.”

“It’s like all the nice things that anyone ever said to me didn’t count until now. I couldn’t hear them before but now I can.”

“I talked to myself the way I always talk to my students and my clients. I guess I needed to practice with them so I could figure out how to do it for me.”

“It’s not like I hated myself before, exactly, but um, I just never really loved myself like that.”

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that night I also met my inner loving parent, the one who would treat me with steadiness and compassion, replacing the judgmental, erratic voices I’d heard all my life. The one who would take care of all the things a kid should never have to concern themselves with.

I didn’t immediately commit to tending to my inner child, but I reluctantly kept at it. The awkwardness, which I can now see as the shame of distorted self-protection, did eventually wear off. My inner child’s trust in me deepened, and now they usually let me know loud and clear what’s going on. And I try my best to listen.

My attention span for my own feelings is getting longer. My ability to be celebrate myself is growing. My disdain for my mistakes and weaknesses is diminishing.

I’m learning how to be a better parent to myself all the time. And for the first time ever, I get to learn how to be a kid.

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Blanket Fort is an online course for inner child healing. In it, we’ll all meet our own inner child and learn some techniques and practices for being in healthy relationship with these sweet, scared, silly, sad parts of ourselves. Click here for more info.

Gender in Quarantine

Photo by Claire Bangser

I keep thinking about my gender, here in this quarantine isolation where no one sees me but me. How much brain space it still occupies. How much it matters to me inside myself, for myself only.  I’ve been wearing less jewelry recently, and I wondered yesterday if it was because my hair is long now. Before I changed my name, I felt so much internal pressure to present in a more masculine way to counteract the discomfort I felt with my overtly feminine name. Once I was called Bear, I was surprised at the space that opened around me, and how my presentation skewed more femme. 

I’ve created a catalog of feminine markers in my mind. One too many throws off the homeostasis. When my hair is short, I wear a lot of lipstick. Now that it’s long, I don’t even want to wear earrings. Crop top plus baggy pants, okay. Put on mascara, okay. Add lipstick and now we’re teetering on the line. Add earrings, and I feel overwhelmed by the wrongness of it. I am always trying to find equilibrium.

I think back to a moment nearly a decade ago, trying to explain to my mom about changing my name in terms that she would understand. “I don’t want to be a man, really, I’m just like, not a regular lady, you know?” “That makes a lot of sense to me,” she answered. “I think that’s always been true about you.” And she’s not wrong. Even as a little kid, I was very particular about what I liked, gravitating towards both clean lines and bright colors. I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe what I felt as gender dysphoria, but in retrospect, maybe that’s accurate.

When I was in fourth grade, I needed a new swimsuit, and my mom picked out an armload of frilly, pink, strappy numbers for me to try on. My step-dad scoffed and said, “She won’t like any of those.” He was right. He made one lap around the racks and came back with the perfect suit: plain but bold, cobalt and emerald, sports bra cut on top, boy shorts on the bottom. I felt so seen. My story doesn’t fit the stereotypical trans narrative of “born in the wrong body” or “I’ve always known,” but when I think back on this story, I can see it as about nothing else but gender. 

In middle school, my style oscillated between boyish flannel grunge and a kind of 70s, strong-jawed femininity. Maybe you’d call that androgyny, but it’s mixed up on me, because what I’m after is femininity on a masculine palette, and the fact that my palette is decidedly womanly has perhaps confused others, but it has not dissuaded me. 

The summer between eighth and ninth grades, I got my first salon haircut. The stylist was a (presumably) gay man named Tm, like Tim but without the “i”. I did not know any gay people at that point, or at least none that I knew were gay. I thought I might be bisexual, but I hadn’t been sexual with anyone yet, so I wasn’t really sure what that meant.

At the hair salon in the department store in the mall, Tm cut my long straight hair into a sharp edged, super short stacked bob that was tres chic circa 1998. It cost $40 worth of babysitting money, plus a tip. He declared me “Fabulous!”

I only went to him that one time, and after that, I started cutting my own hair in the bathroom. My next haircut was a rough-hewn pixie cut I dyed fire engine red, the wildest color I could find in a box at Walgreens. 

There was a weird period of years in high school where I was Pentecostal (it’s a long story) and only wore skirts and grew my hair out long. Even then I stayed somehow tomboyish, as masculine as a denim skirt and button down shirt can be. Is Pentecostal dyke aesthetic a thing? I tried to make it a thing. 

Imagine a time-lapse of pubescent development: my 17-year-old body spinning in stop-motion, my B cup tangerines hastily swelling to DDD cantaloupes. The melons were a bewilderment, undermining my attempts at androgyny but attracting attention I sometimes relished.

My breasts continue to baffle me. They are a site of pleasure and confusion. I love the way they look in a tight crop top. I love the way they feel in my lover’s hands. I hate the way they look in a button down. I hate how they cannot be flattened by any manner of bra or binder, lumpy and full despite their confinement. I most hate how they give me away as inherently womanly, despite my protests. 

I’ve circled the question of top surgery for a decade. Though I support all trans people in making choices about what’s right for them, and I reserve the right to change my mind, for now, my own stubborn logic will not relent: why should I manipulate my untameable corpus to be better understood by a world hellbent on binary gender? Why should my body suffer the consequences of the limitations of our imaginations? I cannot abide. 

Changing my name was Sisyphean. It was a groundhog day of coming out, multiple times a day, every day, for about three years, and then less frequently for about five more years after that. A litany of questions that felt like an undressing. Whether it felt like an affectionate disrobing or a hostile strip-search depended on the person doing the asking.

Yes, I changed my name. No, I don’t go by that anymore. Yes, everyone has to call me by my new name. Yes, even you. Yes, it’s about my gender. No, I’m not transitioning otherwise. Every time I saw someone I hadn’t seen in awhile, I had to do the whole song and dance again. It was exhilarating and excruciating in equal measure. 

