I really think we, and when I say we, I'm thinking about
organizing spaces and specifically actually, I would
think about queer, trans, racialized, poor migrant folks
who are at the forefront of organizing spaces and movements.
We come together because it's out of our survival, It's
urgent. We need to organize and then we
don't have any relational scaffolding for the most
intimate parts of our lives. We don't.
And so coming into organizing spaces with no transformation,
you know, conflict transformation skills.
And so I realized it's not that we lack strategy that make us
fail, It's the lack of relational capacity and skills
that make us fail. We can't deal with conflicts we
can't deal with. I don't agree.
For a lot of us, we come into the spaces thanking, hoping for
so much. We're thinking, OK, this is
horrible outside, but maybe in this little corner late in the
on Thursday night, I'm going to be in a space where people are
not sexist, racist, transphobic, fat phobic, fan phobic, you
know, like all the things. And you realize, yes, we are
actually. The disappointment is huge.
And trust me, I understand that, you know, there was really this
realization for me of so much of the work is urgent and I see it.
And also maybe abolition is really the work of being
becoming a death doula for the empire within as well as, you
know, holding space for the other person next to you who's
also trying to burn down the empire inside of them.
Hello and welcome to Embodied Astrology.
My name is Renee and you are listening to an episode of an
edited conversation between myself and Care for Erotics of
Liberation. Care is a non binary
abolitionist, somatic practitioner, artist and doula
who works on remembering embodied experiences of all
connection, miracles, and care. Their work blooms at the
intersection of Black interiority, somatic memory, and
queer intimacies. We held a live event for April
27th's Taurus New Moon where we talked about Kerr's work with
collective liberation practices, the relationship between Eros
and accountability, and how to free ourselves from avoidance
patterns so that we can communicate about and receive
what we truly want and need. Embodied Astrology hosts
astrologically timed community conversations with astrologers,
artists, activists, and others who are working to create beauty
and well-being in the world. To join us, live in
conversation, and take part in events like these in the future,
make sure to sign up for our newsletter or create a free
membership in our virtual community space.
For those of you who are interested in diving deeper into
the intersections of astrology, embodiment, healing, arts, and
life practices, check out our paid memberships which include
access to our weekly somatic Space classes where we work with
current astrology through movement and meditation, monthly
Astro tea time mini workshops, and our ongoing chart reading
study groups. To learn more about care and to
find and follow them online, check out the links in the show
notes. To learn more about me, Renee,
and Embodied Astrology, head over to embodiedastrology.com.
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From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.
Welcome, everybody. Thank you for being here.
Good to see your faces. Good to see your names, and
happy New Moon. We are gathered today for the
Taurus New Moon, and I'm so grateful to be gathering here
with you and with care. Thank you so much care for
joining us across many time differences and many miles
before we even get into like, who are you and where are you
coming from and what are you bringing with you?
I wonder if you might talk to us a little bit about the name of
this event, which is also the name of your work, Erotics of
Liberation. This is such a compelling
grouping of words. What does this mean to you?
Where did this come from? Honestly, I wanted to have
erotics of abolition if I'm being completely honest with
y'all, but it was used before by a black fan and I'm not a huge
fan of taking work from black people.
That happens enough. So I decided to go with Erotics
of Liberation. Liberation is obvious.
This is the point of my work. And the erotics part was just,
you know, I've been in leftist spaces for so long and we're so
fucking serious. We're so serious and so hard and
so constrained with the work of fighting fascism.
And of course, Audrey Dodd is a huge part of, you know, the
inspiration of malpractice erotics, as in, you know, really
listening to what is there in the body and understanding that
if we're fighting against systems of extraction, of
oppression of the nation that really are here to kill us and
kill life at large on planet Earth, including planet Earth,
then embodiment and erotics should be the point of the work.
I'm not here to suffer. And I want to do this work to
access joy and access. It was like the embodiment of
being in my body. So, and also because honestly,
anything erotic or pleasure oriented has always been very
hard for me to access. I believe in cast spelling and I
do think embodiment in somatics is just cast spending is you,
and you talked about this running just before is, you
know, if you you know what you don't want, that's great.
