This is the Be The Change section of my blog, where I talk about creating a world that nurtures everyone's dreams, and explore the intersections of colonialism, the patriarchy and white supremacy in the New Age movement/Live Your Best Life Industry.
You can't look outside of you for hope.
I mean - there's so little hope to be found out there right now that it's depressing to try.
But mostly because - we're here to BRING IT.
Hope and light and creativity and new possibilities.
This is your work.
This is the theme for today's Creative Genius Planing Session - on Instagram Live.
How do we be force for positive change while the world is a dystopian nightmare?
If you are on this planet right now you have a role to play in creating a good future for everyone.
And if you have a business - your business can play a role as well.
Join me, let's explore this together.
Monday Morning Meditation (AKA Creative Genius Planning) is happening at 10 am Central, on Instagram live.
If you go to my Instagram account from your mobile device you'll be able to set a reminder, and also see this in your own time zone.
And you can catch the replay on my page after we're done.
(These live public meditations are only on Instagram, but I will be doing a more in-depth free class on Zoom soon - stay tuned for details)
I've been having this conversation with a lot of the creative helper people, light-shiners and way-showers.
How do we keep showing up for our work, while the world is falling apart?
And for people who are not self employed it's still a difficult question.
How do we be force for positive change while the world is a dystopian nightmare?
If you are on this planet right now you have a role to play in creating a good future for everyone. And if you have a business - your business can play a role as well.
This will be the theme of the Monday Morning meditation next week!
Join me, let's explore this together.
Monday Morning Meditation (AKA Creative Genius Planning) is happening at 10 am Central, on Instagram live.
If you go to my Instagram account from your mobile device you'll be able to set a reminder, and also see this in your own time zone.
You can also check out the replay from this week's Monday Morning meditation here. The theme was filling up on good energy and fuel for your dreams, which included a great conversation about taking good care of ourselves.
And if you're feeling so flattened by everything that you can't even think about this, I have 2 free courses that help:
Angel Sullivan and I had ✨the most✨ amazing talk about holding a positive vision for the future while the world is falling apart.
This is especially for artists, teachers, therapists, coaches, healers, etc - the people who are offering inspiration and support, which really is tricky when the world keep becoming more and more chaotic AND ALSO this work is needed now, more than ever.
So many in the new age/wellness are turning towards total spiritual bypass - just look at the positive, turn off the "mainstream news", and "know" that everything that is happening is happening for the positive transformation of the world.
There are two things I want to highlight:
1. If all you do is focus on your own corner, lifting up yourself and those like you - you are unconsciously leaning into your privilege and any solutions you generate are only going to be for you, and people who are as privileged as you are.
WE CANNOT CHANGE THE WORLD WITHOUT INTERSECTIONALITY. All we can do is keep re-creating the systems of oppression that we already live in. It's time to do better.
2. YOU HAVE THE POWER TO HELP CHANGE THE WORLD. We all do. It's going to take everyone. It's really easy to feel like you are too small to change anything. But stay present with everything - because you ARE too small to change anything BY YOURSELF but together, we can do this.
It's almost an hour long, so make a fresh cuppa and watch it here.
Photo by Tina Hartung on Unsplash
First, I want to recommend the book My Grandmother's Hands, by Resmaa Menakem.
Also - follow Resmaa, he is an incredible teacher.
It's about intergenerational racial trauma and it's very specifically geared towards the United States, but still had a lot of helpful insight for me in Canada. I actually did recommend this book in my blog post about how your dreams need anti-racism but today it's on my mind for a different reason.
I recommend it especially for white people who may not be aware of your intergenerational racial trauma and all the ways it manifests due to still living in the white supremacist systems that our ancestors created.
Europe was a very brutal place for a very, very long time.
It traumatized our ancestors, generation after generation, to the extent they were able to come to North America and commit mass genocide in order to "settle the land". And we in North America STILL think of ourselves as either settlers or immigrants but that's not even close to what we are here. We STILL fail to take part in any meaningful reconciliation.
That's not something a human can do if they are well.
I know humans have always had conflict but to kill an entire continent of other human civilizations, and to enslave other humans on another continent and bring them over to the "new" world in order to build a new country and create more wealth for yourself - that's not something any human is actually capable of if they are well.