Around that same time (9 years ago now), my housemates had a running game of “describe your gender identity in five words or less” going on the dry erase board that hung beside the refrigerator. “Jewel belly swamp twink” was my first attempt, but I eventually landed on “hot pants femme fag.” 

I am a femme fag, and not a fag femme. Per my own definition, a femme fag = a masculine being who presents in a feminine way. Fag femme = a feminine being who presents in a masculine way. It’s like the names of the crayons in my 64-box of Crayolas: yellow-green was greener than green-yellow. Red-orange was reddish orange; orange-red was orangish red. What is it, and what is it mixed with? Switch them around and the meaning is changed. Similar, but not the same, and the subtleties matter. 

When I first came out about my gender, I used the word “genderqueer,” but the common parlance has shifted. The kids these days say “non-binary,” which has never felt accurate to me, because my gender isn’t non-anything. My gender is so much. It has everything. It wants everything. A plethora of gender. Similarly, the pronouns they/them have always felt strangely neutered and devoid, a weird grey zone where the sparkle-party of my gender should be. I tried briefly convincing people to use the jazzier, made-up-by-me pronouns “zse” and “zsem” but it didn’t catch on.

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of my life thinking about my gender, and this is how I know I’m trans. Cisgender people don’t think about their gender, at least, not like this. Trans, as I learned it when I was a baby queer, meant someone who was transitioning from the sex assigned to them at birth to the “opposite” sex. This does not describe my experience, so I’d never claimed the words trans.

But “trans” has opened up in meaning in the past decade, and now includes people like me, for whom the binary doesn’t much matter but who are definitely not cisgender. Last summer I was describing to a trans friend how it’s not that the problem is my body itself, it’s that people make assumptions about my body that aren’t congruent with how I feel about my gender. “You know,” she said gently, “there’s a word for that.” 

I went home and cried that day my friend so tenderly suggested that I might be trans which, I am told, is another sign confirming my transness. Cis people don’t cry about their gender. 

Trying to contain gender within a binary is like picking any two random stars in the sky and drawing a line between them, as though they are the only dots of light in the dark. Queers have always occupied the space between those points. Now we’re pushing beyond the linear spectrum, into dimensional constellations of identity, into galaxies of gender. Some days I feel so at home inside that vastness and sometimes, I feel lost in outer space.

10 things I’ve learned from 10 years of self-employment

In 2009 I began teaching my first yoga class, a sliding scale class on Thursday nights in the community space above a neighborhood coffee shop. I loved teaching this class, and I really wanted to find a way to make a living as a yoga teacher. I had done odd jobs since I was a teenager, baby-sitting, painting faces, giving haircuts alongside my service industry jobs. But this was my first time taking a side hustle seriously enough as a business endeavor that I was trying to market myself.

My first foray into marketing were printed flyers, cut-and-paste specimens with an artsy-punk aesthetic. (This was a decade ago. Pre-Instagram, pre-online marketing as we know it. Some of you remember.) I xeroxed said flyers at the library and biked around town to stick them up on every coffeehouse bulletin board that would let me. One side listed my classes; the other, a calendar of all the low-cost classes around town. 

Without having taken a single marketing course, I intuitively understood that passersby (my “target audience,” you could say) didn’t care about me or my teaching, and in fact, had something of a distaste for self-promotion, but that some of them (maybe my “ideal clients”) did care about low-cost self-care options, and would be much more likely to pick up a flyer that was a useful resource for them (“content marketing,” perhaps?) I did not know those business terms for a long time to come, but I was enacting marketing principles by gut instinct, and I was right. Those flyers were on refrigerators all over town. Thus was my entree into being self-employed.

In the decade that’s followed, I have continued to follow my gut more times than not, though I have also gotten some formal training in marketing, sales and business. Both have helped, the former to teach me to trust myself and my own intuition; the latter to remind me that having the language to speak of intuitive concepts makes business (and everything else) run much more efficiently. I celebrated ten years in business this November (though I quit teaching yoga last year. Read more about that over here.)

Here are ten things I’ve learned from my decade of business, for you, my fellow visionary business leader. May our futures be expansive and fruitful and fun. 

1. Everything is an experiment. Want to offer an online course? Do it and let it be imperfect. Thinking of trying out sliding scale pricing models? Implement it for three months and see what happens. The fact that sometimes experiments fail doesn’t mean that experiments are a waste of time. Sometimes a failure is based on an error that I’ve made, but more often it’s some combination of circumstances beyond my control that causes things to go awry. Allow yourself to make mistakes. We’re all just grappling through anyway. The experiment of being in business is ongoing. 

2. Consistency is everything. You know the sinking feeling of showing up for a fitness class and not having your favorite teacher be there, or the disappointment of making the effort to get there and finding the door locked with a note taped to it? Yeah, you want your clients to avoid that feeling. For the first three years I taught yoga, I hardly ever left town, because I knew how important it was to not cancel class or have a sub. This consistency built trust with my students, so they knew they could count on me to do what I said I’d do. 

   Similarly, when I first started writing this newsletter, I committed to sending it weekly, and like clockwork, I sent them out. My readers looked forward to Thursday morning when they knew they’d find me in their inbox. When I travelled for six weeks, I found substitute teachers for my classes, but I also arranged substitute writers for my newsletter, so even though I wasn’t there, there was a continuity of experience for my people.  Over time, I knew I could count on my students to show up to practice because of our reciprocity, just like I know I can count on y’all opening these missives.

3. People make the difference. If I like who my clients are, my work expands me, thrills me, and energizes me. If I struggle with the people I’m working with, it’s exhausting. Get clear about who you want to work with and then find. those. people. It will fill your heart to work with the right people. When you’re first starting out, you’ll need to work with lots of folks to see who is truly the right fit for what you offer. For me, there’s no one demographic I prefer, but all my ideal clients have in common that they’re working hard to keep their hearts open in this world in collapse. I’m on the same page as those folks at a fundamental level, and it makes the work light and connected in a way I can’t quite explain. 

