Hello friends!

Welcome to the enthusiastically caustically crappy podcast with Raising Luminaries!

I’m Ashia Ray, this is Season Three: Summer is For Action!

So in our last episode, we talked about how to DIY your own summer accelerator. And today we’re gonna talk about kicking your own butt into gear.

I really hope that you do join this summer accelerator. But if you can’t, for whatever reason, I’m gonna go over one quick tool that I use throughout the summer accelerator a lot. But also, once you start to recognize it, you’ll see it in almost all of the resources that I create, including the podcasts.

Okay. So basically, we talked about, in the last episode, how we integrate activism into our daily life. That’s what we focus on in the summer accelerator, because we want our kids to see how we don’t just talk about our values, we actually transform the world with them using those as fuel.

So in this episode, we’re gonna talk about, well, revealing my secret (it’s not a secret) how we help parents work through despair, inertia and apathy, when faced with overwhelming injustice – which obviously, we live in a world with social media and endless news feeds. So I think we’re all feeling this, at least some if not all of the time.

We’re going to talk about how we do things differently in Raising Luminaries when it comes to creating resources for parents and activists. And then we’re going to DIY a strategy to transform our helplessness into change-making so that way, you don’t have to come to me to do it, you can do it yourself.

Also, we’ll cover good ideas to avoid and a quick five minute assignment to convert what we learned into action, because that’s what we do!

We have no guest today. Sorry.

So first, we’re going to talk about that unspoken pressure. That at least I’m feeling – I don’t know, how are you feeling this? Please let me know if you want I’m not alone!

That responsibility to stay informed. Hust because we have accessible, at our fingertips, media, resources, knowledge, the whole wide human colossus of information, there’s kind of an unspoken pressure that we always be aware of everything that’s going on at all times.

And you’ll see this – people who are really enthusiastic about cancel culture, (not calling people out that is sometimes and often necessary.) But that idea that because someone made a mistake, because someone was not aware of some piece of information, some cultural understanding. It’s supposed to be embarrassing. Like it’s supposed to be something that we get embarrassed about, that we get fragile about, that we somehow should have avoided.

And anyone who’s been doing this work for a while knows that the correct response when we mess up and we miss some information is just to apologize be like, “Oh, my gosh, I didn’t know thank you for telling me. I now know, I’m going to incorporate that moving forward.”

But because the way that our culture, which is a supremacist culture – functions is that we expect excellence from everyone at all times. The knee jerk reaction is not to apologize, but to double down, to defend ourselves, to say like, “Well, I just, it’s different. And…” I suppose tp just being like, “I didn’t know, I’m sorry.”

So when we have these unspoken rules, that’s what culture is. Culture is the rules that no one actually says out loud because we just assume that other people should know it. Hence, supremacy culture. It’s a part of it!

Okay. So when we’re thinking about informational resources that are made for parents and activists, particularly parent activists –

You know, books, articles, webinars, classes, programs directed towards parents and people who have some sort of responsibility for changing the world, for raising up kids in the next generation.

A lot of these resources leave us feeling exhausted and drained and empty. Most of them are clickbait. There are shame, trolling, trauma bombing things that are created to invoke a big emotional response from you so you’ll stay engaged.

Unfortunately, most of these do not provide a release for the big feelings that they generate. There is no call to action. If there is a call to action – so you can release all of this tension – they’re usually inaccessible. They’re like, “Quit your job, move out of your house and go occupy an oil pipeline!” Which just is untenable for most of us.

Even things like calling, to donate money, not accessible for many people. Mobilizing your body for hours into the city for a march – not accessible for many people, particularly for caregivers and people who are responsible for keeping other people alive at the same time as doing their regular jobs and doing whatever volunteering and activism work that they feel compelled to do.

So we seek these resources to get better informed so we can change things but we end up after consuming them – feeling more stagnant. into overwhelmed to actually take any action. It leaves us helpless and burned out even if we’re not doing anything but reading and clicking and sharing.

So today we’re going to cover – We’ll identify why is this happening? How our passive consumption keeps us complicit in the kyriarchy, and how our families can break free of this cycle.

But first, a quick shout out to our communities. I noticed a couple of people rated the podcast on iTunes, which thank you so much! I don’t even know how to rate something on iTunes?