Even if you know that no one in your family enslaved other humans - white people saw other white people enslaving Black people and just went on with their own lives. A human can't do that if they are well. These are all signs of deeply traumatized people. This is one thing I learned in this book.
What's really beautiful about this book is Resmaa's in-depth understanding of how trauma functions in the body, and continual support throughout the book to process some of that trauma.
I've been thinking for the last few days WHY we are all reacting as though the war in Ukraine is the only war that's happening, why we've been mostly ignoring the other wars.
It's complicated. And there's no question about the unconscious racial bias that decides who deserves to live in a peaceful country.
But I think one part is that war in Europe can trigger some of this intergenerational trauma that lives in our bodies.
I've been feeling it.
I'm a sensitive person. All war impacts me, but this one is impacting me more deeply, for multiple reasons.
A lot of my ancestors were killed by Russians. I can feel the terror and fear in my body.
I can see how, over the last 2 years, a huge part of our population had been indoctrinated into belief systems that will have them supporting this war, and supporting the escalation of this war.
So a huge thing that is stressing me out:
The new age influencers are starting to talk about how this war is a good thing.
Please. If you see any of this - don't support it.
This isn't a spiritual war. These are real people being invaded. There is no higher cause here.
We can't turn away.
Yes we can't stay glued to the news either.
We need to take good care of ourselves.
We need to recognize our own trauma responses to this traumatic situation and take care of them - not act out of them, or act out of a desire to avoid them.
Here's what I am doing, if you need some ideas:
- lots of pets with Bear, and pressing my face into his belly while he purrs
- breathing in to a count of 4 and breathing out to a count of 8
- going outside for walks
- getting extra sleep
- drinking a lot of water
- extra meditation
- soothing binaural beats music in my headphones
- extra journaling and art-making to process my feelings
Join me Monday LIVE on Instagram for Creative Genius Planning at noon Central (go to my Instagram account from your phone and you can tap the event notice to set a reminder in your own time zone) and we'll work on a plan for this week that includes the self care you need.
From Wikipedia:
Anti-racism encompasses a range of ideas and political actions which are meant to counter racial prejudice, systemic racism, and the oppression of specific racial groups. Anti-racism is usually structured around conscious efforts and deliberate actions which are intended to provide equal opportunities for all people on both an individual and a systemic level. As a philosophy, it can be engaged in by the acknowledgment of personal privileges, confronting acts as well as systems of racial discrimination, and/or working to change personal racial biases.
Getting defensive when people bring up race is not anti-racist. Saying "I don't think that's racist" is not being anti-racist.
Working through those knee-jerk reactions is anti-racist.
This is what helps you be able to make conscious efforts and deliberate actions. Anti-racism is about ACTIVELY DOING THINGS to confront and combat racism and the ways it oppressing the majority of people in the world.
It's hard for me to write about this because the "alternative media" has taken such a strong stance against anti-racism and has done it in ways that it really has impacted the way a lot of the new age sees this.
It's made the new age community as a whole more reactive when racism is brought up.
Which serves to stop the conversations.
Which keeps systemic racism in place.
It shouldn't be so controversial to say "let's stop giving carte blanche to our white fragility responses" because we can do better.
If you've done any healing work at all you should have the capacity for anti-racism work.
If you have any empathy at all in you, you can see that racism is killing people every day.
Here in Canada, there are suicide epidemics about Indigenous youth which are caused by colonization which is an extreme form of racism where white people go to a new country, sign treaties with the people there, totally disregard the treaties, go on a genocidal campaign to kill 90% of the native people, forcibly remove the survivors from their lands to give that land to white settlers, lock up Indigenous people on reservations and, generation after generation, take their children away at gunpoint to residential schools where the best case scenario for those kids is a childhood of being taught to feel shame for who they are and spend their lives pretending/wishing to be white.
And then, in the white schools children are taught that colonization is this great thing where we signed treaties with native people and now we get to have this land all for ourselves. Native people who are fighting for the country to honour the treaties are seen as "radicals".
And then we wonder what Indigenous parents are doing wrong, why the suicide epidemics among their youth? Or we think "that's so sad" and feel like it's got nothing to do with us.
This is the world we are dreaming in. But in truth, we are all one.
That's what I wrote at the end of my blog post about how we move towards unity when we're all so divided.