4. The way to attract the right people is to be unabashedly yourself. Professionalism is a bullshit concept anyway, and it’s based in patriarchal and white supremacist ideas about how we have to show up in the world in order to be taken seriously. So just be yourself. Write like yourself. Show up on social media like yourself. Show up for your clients like yourself. Some people won’t like you and they won’t stick around. That’s better for you anyway. Don’t take their unsubscribes personally. See number 3. 

5. But share from the scar, not the wound. That doesn’t mean that everything that happens to you has to become fodder for your marketing. Give yourself time and space and PRIVACY to process the things that are happening to you. You can share vulnerably and authentically without having to broadcast your whole life. Some things can remain unsaid. Have boundaries with what you share. Let some healing happen quietly and behind closed doors. 

6. You don’t have to replicate corporate culture. Let me let you in on a secret: you don’t have to follow the rules. (And there are a lot of rules.) You can do things according to your own values and integrity and pleasure. In fact, you should always do things this way. To me, that’s one of the main perks of working for myself. Your work day doesn’t have to start at 8 am. You don’t have to time-track. Of course, if those things are genuinely exciting to you, by all means do them! But if they’re not, let them go and don’t feel guilty about it. If I wanted to follow corporate rules, I’d get a corporate job. At least then I’d have benefits!! If some rule or suggestion from a marketing expert makes you feel gross? STOP doing that thing. There are other ways to be in business. (See number 7.) 

7. Make space for imagination! We can get stuck in wanting to find the “proven 6-step formula” and just rubber stamp our way to success, but I didn’t become self-employed to be like everyone else. Did you? I didn’t think so. Take advantage of all the shit you don’t have to adhere to because you’ve opted out. There are a million right ways to do any single aspect of your business. While you don’t need to always reinvent the wheel, I do suggest finding ways to sidestep. Look at the places where there’s friction of doing business in a way that’s out of alignment with your values. Imagine a future not based on systems of oppression. How would your business shift in that future? What would your client contracts look like then? How would your marketing be different? How would your workday be structured? Envision better futures. This is perhaps a slower path but it is a more generative one.

8. Iteration is key. It can feel so disheartening to put imperfect offerings into the world that don’t quite meet your own exacting standards. The things you make will get better over time. I promise. Just keep iterating. I learned this principle from Ira Glass, who talks about this in relation to artists and creatives, but I would argue that running a business is a type of creative practice, and regardless, his advice certainly applies to us. He says, “All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good....But your taste is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you....The most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.”

9. Relationships are everything. Send the follow up email. Write that person you admire and tell them so. Reach out to former clients to see how they are. Sure, any of those might lead to a sale, but don’t let that be the primary motivation. Do it because you’re invested in the relationship. Care. Offer help anytime you can. Ask for help anytime you need. This will come back to you tenfold, both the offering and the asking. Don’t try to go it alone. Build interdependence into your business. 

10. Take your work seriously, because it has the power to change the culture.  You can change how you relate to yourself as both boss and worker. Your workday can involve dance breaks and midday naps and copious snacks and no pants and inspired midnight visioning sessions. You can change how you relate to money. You can donate your proceeds to causes you care about and never make six-figures and not put profit first. You can change how you relate to your clients. You have the power to have equitable, interconnected relationships with your clients and customers. You can reject the norm of extractive, transactional client relationships. Your business can choose to never replicate any oppressive bullshit. You can build a new world through your business. You can give yourself and your clients an experience of something visionary, something paradigm shifting. You don’t have to replicate the status quo, so don’t. Your business is a little universe. You make the rules. What kind of world do you want it to be?

Want support in creating your own visionary business universe? Click below for information about Radical Business Consulting.

Why the heck is everyone a life coach?

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It’s a question I see tossed around the online business world pretty frequently: why the heck is everyone and their mother a “coach”? What does that even mean? Isn’t a life coach just like a glorified, expensive friend? Why would you pay a coach, people wonder, when your best friend/mother/sister/girlfriend could do the same thing for you for free? 

Life coaching is a relatively new profession, with origins in human potential movement of the 1960s and 70s, and the first official life coaches coming about by the 1980s. Though coaching is a decidedly modern invention, wanting to better oneself isn’t new. Needing support in learning how to do so is also not new; there have long been people outside the family one could go to for guidance: the priest, the village witch, the fortune teller. All of those, in one way or another, were “paid” professions. But our family systems and social structures have changed so drastically over time that we no longer have a built-in system to support these changes. 

I believe that relational work is real work. When I say relational work, I mean the fields of work in which relationships are central to the work: coaching, therapy, teachers in some instances, doulas, careworkers of any kind. There are probably other fields I’m forgetting here. I also believe that emotional labor is real labor. When I say labor, I mean an expenditure of energy towards a certain outcome. When I say real, I mean actual, existent, valid, worthy. When I say real work, I mean work that expends energy, work that takes physical, mental and emotional labor. The emotional, logistical, administrative and relational labor that womxn+ are expected to take on in their homes, workplaces, families, and relationships that includes acts of nurturance, active listening, skillful guidance, and emotional support: this is labor, and it is real. 

Certainly there are nuanced skills in all of these professions, but a large part of what coaches provide is emotional nurturance, a listening ear, an encouraging word, a shift of perspective. And it’s only inside late-stage capitalism that these kinds of emotional support need to become commodified and transactional and branded in the particular way they have been in recent decades, but here we are, inside of capitalism, and I want to be compensated for my labor. 

A large part of why relational work is scoffed at and emotional labor is frowned upon, both casually and professionally, is because we have a culturally engrained habit of expecting women (particularly women of color, particularly Black women) to perform this type of labor for free. That expectation is so entrenched that many people would not even call this emotional work “labor,” and perhaps would not even notice it happening, so unconscious is the expectation. 

In a capitalist system, value and payment are inextricably linked. Paying for work isn’t the only way to signal our values, and it’s not a long-term solution to ending misogynist or racist norms or building a world beyond capitalism. But for now inside white supremacist patriarchal capitalism, the primary way we signal value is by paying. When a certain type of labor is unpaid, it is inherently unvalued, and thus invalid. Paying for relational work validates the labor it entails; it also validates the laborer.  