But in somatics, I'm always going to ask you to go towards
what is it that you want then? Because then it's going to set
the tone to attracting more of that and building more of that,
creating capacity for more of that.
And I found that in lefty spaces, we were.
I became really good specific in Berlin, which I don't live there
anymore, but I became very, very good at naming what's wrong.
And it's great, but it's just not enough.
So that's where it came from. Thank you for sharing that your
your work and your path of practice.
Can you tell us a little bit about where has it, has it
wound? Where have you wandered in your
work, in your path of practice? And I want to just say that I
feel like so many of us in our work are really working with so
many components of our lives that have not been about jobs.
So I'm curious, in your journey up until now, what have you been
gathering? What are you bringing with you
into this space? And how has astrology been a
part of this? I'm bringing everything.
I mean, there's no separating.
I mean, I did a lot of jobs, you know, but like to survive as a
student and as a young person. But after I finished my studies,
I got just one job and I was fired.
So because I said no. So I'm really lucky in that that
I just know I would never fit there because I, I just do not
believe in just leaving parts of you to a place where you spend
most of your day. That makes absolutely no sense.
I mean, that makes sense in spaces that we ask you to be
completely disembodied and then you realise down the line, oh,
I've been completely dissociated for the last 50 years for a
pension or if you're lucky, my sudden return was a good point
for me to. I was doing a lot of things.
I've always been doing a lot of things.
I'm sad rising. I my the corners of my child are
mutable. I get bored very easily.
So I love a distraction. Give me a distraction, give me
something else. Give me another tool, give me
another point of view. I love it.
When I arrived in my sudden return, I was doing so many
different things, including astrology, and people were
telling me like there are too many things you, you know, you
have to pick one. I really felt like yes, sudden
was asking me, well, maybe you just, you know, try to pick a
little bit of a direction and my direction was healing so that I
could it was my way to still you can do anything.
Healing can be, you know, you can do art, you can do
organizing, you can do strategy, you can do tablet, you can do
anything you want. And that was my way to still
bring a lot of things. And I prefer this because the
tool read doesn't matter. I think it was much more about
the direction for me that was important.
But astrology, I came to it because of COVID.
Honestly, I felt like, OK, it's the end of the world.
For once in my life, I'm going to invest in something that I'm
not going to get money from. I'm just going to learn because
I want to. Of course, my business mind, I
actually became an astrologer, but at first it was just really
like, I want to learn astrology. I've been, you know, diving into
astrology for years now and COVID just really felt like, you
know what, fuck it, I'm just going to do it.
So that's how astrology came to me.
And I think for a lot of queer folks, although, you know, the
skies have been completely also colonised and astrology is a
huge place of also of colonisation in different ways.
I think it's the reason why queer folks love astrology is
because it is a way to relate to ourselves in a way that doesn't
depend on systems of oppression and domination.
Also, that's not completely true, but I think you know what
I'm saying. So it's a way to meet each other
and meet ourselves in a way that is a little bit not completely
outside, but maybe a little bit differently positioned inside of
the system of the systems of domination that we know.
And that was enough for me at the time.
So that's that's how I came to it.
We first encountered each other, I think several years ago.
You had written to embodied astrology and we just, we just
settled on our programming for the year.
And then like a week later I got this e-mail from you basically
being like, this is me. This is what I do.
I was like, shoot. And I was so compelled by what
you're offering and what you're doing.
And over the last couple years, it's really been exciting to
watch your practice grow. And I, I know that you have made
a shift and that shift has been from doing one-on-one client
work into collective care practice.
And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit to us about
the liberation practice field and how your practice has been
changing as you've been moving from working with people
one-on-one to working with collective?
Yeah, so I, I've was working. I was living in Berlin for nine
years. It's a cycle.
I just moved to Marseille, back to France.
I was born not in Marseille, but I was born and raised in France
until I was 17 or a little bit older, actually early 20s.