I think I figured it out once. But if you asked me, I would not know how to tell you. So thank you so much, because I know it involves like, actively taking action to boost up this podcast and boost up my work. And I really, really appreciate it!

If I knew who it was, I would name you and say thank you. [laugh]Thank you, anonymous friends!

We’re also having great engagement on the podcast transcripts and notes which, if you only listen to the audio podcast, I highly recommend you go to the Raising Luminaries website and click on podcasts because we actually have a ton of bonus resources that come with every episode in addition to transcripts.

And that’s where I ask people to respond to our call to action or five minute action at the end of every episode. So Rachel and Alison showed up for the last couple of weeks. And I really, really appreciate. Thank you so much.

And then also I’ve been trying to… this is scary – be clear about what I need to keep going. So on my Patreon posts and my newsletters, I ask for quick responses just to say like, “Are you listening? am I shouting into the void? Please let me know. So that way I know what to keep doing or whether or not I should just, you know, stop this do something else.”

And I got a really great response over the last couple of weeks from some wonderful people, including Benjamin and Diana and Alison and Karen and Amanda and Andrea or Andrea, I’m not sure how to pronounce it. And Megan and Kat and Becca and Alison, and my gosh, you guys are so great.

It really makes a huge difference. And it turns this work from kind of draining and exhausting to actually connecting with people and motivating and life giving Thank you.

Also for the summer accelerator. A couple of people have been helping me out Ashley is creating a summer soundtrack for us, which I am so excited about. Thank you. And then also Linda G sent in some really great feedback on challenges that we’re going to be tackling in the summer accelerator. She puts it into words so that way I can reflect it better for our members. And I really appreciate it people taking the time and effort to to assure me that I am not shouting into the void. Thank you.

Okay, so this episode is going to be a little bit meta, because I’m actually using the strategy that we’re about to talk about. So you can follow along. And then if you have free time, which I know you don’t, you can always go back and re listen to this episode to pay attention.

[Whispers:] But this is the knowledge part for anyone who knows what I’m doing here.

Okay, so we’re going to talk about what is the problem, when we’re thinking about doom-scrolling, which is – a lot of us just end up spending, investing a large portion of our limited minutes on Earth doing this, we end up with these endless feeds of tragedy that keep us scrolling and commenting and clicking and engaging. And whether it’s Facebook, or Reddit, or Instagram or Tiktok, or just reading your favorite news site, or even reading the newspaper. We’re tapping into that cultural compulsion to stay aware and pay attention to what’s going on. But it’s also costing us something and it’s costing us more than our time.

So why this is so prevalent in today’s society is because our articles and our resources – in order to bubble up to the top of the feed, in order to be approved by editors, and published, and shared, and go viral. Things have to be outrageous.

They have to provoke some big, big feeling in us – usually negative, and our outrage and our despair ends up being weaponized for profit and popularity.

So the business model of social media and influencer advertising relies on the myth, that awareness is all we need to strengthen our community and overcome tragedy.

It’s not. Knowing about it doesn’t – really doesn’t do anything. [laughter] There’s a couple more steps to it.

But these kinds of sites and articles and resources will sell you the idea that knowing about it, not only is enough, but that taking the next step is going to be so hard that you might as well not try – because taking the next step involves closing the browser window.

It involves switching to something else. It involves changing the endless feed scrolling into another action. And when you do that, it costs them money. They stop take they start taking your attention.

So if we shut off that feed – if we go do something – and this is not screen shaming, we can do things digitally. But when we stopp that foom spiral, they stop making money.

So that’s something that is important for us to know, and for us to keep reminding ourselves about and also important for us to discuss with our kids.

Because our kids are getting hooked into YouTube and phone games. And even the stuff that my kids are doing at school leaves them open to manipulation from the attention economy.

So when we’re talking about information overload.

In the Luminary Brain Trust, my friend Tricia pointed out this, she summarized this nicely with “How do you participate ethically in a wholly unjust system?”

In this case, she was talking about, adoption and the adoption industry. But just that phrase really kind of sums up everything that we’re trying to do in Raising Luminaries.

Everything is so unjust, it is so broken, and we have to not only smash it from the inside, but we also have to maintain an ethical way of moving as we navigate it.