None of this is to say that there aren’t problems in the coaching industry. There definitely are. The same patterns of white supremacy and patriarchy that rule every other aspect of our culture are also playing out in this realm. And there are definitely some truly predatory coaches out there, harming people with their lack of skill. But I have the strong suspicion that a whole lot of snark about coaching and coaches from within and outside the world of online business is not because of these patterns, but because of unchecked patriarchal assumptions about what kind of labor deserves payment, and who doing it deserves to be paid. 

It’s worth reminding us all here that not every patriarchal ideal comes from the mind of a man; not every nurturing act happens by a woman’s hand. Many women and otherly-gendered people also hold these assumptions; I used to too, and in fact, I still feel it inside myself occasionally as imposter syndrome, which is really just patriarchal norms rattling around in my brain masquerading as facts. “Is coaching really a valid profession?,” they ask. “Are you just a quack?” 

But those assumptions are also what I’m pushing back against by continuing to do coaching work. When I take my labor seriously by assigning a price to it, I’m asserting to myself and the world that relational work is valid. And when you pay a coach for their work, you’re affirming it too. 

Much love,

Bear

P.S. IF YOU LIKE WHAT I WRITE EACH WEEK, I'D LOVE TO KEEP IN TOUCH. SIGN UP FOR WEEKLY LOVE LETTERS DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.

What I learned from a year on Tinder

What I learned about radical honesty from a year oN Tinder

This is part one in a multi-part series about skills I learned from Tinder dating. More essays coming soon!

Last year in April I joined Tinder for the first time. I had always been loathe to get involved in online dating; I had never seen the joy in OkCupid or Match.com. I wanted spontaneity and romance, and I didn’t believe these things could be digitally mediated. But here I was, a year out of a five-ish year relationship, and I wanted to get out more, meet new people, maybe even have fun. And sex. I definitely wanted to have sex. 

Meanwhile, I’d been back in therapy for the better part of a year at that point, working hard on myself and my relational habits. I came from a common but not normal type of family, the kind that’s full of dysfunction, abandonment and abuse, the kind that eradicates boundaries, eschews truth, and generally fucks a kid up. I had played out those same childhood dynamics in all my romantic relationships in one way or another, including the recently-ended one. I presented myself at my therapist’s office heartbroken and desperately ready to do it differently. 

“What if,” I wondered to my therapist aloud, “I could use my interactions on Tinder to try out the new emotional habits I was trying to instill in myself? Would this be a lower stakes scenario than with people I already have complex relationships with? Could I use Tinder not just to get laid but to perhaps, become a better person?” 

I started small, taking tiny chances and slowly making small improvements to my dysfunctional habits. I set an intention to be radically honest in all of my interactions on Tinder. For me this meant telling the truth, clearly and directly, when I didn’t like someone else’s behavior towards me, even if I thought the other person wouldn’t like it. Even if they might not want to date me because of it. 

Telling the truth is no easy task. For many women and assigned-female people, being palatable is always the unstated goal. We’re taught to just be nice. Be approachable. Don’t have too many opinions. Definitely don’t tell people (especially men) what you think of them. Just be agreeable and go with the flow. Be the chill girl. This has been my unspoken way of being for basically my whole life. I was ready to start telling the truth. 

Being honest is a time-saver

Not to be glib, but being honest and direct saved me so much time. Turns out if you just tell someone directly that you don’t like something they’ve said or done, most of them just disappear into the pixelated ether, no terrible first date needed to find out you weren’t a good match after all. 

My first experience with this was with an artsy-looking Burner dude who I probably had no business swiping right on anyway. (I quickly developed a set of rules: guns, cops, military, Burning Man, white dreds, car selfie, shirtless gym selfie, mention of his penis in his profile: swipe left.) Artsy Burner and I matched, and I sent the first message. 

“Hey [I can’t remember his name], how’s your week been?” 

“Hey Beautiful! My week’s been great, played a gig with my band last night. How about yours?” 

I rolled my eyes. I hate when dudes I’ve just met address me with pet names, particularly ones that fixate on physical attractiveness. It smacks of a kind of entitlement and paternalism that is just unpalatable to me. (Side note: You don’t have to hate this. I know some people who actively like this. I’m not making a value judgement about that. Just stating my personal preference.) But, I thought, how could he know that I hate that unless I tell him? So I messaged back. 

“Hey so I’m new to Tinder but I’m trying to practice radical honesty here, and it actually really bothers me when guys I’ve just met use pet names with me. If that’s too weird, feel free to unmatch.” 

He quickly sent back a flurry of defensive messages, and before I could even read them, he unmatched. 

At first I felt sad he had unmatched. Getting unmatched always feels a little like rejection. But then I felt relieved. This person was not a good fit for me, and because I told the truth, now we knew it. He was either deeply committed to his used of pet names, or unable to receive feedback about his behavior, or both. We could stop wasting each other’s time.  

Another iteration of this happened a few weeks later when I matched with a soft butch and her cute dog. We chatted on and off for a few days, eventually planning to go on a date the following Saturday evening, details TBD. Thursday rolled around and she wrote: 

“Hey Bear, how about meeting for a drink at the Mayhaw?” 

The Mayhaw? I had never heard of this spot. I googled it. Oh shit. It was the bar inside a mammoth, expensive food court “market” that heavily influenced the rapid gentrification of the neighborhood it was in. I had enacted a quiet, personal boycott of the market since it opened, and I couldn’t see breaking it now, not even for this babe. 

Suddenly the stakes felt higher. We had spent a week exchanging witty banter and establishing rapport. I texted a friend for guidance. I wanted to tell my date the truth, I explained, but I also really wanted to go out with her.  “Just suggest a different bar instead,” my friend encouraged. “You don’t have to mention the reason why.” I considered this approach, but being clear about my politics felt important, like a litmus test of shared worldview. 

