WHAT TO EXPECT THIS SUMMER
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What we cover this week
- How we do things differently here
- Activating the Activist: Triumvirate of Mobility
- Supremacy Culture vs. Interdependence Culture
- All we need to get started
- How this summer will be different
- Instead of…
- I want…
- This will…
- So I will…
- Call to action
- Leave a comment on this page about today’s caper
- Summer Crew: Visit the Summer Portal
Transcriptions are auto-generated.
Leave a comment on the page if you’d like any passages clarified
Hello Friends bear with me as I learn how to use technology. Okay, so welcome to our orientation. Thank you so much for taking the time to check this out. I hope that it is fun for you. And I am totally open to feedback and ideas on how to make it fun if it is not. So this week, we’re going to focus on a busy parents guide to getting shit done. By now, you probably should have received a link to the orientation portal where you can also find a download, find and download a guide to follow along a nice PDF document that I went really overboard on. So this summer, our theme is rambunctious ly ambitious, even though we’re not quite sure what we’re doing. Which is to say like fun, but challenging, with the focus on going from feeling overwhelmed to focused and kind of messy and in progress. And I can confidently say I’ve been, I’ve been living that out appropriately while designing this, and I’m having a really big blast. So the idea is we show up to this, and we do not expect it to be polished, we do not expect ourselves, we’re the people we are engaging with to be polished or curated. We just show up where we are now. For instance, I have not washed my face and I am not wearing a bra. And I’m not going to because because I want to be able to focus on what I am saying and engaging with other people not on showing off or impressing someone. So this is what the work looks like, right? We could spend all our time over planning and curating things and making it nice and making sure everything’s spell checked. But then we’d never actually get up and do the work. So what we’re going to cover this week over the course of five days. Today we’re going to talk about what to expect and how to get started. Tomorrow is how we keep going. The third day Wednesday, we’re going to talk about seasonal journeys, breaking hard decisions into step by step guided reflections. Thursday, we’re going to talk about discovery reflections, how we move from passive consumption to active discovery and action. And then last on Friday, we’re going to talk about how we can show up for each other to build trust and collaboration. So today, how we do things differently in Raising Luminaries, and potentially everything and it could be awesome if we did it. Okay. So the goals of Raising Luminaries, as a community are to activate the activist to smash the kyriarchy. And to stay responsive to access needs and collect and create a collective that’s designed by our members. And all of this is scaffolding and methods that we use ultimately to raise kind and courageous leaders. If that makes sense. I should have made that into a diagram. Words. Okay. So in terms of activating the activist, the way that books for littles was originally designed was to get people who do not consider themselves activist who do not consider themselves capable or responsible for changing policy, or society or cultural norms. And it was just a slow onboarding process to get people on the rest of Raising Luminaries is for people who have already moved on to decided, yeah, we do need to take responsibility for each other in our common health and dignity and safety. So the the issue is for people who were not raised in activist families who are raised to believe that they don’t have the skills or what it takes, or the right to make a change in broader society.
How do we get over that hump of getting started? So we’ll talk a little bit more about this for the rest of the week. But we have for many years been using this thing that I have ridiculously named the triumvirate of mobilization, there’s more, there’s more to it. I will link to the bonus resources in the portal for this caper one of our Getting Started orientation. But basically what I have found for most people who like me were raised to just keep your head down was when we hear horrible things happening in the news when horrible things happen to us our immediate responses to spare inertia or overwhelm some version or mixture of those. And I have discovered that the reason we end up falling into those buckets, as opposed to mobilizing and staying responsive is because we either were lacking one of three things, knowledge of what the actual problem is and how to solve it. capacity, our ability and tools and active actions we can take within our current capacity given our disabilities, our needs, our caretaking responsibilities, that sort of thing. And then urgency, which is a sense of how this issue impacts is directly how it impacts the people that we love and a reason why we need to get started and fix it now. And once you have all three of those things, as long as the capacity is reasonable, as long as the knowledge is, is simple, and as long as the urgency, it pings some emotion in you, action actually becomes almost impossible to resist. So with that we focus. The second thing that we focus on Raising Luminaries is smash in the kyriarchy. We’ve identified from many different ways of being from our own lives from from educators and wonderful people, we’ve identified some hallmarks of colonization and supremacy culture, a few of them, for example, are that compulsion to have it all erased to comfort, that concept that we need to constantly strive for more, bigger, faster