And I really loved my time in Berlin.
I was working as a somatic practitioner and seeing clients
one O 1 and I was lucky really. I mean, I've been really lucky
because I was working physically.
So I was seeing clients physically one O 1 in a qui
entrance health centre that is called Casaqua and that space
was created by trans people of colour.
We were All in all practitioners there.
We were all tin. So trans, intersex, non binary
folks and racialised folks were really at the centre of this
space that was complete. That's still you know, I still
don't know any space like this in Paris.
I don't know any space like this in Marseille.
I don't know any space like this in a lot of spaces that we would
potentially think maybe that would exist.
So talking to all the transports of folks of colour outside of
Berlin, I really realized, wow, this is really lucky, actually.
This is hard. It's getting harder because we
have less and less, you know, access to state money for
reasons that you all know. If I was listening just to
myself, I would continue one-on-one work.
But when I was listening to my clients and we will really go
down to like the, the, the radical part, like meaning the
roots of the reason why they were coming to see me, we would
always go back to the state. The problem is capitalism.
The problem is that we have to pay rent.
The problem is that we don't have access to health, including
mental health. We don't have access to stable
housing. We don't have access to all
those things. And so first of all, I realized
that as a practitioner, there's very few things that I can do.
And also if I really wanted to create long term sustainable
solutions for them, I knew from the bottom of my heart the real
solution is abolition. And so I really thought maybe
hearing work has to be collective because there wasn't
a solution that I can give to them.
And I felt more and more that if I would try to give them a
solution, an embodied solution, I would be one of those
therapists that are giving you tools to, you know, deal with
capitalism better, be more productive.
And fuck that from the bottom of my heart.
And I felt that in community work, we don't give each other
tools so much. It's more about building
solidarity and just this mirroring, constant mirroring
that is the root of therapy. Therapy work truly is to have
people be like, yeah, me too. And that only can be really such
a huge source of healing for folks on top of building
capacity for organising so that we can do abolition and burn
everything down. So that was just really the, for
me, the point also of what if I would do collective work and
make people meet and make them realise this is far from being a
personal thing. The prime one, we do believe
that it's a personal thing. We then believe that the
solutions should be personal too, meaning you should see a
like a practitioner alone. And instead what we could do is
come together and then build collective solutions to
collective problems. So that's how I create
Liberation Practice Field, which is a one year programme for
folks to practice the erratics of liberation, the somatics of
abolition. Collectively.
The goal for me is to absolutely give everything that I know
about somatics and embodiment. And we have also somatic groups
for buy box for white folks. And then people can create their
own somatic groups, meet wherever they are.
There's people all over the world coming to this group.
So This is why I decided to do collective work rather than just
continuing on one-on-one work. Yeah, listening to you, I can
really feel the the erratic charge of being in a group,
doing that kind of work, the arrows of it, and the difference
in that collective group work than in the one-on-one.
And part of what I'm feeling is how much energy there is in the
spaces of difference that you really get to encounter in a
group space. And I'm wondering for you as the
the main organizer of this and kind of the the sun at the
centre of this particular system, how has it been to be in
collaboration in this work of a liberation practice field?
And what have you been learning in the kind of sparks and
friction and, you know, the unknowns of what happens when so
many people come together? I know we, we have like we deal
with conflict, that's for sure, which for me as care the person,
it is very healing to deal with conflict in a way that is not,
that doesn't take away our agency and our dignity ever.
We can say I don't agree, but we will never, you know, get away
from those 3 core needs that somatics tell us are absolutely,
you know, paramount to us. So safety, dignity, belonging,
those are the three things, the core things that we always go
back to. It's complicated work.
You know, when I did it first, I think 380 people signed up and I
was just like, I'm just JK, kidding.
That was a joke. I don't want to do this.
This is way too many people, you know, this is what they say with
power comes great responsibility.