“Hey there, so I’m trying to practice radical honesty on Tinder,” I shared earnestly, “and truthfully, I can’t go to the Mayhaw because to me it represents forces of gentrification in the neighborhood that I just don’t support. I’m happy to meet you at some other bar, or feel free to unmatch, no hard feelings.” 

Within minutes and without a reply, she unmatched. 

Damn. Damn damn damn. I was disappointed. I had high hopes for this! But then, inevitably, relief swept in. Glad we got that out of the way now, I thought, before either of us hitched up the U-haul. 

Disappointments aside, this radical honesty thing was working. In just one message, I was laying out to people what was truly important to me, what I was unwilling to compromise on, and then, simply letting them choose. If it’s a dealbreaker for them, then so be it. If he is really dedicated to calling strangers “Beautiful” or “Love”, let him be. If the Mayhaw is her favorite bar and she’s never heard the term gentrification before, better to know it now. 

The thrilling flip side of telling the truth, of course, is that sometimes people don’t unmatch. Sometimes you tell someone your honest feelings about something and they want to talk more about it, try to understand you, want you to understand them. Honesty becomes an avenue for connection rather than disconnection. 

Recently I had a Tinder debate with a new match about yet another bar in the city whose owners are known to support white supremacist causes. My match said he’d been boycotting the place for years, even though it was one of the only spots for zydeco dancing in town. I countered that because of that, they also support and employ many Black zydeco musicians who have few options to play elsewhere. We agreed that it was complicated and that there were no easy answers. Maybe we’ll go dancing soon, though not at that bar. I was grateful for the conversation.

There are cultural norms, especially for women and female-assigned people, that say we should put our best face forward, hide our true selves until we’re further along in getting to know someone. How will you convince them to love you if you show them who you really are right away?, common sense seems to tell us. But in fact, the opposite is true. If you start out with half-truths and swallowing your opinion about things, you’re setting yourself up for deception and resentment. Being radically honest doesn’t solve all the problems of a relationship, but starting out by telling the truth sets you up for more truth.

And the truth, as they say, will set you free. 

P.S. IF YOU LIKE WHAT I WRITE EACH WEEK, I'D LOVE TO KEEP IN TOUCH. SIGN UP FOR WEEKLY LOVE LETTERS DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.

5 Qualities of an Anti-Capitalist

Capitalism, like other systems of oppression, is the water we swim in. Its ubiquity makes it incredibly challenging to notice how it affects us. Whether we notice it or not, it gets into our minds and our lives and our behavior. Capitalism has its own set of values that likely do not align with your own, but if you don’t recognize them, you’re liable to live your life as though they did. It takes concerted effort to see them and interrupt them.

This list is surely incomplete and is, admittedly, over-simplified for the sake of this blog post. Capitalism is racialized and gendered. Capitalism exists on the backs of  white supremacy and patriarchy; these systems require each other. But for the sake of clarity here, I’m addressing capitalism singularly in order to help us understand it, so that we may be better equipped to take it down. Here goes!

Slowness is anti-capitalist.

Getting as much work done as possible in as little time as possible is a deeply held capitalist norm. Most of us (self-employed or no) sprint through our lives this way, always trying to maximize our results and minimize our efforts. It’s an inherently extractive paradigm.

When you’re an employee who works for a boss, the boss is the one trying to extract your labor, but when you work for yourself, you’re both the boss and the laborer, the extractor and the extracted. Let yourself slow down. Be your own good boss. There’s no rush. Divest from the paradigm of hurry up.

Generosity is anti-capitalist.

The richest people are the least generous among us, studies show. Those with very little money are more likely to share it, lend it, and give it away. What little they do have is treated as a community resource, rather than a personal possession to be squirreled away and never touched or spoken of.

When we give to another person, it requires us to really see them, in their struggles and pain. Generosity has within it, compassion. Capitalism runs on always trying to get a little more than you already have. When we give away what we have, we’re divesting from the norm of accumulation.

Inconsistency is anti-capitalist.

The myth of consistency is harming us. Most of us look at our most productive days and expect that every day should be just as productive. But it’s not possible. It’s not how nature works (and guess what? You’re a part of nature!)

When plants grow, it’s not slow and steady. It’s often days or weeks of seemingly no change, and then suddenly, bam! The seed has sprouted and is pushing towards the sun. You’ll see weeks of imperceptible growth and no blooms, followed by days of abundant unfurling flowers.

Your work does not have to be consistent. Take hours off. Take days off. Take weeks off. Don’t feel guilty. Divest from the paradigm of constant work.

Connection is anti-capitalist.

Capitalism teaches us (whether we’re conscious of it or not) to always be trying to prioritize our own needs over the collective well-being. It teaches us to do for yourself (and your family maybe) alone, and everyone else is on their own. It’s every person for themself.

This way of being is soul-crushing. It forces us to ignore the suffering of other people in order to try to “get ahead”, and it is deeply dehumanizing. It encourages us to shun or pity people with less than us, and judge or resent people with more than us.

It’s possible to account for the differences in our lived realities while not reducing someone else to a stereotype about “poor people” or “rich people.” When we practice seeing other humans as just that, human, it’s pushing back against this capitalist norm.

Transparency is anti-capitalist.

We’re pretty well trained not to talk about money. It’s rude to discuss your family’s wealth (or lack thereof); in some cases it’s actually prohibited to divulge the amount of your salary. Who benefits from this secrecy? What do we gain by participating in it? Start talking about money with your friends, family, and clients. It might be uncomfortable at first, but it helps us to see the underpinnings of the myths we believe about how money works.

A few years ago I started asking any friend who was buying a house how they got the money to pay the down payment. Nearly every single one admitted they received help from family to be able to afford buying a house. If we dig a little deeper, most will point to some dubious source of how the family came to have that money. But we don’t hear those stories very often. The ones we hear are of bootstraps and hard work, and those are incomplete at best and incorrect at worst.

Being transparent about our money, and asking those close to us to do the same, isn’t rude; it’s radical.