So how do I – when I’m creating resources, Raising Luminaries, how do I inform you? How do I try to compete with the people who are grabbing your attention, through outrage and despair, while also informing you ethically without overloading you, right? While also encouraging you to please stay long enough to support my work… but also go away? Leave this place and go do the work that you were called to do to change things.

It’s really hard! [laughter] And the question is, how do we stay informed enough to take action? Because social media and the way that we have instant access to the internet and information has opened our eyes to a lot of things, but it has also turned us into zombies.

We feel better informed. But are we better informed? Because too much information is going to lead to overload and doom spirals. Whereas too little information, just locking ourselves into a cabin in the woods sounds really appealing. But it also leads to a high level of ignorance and ending up causing more harm.

I know a lot of people who don’t use social media, they don’t read the news. And they cause a lot of harm, even in their personal relationships. So the way that Raising Luminaries collectives and the resources that I create, try to raise awareness, mindfully and ethically is – I keep in mind our objective, which is to activate the activist.

So I try to integrate the actions that I call you to do into your daily activities, into your parenting life, not on top of them. I’m not going to ask you to take on another task, I’m going to ask you to switch the task that you’re doing to do something else.

If you’re already reading bedtime stories, read this bedtime story instead of that bedtime story, right?

Because I don’t want you doing more action, you cannot fit more action into the 24 hours of your day. The best we can do is tweak it. So we’re doing different, more impactful action.

So what if we tap into emotion using personal stories, because that actually is necessary? Humans connecting through stories is hardwired into our brains into our community. It just shouldn’t be exploited the way that the attention economy, does it.

So how do we do that just enough to keep us motivated without overloading? Without…participating unethically?

Also, what if we use humor to release that excess tension?

Bbecause gaining awareness – anything that really taps into the depth of you, changes your mind, triggers you into changing the way that you behave? That is going to be painful that is going to cause tension.

So how do we hold space for that using humor?

And then what if we equipped parents with simple accessible tools to take action to release that tension? Right?

Okay, so [whispers] this is the urgency part, you will know what I’m talking about in a little bit. [laughter]

How does this sneak into our parenting? How does that information overload and staying complicit in doom scrolling, in having big feelings and then getting too overwhelmed to do anything?

How does it sneak into the way that we parents with our kids?

How we are complicit in discussing hard topics with our kids, but then not actually taking time to do something as a family. Not telling our kids what we are doing, where we are spending our money, what we are doing with our time, who we are choosing to connect with and support – and how it connects with those hard conversations that we’re having.

Because everyone in the Raising Luminaries community who has stuck around a bit, they’ve used the resources that we’ve created to actually have those hard conversations. But what are we doing after that?

Are we just having conversations with our kids and then leaving them to despair because there are refugees that are living in in deep poverty under constant threat? No! We have to release that tension with action.

Which is why I don’t just make book collections and tell you to read a book. I try to make a call to action to further and deepen that connection between your family and this issue.

And then just [laughter] how do we get over ourselves?

How do we show our kids that we… how do we acknowledge that we have big feelings about tragic events, without just falling into a puddle of tears, which would be very alarming to them.

But just like – letting our feelings out, sure, crying, getting angry, and then pointing out that our feelings about this issue are not solely about us, but about caring for the rest of humanity.

Okay, so our kids need to see us taking action, we need to talk about it. We raise kids to understand information overwhelm – how doom scrolling, and that cultural need to be aware of things can kind of creep in and become compulsive.

So that way, they can identify when they’re being manipulated into passivity and compliance. And also, because we’re raising leaders. We need leaders who think critically about the information that they’re getting – about the quantity of information, the quality of the information they’re getting, whether or not it’s overloading them, how to recognize when they are overloaded.

And then how to recognize when the information that is coming to them is only coming to them because it’s performative outrage.

So what this is NOT is a call for any of us to do more bigger action. Right, Usually right around now is where you’re going to see in click bait and other resources. “Here’s how you have to change everything in your life completely.”

So what if we’re missing vital information? That’s the big fear, like what keeps us from taking action? What often keeps us from taking action when we read one of those really terrible articles about school shootings?

And, and, oh, my children are home.

And taking away a person’s access to health care because they’re trans or they have a uterus? What can we even do as small individuals to impact that – other than just hide under a blanket and hope we don’t get pregnant again!?

[sigh] Okay. And what happens if we want to take action except we’re worried that we’re actually going to cause more harm because we don’t have all of the information we need.

