You Do Not Need a Better Routine. You Need a Life That Stops Requiring Your Self-Abandonment.

Sometimes the problem is not that you cannot keep up. Sometimes keeping up is the problem.

You may not need more discipline, a better planner, or another morning routine. You may need to tell the truth about what your life is costing you.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that sleep does not fix.

You can take the nap.

Cancel the meeting.

Drink the water.

Buy the planner.

Delete the app and download a different app that promises to organize your life in softer colors.

You can create a morning routine, an evening routine, a supplement routine, and a Sunday reset routine.

And still wake up tired.

Because sometimes the problem is not that you have failed to build a life-giving routine.

Sometimes the problem is that you are using routines to make an extractive life more tolerable. (read that again) you are using routines to make an extractive life more tolerable.

Sometimes you are not tired because you lack discipline.

You are tired because too many parts of your life require you to leave yourself in order to participate.

That is a different problem.

And it requires a different kind of answer.

The question underneath the question

When we say, “How do I become more consistent?” the question underneath may be:

• How do I keep meeting demands that exceed my capacity without anyone noticing what it costs me?

When we say, “How do I stop procrastinating?” the question underneath may be:

• Why does my body resist this thing my mind insists I should be able to do?

When we say, “How do I become more productive?” the question underneath may be:

• Who taught me that my value becomes visible only after I produce something?

And when we say, “How do I get back on track?” perhaps we need to ask:

• Who laid the track?

• Where is it taking me?

• What has it required me to run over (including myself) to stay on it?

This is not an argument against structure. I love a structure that helps us hold what matters. Many neurodivergent, disabled, chronically ill, traumatized, and overwhelmed people need supportive structure, not because we are deficient, but because access should not depend on forcing ourselves through unnecessary friction.

But there is a difference between structure that supports your life and structure that trains you to endure it.

One creates capacity.

The other conceals the cost.

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Self-abandonment rarely introduces itself honestly

Self-abandonment rarely announces:

“Hello, I am here to disconnect you from your body, override your limits, and make belonging conditional on your usefulness.”

It sounds more reasonable than that.

It sounds like:

Just get through this week.

Do not make it a big deal.

They need you.

You can rest later.

Be the bigger person.

Do not disappoint anyone.

You already said yes.

Other people have it worse.

You should be grateful.

You can handle more than most people. (ask yourself which one, or more, felt familiar)

And maybe you can.

But capacity is not consent.

Being capable of carrying something does not mean it belongs to you.

Being able to survive a pattern does not make the pattern sustainable.

Being the person who always figures it out does not mean you should always be left to figure it out alone.

When adaptation becomes identity

Many of us learned to become exquisitely responsive to everyone except ourselves.

We notice the shift in another person’s tone before we notice our own jaw tightening.

We anticipate what the room needs before asking whether we want to be in the room.

We can feel disappointment coming and rush to prevent it.

We call this kindness.

Sometimes it is kindness….

• Sometimes it is hypervigilance wearing good manners.

We call it responsibility.

Sometimes it is responsibility.

• Sometimes it is fear wearing a calendar.

We call it resilience.

Sometimes it is resilience.

• Sometimes it is a body that has never been given another option.

The adaptation may have kept you connected, employed, praised, protected, or needed. We do not have to shame it to tell the truth about it.

It was intelligent.

It was protective.

It may also be exhausting you now.

This is why liberation work cannot stop at changing our thoughts. The body may still be obeying an agreement the conscious mind no longer believes.

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A reset is not a prettier version of the same demand

The wellness industry often sells us a reset that leaves the original system untouched.

• Take a weekend away so you can return to the same impossible pace.

• Buy something soothing so you can tolerate what is harming you.

• Perfect your routine so no one else has to change.

• Regulate yourself so the room never has to become safer.

• Become more resilient so the institution can remain violent.

That is not a reset.

That is maintenance.

A real reset asks more dangerous questions:

What am I maintaining that is no longer maintaining me?

What only works because I overfunction?

What relationship depends on me having no needs?

What commitment belongs to a version of me who no longer exists?

Where am I calling something “necessary” because naming it as a choice would require me to choose differently?

What am I afraid will happen if I stop being endlessly available?

This is where Rest becomes Reset.

Rest gives us enough space to hear ourselves.

Reset asks us to believe what we hear.

A small practice: Find the Flinch

Do not make a list of everything you need to change. That can become another demand.

Instead, think about the week ahead.

Move through it slowly in your mind: the appointments, responsibilities, people, rooms, calls, errands, and expectations.

Notice where your body flinches.

Maybe your breath gets shallow.

Maybe your shoulders rise.

Maybe your stomach tightens.

Maybe you suddenly feel tired, irritated, foggy, or far away.

Do not immediately cancel anything. Do not force yourself to solve it.

Simply ask:

What does my body know about this that I have not yet put into words?

Your body is not a courtroom witness. You do not need to cross-examine it until it produces enough evidence to justify your discomfort.

The flinch is information.

Not an order.

Not the whole answer.

Information.

And information is enough to begin.

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Practice Your Praxis

Self

Where am I using discipline to override information from my body?

Home

What only gets done because one person repeatedly abandons their own capacity?

Work & Community

Which “urgent” expectation would become negotiable if we valued people more than pace?

The New Agreement

You do not have to burn your whole life down by Friday.

You do not need to make a dramatic exit to prove you are choosing yourself.

Liberation is not only found in the big refusal.

Sometimes it begins with a pause before yes.

An honest “I need to check my capacity.”

A meal before the meeting.

A deadline renegotiated before collapse.

A request for help before resentment.

A decision not to explain your no into a yes.

A willingness to let someone be disappointed without making their disappointment an emergency.

The new agreement might be this:

I will stop treating my body as the obstacle standing between me and the life that keeps hurting it.

I will let my body become part of how I decide.

That is not selfishness.

That is sovereignty.

And perhaps the reset you need is not a better way to keep up.

Perhaps it is permission to stop organizing your life around the demand that you abandon yourself.

Continue the journey

This is the doorway.

In the next three subscriber reflections, we are going beyond awareness and into embodied practice:

• The Reset Audit: a guided examination of what is draining, outdated, one-sided, inaccessible, or sustained only by your overfunctioning.

• Your No Is a Nervous-System Practice: why boundaries can feel dangerous even when they are necessary, and how to practice refusal without abandoning yourself in the process.

• When Rest Becomes Another Performance: how grind culture follows us into healing; and how to build practices that restore rather than measure us.

Paid subscriptions are $10 monthly or $100 annually. Equity Partners subscribe at $150 annually and help fund scholarship access for members of our community.

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If cost is the barrier, email scholarships@desireebstephens.com. No proof required. No story owed. Just ask.

Because liberation education should be sustained through reciprocity, not guarded through scarcity.

You can also go deeper inside the Liberation Education Academy:

https://desireebstephens.com/academy-membership

Or practice in community through The Healing Homestead Collective:

https://desireebstephens.com/homestead

In solidarity and liberation,

Desireé B. Stephens
Educator • Counselor • Community Builder
Founder, Make Shi(f)t Happen
Writer of Liberation Education
Steward of The Healing Homestead Collective

New Agreements. New Systems. Deeper Connection. 🌬️

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Today, under the New Moon in Cancer, I have been thinking about belonging.