forever, that we need to achieve results in order to be worthy human beings, and that there is value in individual exceptionalism, it’s important that we we show off and point out how great we are, be the exception to the rule and not like all the other girls. So instead of these, instead of these, we’ve we’ve experimented with many different ways of being. And here are the ones that I have found create the healthiest sense of community and collaboration in the Raising Luminaries projects that we do. So instead of trying to have it all we create, and we harvest in reciprocity, we ask for what we need, we accept help, we make it known what help looks like for us. And instead of take take taking, which honestly, no one in the Raising Luminaries community usually does, we’re mostly usually people who give, give give too much. So the hard part is really accepting that it’s okay to receive. To resist right to comfort, we create brave spaces, which we’ll talk more about on Friday. And then to resist that compulsion for more and bigger and faster and forever. We focus on having enough, doing enough, pacing ourselves, making things temporary and being okay with the fact that not all things are going to last forever. We’re going to talk about that tomorrow. To resist that compulsion to achieve results. We focus on a iterative practice, which we will also talk about tomorrow. And then how to resist that, that need to prove ourselves with individual exceptionalism. We focus on collective interdependence. And we try and constantly remind ourselves what is our goal, and so we can get past our egos. So before I give you today’s call to reflect and act,
I just want to talk briefly about resourcing, which is just seeing what you have available to you at the moment. So what do we need to get started? What do you need available to to get through the rest of this week to make the most out of it, you don’t actually totally need these things, but they’d be very helpful. So if you visit the portal I have for throughout the first week before we started our summer accelerator, everyone in our community, whether or not you’re joining us for the summer accelerator or not gets access to our Getting Started weekly thing, which this is, seems backwards. I haven’t posted it yet. So my brain still aligning itself, okay. And we’re going to So visit the portal, you should be getting links to in your emails and newsletters and stuff like that. There you can find recordings of these share casts, where I will also post auto generated transcripts, you’ll find a comprehensive guide book to follow along so you don’t have to scribble notes very fast while I’m talking with some reflection activities. And then also a lot of bonus resources that expound upon some of the things that I’m quickly talking through. Also, please check your email and check your spam folder, I send email from a few different places. So check your email regularly for updates and notifications. And please mark me as not spam. Okay. And then so Today’s reflection is how will this summer be different? How would we like to make this summer different than all other summers? And I’m really excited to hear what your what your wishes are? What do you want permission to do? What do you want to focus on? What challenge Do you want to solve? How do you want to just like get a really nice comfortable pair of sandals for the heat? I don’t know how, how is the sun we’re going to be different. So and the way we’re going to think about this to frame it is in your past initiatives and your collectives and the other projects you’ve worked on. what didn’t go well for you. Think about what do you want? How do you want this summer collective this initiative this week to be different than the previous ones? And what possibilities would this create for you So, when you do that, you gotta think what behaviors within your control, not going to solve all of it immediately. I would really like to, but we think about what’s one small thing we can tweak because we can tweak more things next summer, we can tweak more things in the future. But right now, someone’s my neighbor’s calling your dog. But right now we need to focus on what is one small thing we can tweak because again, it’s not all or nothing, it’s not doo doo doo at all. We’re gonna tweak it and we’re gonna keep trying. So your call to action is to log into the portal, make sure it works. Please tell me if it doesn’t just hit reply on your emails or your posts, leave comments. And then leave a comment on this orientation caper. Number one for Monday. Tell us what can you clarify or ask for or commit to this summer to make this summer just a little bit different than all other summers? Huh? Thank you for your patience and your attention.
Stay Curious, Stand Brave & Smash The Kyriarchy
CALL TO ACTION: Contribute a comment below
What can you clarify, ask for, or commit to in order to make this summer different than every other?
15 comments
Thank you, Ashia! What thoughtful, kind, inspiring, and clear content here!
This summer:
Instead of… despair -> paralysis
I want… inspiration -> action
This will… demonstrate to myself that I can contribute in some small way(s) to smashing the kyriarchy!!
So I will… stick with this, make consistent time (daily or near-daily) to bring attention to the content, the exercises, the community space and commit to small but REAL actions.
love it!
What hasn’t worked in the past:
1. Trying to fit a definition of ‘activist’ that just doesn’t work with my brain or current life. In the past, I thought ‘activist’ meant writing letters to legislators, knowing All The Current Things, and showing up to big collective actions like protests- all of which make me want to rage-nap, melt, and crawl out of my skin, respectively.