I feel that for sure you're responsible to a same degree for
folks coming into the space. And folks coming into a space
always means potentially heart and harm, especially when
there's, you know, people coming from different races and people
coming from different background, which is totally the
case for my program. And so I'm so lucky that I have
an amazing, amazing tech person, an amazing, amazing community
manager person, because I don't know what I would do be doing
without them. I'm very surrounded.
You should never do things alone.
I think. I mean, this is the thing that I
keep saying is why would you be a * when you could be a
constellation? So my goal is always to come
into things and be a constellation.
Yeah. It's been also incredibly
humbling to see that people trust me.
It's been, honestly, it's been life changing.
Like my life will never be the same after this program.
And I, I will continue doing it over years.
Next year's I'm going to continue and, and hopefully I've
learned so much that I'm going to make it much better because
there was no way that I could completely prepare myself to
what was coming to me. But you know, Jupiter was in
Gemini in my 7th House of partnership and relationships.
So a lot of people came into my world and I was like, my Scorpio
moon was just really like, that's too much.
But I dealt with that the best way I knew I could.
I don't know, I felt like it was also the moment to just use this
momentum for something important for me.
And so abolitionist numero Uno on my priority list.
So I use it this way. So much in what you just said
resonates really deeply for me and how embodied astrology has
come forward and, and what we do here, which is very much around
constellation practice and, you know, not being a, a son all the
time, getting to step into that, getting to feel that and embody
that, but also getting to be parts of constellations.
As you were speaking, I was kind of thinking, feeling about the
work of abolition and liberation.
And how what you're describing in, you know, this iteration of
your work and next time you're going to do it differently feels
to me very much like life like that's just what we do is, you
know, do our best and then learn from it.
And that brought to mind the concept of Kairos time.
And I you're probably familiar with this, and in case anybody
here isn't familiar with this concept, in some esoteric
traditions there are different kinds of time.
And in the tradition of tropical astrology, there are two kinds
of time. And one is Kronos time, which is
linear time that, you know, once the past is gone, it's gone and
we're moving forward and it's kind of this March of progress
and time. But then there's Kairos time,
which is time out of time and cyclical time.
And all time is here and what is time?
And we are just experiencing it all in the moment.
And in, in my experience, the work for liberation, the work
for abolition often gets really caught up in Kronos time and
deeply needs Kairos time because so much of what we're trying to
do in our transformative process is change the way that we are,
are really. And and a lot of that needs to
deeply hold the past and also the future at the same time.
And then in the present, like you said, especially with groups
of people who are coming together with shared intent and
from really different spaces, our times can collide and there
can be like a lot there. And I, I, I feel curious if you
have some wisdom to offer this group around your own somatic
awakening through this process. You know, this, this idea of
the, of Eros and the erotics of liberation.
What have you been learning through your body about being
together in time and space with people, when the time and space
might also be very charged with a lot that's there?
Yeah. That's the tension that we've
we're always dealing with, all of us is we're so caught up in
responding to the last urgent violent thing.
And that's such a good and effective way to control people
because of course it did really shapes you in the shape of
urgency. And when you do this over time,
then, you know, someone comes in and you're left to space,
although just like you, therefore free Palestine and a
free Congo, and they want to burn everything with you and,
you know, love each other, right?
But I don't know, they did something, they said something
that you're like, wait a minute. And so you respond to it also in
the shape of urgency. The reason why I think my work
has been Orient orienting itself towards organizing spaces
specifically, I always talk about conflict and organizing
spaces is because of that. I've seen so many organizing
spaces being built since October 2023 for office reasons and then
just collapse in a second because I really think we, and
when I say we, I'm thinking about organizing spaces and
specifically actually, I would think about queer trends,
racialized, poor, migrant folks who are at the forefront of
organizing spaces and movements. We come together because it's
out of our survival. It's urgent.
We need to organize and then we don't have any relational
scaffolding for the most intimate parts of our lives.
We don't. And so coming into organizing
spaces with no transformation, you know, conflict
transformation skills. And so I realized it's not that
we lack strategy that make us fail, It's the lack of
relational capacity and skills that make us fail.