Bottom line?

When we can see the oppressive qualities of capitalism, we can interrupt them. When we can interrupt them, we can replace them with more aligned qualities.

Try these on! Tell me what you think. I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

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I’m teaching more about practices for anti-capitalism in

FREELY: An Anti-Capitalist Guide to Business

Part One deals with how to set your rates. Part Two delves into how to keep your work financially accessible.

Lessons From the Intersection of Yoga and Capitalism

This essay was first published in 2016 when I was still a yoga teacher. Teaching yoga wasn’t the first time I worked for myself, but it was my first full-time self-employment. I learned so much about money and how people relate to it there.

(I quit in October 2018 because I finally came to terms with the fact that cultural appropriation is real and does lasting harm. I wrote more about all that over here: bearteachesyoga.org)

These were some of my reflections from back then, lightly edited and updated for clarity and context. I’m resharing them here to give some background about myself, my business, and my approach to anti-capitalism.

THE SCALE IS BROKEN

I have been teaching yoga since 2011, and in that time, I’ve been lucky to be able to offer all of my public classes on a sliding scale. Sliding scale is a means of making yoga more affordable, by making it cheaper for those who need it to be, while those who can afford to pay more do so, with the folks at the top of the scale subsidizing the folks at the bottom. At my classes, no one is ever turned away for lack of funds, and I’m always open to trade or barter (with agreements made in advance). My students pay me anonymously on the honor system (they simply drop their money in a basket before or after class).

I believe in sliding scale pricing models because they can help to remove one barrier of access to yoga practice. Certainly we can all practice on our own (for free!) but there is something special about being in a class together with other people that those with less financial means should not be excluded from. Sliding scale economies offer an autonomous alternative to capitalism (albeit still existing within capitalism).

A functional sliding scale means that the average payment is about the middle of the scale. The scale for my classes has been $5-15 for as long as I’ve been teaching, so a healthy average would be around $10/student. Instead the average per student has never consistently exceeded $6 or $7, which means that the vast majority of students pay on the lower end of the sliding scale.

It makes sense that people who are attracted to a lower-cost yoga class might be lower-income; by contrast, most students at a $20 drop-in class are probably financially stable.  I have little statistical information about the average of my students’ salaries or their monthly expenses, though what I observe can give us a place to start from. Many of my students are artists, writers, and musicians. A few are lawyers, doctors, and engineers. Most are white, in their 20s and 30s, and have no children. Most of my students (though certainly not all) are well off enough to buy coffee at a coffee shop, or go out to eat with friends, or take a vacation.

Yet the numbers show that some of these financially comfortable folks must be paying at the bottom of the sliding scale. My students are largely $6 students, regardless of actual income level.  A healthy sliding scale system would assure that students can afford classes, teachers make a living wage, and the studio stays afloat. If most folks pay at the minimum, the system isn’t serving its purpose. Our scale is currently broken.

TRAILER PARK CHILDHOOD

I’m a white, college educated, able-bodied person, with a whole lot more earning potential than I’m currently utilizing, but/and I grew up working-class/working-poor. I spent the first half of my childhood in trailer parks and cheap apartments. Though we were far from the worst off, especially on a global scale, I’m familiar with the experience of not-enough. My mom was single with three kids. She never had fewer than 2 jobs. My brothers and I wore hand-me-downs and garage sale clothes. We always had food on the table because we were on food stamps. We picked cans on the weekends sometimes to be able to get Happy Meals at McDonald’s as a treat.

My first memory of class-based shame was in Kindergarten: I was so angry that my older brother got to carry a backpack like all the other kids, but I had to carry my school supplies in the blue nylon duffel bag that came in the $5 two-pack from Wal-Mart. We simply couldn’t afford a second backpack. As I got older, I desperately wanted to take dance classes, but they were too expensive. I went to a public magnet middle school, so my friends lived all over town, many in ritzy neighborhoods. I was startled to learn I had friends who had a maid; my mom had been a cleaning lady.

Our financial situation improved when my mom married my step-dad, but still money was tight. My parents worked nights in addition to their day jobs so we could have braces and eyeglasses. They could afford for me to go on the class trip, or to get birthday and Christmas presents, but not both. I went to college on scholarship and waited tables to pay my bills. When my scholarship ran out, I put my tuition on a credit card. I’m the first person in my extended family to get a college degree.

A NICKEL TO MY NAME

I have identified as “broke” for most of my life. My experience of scarcity in childhood didn’t just go away as I became an adult. I lived on the edge of major financial trouble from age 18-28. I have paid thousands of dollars in overdraft fees on my checking account. I carried ten thousand dollars of credit card debt for about five years. I borrowed money from friends to cover my rent half a dozen times over ten years.

I laughed ruefully once when I got a receipt from an ATM that stated my bank balance as 5 cents. I literally had a nickel to my name. I posted it on my fridge for years as a reminder that it could always be, had already been worse.

There were sleepless nights pinned down by the weight of my debts, countless fits of tears about overdraft fees, hours of stress-ridden shifts at work, smiling just a little broader in the hopes of a good tip, the thrum of low-grade anxiety ever present in the background. The emotional toll of living at the edge of scarcity is hard to ignore.

But despite all my money woes, I mostly lived comfortably. I often had to scrimp and save, but I never worried about going hungry.  I still managed to pinch pennies enough to travel a little most years, even internationally a few times. I did not have to pay for the care of children or elderly parents. I did not have ongoing medical expenses. My waitressing jobs always paid me above the minimum wage.

And yet, I applied for a scholarship, subsidized rate, or payment plan for every yoga training I took in my first years of teaching. I ALWAYS paid at the bottom of the sliding scale or just above for every massage I got, every herbal medicine workshop I took, every conference I attended. I just never felt like I could afford to pay more. I identified as broke, even when I wasn’t.  I’m the epitome of the $6 student.  