Not simply where I belong.

But what I have been taught belonging requires of me.

• How much must I offer?

• How agreeable must I become?

• How many needs must I minimize?

• How much discomfort must I quietly absorb?

• How useful must I remain before I am allowed to rest?

Because many of us learned belonging through negotiation.

We learned which parts of ourselves made the room uncomfortable.

Which emotions were inconvenient.

Which boundaries threatened connection.

Which truths might cost us access.

Which needs made us “too much.”

So we adapted.

We became useful.

We became agreeable.

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We became the organizer, the caretaker, the educator, the mediator, the strong one, the dependable one, the one who could hold everything without appearing to need anything.

And then we called that belonging.

But belonging that requires your disappearance is not belonging.

It is compliance.

It is performance.

It is self-abandonment with witnesses.

This July, our seasonal framework is Rest • Reset • Resist

The question guiding us is:

What becomes possible when I pause without guilt?

But underneath that question is another:

What am I finally able to hear when I stop performing my way into belonging?

Because pausing is not only about doing less.

Pausing allows us to listen.

• To the body.

• To the emotions we have been managing instead of feeling.

• To the resentment beneath our automatic yes.

• To the exhaustion beneath our commitment.

• To the quiet no we keep attempting to transform into a more socially acceptable maybe.

This is why July’s somatic principles are:

Gentle Reminder we do Somatic Sunday first Sunsdays of each month when you are apart of the Healing Homestead Collective or The Liberation Education Academy more information available HERE

• Resource: establishing safety.

• Self-regulation: staying in relationship with what is felt.

• Orienting: recognizing what is true in the present moment rather than reacting only from what has happened before.

You cannot discern where you belong while disconnected from yourself.

You cannot consent to participation when urgency will not allow you enough time to hear your answer.

You cannot build sustainable community when people are expected to override their bodies to prove their commitment.

And you cannot call something liberation if it requires the same self-erasure as the systems we are attempting to dismantle.

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July’s Astrological Companion

Each month, my most favorite human joins our community for an Astrology of Liberation gathering.

Leah offers the astrological landscape.

I bring that landscape into conversation with liberation, supremacy culture, somatics, relationship, and the systems shaping our everyday lives.

For July, Leah names the larger theme as Belonging Without Self-Abandonment—a month of emotional truth, collective awareness, and reconsidering what meaningful participation actually looks like.

The New Moon in Cancer brings our attention toward emotional safety, nourishment, home, and the ways we care for our inner environment.

Later this month, the lunar nodes shift into Aquarius and Leo, beginning a longer conversation about individuality, performance, validation, contribution, and collective possibility.

The Full Moon in Aquarius then invites us to notice where our participation is aligned, and where something that began as a choice has quietly become an obligation.

This is not about choosing yourself or the collective.

💡That is the Either/Or Thinking pillar at work.

The deeper practice is learning how to remain in relationship with yourself while participating in something larger.

To contribute without becoming consumable.

To care without becoming responsible for everyone.

To belong without bargaining away your emotional truth.

Leah’s complete Astrology of 2026 guide includes the monthly transits, reflections, and companion practices that support these gatherings.

Purchase Leah Tioxon’s Astrology of 2026 ebook

Belonging Requires Boundaries

July’s underlying practice is participating with boundaries.

Boundaries do not mean we do not care.

They clarify how we can care sustainably.

A boundary might sound like:

Boundaries allow us to participate honestly rather than offering resentful, coerced, or performative agreement.

They also create the possibility of real conflict.

Because the moment you stop abandoning yourself, someone who benefited from that abandonment may experience your boundary as harm.

That does not automatically make the boundary harmful.

This is where we begin dismantling the Fear of Open Conflict pillar.

Liberated community cannot require the absence of tension.

It requires enough skill, honesty, and care to remain present when tension arrives.

Conflict is not always evidence that the relationship has failed.

Sometimes conflict is evidence that truth has finally entered the room.

The replay and full July Liberation Lesson continue below for paid subscribers.

Your subscriptions help compensate our collaborators, sustain Liberation Education, support the continued development of the Academy and Homestead, and create space for this work to remain accessible through scholarships and community resources.

Liberation Education Subscription Options

This is the reciprocity that keeps Liberation Education sustainable.

$10 a month. $100 a year. $150 a year as an Equity Partner — which helps sustain access by funding scholarships for community members who need them.

And if cost is the barrier, you are not excluded here. Scholarships are available at scholarships@desireebstephens.com. No questions asked.

Become a paid subscriber to continue reading and support independent liberation education

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“The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more deceitful than the conservative. Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro’s friend and benefactor.”

— Malcolm X

Meet Jane

Jane opposes Trump.

Jane protests tyranny.

Jane supports birthright citizenship.

Jane appears willing to vote for people of color.

Jane rescues animals.

Jane likely considers herself progressive.

And yet when Black people discuss racism, Jane reaches for one of the oldest racial talking points in America:

“Young Black males have more to fear from other young Black males.”

Jane said this publicly, under her own name, on a public post. So we will discuss it publicly.

If you’ve spent any time doing anti-racism work, you’ve heard some version of this before.

What fascinated me wasn’t the comment itself.

It was who said it.

Because what I found wasn’t what many people imagine when they imagine racism.

Jane wasn’t wearing a hood.

Jane wasn’t posting slurs.

Jane wasn’t MAGA.

Jane wasn’t attending white nationalist rallies.

By all accounts, Jane would most likely consider herself a progressive liberal.

Jane was posting about democracy.

About authoritarianism.

About protecting vulnerable communities.

About resisting oppression.

And yet the moment the conversation became Black people, the analysis changed.

Suddenly systems disappeared.

History disappeared.

Context disappeared.

And what remained were stereotypes.

That contradiction is the story.

Not Jane.

Jane is simply the latest example.

Years ago, long before this interaction, I wrote a series on Medium called Dissonance.

At the time, I was trying to name something I kept witnessing but couldn’t fully explain.

People who opposed oppression while participating in it.

People who advocated for justice while defending injustice.

People who understood systems everywhere except where those systems implicated them.

I thought I was writing about contradiction.

I was actually writing about whiteness.

I just didn’t have the language for it yet.

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Paid Subscriber Section

The rest of this article is for paid subscribers.

In the next section, I explore:

• Why I used to say, “Hi, I’m Desireé B. Stephens, and I pathologize whiteness.”

• The difference between pathologizing white people and examining whiteness as a system

• Why dissonance is not a side effect of whiteness but one of its primary mechanisms

• What the FBI’s own data says about the “Black-on-Black crime” deflection

• How racism survives inside otherwise progressive politics

• Why Malcolm X’s critique of white liberals remains relevant today

• A Liberation Lens and Practice Your Praxis for examining the contradictions that survive our politics

Paid subscriptions allow me to continue creating rigorous, accessible liberation education while building the frameworks, resources, and communal practices that move us beyond performance and toward embodied transformation.