And it's true.
We're all connected. We're all related. The human race is one race.
And our dreams are definitely connected.
It's not that there is PRESSURE on your dream that it is SUPPOSED TO save the world or anything.
But our dreams come from the truest parts of us.
The parts of us least impacted by all the fuckery in the world.
The parts of us that ARE connected.
Our dreams draw on each other's dreams, our dreams support each other's dreams, our dreams hold space for each other's dreams. Everyone dreams are connected through a complex web.
I see it ALL the time.
Look at the video I shared last week with Michael Redhead Champagne. Notice at how IT FELT to hear about his dream - you can feel his dream nourishing your dream. And you can see how it will impact the dreams of all of the young people who will read the book.
Our dreams are not racist.
Our society is extremely segregated.
Personally, I made an effort to follow MORE Indigenous news, leaders, teachers, writers, artists and activists than white people because otherwise.... I am only getting white news/ideas/perspectives.
My whole young life I equated white with "normal".
White people on tv - normal.
Black people on tv - Black.
Note how it's ok to call Asian people Asian etc etc etc but when we call a white person white.... whoa.
That reaction that white people have to being called white - that's white fragility.
Yes, maybe we need a better world for it that doesn't minimize your feelings.
Because your feelings are valid. Always.
AND the ways that the world has always told you that "You're just a person. You are normal. You don't need a label" IS racist when everyone who isn't white is always labeled.
We need to be able to question that. It should not be controversial to call you white, if you can call Black people Black.
And if you read this and think "I'd rather just not see race" do know that not seeing race erases the injustice. It allows you to go on wondering WHY there are suicide epidemics among Indigenous youth in Canada, instead of doing anything at all to help stop them. Is that who you want to be?
Our WORLD is segregated. Our DREAMS are not.
Our Dreams need other dreams - as fuel and support systems and space holders and inspiration and friends.
Some Dreams need VERY SPECIFIC things from VERY SPECIFIC dreams in order to be activated.
Again - back to the video I shared last week - when I asked Michael where he started with his dream, he pointed to a book he read: Building A Movement To End The New Jim Crow. That book was a dream, which was a midwife for so many other dreams.
We just don't know whose dreams are going to help nourish and midwife OUR dreams
Like the title of Michael's book - We Need Everyone.
We need everyone's dreams, too.
Being anti-racist doesn't take anything from you.
It gives you ways to take some action towards making the world better and helps you live more in alignment with your values. If you're not racist then it feels good to ACTIVELY work against racism.
Suggested actions:
Read: My Grandmother's Hands | So You Want To Talk About Race | Or any anti-racism book that looks good to you.
If you are listening to media that is encouraging you to NOT do this work, ask yourself why. Really sit with the discomfort of the question.
Look at all of the media you consume - news, books, podcasts, whatever. What percentage of them are white? How can you diversify? What if only 50% of your media sources were white?
You can google white fragility if you feel brave, and look at the documented forms that it takes. White fragility is just about the way that white people react when confronted with racism. It speaks to how protected we are from racism, that we get this uncomfortable when it's brought up.
(I am deliberately NOT recommending the book by that title, I think it's best to learn anti-racism from people who are not white and I am guessing that over 90% of the books you read are by white authors anyway and you can make some space in your bookshelf for other perspectives)
Sharing yesterday's talk with Michael Redhead Champagne about his new book, We Need Everybody, and the process of writing books (or pursuing any kind of dream) that help to change the world.
This is AMAZING, so rich and inspiring.
Watch it on Instagram to leave your comments.
View this post on Instagram
We Need Everyone is currently available as a pre-order. Get the info here.
Photo by James Lee on Unsplash
Things are intense in Canada right now.
And one of the things that has felt distressing to me personally, is how we can no longer agree on what is a fact and what is not and that makes it really hard to even begin to have a conversation about how to find common ground.
There are no more gatekeepers in the media, and so everyone can choose the media that reflect their own biases. We can all feel like the media we choose is telling the truth and everyone else is biased. That's always been true but never to the same extent as now.
So, right now, for some people it feels like this amazing freedom rally went across the country and is fighting the communist Canadian government and standing up for freedom for all.