Over the years of teaching, I have considered abandoning the sliding scale model, instead teaching $15 classes like every other studio, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to do it. I feel deeply that this is an important thing to offer. You all, my students, are SO INCREDIBLE. You constantly amaze me. Would you stop coming if class cost more? I believe that the gesture of sliding scale is important, even if none of you ever utilized it. So here we are, seven years in, and we’re all the $6 student.

“WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THIS MONSTROUS MACHINE THAT CHEWS UP BEAUTY AND SPITS OUT MONEY?” --Charles Eisenstein

It’s a basic tenet of capitalism that the market must always grow. Constant growth is fundamental to a successful capitalist system. More money, more product, more profit. Bigger is better. More is more. The inverse, then, is that THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH. This is evidenced in our gluttonous consumer culture, and few of us are immune. I live pretty simply for the most part, but I own two dozen (?!?!) pairs of shoes, and I just ordered another pair of sandals on Amazon this week.

It’s not hard to imagine how that might translate into a sense of never having enough as individuals. If more growth is always required, there can be no contentment. In many punk/artist communities that I’ve been part of, being broke is worn as a badge of honor. We laugh at and disparage those who have lots of money as shills, cogs in the capitalist machine. But if we buy into the idea that we’re always, will always be, broke, aren’t we just enacting the other side of the same coin?

Financial blogger Hadassah Damien says, “You don’t have to like, love, or even understand capitalism to get to survive it. I mean survive it like all the single moms and working families and folks at joyless gigs to pay student loans and hustling artists and everyone working a black market job and everyone in the service industry and freelancers and roommates and collective houses and coops and and and. ...You. Deserve. A. Future. And so, you can choose to put energy towards that future....That future needs you, wherever you are today.”

SCARCITY AND FEAR

It bears repeating that there is a difference between living in actual scarcity and living in the fear of it. Here’s an example (via Ride Free). Sacrifice and hardship are not the same. If paying $15 instead of $5 for yoga class would mean that you can’t buy yourself a green juice from the juice bar after class, that’s a sacrifice. It’s trading one non-essential purchase for another. If on the other hand, paying $15 for yoga class would mean that you can’t put gas in your car to get to work the next day, that is a hardship.

Many of us conflate the two and inadvertently treat our sacrifices as hardships. We live paralyzed by the fear of not having enough, because we know that in this system, there can never be enough. What’s more, capitalism encourages us to always try to get the most gain for the smallest output. It’s the essence of the system. Employers pay workers the minimum wage in order to maximize their own profits. “In a pure financial transaction we are all identical: we all want to get the best deal” (Eisenstein).

How does this shake down in a sliding scale economy?  We, as purchasers, get to decide the value of the product, and we simply aren’t experienced at assigning value. In most other cases, our choice is simply whether or not to make the purchase at the price determined by the seller: I decide my weekend workshop costs $250, and you decide whether or not the workshop is worth that price to you. With sliding scale the roles are reversed, and the choice is much more complex: we have to decide how much the good or service is worth to us.

We are woefully unprepared to make this decision. It can be difficult to justify paying more than the lowest amount simply because we have the option to pay less, and paying less now guarantees more for later. All of us living under capitalism have the experience of either actual scarcity, perceived scarcity, or fear of future scarcity. I continue to oscillate through all of them. When we approach the sliding scale system with a capitalist mindset, it’s no wonder we’re all the $6 student. We’ve had a lifetime of practice at it.  

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

My own financial situation has shifted a lot in the past five years, as has my perspective. I am finally out of debt, but I actually make less money now than I did in many years prior, namely because I quit the restaurant industry entirely to focus on teaching yoga and making art. By some standards I live very simply: I don’t own a car, or have a smartphone, and very rarely buy new clothes, instead preferring my bike, my flip phone, and thrift store shopping. But by many other standards I am incredibly wealthy, and I live more abundantly than I ever have.

I have lots of caveats around the concept of abundance, which is often class and racial privilege masquerading as “shifting your mindset,” but my life is different now than it ever has been. Some of that certainly comes from the reality of my financial situation shifting, but much of it comes from a shift in my understanding of my own position in a system in which there can never be enough. I can’t keep pretending that I don’t have what I need right now because I’m afraid I won’t have it in the future.

So I’ve started paying at the higher end of the sliding scale. This is not comfortable for me to do. It pushes alllllll of my buttons, but I’m giving it a try anyway. I went to a donation-based meditation retreat in May, and I asked myself how much I could comfortably pay, and then I paid $50 more than that. I’m unlearning my own habits, and trying to get my mind out from under a system that wants to keep us all scared and small and broke(n), both financially and otherwise. Social researcher Brene Brown says, “For me, the opposite of scarcity is not abundance. It's enough. I'm enough.”

I don’t mean any of this as a finger-wagging admonishment to give me a raise, or as an indictment of anyone's personal spending habits. Some among us are actually struggling financially, and if that’s you, please keep being the $5 student, or the student who pays in fresh herbs from the garden, or the student who says “I’m broke right now. Can I pay you next week?”. I’m thrilled and honored to have you there regardless of your ability to pay. But for the rest of us, I believe it’s worth looking at the intersection of our past experiences, our present privilege, and the way we’ve been inculcated into scarcity simply by being alive in capitalism.

How much money would you need to make for it to be ENOUGH? How would your life be different if you believed you had enough? How would your spending habits change? Would you be able to sleep at night instead of lying awake worrying about money? Could you stop obsessively monitoring your expenses or avoiding looking at your bank account? Would you give to charities more, or support other organizations who do work you believe in? Would you be a $15 student instead of a $6 student? Who would you become?

Want more resources? Hadassah Damien's blog has a wealth (pun entirely intended!) of information: ridefreefearlessmoney.com. Charles Eisenstein's book Sacred Economics is a worthy read on creating new systems for exchange, and you can read it for free at charleseisenstein.net/books. Both of these are quoted in this essay.

If this essay was useful to you, you might like

Freely: An Anti-Capitalist Guide to Setting Your Rates.

This online workshop is Thursday, May 23 at 1pm Central Time. It’s $19.