This is the reciprocity that keeps Liberation Education sustainable.

$10 a month. $100 a year. $150 a year as an Equity Partner — which helps sustain access by funding scholarships for community members who need them.

And if cost is the barrier, you are not excluded here. Scholarships are available at scholarships@desireebstephens.com. No questions asked.

Become a paid subscriber to continue reading and support independent liberation education.

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Read more

Let me say it again….

Black children are taught avoidance as survival, whilst white-bodied people are taught avoidance as separation

A comment on one of my posts stopped me.

It was well-meaning.

Gentle even.

Someone said their heart was deep in the grief this family feels, as well as “his larger community.”

And I knew what they meant.

I really did.

But I also felt the separation immediately.

His family.

His community.

As if this grief lives somewhere over there.

As if it belongs to a particular set of people.

As if Black death is a tragedy that can be witnessed from outside the circle.

As if the grief does not indict the whole.

That separation is part of the wound.

Because if we are humans, mothers, parents, kinfolk, neighbors, coworkers, teachers, friends, and community members, then the ache cannot stop at “his family and his community.”

You should ache for us all.

Not because grief needs to become performative.

Not because everyone gets to claim Black pain as their own.

But because separation is one of the ways people protect themselves from responsibility.

It lets someone feel sad without feeling implicated.

It lets someone mourn without examining the conditions that made mourning necessary.

It lets someone say, “their community,” instead of asking how their community has helped create the danger our community is forced to survive.

That is the deeper work.

Not just sympathy.

Not just ache.

But the willingness to sit with what the ache reveals.

Because the truth is, Black children have to be taught avoidance of white people the way we teach them to cross the street.

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Look both ways.

Listen.

Pay attention.

Do not assume they see you.

Do not assume being right will keep you safe.

Do not assume innocence will be recognized on your body.

Do not assume the rules will protect you.

That is how common the violence against Black bodies is.

That is how ordinary the preparation has become.

That is the pain point.

That is the wound.

And the lie covering that wound is the lie that we live in a post-racial world.

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The Lie of Post-Racial America

Post-racial America is one of this country’s most dangerous myths.

It tells people that racism is mostly historical.

That race no longer structures danger.

That if something happens now, it must be isolated.

An accident.

A misunderstanding.

A personal conflict.

A tragedy with no pattern attached.

Post-racial America asks Black people to ignore the very pattern recognition that has kept us alive.

It asks us to wait for official facts while our bodies are already remembering.

It asks us to treat every incident as separate, even when the grief arrives in a familiar shape.

It asks us to pretend the past is finished because the present learned better language.

But we are not confused.

We are remembering.

The lie of post-racial America is tied to the unfinished lie of Reconstruction.

The promise that the war ended and the country was remade.

The promise that freedom meant safety.

The promise that citizenship meant protection.

The promise that the law would recognize Black humanity without being forced.

But Reconstruction was not completed.

It was abandoned.

And the lie stayed.

It changed clothes.

Changed language.

Hid behind progress.

Called itself colorblind.

Called itself polite.

Called itself neutral.

Called itself objective.

Called itself progressive.

Called itself liberal.

Called itself law and order.

Called itself self-defense.

Called itself unfortunate.

Called itself isolated.

Called itself anything except what it is.

So we teach our children.

Not because we want them afraid.

Because we want them alive.

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When My Son Said, “I Don’t Trust White People”

This is not theoretical for me.

I once got called into my child’s school because he refused to transition with a staff member for testing connected to his 504 Plan accommodations.

When I arrived, I came calm.

Curious.

Grounded enough to ask what was wrong instead of assuming he was simply being difficult.

And without flinching, my child said:

“I don’t trust white people.”

My first instinct was the one many of us have been programmed to perform.

The respectable one.

The conciliatory one.

The one that rushes in to make whiteness comfortable before the Black child’s body has even finished telling the truth.

“But you have white family. White friends.”

And he said:

“I know them. I love them. I don’t know her.”

And just like that, the whole conversation changed.

Because what do we usually do in that moment?

We shut it down.

We say:

“That’s not nice.”

“That’s not kind.”

“That’s racist.”

“We don’t talk like that.”

But is it?

Or is it a Black child naming a truth he feels in his body?

Is it hatred?

Or is it discernment?

Is it rudeness?

Or is it pattern recognition?

Is it disrespect?

Or is it generations of warning carried in the nervous system of a Black child trying to determine who is safe?

My son was not being mean.

He was being honest.

And honesty becomes dangerous in systems built on denial.

That moment reminded me that Black children often know what adults have been trained to explain away.

They know when their body says no.

They know when proximity does not yet mean safety.

They know that being nice is not the same thing as being protected.

They know that a smile, a role, a title, or an institution does not automatically create trust.

And instead of teaching them to betray that knowing in order to make white adults comfortable, maybe we need to ask why their discernment feels so threatening.

I did not punish him.

I did not scold him into softness.

I did not ask him to perform trust he did not feel.

I held him.

I reminded him he was safe with me.

And a Black male staff member stayed with him until he felt regulated enough to transition.

That is what love looked like in real time.

Not forcing a Black child to override his body.

Not making a white adult’s discomfort more urgent than his sense of safety.

Not confusing compliance with care.

Love looked like listening.

Love looked like context.

Love looked like community.

Love looked like repair.

And yes, I could hold the humanity of the white staff member too.

It probably did not feel good to be distrusted.

It likely felt uncomfortable to be associated with a collective history she may not consciously identify with.

It may have felt unfair to be seen not only as an individual, but as someone moving through the world with whiteness attached to her body.

That discomfort is real.

But it is not more urgent than my son’s safety.

You do not have to be a white supremacist to carry the weight of white supremacy.

That is how systems work.

You do not have to intend harm to be shaped by it.

So no, I was not blaming her for a system she did not invent.

But I was holding the reality that whiteness travels with you whether you acknowledge it or not.

This is not about guilt.

It is about honesty.

And honesty is where repair begins.

Because when a Black child says, “I don’t trust white people,” the question should not be:

“How do we make him stop saying that?”

The question should be:

What has the world taught him?

What has history taught him?

What have institutions taught him?

What have Black mothers, fathers, aunties, grandmothers, elders, and ancestors had to teach Black children in order to keep them alive?

And what would white-bodied people have to repair for Black children’s bodies to stop carrying that warning so early?

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Because distrust is not the wound.

Distrust is the scar.

The wound is the repeated harm that made distrust wise.

That is why the lesson begins so early.

Not because we want our children afraid.

Because we want them alive.

Because Black parenting in America often means teaching children how to survive what the country refuses to stop producing.

We teach them the room.

The tone.

The look.

The street.

The classroom.

The store.

The neighborhood.

The party.

The boat.

The island.

We teach them avoidance the way we teach them to cross the street.

And that is the poem.

The Street We Teach Them To Cross

We have to teach Black children
avoidance of white people
the way we teach them
to cross the street.

Look both ways.

Listen.

Do not assume they see you.

Do not assume the rules
will protect you.

Do not assume being right
will keep you alive.