2. When I am into a topic, I tend to get kind of obsessed, tunnel vision that leads to lots of research, deep dives and big planning. I also way overestimate time/capacity AND am always ready to fall in love with the next shiny topic or pulled into the most recent, attention-grabbing fray. This leads to a cycle of rubber-banding wildly between frantically over-planning and making lots of lists and plans and then laying on the floor feeling completely drained and defeated before starting.
So THIS summer, I’m trying some new things:
1. trying very hard to let go of definition of ‘activist/action’ and embrace that there are other, quieter, no less important ways to add to collective action.
2. Trying to move slowly and thoughtfully at medium pace (between fugue and full stop)
3. Starting with paying attention to what things do I keep returning to/where do I feel grounded and energized, rather than drained- maybe that’s a place to build from(garden, outside, dirt, bugs, All The Animal and Plant facts, fungi, etc)? And maybe instead of chasing the ‘thing of the moment,’ trying (very hard) to ask myself ‘what is it about this thing that is catching my attention? What pieces of it can I connect to from where I’m at?”
4. Using the triumvirate of mobility: When feeling one of the less-helpful in-betweens, how can I use the third, missing thing to gently nudge myself into action?
So much good stuff in here!
“What is it about this thing that is catching my attention?” is the perfect question to start with
I love this question, too — thank you for sharing it!
this was a helpful orientation! the triumvarite is really helpful as a lens in thinking both about what i need and what those around me (who i seek to organize) may need or what barriers they are facing
Yes! So much of what we do is trying to push our collaborators (or our kids) forward, without equipping they with the tools they need to overcome the barriers to action. Kindness is basically about seeing where folks are and accepting it, right? And service is helping them get whatever tools they need to work through those challenges.
How this summer will be different:
Instead of: immersing myself 200% in a summer initiative and committing to pushing a project forward in every waking moment all the time plus picking up anyone else’s share of the work anytime they can’t do it or successfully respect their own limits,
I want: to practice balance and self-care and sustainability and doing the work but also taking care of myself in somehow a blended way.
This will: be better and more sustainable.
So I will: uhhhhmmm magically be a blended and balanced person? No, okay, you said something in my control. I will continue the accountabilibuddy chart. I will practice paying more attention to how I’m feeling. I will practice putting things down even when they’re not perfect or not finished.
I plan to set a *spectacular* example of how okay it is to put things down when they are not perfect or finished.
Watch out summer, typos, word salad, and too-long articles ahead!
One question that really resonated with me was, “for people not raised in activist families how do we get over the hump towards getting started?”
After over a decade in a city with a pretty vibrant activist community I’m still unsure how to plug into it safely. I’m trying to shake free from the constraint of a partner who believes reflexively in keeping your head down, and his ideas about which priorities are most urgent to tackle doesn’t match up well with my own. The pandemic years have been awful for maintaining community connections of any kind, so I feel like I’d be starting completely from scratch and I’m not sure where to start. But connecting to local activist community I believe in would probably provide some community benefits as well as making it easier for me to engage in activism outside of my professional work and parenting. And hopefully I’m sufficiently obviously overwhelmed that nobody will try to make me run anything (that’s been a problem in professional organizations).
And if the first activist space isn’t quite the best fit, you can always take-over with an iron fist and…oh right not taking on a leadership role (j/k)
Check out the ‘NO Protocol’ in the bonus resources for a script on saying no, ’cause you know folks will ask you to lead without considering how little bandwidth you have available.
My problems are flip sides of each other: too many things to do > inertia keeps me still due to choice paralysis and overwhelm. No idea what to do > inertia keeps me still.
I want to break free of the inertia of standing still, and to build some inertia moving forward in a positive direction.
Oooh! We had an entire chapter on that in the Winter Incubator! How to Disrupt an Inertia Spiral 😉
I’m going to do the thing. This summer instead of reading and watching and listening to all the problems and possible solutions and the problems with the possible solutions and then doing nothing, I want to look at one problem and do one not-perfect action to try to help. This will break me out of the doomscrolling/just talking with my immediate people about problems and into taking action. Once I do this, it will show me that I can (!) which will make it easier/less anxiety inducing to take another step.
Yes! Do the thing! (Just the ONE thing!)