Sign up over here!

why your to-do list doesn't get done

Is your to-do list dysfunctional?

Imagine this:

You're building a new website (ahem...) You might be tempted to write something like "work on website" on your to-do list. So then every time you sit down to work, "work on website" is what looms at you from the page. You're never sure what the next right step is or how to pick up where you left off.  You've been working at it for weeks, but it's still not done, so you don’t get to cross anything off the list.

You know the feelings that follow: frustration, irritation, and that anxiety of feeling like you haven’t done enough.  

Weirdly, the problem might be that you didn’t add enough items to your to-do list.

I know this seems counterintuitive, but breaking down what you have to do into annoyingly small parts can be VERY effective at actually making progress.

What I’m saying is, add as many tasks as possible to your to-do list.

When you’re tempted to write “work on website” on your list, take a minute and break it down into smaller, more doable chunks. “Work on website” might feel clear to you, but a website redesign is a big-ass project made up of a ton of smaller tasks. Consider instead "make header graphic for homepage" or "write copy for about page" or "research pop-up plug-ins."

To reiterate, a task is a discrete action, something that can be accomplished in one sitting, while a project is multifaceted and by definition requires coordination of multiple parts.

At first all this writing might seem like a waste of time ("I don't have time to write all these things down! I'm trying to Get Shit Done!"). But trust me, having a clear plan is paramount for accomplishing what you've set out to do.

When you put a project on your task list (“Work on website”), you get stuck, too paralyzed to begin because you don’t know where to start. But when you break down a project into tasks (Write about page copy”), you can take action. And one action leads to more.

Momentum coupled with a clear action plan can keep you from falling into inertia and overwhelm.

When you know where you're going, you're that much more likely to actually end up there. And when you can honestly cross things off your list, you accomplish more, feel better about your work, and BONUS, you might end up feeling better about yourself too.

INQUIRY: Can you implement this shift in thinking? What else keeps you from finishing what you start?

ACTION: Write a new to-do list for yourself that includes only TASKS and no projects. Take a picture of your new list and send it to me for some external accountability. #getshitdone

Much love,

Bear

P.S. The next round of Get Shit Done starts October 7. Click here for more info or to sign up!

why i'm proud of being flaky

Why do we value reliability over honesty?

So many of us, particularly those of us socialized female, have a tendency to always put the needs of others first. We’ve been trained to value being reliable and keeping our word above all else. I hear it over and over again from my coaching clients:

“I’d rather not go to that meeting/party/playdate/etc---BUT I said I would, soooooo....”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it’s never important to put on some #actualpants and show up for the people you’re close to. And for those with kids or other dependents, what you feel like doing isn’t always relevant.

But in so many other cases, we police ourselves and in each other into doing shit we don’t want to do.

For example, I agreed to go on a trip to Mexico this summer with a dear friend. We decided spontaneously, over a glass of wine at the neighborhood wine shop. The plane tickets were so cheap that we bought them on the spot.

But in the weeks since then, I’ve waffled. When I thought about going on this trip, I didn’t feel excited. I felt anxious. I felt “off.” It wasn’t personal at all, but to me, all my reasons felt like frivolous justifications.

“I can’t just back out of this trip! We’re travelling internationally! We bought the plane tickets already. She’ll be so disappointed if I don’t go. What kind of a terrible friend am I??” etc etc. But I just couldn’t shake the feeling: I didn’t want to go.

So finally, I called my friend.

“I can’t go to Mexico. I want to want to go, but I just don’t.”

She was surprised and sad and disappointed. But it was okay. She called our other travel companion to regroup, and texted later to let me know that everything was cool between us. #goodfriend

What kind of world is it if we value doing what you said you would do three weeks ago over  doing what feels like the right thing to do in this moment? Who benefits when we value reliability over authenticity?

Valuing reliability relates to patriarchy, rape culture, and ableism.

In terms of patriarchy: women are taught to prioritize the needs of others over ourselves. Women are never the center of our own story. That’s not to say that men can’t or wouldn’t sacrifice themselves for others, but when they do, it’s seen as heroic, whereas when women do it, it’s seen as expected, natural, par for the course.

So when we value showing up for something simply to preserve the feelings of other people, we’re upholding that patriarchal position.

The subtle coerciveness of rape culture is based on (among other things) the assumption that consent is irrevocable. If you said you wanted to do whatever-sexy-act last week or ten minutes ago, you’re not supposed to change your mind. Changing your mind is an affront to the desires of the other person, thus, your desires are secondary. (See point #1.)

But consent culture says we’re allowed to say yes now and say no five minutes from now. We’re allowed to change our minds. We’re allowed to back out.

Ableism presumes that your abilities stay basically the same from day to day, but for folks with disabilities, chronic illness or mental health issues, this isn’t true. Heck, it’s not true even for those of us that are (currently) able-bodied. What’s possible right now, in today’s body and mind, may or may not be possible in three hours or three days or three weeks.

The ability to say yes and then change one’s mind without social penalty is crucial for creating communities that are welcoming for differently-abled people.

So being flaky, aka, being okay with backing out of something you previously agreed to, might actually be the best thing you can do for yourself.

And get this, it might actually be better for the person on the other end of your agreement too. Because here’s the thing--when someone shows up to something out of obligation, YOU CAN TELL. It’s often apparent when there’s no enthusiasm.

I’m not saying to bail on people with no warning. I’m not saying to ghost your lover or no-show on your BFF. But with clear, direct communication, you can state your needs and your boundaries and do what you really need to do.

Yes, someone else might be sad that you couldn’t make it. It might put your coworker in a tizzy for a minute. But if these people really want what’s best for you, they’ll trust that you know what that is, even if it’s inconvenient or disappointing for them.

The idea that we have to prioritize other people’s feelings over our own well being--I’m through with it. It’s bullshit, and it doesn’t serve us anymore.

Here’s to unpacking coercive, ableist norms. It makes the world better, easier, and more liberated, not just for women or disabled people, but for ALL OF US.

Much love, 

Bear