Do not assume innocence
will be recognized
on your body.

This is what America
has made of childhood.

A lesson in calculation.

A map of exits.

A study of tone.

A training in distance.

A whole survival manual
tucked inside the mouth
before a child is old enough
to spell the word danger.

And still they tell us
we are post-racial.

Still they tell us
we are imagining the pattern.

Still they say
it is not always about race

as if Black people
have ever had the luxury
of finding out too late.

Post-racial America
is the lie Reconstruction left behind.

The promise that the war ended
and the country became new.

The promise that freedom
was enough.

The promise that citizenship
would shelter us.

The promise that the law
would recognize our humanity
without being forced.

But Reconstruction was not completed.

It was abandoned.

And the lie stayed.

It put on new clothes.

Changed its language.

Hid behind progress.

Called itself colorblind.

Called itself polite.

Called itself objective.

Called itself concerned.

Called itself law and order.

Called itself self-defense.

Called itself unfortunate.

Called itself isolated.

Called itself anything
except what it is.

So we teach our children.

Not because we want them afraid.

Because we want them alive.

We teach them how to leave.

How to lower their voice.

How to keep their hands visible.

How not to run.

How not to reach.

How not to argue with someone
who has already decided
their fear matters more
than your life.

We teach them the street.

The store.

The classroom.

The neighborhood.

The party.

The gas station.

The gym mat.

The island.

The boat.

The places where childhood
can become evidence.

The places where a Black child
can become a threat
before becoming a person.

And then someone asks
why we ache like this.

Why one family’s grief
moves through all of us.

Why we say his name
even if we never knew him.

Why Nolan sits heavy
in the body.

Why Kendrick never left.

Why Karmelo feels like
a terrible answer
to a terrible question.

Because if he had not made that choice,
we fear we would be writing
another poem for a grave.

And hear me clearly:

I am not romanticizing prison.

I am not glorifying violence.

I am naming the brutality
of a world where Black children
are forced to choose
between a cage
and a coffin.

A world where survival
can still be punished.

A world where restraint
can still become a funeral.

A world where the lesson is:

take the charge
or become the chalk outline.

And then we are expected
to speak gently
about the conditions
that make such choices possible.

No.

I will not make this palatable.

Because there is something
deeply broken
in a country where Black parents
have to measure every lesson
against the possibility
of death.

There is something broken
in a world where Black children
must learn threat assessment
before they learn ease.

There is something broken
in people who can look
at Black grief and say:

I ache for his family
and his community.

As if that separation
is innocent.

As if his community
is somewhere over there.

As if the grief can be contained
inside Black neighborhoods,
Black churches,
Black mothers,
Black timelines,
Black bodies.

No.

You should ache for us all.

You should ache because
his community and your community
are not separate
unless separation is the lie
you still need
to stay comfortable.

You should ache because
what harms Black children
reveals the sickness
of the whole society.

You should ache because
your community helped build
the conditions
our community is forced to survive.

You should ache because
becoming white
cost your people something too.

Not the same cost.

Not the same wound.

Not the same danger.

But something human died
in the making of whiteness.

Connection died.

Memory died.

Kinship died.

The capacity to feel
without separating yourself
from responsibility died.

A people do not become white
without burying parts of themselves
beneath the bargain.

And then they call the numbness
neutrality.

They call the distance
objectivity.

They call the inability to grieve
with us
reason.

But we know what it is.

Avoidance.

The same avoidance
we teach our children
as survival

is the avoidance whiteness uses
to escape its own reflection.

And there it is.

The wound and the lie
standing in the same room.

Black children must avoid whiteness
to survive.

White-bodied people avoid whiteness
to remain innocent.

And the country calls that peace.

But peace is not the absence
of Black screaming.

Peace is not the silence
after another mother
has been handed a name
instead of a child.

Peace is not telling us
to wait for facts
while history is standing
right there
with blood on its hands.

Peace is not being able
to cross the street
because danger is predictable.

Peace is not surviving
the lesson.

I want a world
where Black children
do not have to be taught
white avoidance
as a life skill.

I want a world
where being right
does not get them killed.

Where being afraid
does not get them punished.

Where defending themselves
does not become the beginning
of another kind of captivity.

Where leaving home
does not become a communal prayer.

Where coming back
is ordinary.

Where Black mothers
do not have to become prophets
of danger
just to raise a child.

Until then,

do not ask us
why we feel it.

Do not ask us
why we grieve beyond bloodline.

Do not ask us
why one Black child’s death
or imprisonment
moves through millions of bodies.

We are not confused.

We are connected.

We are remembering.

We are aching
from the place America
keeps pretending
does not exist.

And if you only ache
for his family
and his community,

you have not understood
the wound.

You are still standing
outside the grief
as if the fire
is not also burning
your house.

🌬️

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Black avoidance tries to keep our children alive.

White avoidance tries to keep innocence intact.

And America rewards one while criminalizing the other.

Below the paywall, we are going deeper into the part most people avoid:

What becoming white does to memory, connection, grief, and accountability.

Why Black distrust is not hatred, but pattern recognition.

Why separation allows white-bodied people to ache for Black families without feeling responsible to Black safety.

How schools, homes, workplaces, and communities can stop punishing Black discernment and start practicing repair.

And what it means to move from sympathy into solidarity through embodied liberation work.

This is the work of Liberation Education.

We do not stop at awareness.

We practice interruption.

Paid subscriptions allow me to continue creating rigorous, accessible liberation education while building the frameworks, resources, and communal practices that move us beyond performance and toward embodied transformation.

This is the reciprocity that keeps Liberation Education sustainable.

$10 a month. $100 a year. $150 a year as an Equity Partner — which helps sustain access by funding scholarships for community members who need them.

And if cost is the barrier, you are not excluded here. Scholarships are available at scholarships@desireebstephens.com.

No proof required.

No story owed.

Just ask.

Take a breath. 🌬️

Then come deeper.

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My daughter turned 30 today.

For the past five and a half years, we have been estranged.

Aside from a letter or two, we have not spoken.

And yet, I keep up with her well-being when I can. I celebrate her victories from afar. I pray for her happiness. I remain proud of the woman she has become.

Thirty years ago, I became a mother.

Today, I find myself reflecting on what that actually means.

One of the hardest lessons adulthood has taught me is that I do not get to decide what someone else’s experience of me was.

I can tell you I loved my daughter fiercely.

I can tell you I would have laid down my life for her.

I can tell you I did the best I knew how to do.

And all of those things can be true while she still carries wounds from being raised by me.

Those truths are not mutually exclusive.

I was a young mother.

A military wife.

Far from home.

Parenting while still trying to figure out who I was.

I was raising children while carrying my own unhealed childhood.

I was the granddaughter of Irish immigrants.

The daughter of addiction, alcoholism, and poverty.

I grew up in the Bronx with a chip on my shoulder and survival woven into my bones.

That turns a person into something.

Not necessarily something bad.

But something shaped by scarcity.

Something shaped by fear.

Something shaped by the belief that love must constantly be earned, protected, or proven.