Quick revelation. We don’t. None of us have enough information. We don’t have the information that we need.

[child interrupting, recording paused]

[muffled sounds]

whew! Okay, and with that interruption with my small person, let’s get into ba ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba baaaa! Good ideas to avoid!

[whis[er] (This is where we do the humor and tension release)

Today’s good ideas to… good idea? to avoid is… Just Give Up. [laughter]

So, last month, I think it was in May we were doing When we gather courageous parenting workshop with Bellamy of revolutionary humans. And we were talking about courageous parenting, obviously.

My definition of courage, by the way, is just doing the hardest, scariest, most difficult thing that you can do to benefit others.

So how I keep moving forward and choosing courageous parenting action is basically… I’m comforted by the inevitable end of the universe as we know it.

Which sounds backwards, bear with me.

Because something about the idea that nothing I actually do will matter in the very, very, very long run, I might as well get into the most good trouble, right?

Cat who was also there, she labeled it for me. I did not know it was called something. But this is called ‘optimistic nihilism.’

And we talked about how, [laughter] since I vacillate between finding comfort in the heat death of the universe, versus a hope-punk style tenacity, to change the world… you know, like, we have all these possibilities, and we can make a difference!

Even knowing that that difference, one day, just won’t matter.

So today’s good idea to avoid is just give up! [laughter]

Or! OR! Try as hard as you can! It genuinely doesn’t matter in some respects, in the long run. And those two kinds of start to feel the same.

Well, you would think, remembering that I can just say – just give up OR try as hard as I can, would inevitably lead me to do the easier thing, which is just to give up?

That also reminds me that there’s some trouble with just giving up because things get a little shitty in the short term. I don’t feel that great about myself, right? [laughter]

And then also things can get even shittier in the medium term! And by medium term, I mean, like the next 100 or 300 years. [laughter]

And if you do just give up, you kind of feel like living without hope in a world without meaning? Which is like – next up depression city.

And [inahle] that’s a slippery slope that I do not want to get into again, so maybe, maybe don’t just give up.

Entertain the idea. Feel it out. It’s okay. Because I don’t think anyone who’s actually listened to this – anyone in our community who has sought out these resources, I don’t honestly think that just giving up is something that is an option for us.

There’s something hardwired in us, that makes us want to do the most difficult thing. That makes us want to have an impact and influence the direction of the long arm of justice, right?

So when I do recommend, but not recommend, just giving up I mean it as a thought exercise, and I’m not actually worried at all that you will just give up.

But it is a great idea to maybe avoid. [laughter]

Also, as we get into the tools that we’re going to get into for the rest of the day, – you’re going to find that good trouble become slightly irresistible if we actually follow this Do It Yourself strategy for converting these big feelings into small actions.

So this is all basically kind of a run around way of recommending [laughter] that you join When We Gather with revolutionary humans. Because we get to have these great conversations.

So go to revolutionaryhumans.com and join my friend Bellamy. She hosts monthly book clubs and parenting workshops and creates art projects for you to incorporate with your children’s time together. I don’t know. Yes, it’s great. It’s worth it. Go do it.

[muffled sounds]

Okay, ready? Back to it.

[whispers] This is the capability part.

So how do we transform our big feelings into good trouble?

What we’re trying to do when we get these overwhelming, horrible tragic news stories and face these, just way too many problems for us to take on alone is = we’re trained to just let the experts handle it.

And that’s how people who have power maintain power -is by feeding you this idea that you don’t have enough information to take action, you don’t have the natural skills to take action. So you should just give up and become one of the people that they harvest organs from. I

don’t know, I don’t know how it works exactly. [laughter]

No, I do. I do know how it works.

But we’re trained to let someone else who knows more, take care of it. And because we know that we don’t know enough, we’re always going to feel unequipped and like an imposter trying to step forward and make some change,

Which is why it’s really important that we just embrace, absolutely none of us knows exactly how this is going to turn out or exactly how we should move forward.

Otherwise, we would just strive forward confidently, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the people that we see striving forward the most confidently have genuinely no idea what they’re doing. [laughter]

So it’s a balance, I guess.

So the new that way, instead of letting the people who already have power, handle it FOR us, which means USING us. We’re going to take responsibility for motivating ourselves and our community.