We can't deal with conflicts we can't deal with.
I don't agree. For a lot of us, we come into
the spaces thanking, hoping for so much.
We're thinking, OK, this is horrible outside, but maybe in
this little corner late in the on Thursday night, I'm going to
be in a space where people are not sexist, racist, transphobic,
fat phobic, fan phobic, you know, like all the things.
And you realize, yes, we are actually.
The disappointment is huge. And trust me, I understand that.
You know, there was really this realization for me of so much of
the work is urgent and I see it. And also maybe abolition is
really the work of being becoming a death doula for the
empire within, as well as, you know, holding space for the
other person next to you who's also trying to burn down the
empire inside of them and not at the same speed.
You know, for some people, they will still still say stuff and
you're like, wait, what did you say?
And you have to be like, yeah, they're not on the same train.
And just like you are potentially super so for another
person. And so that was just, you know,
for me, it's still very much a revelation that of course, we
have to organize and we have to challenge, if not, you know,
abolish our governments and all of these things.
And also a huge part of the work is our own working side.
Care. How do you how do you centre
care like in in you and your body Like when you are getting
ready to go into a meeting and when you are planning and
strategizing and thinking about the actions you want to take?
What does it feel like to centre care as a?
Practice, It's always saying the thing that Alicia, you told us
about that just before we started the life, but saying the
thing that maybe nobody expects or you know, for example, if I
hire someone for something, there is a huge power dynamics.
I'm the one paying you. You need this money to survive
under racial capitalism. And so potentially you will be
scared to say some things to me or you will at least not maybe
scared, but at least you will kind of understand that, you
know, we don't we just, it's just there's power dynamics.
It's just we can't get out of them.
And so replacing consent as much as possible, you know, which is
really liberation framework towards just punching back.
You know, it's not that we're going to be here because I'm
still hiring you for a project potentially.
So also wanting to evade the fact that there is a power
dynamic between us is just as harmful as, you know, the power
dynamic itself potentially, but just pushing, you know, against
it by really saying I want to pay you for your zone of genius.
And so if there's anything that you do that it's not of your
zone of genius, I don't want you to do that.
You know, How do you feel about this?
Oh, like, you know, I keep saying this to my folks in my
team like we're not saving babies.
Like if you need a day off, take the day off.
The goal is to do exactly the opposite of what has been done.
So if people tell you this is not viable, this is not da da
da. I'm thinking, oh, that's good,
That's juicy. Plus, you know, I'm sad rising,
so tell me I can't do something. I will do it.
I love the challenge and it works.
So I think coming into spaces with care is not like what we
think of like, oh, and there's, you know, I think it's more
saying the thing that maybe nobody wants to say and just
really not taking yourself too serious.
And, yeah, realizing that the person in front of you is a full
being with histories of trauma, gifts, you know, challenges.
I go out into the world and I'm always thinking everybody's
having a bad day. You know, something that I
really don't love is when people just are being annoying and
they're like, I had a bad day. I hate this shit from the bottom
of my heart. I think it's the most Western
thing in the world. It's like I go into the world
and I'm always thinking, this person's having the worst day,
this person's having the worst week, this person's having the
worst year. I meet people this way.
How many of us, you know, you go out and somebody smiles at you
and it just makes your day. And for me, it always makes my
day when people are just like kind of out of nowhere.
I'm just like, you know what, maybe it's cool to be here, you
know, and I just really realize how we have such a huge impact
on each other, like the smallest things have such a huge impact
on each other. So I accountability is that it's
like I matter. Of course I matter.
So it's just it's part of dignity.
I matter, and so my words matter.
My actions matter, my no actions matter, My silences matter.
I matter. Thank you.
That was a note I made from our our last conversation.
And pretty much exactly what you just said is that accountability
is tied to dignity and that what I say and don't say matters.
And what I said or what I don't, didn't say affects me because I
matter and my energy matters. I also write under that have a
note that I'm sure is something that you said because it's it's
a variant of what we included in our event description.