And some people, me included, feel like white nationalist groups, many of which are funded and organized from outside of our country, are occupying the capital, displaying white supremacist symbols, allowing thugs to run wild, assaulting people for wearing masks, committing so many hate crimes the police have no way of keeping up with the reports coming in and appropriating First Nations sacred items and practices in disgraceful ways.
And everyone has a cell phone. There is plenty video evidence to show what is happening on both sides.
Both of these things are happening.
I looked at some photos that the people who support this protest were sharing and I saw the love and unity that they saw. I saw how badly they want that, they are have been willing to "overlook a few bad apples" and keep supporting this movement, despite all of the controversy and reports of hate crimes.
We actually ALL want that. Unity and freedom and every opportunity to feel good.
But if we want our movements to be supported by everyone, we have to include everyone.
There was a ridiculously hostile happening on the social media accounts of my favourite doughnut shop this weekend. And supporters of the freedom rally were getting angry and saying "but we're fighting for YOUR freedom too" and that's when I saw it so clearly.
You can't angrily tell someone you are fighting for their freedom too.
If you truly are fighting for their freedom, you have to find out where they are not free. You can't project your own experience onto them and expect it to fit.
So the people in favour of the freedom rally feel oppressed in a specific way, and want to create freedom in a specific way.
And the people not in favour of it don't feel oppressed in that particular way, and the solution being presented by the freedom rally actually feels oppressive to many, even dangerous to some, or at the very least not helpful.
It's not the flavour of freedom I want. I agree with you that freedom is great! But this particular flavour of it actually doesn't taste like freedom at all, to me.
I wrote last week about how much I am loving couples therapy.
One of the things I've received from it that I love most is the life-changing magic of accepting things as they are.
For a person who has makes her living by helping people make their dreams happen - accepting things as they are is NOT a place where I thought I would find a lot of magic and healing.
However, the magic of accepting things as they are can be a vital tool for relationships because when applied right (I'm not talking about resigning yourself to having less than what you really want) it helps you make space to find common ground.
So I though about my experiences with that, and laid it over my thoughts about the freedom rally and.... oh.
We really all do want unity and freedom.
So the only effective way to go about it is to take an intersectional approach and find out what that means for everyone.
Hold space for what every single person wants here. *There is a HUGE caveat to this of course and I'll come back to that.
Even though many people will want the exact opposite of what others want, and the wants will conflict in ways that make it seem impossible that we can ever come together.
That's where we apply the life-changing magic of accepting things as they are. In accepting what other people want, too.
You don't have to agree, to accept.
How can we make space for being aware of and accepting of what other people want?
How can we assume that other people have valid reasons for wanting what they want?
It really shifts the way the you look at it, and creates space where new possibilities can emerge.
Conflicting wants and desires actually CAN all be held together.
When you can sit with WHAT IS.
Even when it's uncomfortable.
Even when there are no solutions in sight:
You want an end to the mandates now.
I want the mandates to stay in place, and get better (with more forms of support for everyone) until the pandemic has subsided to the point where our most vulnerable people are as safe as they were pre-pandemic.
(Ideally I'd love for the pandemic to have taught us about what vulnerable people go through in our society, recognize that they're not vulnerable by nature but MADE vulnerable by the way organize our culture, and make some changes, but that's a bigger topic)
Clearly, these two wants conflict directly and it appears that we can't both have what we want.
And we can both point to information and ways of seeing the world that completely invalidate the other person's point of view.
But what if we don't?
What if we see the pain everyone is in right now?
What if we recognize that we're all acting out of our trauma responses because living through a global pandemic is traumatizing?
What if we just stay there for a minute, without any solutions at all?
I don't see another way of coming to any kind of unity.
Not that I see solutions right now, but I see this as a way to move towards them.
Back to: We need to hold space for what every single person wants here.
***Except for the white nationalists and nazis who have been given carte blanch to run around committing hate crimes for over a week in Ottawa.
If your values include the oppression of other groups of people, there is no room for you in unity.
Unity can't be ALL peace and love and rising above and saying "we're all welcome here" while turning a blind eye to the hate crimes. It's an EXTREMELY privileged stance to allow these people in your movement and give them the opportunity to do harm.
While I recognize that all people are, at their core, good - if people are so disconnected from who they really are that they're waving nazi flags, threatening rape and murder to people who chose to wear masks, throwing rocks into windows in apartment buildings that have pride flags on them (all documented events that are happening at the rally in Ottawa) - then good people can't unify with them.