And that includes magic mind control tricks that I’ve been using since the start of books for littles and Raising Luminaries. [laughter]

I’m calling it working title: TRIUMVIRATE OF MOBILITY!

Doesn’t that sound important? It does sound important. I don’t have a better way of of like… action… strategy? ehhah. It just It doesn’t sound right.

Okay, let’s go with Triumvirate of Mobility. So we use this in almost all of our Raising Luminaries resources. And we really really dig into it in the parent activist collectives.

The TRIUMVIRATE OF MOBI- let’s call it TOM.

TOM is a strategy for activists who care so deeply that they end up drowning in despair, outrage and burnout.

And basically, it boils down to very simple, – three things that you need. So that way, taking action becomes irresistible, It’s actually harder to not do anything, then to move forward and make some progress.

So those three things are knowledge, urgency, and capability.

So knowledge 0 what is the issue? And why is it a problem?

That’s why I start out all of my articles, podcasts, whatever, with either what is the issue? And why is it a problem? OR a narrative story to get you hooked into it.

Because it’s really, it’s really hard to ground ourselves and create memories that we can work on and tap into an emotional response if we can’t hook it into some sort of story that makes all of this make sense.

But honestly, sometimes I am tired and I don’t have the energy or the time to tap into how I can connect something that happened in my real life or something that happened that I did to someone else and tie into the issue at hand.

So I skip it, like today, but that’s okay, I have your undivided attention because we’re on a podcast. [maniacal laughter]

I can take advantage of that. But if you do want to get the attention of strangers or people who don’t have an established relationship with you, and don’t necessarily trust you, it could be good to get started with a story.

But you do have to talk about what is the issue and name it and then explain how it’s a problem.

The next thing you need, in addition to knowledge is urgency. Because again, knowledge is just awareness.

And if you just know about something, you can’t actually change it unless you take further action. So urgency is what kicks us into gear. If you have just knowledge, you don’t do anything about it. If you have urgency you feel compelled for change, maybe not necessarily you to make the change, which is why there’s more to it.

But urgency involves, usually I talk about how this issue harms people you care about, or how it affects you personally, or how it ties into a challenge that you’re having such as getting your kids to work through their temper tantrums.

And sometimes we’ll tap into common fears, like the fear of missing out.Everyone’s talking about this. Everyone’s talking about this with their kids. Everyone was making change. You don’t want to be left behind!

So you create some general urgency.

And then there’s the capability – the tools that are actually accessible.

They must be simple. The way that I frame the problems is – I’m not going to dump a trauma bomb on you and then skitter away dancing…

I pictured myself dancing… prancersizing away! [laughter]

If you don’t know how to prancersize, maybe we can work on it.

But the capability, and the tools that I provide, ideally, they’re simple, they’re something that would be less than five minutes. It’s something you can do without lifting your butt up from a chair. It’s something that you can do while you are nursing a baby or helping a kid in the tub.

The idea is it has to be accessible to the actual audience, which is why it’s so important that we narrow in on exactly who we’re talking to, and exactly who we’re trying to help

Again, something we talked about in the summer accelerator!

Once we have a simple accessible action, it’s really good to just ask for one thing. I know that’s best practice, but I don’t because I’m still juggling, like, how do I support this, and I need you to stick around long enough to want to pay me for it? But also go out and do your work.

I mentioned this earlier. So I tend to do more than one call to action. I know I shouldn’t! I am working on it! I haven’t figured it out. None of us, again, have really figured this out.

But I do know how – if I really want to – get people to take that one next action.

Usually, it’s something as small as signing a petition, clicking a link.

And the idea is that once you take that small action, you will self-identify as the kind of person who takes that action, which makes you more open to doing something slightly less convenient, slightly more courageous in the future.

And it kind of builds up from there.

And from there, if you have the knowledge of the problem, if you have an idea of why it’s so urgent that we take care of this and change it right now. And if you have one or two tools to get you started and starting to self identify as the kind of person who contributes and supports the change, it gets actually really hard not to take action.

Because imagine if if you had an emotional connection to something – you saw people suffering, you know that suffering is affecting people you care about, or it’s coming for you down the line. And you could take one small action to make it slightly less likely – of course, you’re not going to sit around and do nothing! Of course, you’re going to click on that link, or request that book or start that hard conversation!