And it says avoidance isn't just avoiding conflict, It's a
general life vibe. And so to be avoidant with
conflict is to be avoidant kind of in your life.
And building accountability and relationships also builds
accountability with yourself and your life energy.
My last question for you for for now has to just do with current
astrology if you want to talk about it or just the vibe of
let's say the last six months if we think back to Mars beginning
its retrograde cycle and the last few months of Venus,
Mercury retrograde eclipses. If you want to talk about
astrology specifically, would love it.
If not, don't worry. I'm wondering what like what?
What's fresh for you right now and what are you noticing maybe
in your collective space or with your clients?
What what is asking to be learned right now about
accountability and relationships and boundaries and avoidance and
the erotics of liberation? I mean, I just want to say,
first of all, as a person on parent Earth, I'm going through
it. I feel like the universe is just
dragging me by my edges. But yeah, this specifically, I
think the confrontation between Crudo and Mars.
Oh. It's just so much tension.
You want to punch somebody in the throat.
And so in the practice of not doing that, I have been trying
to just really be in my body and just, you know, just sweat it
all out. I'm a huge believer in, you
know, in my spaces. There's been conflicts too in
the British practice field. And so one thing that we've
been, I mean, it's perfect because it, of course everything
happens for a reason. But this isn't that we're in,
it's based on the four elements my program.
So now we're in spring northern hemisphere and it's tied to the
wind air, and it's all about connection and specifically
conflicts like being in relationship with folks and
accountability. And so a lot of the work we've
been doing is around accountability and so many
things lead us to conflict that we could take care of before.
But this, this idea of like this paper cuts that you have this
slight thing that happens and you're like, oh, if I bring it
up, I'm petty, you know, like, I don't want to sound crazy.
And so you don't bring it up. And so, and then there's another
one and there's another one and there's another one.
And then you're bleeding and you don't know where it's coming
from because there's been so many different tiny paper cuts
everywhere. And so I don't know, I think,
you know, we've been doing that for so long.
So even talking about the last two years would be kind of
ridiculous. I think we've been doing that
since the beginning of capitalism.
We've been doing that of like working our whole lives.
Doesn't sound super good. But you know what, maybe I'm
going to get a career and maybe I'm going to make enough money
or maybe I'm going to get I'm going to get status.
And you know, that completely responds to the, the big
question for human beings is, am I loved?
And so I think, you know, of avoidance.
And when I talk about avoidance specific or people come to my
work because of what I'm talking about around transfersive
justice or accountability, we're always thinking about conflicts.
I want to say first of all, that avoidance is not something to
avoid. It's meaning the first thing we
do when we see something that is complicated is actually, and
it's part of our survival strategies is to flee.
Like mammals, the first thing they tend to do is fleeing.
So you see a cat, if the cat says something that is scary or
whatever, the cat will flee just because in terms of energy, it's
less energy to flee than to fight, which is would be the
other survival strategy that you could have.
And then this other survival strategies like fawning or
appeasement, dissociation, and, you know, so fleeing avoidance,
it's not something we can actually stop doing.
I really want to be clear about this because this is literally
part of 3 billion of years of evolutionary wisdom that we've
built around surviving planet Earth.
And as much as I do believe that we've built trauma in ways that
are just, wow, we really put so much energy into building trauma
on planet Earth. I do think being a doula that
potentially being embodied is traumatic.
You know, I'm, this is a question I have.
I'm thinking if we didn't have racism, if we didn't have all
the systems of donation, you know, when you look at a birth,
for example, it's quite traumatic and maybe not for the
child because we, you know, but the person giving birth,
although there are hormones sometimes that make us forget
that. So we can keep on going.
But I don't know, it's just traumatic to be in a body, you
know, to be being, be born and then see everything that you
love, die and then die too. Regardless of that.
I, I really want to say that avoidance is not something to
avoid. It's something that we do.
And I think it's something that also has kept us alive for sure.
It's not me thinking that. So it's, it's really important
that we understand that to a certain degree.