When I became a parent, I was determined to give my children everything I never had.

The problem is that sometimes, in trying to give children everything we lacked, we fail to see the children standing in front of us.

I know now that I spent so much time trying to become the mother I never had that I wasn’t always paying attention to the daughter I actually had.

I coddled in places that required boundaries.

I focused on achievement when connection was needed.

I celebrated intelligence and resilience while missing signs of suffering.

Like many parents of my generation, I was taught that feelings were inconveniences.

We didn’t discuss trauma.

We didn’t discuss anxiety.

We didn’t discuss depression.

We didn’t discuss nervous systems.

We discussed getting through it.

We discussed working harder.

We discussed being tough.

There was no crying in baseball.

There was no crying anywhere.

And if there was, it was often done in private.

Many of us Gen X parents were raised by Baby Boomers who were raised by the Silent Generation.

Every generation passed down both wisdom and wounds.

We inherited survival strategies that helped families endure impossible circumstances.

We also inherited emotional distance, silence, and pain.

We put the fun in dysfunctional.

At least that’s how we joked about it.

But the generations that followed us stopped laughing.

They looked directly at the fractures.

They questioned family systems.

They challenged loyalty at all costs.

They sought therapy.

They named harm.

They established boundaries.

They chose themselves.

And sometimes that choice meant choosing distance from us.

That can be painful to admit.

But pain does not make it untrue.

My daughter chose herself.

Even when I disagreed with the details.

Even when I wished things had unfolded differently.

Even when it hurt.

She chose what she believed was necessary for her well-being and safety.

And I am proud of her for that.

Because if I truly believe the things I teach about healing, liberation, and self-trust, then I must honor her right to make decisions that I would not make myself.

Love that only exists when someone stays close is not unconditional love.

Love that requires agreement is not unconditional love.

Love that demands access is not unconditional love.

Real love honors autonomy.

Even when autonomy hurts.

Especially when autonomy hurts.

The older I get, the more I understand that accountability is not the same thing as shame.

I do not need to believe I was a terrible mother to acknowledge the ways I fell short.

I do not need to erase the love I gave to recognize the places where love may have felt conditional.

I do not need to deny my intentions to acknowledge someone else’s reality.

Both can exist.

Both often do.

My daughter taught me many things during the twenty-four and a half years we shared life together.

One of the greatest lessons was that love requires growth.

Not performative growth.

Not social media growth.

Real growth.

The kind that asks us to examine ourselves without defensiveness.

The kind that asks us to sit with regret without allowing regret to become our identity.

The kind that asks us to tell the truth.

The truth is that becoming her mother changed my life.

The truth is that she helped shape the woman I eventually became.

The truth is that I will always be grateful for the years we shared.

And the truth is that I celebrate her today.

Not because she belongs to me.

But because she belongs to herself.

Today she is 30 years old.

I pray for health.

I pray for joy.

I pray for safety.

I pray for community.

I pray for love.

I pray for a life that feels expansive and fully her own.

And whether I witness that life up close or from afar, I celebrate it all the same.

Happy Birthday, baby girl.

You owe me nothing.

But I will always be grateful that for a season of my life, I had the privilege of being your mother.

Why This Matters

It would be easy to read this as a story about a mother and daughter, and isolate it to one family, one moment, one person…

But the longer I do this work, the more I realize that our most intimate relationships are often where liberation is first practiced.

The same patterns we see in systems, organizations, communities, and nations also show up around kitchen tables, in family dynamics, and in the stories we tell ourselves about love, responsibility, belonging, and worth.

The same skills required for collective liberation —accountability, curiosity, boundaries, grief, repair, and truth-telling— are often first learned in our closest relationships.

Liberation is not something we practice only when discussing politics, policy, or social change.

It is something we practice in our homes.

In our friendships.

In our parenting.

In our partnerships.

In our willingness to tell the truth about who we have been and who we are becoming.

This is the work at the heart of Liberation Is a Lifestyle.

If this reflection resonated with you, I invite you to continue the conversation through the Liberation Education Newsletter, the Liberation Education Academy, and our community spaces where we explore what it means to move beyond awareness and into embodied practice.

Because liberation is not a destination.

It is a way of living.

Learn more at www.DesireeBStephens.com

Practice Your Praxis

Liberation is not found in being perfect.

It is found in telling the truth.

Even when the truth is uncomfortable.

Even when there is no guarantee of forgiveness.

Even when accountability does not lead to reconciliation.

This week, consider where you may be holding onto a story that prevents deeper honesty with yourself.

Self

Reflect on a relationship where you may have caused harm, intentionally or unintentionally.

Ask yourself:

• What am I still defending?

• What am I afraid might be true?

• Can I hold love for myself while also acknowledging impact?

Remember: accountability is not the same thing as shame.

You can be a good person and still have caused pain.

Home

Consider the stories your family inherited about emotions.

Were feelings welcomed, ignored, mocked, punished, or feared?

Have a conversation with someone you trust about the emotional lessons you learned growing up.

Ask:

• What was expressed openly?

• What was never discussed?

• What survival strategies were passed down as wisdom?

Notice what deserves gratitude and what deserves examination.

Work & Community

Think about a time someone gave feedback that was difficult to hear.

Did you move toward curiosity or defensiveness?

This week, practice listening without immediately explaining your intentions.

Instead ask:

“Can you help me understand your experience?”

Whether in families, organizations, or communities, liberation requires our willingness to hear truths that challenge the stories we tell about ourselves.

Somatic Reflection

Place one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly.

Take three slow breaths.

As you inhale, say silently:

“I can tell the truth.”

As you exhale, say:

“And still be worthy of love.”

Notice what arises.

You do not need to fix it.

You do not need to explain it.

Simply witness it.

In Solidarity and Liberation,

Desireé B. Stephens
Educator | Counselor | Community Builder
Founder, Make Shi(f)t Happen
Writer of Liberation Education
Steward of Selenite & Sage Healing Homestead Co.
Where Reflection Meets Transformation

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WHEW…

I could write an entire article about people needing the shelter of Blackness to weather the storm.

So I did.

On July 4, 2026, people gathered on the National Mall to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States.

They came to celebrate freedom.

American freedom.

The kind wrapped in flags, fireworks, military performances, patriotic speeches, and carefully edited stories about who this country has always been. The kind that allows masked white-bodied people to march with treasonous flags and call it freedom and free speech. The kind that is brazen enough to chant, "Reclaim America!", “Life, Liberty, Victory”, and demand the removal of immigrants whilst being masked so we can pretend they are not our children’s teachers, Dr.s, bankers, that will deny us loans, and often our very own neighbors.

And then the sky opened. (Even Mother Nature is sick of the nonsense)

Severe weather forced the evacuation of the National Mall, sending attendees in search of nearby permanent buildings.

Among the places they entered for protection was the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Chiiiiiild….

The irony wrote itself.

People who had gathered to celebrate 250 years of American freedom found shelter inside a building dedicated to the people for whom that freedom was never fully intended.

People sought protection beneath a roof preserving the history this country has repeatedly tried to minimize, sanitize, ban, distort, and forget.