The question is, how do we get people to keep coming back and engaging more with further actions. Also not that hard, but it does involve a little bit more work than just passively listening to a podcast or reading one of my articles, hence the Collectives!

And like I said, you can add some bonuses, you can spice it up, you can make it fancy, you can add some narrative stories to get people connected to it. So they’ll actually remember it long term.

And like I have with the ‘good ideas to avoid’ segment – and the fact that in this podcast, we laugh real, real hard and very terrible things. We can add some humor to release some of that tension.

Because if you have the knowledge and the urgency that something has to happen, but you’re just too pent up with overwhelm, you’re going to end up in despair land.

And if you have the knowledge and you have the tools, but you have no reason to act right now – you end up procrastinating and kind of stuck in an inertia spiral, right?

And then what are the other two? Oh, I should have written this down. [laughter]

And then if you have say urgency and action, but you don’t know that there’s a problem, then obviously, you’re not going to be taking any control over that issue.

So adding those three, knowledge, urgency, capability. You can spice it up with a narrative story. If you have if this is a really hard topic, you can release some of that tension. And that pain of asking people to fundamentally change the way that they think when it comes to cultural assumptions – with humor.

And then you can also add in, if you want to get really sneaky, add some pain avoidance and pleasure seeking. Point out how this issue is reflected in someone’s daily life and how it makes you feel. And then the pleasure or the awesomeness that they could experience if they just get up and do something about it.

So like, when we talk about how do we integrate this action into our life with kids, it’s also very helpful to motivate our kids into taking big action.

We start with books for littles. We start with reading a small story. That’s the knowledge, right? That’s teaching them. We have a refugee crisis. We have a mass shooting problem in the US. We have people trying to control the bodies of people with uteruses.

So you read those stories to build up their knowledge, and then you build up the urgency. That’s kind of on your own because you actually have to know the kid, their lives and how they’re connected with that issue.

So the urgency is something like, I don’t know, I feel like kids kind of automatically get the urgency in terms of school shootings. No kid wants to be shot in their classroom.

But it does take a little bit of finesse to connect – how do your kids lives actually connect to this issue if it’s not readily apparent? That’s where when we have the resource roundups, that’s where the discussion questions come in, usually, the discussion questions, connect a kid’s daily life with the issue at hand. So they can see that reflected in their own life. And it trains them to pay attention and think critically about how they’re connected to the rest of humanity and the systems and the kyriarchy that uphold it.

And then there’s the urgency, why do we need to take action now?

One of the nice things about Raising Luminaries is because we are raising kind and courageous leaders, we have a built in deadline.

We only have influence over our kids for so long before they think that we’re really uncool losers who have nothing important to add.

I suspect that moment is coming in like five minutes for us.

But we have a built in deadline. It’s convenient. It’s also terrifying.

But building in deadlines for our kids involves something like, even just acknowledging holidays, acknowledging, for instance, that today’s Juneteenth, we could put off talking about slavery, and how Black people liberated themselves …indefinitely. We could wait for the schools to handle it.

But taking the opportunity of saying, “Hey, there’s a festival today, since we’re going to that festival, so you don’t look completely ignorant. Would you like to learn about why we celebrate Juneteenth? What’s the history behind it? And how is it connected to our own liberation?”

Kids are a lot more receptive to that, before we actually head to the festival. It’s great.

So you’ll notice that in this podcast, we worked on this section of talking about the story about why do we have this unspoken pressure, this responsibility to to stay informed. How it’s connected to supremacy culture, which everyone who listens to this podcast cares about.

We connected it to – how is it connected to your challenges and your goal to raise kind and courageous people.

What is the actual problem of information overload.

And then we got into urgency – how this sneaks into our parenting, how we’re complicit, and how we get over ourselves.

And then I release some of that tension with good ideas to avoid – openly digging into the idea that we could just give up. We genuinely do have some options, we could make choices. And this is not something that we have to do, this is something that we choose to do.

And then we get into capability, those tools, what do we do. And this is getting kind of meta, that’s what I introduced the framework that I’m using with you today.

The nice thing is, it doesn’t have to be sneaky. You can tell your kids what you’re doing. Tthey want to be in on the strategy. It’s kind of fun. And then they can go out and use that to inform, self advocate, and be a great accomplice while they’re out in the real world without us holding their hands.