I mean, we don't choose our survival strategies.
We don't get to say, OK, I'm going to choose fleeing or I'm
going to choose fighting. We do the thing that we kind of
feel is the is going to be the best for our survival.
However, I think because of how overwhelming racial capitalism
has become and the state of our lives at large, I do think we
build more and more avoidance and then it becomes a lifestyle.
And that's really the hard part is to understand, OK, how is
this part of my survival? But and when is this, you know,
really something that is not serving me?
And I do think we avoided for so long the realities of the
systems that are really about extraction.
And so when people are saying like this system is or this, you
know, whatever they call it is broken.
No, it's not broken. It's doing exactly what it's
supposed to be doing. It's doing it so well that for a
while we thought something is wrong, but I'm just going to
keep going. It wasn't urgent enough that we
thought, OK, we have to do something about it.
We have to organize with friends around us.
That's why it's so good, this system, right?
It's like it gives us a little bit of thing to keep going so
that we don't really think, OK, for the most privilege of us,
something about wise people, the Western world.
But for a lot of us, it has never been a thought that this
system is broken. It was clear from the very
beginning. And we've been trying to tell
folks like, hey, it's, it's going to come to you at some
point and the way we are treated, it's going to come to
you at some point. But unfortunately it has taking
a little bit of time for people to realise that.
And so I think really avoidance and accountability is like the
maybe the stepping stone to abolition at large is to
realise, OK, it has never been working.
And we can wallow on the fact that we've been, you know, just
a victim and slash or a accomplice of the system.
But still we're still here and we still have to change it.
So what do we do about it? I, for my part, you know, I
still feel very much that I'm not doing enough and that
abolition is so huge. And, and this is where then my
humility comes in and says, yeah, why would you just start
when you could be a constellation?
You're not doing this alone. Movements have never been
created alone. The whole, you know, celebrity
culture around activism, that's bullshit.
That's for Hollywood, that's for Instagram.
That never happened like this. Families are always built in
community. People survive because of
several people. It takes two people to create
one person, you know? So if we're bowing each other's
hands, that means we really need to hold each other.
So I always try to come back to that and realise that, yeah, my
work is really, really tiny, but potentially and hopefully it's
going to support other people's work.
And when I do feel like I'm not doing enough, I just look at
other people's work and I'm like, I'm good, people are doing
their shit too. And that helps me to like not
fall in despair, but instead fall into community.
So yeah, I'm, I'm not sure if I'm answering your question,
but. I'm not sure either, but I
enjoyed where you went and appreciated what you said.
Do you? Is there a somatic practice that
you do? Is there something that you do
when you know that you don't want to avoid something?
That's such a great question Today.
I did that. And I think most of the time
what we avoid is ourselves. Like you feel upset because
somebody said something and you're like, Oh no, I shouldn't
be petty about it. And I this is, come on, like the
world is on fire. I shouldn't worry about a
comment. And so I think most of the work,
at least for me, is to not avoid my own feelings to be like,
girl, just sit your fucking black ass down.
You are feeling this way. You are feeling this way and
coming to my journal, writing it down, making it real, writing
yourself in as October. But this would say just really
making it tangible and real for yourself that this is how you're
feeling. For me is the first step and
then just I always have this, you know, tension towards
crying. I'm a Pisces, so most of the
time I'm just going to cry and I always block it out first.
I always like kind of like I want to hold it like AG.
I'm like, no, this is I want to cry about it.
And it's wild. What not feeling would make us
do you would. You will eat something.
You will distract yourself with your screens.
You will text somebody. You will use people as avoidance
tactics. Honestly, you will just work it
out. You will just, I don't know what
it is. You will buy something which
great for capitalism. You will, I don't know what it
is, but you will do those things over long term.
This is not now. I'm just talking about one thing
over long term when I had what I realised for myself is that I
will turn things around, obsessions and control.
And one huge part of my practice is, you know, we learn in my
practice, find near enemies. And I don't know if you know
about this, but it's like a Buddhist knowing that basically
is explaining the difference between far and near enemies.