People waited out the storm inside the memory of Black survival.

And the internet laughed.

I laughed too.

Because sometimes the symbolism is so precise that all you can do is laugh before you begin to cry.

But after the laughter, I found myself sitting with a deeper question: (as I have said repeatedly, I do not move at the speed of headlines, I process)

What does it mean that when the storm came, people needed the shelter of Blackness?

Because Blackness was shelter long before the museum became a building.

America Wants the Shelter, Not the Responsibility

Black labor sheltered the economy.

Black organizing sheltered democracy.

Black creativity sheltered American culture from its own sterility.

Black music gave people somewhere to place emotions they did not yet have language to name.

Black spiritual traditions held communities together when every institution around us was designed to separate our families, destroy our connections, and erase our memory.

Black mutual aid fed people whom the government abandoned.

Black movements developed much of the language America now uses to speak about liberation, justice, collective care, intersectionality, resistance, accessibility, and freedom.

Black communities have repeatedly shown this country how to create life under conditions designed to produce death.

How to create family when our families were legally separated.

How to preserve memory when our stories were excluded from the archive.

How to build community when every public institution was organized to deny us belonging.

How to make music from mourning.

How to make beauty in the middle of brutality.

How to create shelter while standing inside the storm.

America continues returning to Black people for the very things it simultaneously devalues.

It wants our labor when something needs to be built.

Our votes when an election needs to be won.

Our organizing when democracy needs to be saved.

Our language when a movement needs to sound revolutionary.

Our creativity when the culture becomes stale.

Our resilience when everyone else needs instructions for survival.

Our care when the community is in crisis.

Our forgiveness when the violence becomes too visible to deny.

Our joy when the room needs energy.

Our grief when the country needs a redemption story.

America wants Blackness to function like a public utility.

Always available.

Always accessible.

Always prepared to absorb the impact.

Always ready to open the doors when somebody else gets caught in the rain.

But America does not want the responsibility that should come with entering the shelter.

It does not want to study what built it.

It does not want to acknowledge why it became necessary.

It does not want to repair the conditions that keep producing the storm.

And it certainly does not want to make America safe for the Black people who have spent generations sheltering everyone else.

That is the contradiction.

America wants Blackness to be the roof, the foundation, the emergency exit, the moral compass, the cultural engine, the political strategy, and the gathering place.

It simply does not want to protect the people holding the structure together.

Safe Enough to Save You

There is a piece of parenting advice that has circulated through social media for years.

White parents tell one another that if their child becomes lost, frightened, or separated from them, they should find a Black woman.

Some say find a Black person.

Some have even said they teach their children to look for a “big Black man.”

I find that to be very telling and interesting…

Social media is a cultural archive.

It tells us what people repeat.

What they normalize.

What they teach their children.

What they instinctively believe even when their politics, institutions, and public narratives say something entirely different.

So what does it mean to privately teach a white child that Black people are where they should seek safety while publicly participating in a culture that teaches that same child Black people are the danger?

What does it mean to tell a frightened white child to find a Black man when America has spent centuries constructing Black men as brutes, predators, criminals, and inherently violent?

What does it mean to send that child toward a Black woman when Black women have been portrayed as aggressive, sexually irresponsible, emotionally unstable, unfit, and undeserving of protection?

What does it mean to trust Black people with the safety of your children while refusing to build a society that keeps Black children safe?

That is not merely hypocrisy.

It is function.

Because supremacy culture does not need its stories about Black people to be consistent.

It only needs them to be useful.

The Black man becomes a brute when his body is needed to justify fear, policing, exclusion, incarceration, or violence.

• He becomes the big, strong protector when a white child needs help.

The Black woman becomes Jezebel when her body is being controlled, exploited, desired, or blamed.

• She becomes Mammy when someone needs her labor, care, nurturing, emotional capacity, or protection.

She is too aggressive when she protects herself.

• But instinctively comforting when someone else is afraid.

Too irresponsible to be trusted with resources.

• Responsible enough to be entrusted with everybody’s survival.

Too loud when she advocates for her own children.

• Reassuring when a white child needs to find the way home.

  ---

The stereotype changes according to what whiteness needs from the Black body standing in front of it.

Danger.

Labor.

Desire.

Protection.

Entertainment.

Care.

Punishment.

Forgiveness.

Shelter.

The role changes.

The entitlement remains.

Black people are considered safe enough to shelter everyone else but rarely innocent enough, vulnerable enough, or human enough to deserve shelter ourselves.

And that contradiction begins long before Black children are old enough to understand what is being demanded of them.

Everything above names the contradiction.

Below the paywall, we are going deeper into the system beneath it:

• Why Black availability is treated as normal while Black autonomy is treated as aggression.

• How the Mammy, Jezebel, brute, and adultification stereotypes assign different uses to Black bodies while preserving the same entitlement.

• Why Black joy becomes communal property while Black grief remains a private Black burden.

• How America uses Blackness as an external nervous system—asking us to detect the storm, survive it, explain it, organize everyone through it, and create meaning from the wreckage.

• Why proximity to Black people is not the same as protecting Black people.

• And what the still-unfolding story of Nolan Xavier Wells asks us to confront about friendship, vulnerability, responsibility, and who gets home.

This is the work of Liberation Education.

We do not merely identify oppression.

We examine its architecture.

We trace how it enters institutions, relationships, bodies, identities, and nervous systems.

And then we practice interruption.

Paid subscriptions allow me to continue creating rigorous, accessible liberation education while building the frameworks, resources, and communal practices that move us beyond performance and toward embodied transformation.

This is the reciprocity that keeps Liberation Education sustainable.

$10 a month. $100 a year. $150 a year as an Equity Partner — which helps sustain access by funding scholarships for community members who need them.

And if cost is the barrier, you are not excluded here. Scholarships are available at scholarships@desireebstephens.com. No proof required. No story owed. Just ask.

Take a breath. 🌬️

Then come deeper.

Subscribe now

Read more

Last week I gave myself permission to lie down in the middle of the afternoon.

Not because I had finished everything.

Not because I had earned it.

Simply because my body asked.

And do you know what happened?

Nothing peaceful.

My mind started running through lists. My chest tightened. My hands wanted a phone, a task, a reason. Some part of me kept whispering that I was falling behind, that someone somewhere was disappointed, that lying still was dangerous.

I was resting.

And my body was bracing.

If you have ever tried to rest and felt worse instead of better, I want you to know something before we go any further.

You are not broken.

You are not bad at rest.

Your nervous system is telling the truth about where it has been.

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What the discomfort is actually saying

Here is what supremacy culture never taught us.

Rest is not just an activity. Rest is a state the nervous system has to feel safe enough to enter.

And for many of us, safety has been rare.

If you grew up in a home where stillness meant trouble was coming...

If you learned that your value depended on being useful...

If you have spent years in workplaces where slowing down made you a target...

If you live in a body this world was not built to accommodate...

Then your nervous system did exactly what nervous systems do. It adapted. It learned to stay ready. It learned that vigilance was survival and motion was protection.

So when you finally stop moving, your body does not immediately understand that the danger has passed.