You can hold space for them to get better - if they want to.
But hate can't be a part of unity.
Unity needs judicious boundaries.
And if you're feeling like "oh no I can't dis-include people from the movement" please think about how well you are including people who have been the victims of all of these hate crimes.
The presence of hate groups means everyone can't be safely included.
So you do have to choose: groups of people who actively want to destroy other people or everybody else?
But once you've done that, some form of unity has got to be possible.
In truth we are all one.
Micheal will leave you motivated, inspired, and ready for action.
Michael Redhead Champagne, born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, is an award-winning community organizer, public speaker, and a proud member of Shamattawa First Nation. Michael believes we all have a gift and shows youth the path to discover their own. He is solution oriented and passionate about building system literacy, encouraging volunteerism, and engaging communities to be involved in the design, delivery, and evaluation of any initiative that affects them.
He's also been a HUGE source of inspiration to me for the last 12 years.
I am so excited to go on Instagram Live with him and talk about the making of this book:
We Need Everyone. (<--- follow that link to get your copy!)
This is a children's book and it is a celebration of our many gifts!
We'll go live on Instagram at 2pm (Central, North America) on February 7.
If you go to my Instagram account on your phone (doesn't work from a computer) you can sign up there to get a notification when we go live.
Photo by Sparks Reliance on Unsplash
We're all plugged into systems - ways of being, ways of thinking, ways of feeling, ways of doing - that are not in alignment with our values.
This is just a part of what it means to be alive at this time.
There's the dream that we can just rise above. Just don't focus on the hard stuff. Be happy and free.
This is what the Life Your Best Life Industry has been selling for so long. The idea that we can change our thinking about ourselves, go after our dreams, and that this contributes to making the world better.
And I have felt that way in the past.
Feeling good about making money and then using that money to support the things I want to see in the world.
Feeling like that's somehow enough to transform entrenched systems of patriarchy, white supremacy and colonialism in our capitalist society. And not learning enough about how these systems actually function to know, for sure, what it would take to transform them.
AT THE SAME TIME
Of course I believe that every dream made real contributes to making the world better.
HOWEVER
When talk about dreams, I am talking about something very specific. I am talking to listening to your inner truth. FOLLOWING your inner truth. Living your values, in a meaningful way.
I'm not talking about winning the lottery and buying a Greek island and living happily ever after. Or building a 6 figure online business in 3 months.
I am talking about something much deeper - which of course can result in big businesses and Greek islands but more often is not so flashy.
The work it takes to hear your heart's desires and act on them is the work that grows you.
No one like to grow up. No one likes to take responsibility. Everyone likes to avoid discomfort.
And - in general - this Live Your Best Life Industry is going shallow when we need to go deep. Spiritual by-pass instead of growing up.
Manifesting big bucks instead of sitting honestly with our feelings, our behaviour, the state of the world and what we might be able to contribute to improving it.
We need to do better.
Because you are a part of the earth. So your true heart's desires are not going to contribute to climate collapse.
Living your values would have you actively supporting a livable future for everyone.
You are a part of humanity. So your true heart's desires don't contribute to the oppression of other humans.
Living your values would have you caring about everyone having a good life, not just you and yours. Living your values would have you looking for ways to show up and BE the change.
But we're so tangled up in colonial ways of thinking, in unconscious white supremacy, in capitalism, that these systems are infecting our dreams and making us feel discouraged and like the idea that a society where EVERYONE has EVERYTHING they need is preposterous.
It's not.
We need to get free. Truly free.
Not by thinking positive and letting go of everything that holds us back.
By making space to really hear our deepest inner truth, to really hear what our hearts are calling us towards - beyond all the ways we've been brainwashed by colonization and capitalism - and then getting our lives into alignment with our deepest inner truth.
AKA by creative dreaming.
This is one of the paths that lead to a better world.
I have been accused of being overly critical.
But it's BECAUSE of how much I see the good and potential of the New Age/Wellness/Live Your Best Life Industry, that I can't turn a blind eye to the bad.