And so far enemies are two things that are completely
opposite, just like Mars and Pluto are opposite to each other
right now. They see each other.
So when you face someone, you're having a direct conflict with
them. You know exactly this is what is
in front of me. So for example, far enemies
could be the opposite of being kind is being mean, or the
opposite of compassion is cruelty.
That's easy because they're opposite to each other.
They see each other now near enemies.
They're it. It's really hard to pinpoint
because they act like the real deal, but they're not.
And so they completely derail connection.
So, for example, the near enemy of compassion or empathy is
pity. Instead of saying, you know,
seeing a person in front of you and saying I'm not free until
you're until you're not free. I feel you.
It's putting the person down and saying, oh, it must be so hard.
Oh, poor you. Thank God it's not me.
Oh my God, it must be. So I'm so sorry.
And that, you know, every time I explain this to my clients in
101 work, I used to do that a lot.
And people would always be like, Oh my God, like, yes, we feel
somatically when someone gives us pity versus like, I know
exactly what, you know, like I'll get angry with you because
this is not right. And so one of the near enemies
that I'm always working with. And I think it's you potentially
the only reason that I do everything that I'm doing,
including liberation practice field is I've understood at some
point because, you know, I'm so interested in fascist and like
bigots at large, I'm really interested.
Sometimes I just really want to have a coffee with them and be
like, So what happened? Let's just talk about it.
And I realized at some point, because in my spaces I felt like
we have connection. And so I assumed that on their
side they have connection. But then I realized, oh, it's
not connection, it's control. And so those two things are near
enemies too. The near enemy of connection is
control. And so where connection must be,
For example, if we take the example of Palestine, all human
beings should be free. All indigenous people should be
free, The earth should be free, our bodies should be free, trans
people should be free, Black and brown bodies should be free, All
of us should be free. On the other side, people should
not be free. But then it's also like if
someone inside of this circle says, well, I think maybe
Palestinians have rights. You are immediately put into,
you are less than a Palestinian, right?
Like you are immediately put back into, you have no rights
whatsoever. So it's control, right?
It's not connection anymore. And so I'm always in.
It does. I'm not saying that we don't do
control in our spaces. We obviously do.
Sometimes we police each other and you know, but the core of
our, of our, of our movements is to be in connection.
We're not part of nature. We are nature.
Like this is all of this is, is us, right?
And so I think my, my understanding around this has
LED everything that I'm doing. And so a lot of the things that
I will do for myself is to go into control instead of
connection. So I would just like be so
fucking sure that if only I would lose weight, my life would
be better. And then I realized six months
after, wait a minute, like, where is this coming from?
And I'm not saying, you know, that, you know, wait doesn't
have an impact on you, on how you connect to people.
It actually has a huge impact, but it's not maybe the
connection that I want to have. And so I find myself going into
distractions and obsessions that really stems from neglect.
I do think neglect creates, you know, capacity to obsess because
we had to kind of guess all the time.
And so we just guess what if I do this and maybe I'll do that
and maybe I'll do that and then I'll get the connection that I
crave so badly. Instead of staying exactly where
you are and asking yourself, what are the people around me
that crave the same type of connection that I could get
along with and I could build worlds from this place.
You know, I'm thinking about permaculture and how I learned
through permaculture that growth happens at the margins.
And so instead of like forcing yourself into the centre that
you will potentially never be accepted by build growth there,
don't sit at the fucking table. The table is boring.
The food doesn't have any fucking taste.
Our parties are always better. Stay where you are and build
communities where you are. And so for me, it's been really
clear over the last. And then the thing that I also
do somatically to come back to center is just like, go out and
see how that people are living and people are breathing and
people are doing things and people are suffering and people
are, you know, loving and people are just and you, you're part of
a whole that is always changing and moving.
And so you are too. So, you know, just going outside
and liberation practice well is definitely part of my practice
to just get out of myself and just do things that are more
important than me. Yeah.
Thank you so much for that.