It asks: Are you sure?

That restlessness you feel when you try to pause?

That is not laziness fighting discipline.

That is a survival strategy meeting an unfamiliar invitation.

The discomfort is not a sign that rest is wrong for you.

The discomfort is information.

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🌬️ A somatic pause

Before we go further, let’s practice what we’re naming.

Right now, wherever you are reading this, pause.

Let your shoulders drop away from your ears.

Unclench your jaw.

Take one slow breath in. Let the exhale be longer than the inhale.

Now notice: what did your body do while you were reading about rest?

Did something tighten?

Did something soften?

Did some part of you start planning how to use this information?

Whatever you found, you do not need to change it.

You just needed to meet it.

That noticing is the work. Everything else this week builds from here.

When you’re ready, continue.

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The pillar we are dismantling

This week we sit with Sense of Urgency, one of the pillars of supremacy culture we named in the seasonal opening.

Sense of Urgency tells us everything must happen immediately.

It tells us pausing is falling behind.

It tells us the deadline matters more than the body meeting it.

And here is the part I need you to hear.

Urgency is not just around us. It is in us. It lives in the shallow breath, the clenched jaw, the inability to sit through a quiet moment without reaching for something.

We internalized it because we had to.

We do not have to keep it

.

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The rest of this reflection is for paid subscribers

Behind this line: the week’s somatic practice, a word for my disabled sibs, journal prompts, and Practice Your Praxis.

This is the reciprocity that keeps Liberation Education sustainable.

$10 a month. $100 a year. $150 a year as an Equity Partner — which helps sustain access by funding scholarships for community members who need them.

And if cost is the barrier, you are not excluded here. Scholarships are available at scholarships@desireebstephens.com. No proof required. No story owed. Just ask.

Because rest should not be a luxury good. And neither should learning how to practice it.

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Rest • Sovereignty • Refusal

Every year, July arrives carrying a question many of us spend the rest of the year avoiding.

Not because we don’t know the answer. Because we’re afraid of what the answer might require.

For six months, we’ve been moving through The Liberation Method™ together.

January invited us to listen.

February invited us to stay.

March invited us to release.

April invited us to emerge.

May invited us to bloom.

June invited us to expand.

And now July arrives with what may be the most difficult invitation of all:

Pause.

Not forever.

Not because you’ve failed.

Not because you’ve earned it.

Not because you’ve checked enough boxes to deserve it.

Simply because every living thing requires periods of restoration.

The trees know this.

The oceans know this.

The nervous system knows this.

The only thing insisting otherwise is supremacy culture.

And many of us have spent so long living inside those messages that we mistake exhaustion for purpose and depletion for commitment.

This season asks us to consider another possibility.

What if rest is not the opposite of liberation?

What if rest is part of liberation?

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This year, the invitation feels especially important.

Because for many of us, the first half of 2026 has been heavy.

The world continues to move at a pace our bodies were never designed to sustain.

The news cycle never stops.

The demands never stop.

The notifications never stop.

The expectations never stop.

And somewhere along the way, many of us stopped asking whether all of this constant movement was actually serving us.

• We simply adapted.

• We normalized it.

• We called survival resilience.

• We called burnout dedication.

• We called depletion responsibility.

But adaptation is not the same thing as wellness.

And survival is not the same thing as freedom.

July invites us to examine the cost.

Disability Awareness Month and the Wisdom of the Body

It is no coincidence that this season overlaps with Disability Awareness Month.

Disabled people have long been forced to confront realities that dominant culture spends enormous energy trying to avoid.

The reality that bodies have limits.

The reality that productivity is not a measure of human value.

The reality that rest is not optional.

The reality that accessibility benefits everyone.

As someone living with a dynamic disability, I know firsthand that there are days when my body allows me to do more and days when my body requires me to do less.

Neither day changes my worth.

Neither day changes my humanity.

Neither day changes my value.

Yet we live inside systems that constantly suggest otherwise.

Systems that ask:

“What did you accomplish?”

Before asking:

“How are you?”

Systems that celebrate productivity while ignoring capacity.

Systems that reward output while dismissing embodiment.

Disability justice offers us another framework.

One that understands interdependence.

One that understands adaptation.

One that understands that access needs are not weaknesses.

They are information.

And liberation requires us to listen.

This month, we will spend time exploring what disabled communities have long understood:

Rest is not a reward. Rest is an access need.

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The Lie

The lie is that your worth is tied to your productivity.

The lie is that rest must be earned.

The lie is that slowing down means falling behind.

The lie is that your body is a machine whose only purpose is output.

The lie is that saying “no” makes you selfish.

The lie is that boundaries make you difficult.

The lie is that exhaustion proves commitment.

The lie is that depletion is normal.

The lie is that your body is the problem.

The truth is often far more uncomfortable.

Many of our systems rely on our inability to pause.

Because when people pause, they begin to notice.

They notice what hurts.

They notice what is unsustainable.

They notice what no longer aligns.

They notice what needs to change.

And systems built on extraction rarely benefit from awareness.

The Permission

July offers permission.

Permission to rest before collapse.

Permission to listen before crisis.

Permission to stop explaining your needs.

Permission to honor your capacity.

Permission to change your mind.

Permission to move more slowly.

Permission to do less.

Permission to do one thing well instead of ten things poorly.

Permission to disappoint expectations that require your self-abandonment.

Permission to trust your body.

Permission to trust pause.

Permission to trust yourself.

The Method

In The Liberation Method™, July is the season of:

Rest

Creating intentional space for restoration.

Reset

Recalibrating what is no longer working.

Resist

Refusing participation in systems that require our depletion.

This month we continue dismantling three pillars of supremacy culture:

Sense of Urgency

The belief that everything must happen immediately.

Worship of the Written Word

The belief that intellectual knowledge matters more than embodied wisdom.

Fear of Open Conflict

The belief that discomfort must be avoided rather than engaged.

Our somatic principles for July are:

Resource

Establishing safety.

Self-Regulation

Staying with what is felt.

Orienting

Returning to present-time awareness.

And our collective question remains:

What becomes possible when I pause without guilt?

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What We’ll Explore Together This Month

Each week, paid subscribers will receive a deeper reflection designed to help us move through this season intentionally.

Together we’ll explore:

Week One: Rest

Why rest feels so uncomfortable and what our nervous systems are trying to tell us.

Week Two: Reset

How to recognize when our lives, relationships, routines, and commitments need recalibration.

Week Three: Resist

What it means to refuse grind culture, urgency culture, and self-abandonment.

Week Four: Integration

Creating sustainable practices that support liberation beyond this season.

These won’t be productivity hacks.

They won’t be optimization strategies.

They won’t be another way to turn healing into performance.

They will be invitations.

Questions.

Practices.

Reflections.

And hopefully, a little more room to breathe.

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Practice Your Praxis

Self

Where have I confused exhaustion with worthiness?

Home

What would make my environment feel more supportive, restorative, or accessible this month?

Work & Community

Where can I choose sustainability instead of urgency?

An Invitation Into the Season

If the first half of this year has left you tired...