[laughter] The frustrating part is, we don’t control the outcome. We can give people the knowledge, the urgency, the capability, we can hold their hands, and gently usher them forward with narratives and humor.

But we don’t actually control what people do. And that is both intensely frustrating, but also curiously wonderful because people make up their own actions, and they are innovative and coming up with their own solutions to the problem. Which is wonderful and necessary. And just one more example of why we need a wide range of diversity in the ways that people think, the abilities that people create, and the art, and the the ways that we move around the world in completely different, innovative ways.

So coming up – before we get into this week’s five minute assignment, which is that that capability, the call to action that becomes kind of irresistible, because I’ve given you all the reasons and the tools you need to equip it…

Let’s talk about briefly the parent activist summer accelerator, which is enrolling now!

We are actually open for enrollment for the next couple of weeks. If you go to raisingluminaries.com right now, you can click through and in a couple of clicks, you can actually get into shenanigans with us!

And it’s going to be awesome.

So, how is this relevant? Together this summer we’re taking back our agency and developing new ways to integrate our parenting and our activism. In the new reality of an endless pandemic with scarce support for parents and Judgey, McJudgersonswho throw shade at our parenting choices, what if we had the opportunity to name the future that we really want?

And what if we created a path to get there together?

Ooh, mystery. [laughter]

So this summer, what I’m trying to do is reclaim my fragmented attention, and then set a direct course from theory to action.

What I want to do is overcome the derailments of these endless news tragedies, and unsolicited advice and social media feeds that derail my focus and spin me into overdrive.

And from what I hear from all of the members that I’ve spoken to, they’re feeling the same exact thing. So why the heck not do it together?

We’re getting radically honest about our capacity to dismantle the kyriarchy. So we can focus our limited time, energy and resources to create a deeper impact.

So over the course of the six weeks, which starts July 11, each week, we will narrow down our focus, reduce the things we say yes to until we’re only choosing the most impactful actions that suit our skills and visions for a better future.

We’ll be using the Raising Luminaries, tools and strategies, one of which is the triumvirate of mobility! Among like, many, many, many more things I have developed. [laughter]

So that way, we can make it easier to say no, without guilt, to the stuff that is sidetracking us and overloading us, and crushing us with despair and inertia. And that way, we can actually take the limited amount of time and energy we have and make a deep and rippling impact that actually lifts us all.

So capacity maxes out at six people because I will need to keep this accessible and tailored to each individual member as we work together. Maybe it’ll be one person, maybe it’ll be a full house, I don’t know. But it’s going to be awesome.

And we are accepting new members at this moment at least. And we will keep doing so until we reach maximum capacity. So I really, really, really hope you’ll join us because it is fun.

And in the spirit of reciprocity, I need your support developing these things because the resources that I create for the roundups and books for littles and this podcast, are a direct byproduct of the strategies that I create during the collectives.

So, if you can’t join us, that’s cool. You can try and DIY it. If you can, please join us we do have a sliding scale. So that way it is accessible for anyone who actually wants to show up and do the work together with us.

So this week’s five minute assignment, your call to action.

Now that you’re equipped with the knowledge and the urgency, and the capability and the tools and all of the ….reasons! [laughter]

All you have to do is say five minutes to name and commit.

What are you struggling with? What issue? Is it school shootings? Is it the impending… I don’t know, colonization of everyone’s wombs [mumbling aside] as opposed to just mostly women of color and indigenous people and disabled people?

What is the issue that is sending you into a spiral of despair?

How will you apply the triumvirate of mobility to transform your overwhelm into action? What knowledge are you going to seek? What creates urgency for you? And then what small actions can you identify that will get you just a little bit closer to making change?

And then how are you going to incorporate that into the work you do with your kids – if you want to spread it out like that.

So name it and commit, leave it in the comments. You can go to raisingluminaries.com/podcast find this episode. Leave a comment once I publish it.

You can also leave a voicemail at 781-342-0486 and I will listen to your message and it will be glorious.

And meanwhile, you can find everything you need in the show notes, transcripts, links, bonus resources, visit raisingluminaries.com/podcast

Unless I’m eaten by a polar bear, I will be back with you next week. And we will take into more awesome strategies to DIY your own summer accelerator!

Okay, bye. I appreciate your time. Thank you.