For every white person who found it empowering to just focus on the positive and not let the news (AKA reality) get them down, how many Black, Indigenous and People of Colour who couldn't see beyond the blind privilege of that approach were shamed for not being more spiritually evolved? And them had to process those feelings ON TOP OF all the ways systemic racism makes life harder for racialized people?
For every person who's NEVER experienced a serious health issue who could feel empowered by the idea of "I am responsibility for the state of my health. I create a healthy body with healthy thoughts." how many people with disabilities or chronic illness felt shamed, blamed, and like they were not positive enough, and so deserved their symptoms? And them had to process those feelings ON TOP OF their health challenges and ON TOP OF all the ways our culture makes life harder when you have any kind of challenge?
Also - given that underlying victim-blaming attitude - how many organizations were truly open to meeting everyone's accessibility needs?
(I say this knowing that the Creative Dream Incubator is NOT a role model for meeting everyone's accessibility needs)
I mean, personally, I was fat shamed as a normal part of any kind of "healing experience" I attended in the New Age community. Even though I never once brought up the subject of how I felt about my body, I was told repeatedly that if I would just love myself, the weight would be gone.
No one, not even once, asked about my blood pressure or blood sugar reports - more accurate measurements of health than weight.
No one, not even once, asked me how I felt about my size. I feel good! I eat healthy, I exercise, I LOVE carbs, I have the metabolism that I have, and I'm enjoying my life.
All of the shitty things about the culture we live in, now live in the culture we created in the New Age.
But then we added some extra layers of blaming and shaming because we use the "your thoughts create your reality" concept from a place of blind privilege AND a complete political disconnection to the realities of the world - which IS actively encouraged as a way of "focusing on the positive".
A LOT has already been said about that complete disconnection from politics made it possible for the far right Q Anon conspiracy theories to take such a strong hold in the new age. And there are some really eye-opening ideas about how the new age was founded on white supremacist principles, that once you see it, it's hard to un-see it. (If you want to know more - conspirituality is a good place to start )
It's because I believe so completely in the potential of our creative power that I speak out about this.
I believe we can do better.
My hope, with everything happening politically in Canada right now as we continue to discover more children's bodies buried under former residential school grounds, is that we use this time as an opportunity for RADICAL DECOLONIZATION.
We, white Canadians who have been so gifted at turning a blind eye, are being faced with the reality of what colonization is.
It is my hope that we open our eyes, be present to how violent and destructive colonization is, and become actively engaged in the process of truth and reconciliation to stop the violence.
It's because I believe so completely in the potential of our creative power that I know we can do this.
If your healing tools and practices are not sturdy enough to allow you to be present with the real pain of the world - you need to upgrade your tools and practices.
(Dream Book can help you do this, and process the layers of feelings that come up as you AND get more clear about wha you want to DO in response to what you learn - our members are doing amazing work at confronting privilege and cultural appropriation and finding better ways to do things)
Spiritual bypass tools are not going to get us where we need to go next.
All they can do is help individuals feel more comfortable leaning into their privilege to "feel good now" while we watch the whole world get destroyed. Which isn't even hyperbole at this point.
Colonial culture is violently oppressing and destroying Indigenous people every day. But it won't stop there. It will destroy us all, by continuing to squeeze every penny out of resource extraction until most of this planet is no longer livable for humans.
It's because I believe so completely in the potential of our creative power that I know we can create a whole new world.
One of the ways I have most benefitted from learning anti-racism and taking actions outside of my comfort zone, is how my perspective has shifted to include seeing that there are so many more solutions that it seems like there are.
When we stop seeing the world from our own places of privilege, whatever they may be, and instead learn to see from the perspective of those with the least privilege, so much opens up.
Making the world work better for people with less mobility makes it easier to navigate for people with more mobility.
Since the majority of my readers are women - I think you can see that if we eradicated sexism everywhere and made the world safer and more supportive for women - this would benefit men as well.
Following that logic, making the world safer and more supportive for trans and non-binary people would serve all of us in ways we can't even currently see. I mean can you even imagine a world where your gender doesn't determine ANYTHING about who you are or what your potential is? It goes beyond the end of the "pink tax".
This works for literally every marginalized community.
And that's why all of this matters: Because we can get to a better world - but only if we don't leave anyone out.
And the New Age, with the blaming and shaming and blind use of privilege and spiritual bypassing, leaves a lot of people out.
It's time to do better.