If you’re carrying grief, uncertainty, overwhelm, or simply the weight of being human in complicated times...

If you’re learning how to trust your body again...

If you’re discovering that healing is not linear...

This season is for you.

Not because you need fixing.

Not because you need another self-improvement project.

But because liberation requires places where we can remember that we are more than what we produce.

Throughout July, I’ll be sharing weekly reflections, somatic practices, journal prompts, disability justice perspectives, and practical ways to embody Rest • Reset • Resist in everyday life.

I hope you’ll join me.

Because another world is possible.

But we cannot build it while abandoning ourselves.

And sometimes the most revolutionary act available to us is choosing not to run when everything around us demands speed.

Welcome to the Season of Rest • Reset • Resist.

Let’s see what becomes possible when we pause long enough to listen.

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Continue the Journey

📖 Paid subscribers will receive weekly July reflections, practices, and seasonal guidance throughout the month.

If you’d like to go deeper:

Liberation Education Academy
https://desireebstephens.com/academy-membership

The Healing Homestead Collective
https://desireebstephens.com/homestead

Liberation Education Newsletter
https://desireebstephens.substack.com/subscribe

Liberation healing is not linear.

It is seasonal.

It is cyclical.

It is relational.

And this month, it begins with permission to pause.

In solidarity and liberation,

Desireé B. Stephens
Educator • Counselor • Community Builder
Founder, Make Shi(f)t Happen
Writer of Liberation Education
Steward of The Healing Homestead Collective

New Agreements. New Systems. Deeper Connection. 🌬️

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A few years ago, if you had told me that one of the most impactful things I would offer my community was a virtual room where people quietly worked on their own tasks, I probably would have laughed.

After all, we’re taught that transformation comes through grand gestures.

The breakthrough.

The retreat.

The workshop.

The life-changing moment.

And sometimes it does.

But increasingly, I came to believe that liberation is built in much smaller moments.

• It’s built when you finally schedule the doctor’s appointment you’ve been putting off.

• When you answer the email that has been sitting in your inbox for three weeks.

• When you fold the laundry instead of letting it become another source of shame.

• When you meal prep because your future self deserves care.

• When you complete the application, write the proposal, update the resume, submit the assignment, or start the project that matters to you.

Those moments may seem small.

They aren’t.

They are acts of self-trust.

They are acts of self-respect.

They are evidence that we are building lives rooted in intention rather than survival mode.

The truth is that many of us aren’t struggling because we don’t know what to do.

We’re struggling because doing things alone is hard.

Especially for those of us navigating burnout, trauma, chronic stress, neurodivergence, caregiving responsibilities, disability, grief, activism fatigue, or simply the reality of being human in a world that asks too much and offers too little support.

That is where body doubling comes in.

For those unfamiliar, body doubling is a practice where people work alongside one another while each focusing on their own tasks. There is no pressure to socialize. No expectation that everyone is doing the same thing. Just the gentle accountability that comes from being witnessed in community.

And it works.

Not because someone is forcing you to be productive.

Because community reduces isolation.

Because co-regulation matters.

Because humans were never meant to do everything alone.

Practice Your Praxis

Self

What is one task you’ve been carrying that would make your life easier if it were finally done?

Not the biggest task.

Not the most important task.

Just the next task.

Maybe it’s scheduling an appointment, responding to an email, taking a walk, organizing a drawer, or drinking more water this week.

Ask yourself:

What support would make this feel more accessible?

What would happen if you stopped judging yourself for needing support and started honoring the reality that humans are interdependent?

Home

Look around your living space.

What is one unfinished task that creates stress every time you see it?

Laundry?
A pile of mail?
Meal planning?
Cleaning out a closet?
Making that maintenance call?

Choose one.

Set a timer for 15 minutes and begin.

Not because you have to finish it.

Because progress is often more liberating than perfection.

If possible, invite a family member, friend, partner, or body double to work alongside you.

Work & Community

Consider a task you’ve been avoiding in your work, volunteer efforts, activism, business, or community commitments.

What keeps it stuck?

Is it lack of time?

Lack of clarity?

Fear of getting it wrong?

Trying to do it alone?

Identify one person, group, or community space that could help create accountability and support.

Liberation isn’t about proving you can carry everything by yourself.

It’s about building relationships and systems that make carrying the load more sustainable for everyone.

Because often the barrier isn’t capability.

It’s isolation.

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Our Monthly Body Double Session meets:

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Bring your task.

We’ll bring the community.

Needing support is not evidence that something is wrong with you.

What I’ve learned about body doubling over the years is that it reveals something much deeper than productivity.

It reveals how disconnected many of us have become from collective care.

We live in a culture that celebrates individual achievement while quietly dismantling the communal structures that once helped people survive. The result is that we often interpret needing support as personal failure.

If I were stronger...
If I were more disciplined...
If I were more organized...
If I were better...

I wouldn’t need help.

But needing support is not evidence that something is wrong with you.

It’s evidence that you’re human.

One of the pillars of supremacy culture is individualism: the belief that success and failure belong solely to the individual. When we internalize that belief, every unfinished task becomes a moral judgment instead of what it actually is: a task.

Body doubling interrupts that narrative.

It reminds us that community is a resource.

That accountability can be compassionate.

That care can look like sitting quietly on Zoom while someone else folds laundry, writes a grant proposal, studies for an exam, or meal preps for the week.

And perhaps most importantly, it reminds us that liberation is not always found in extraordinary moments.

Sometimes liberation looks like finally doing the thing.

Below is the zoom link as we are live at this moment.

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At the beginning of June, I asked you (and myself) a question:

How do I grow without abandoning myself?

In the article, I wrote about expansion.

I wrote about capacity. About discernment. About boundaries. About growing without abandoning myself.

Looking back, I realize I may have answered that question more honestly than I intended.

Some of you may have noticed I got quieter.

Not because the vision disappeared.

Not because the work stopped.

Not because I burned out.

But because expansion doesn’t always look like adding more.

Sometimes expansion looks like turning one eye on the stove to low so you can tend another pot.

Sometimes it looks like shifting your attention toward what requires care.

Sometimes it looks like trusting that everything doesn’t need to boil at once.

And sometimes it looks like honoring the capacity you actually have instead of the capacity you wish you had.

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At the time, I thought I was writing about expansion.

Now that the month is ending, I realize I was actually writing about discernment.

Like many people, I was taught that growth meant addition.

Add another project.

Add another responsibility.

Add another offering.

Add another goal.

Add another thing to carry.

The problem is that eventually there is no room left for you.

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What I have learned this month is that expansion is not always about adding.

Sometimes expansion is about removing what keeps you from hearing yourself.

This month required me to become honest about capacity.

Not the capacity I wish I had.

Not the capacity I think I should have.

Not the capacity that supremacy culture rewards.

My actual capacity.

As someone living with chronic pain and dynamic disability, this lesson arrives repeatedly.

Some days I can build.

Some days I can create.

Some days I can teach.

Some days my work is simply staying in relationship with myself instead of declaring war on my body.

That is not failure.

That is discernment.

I also noticed something else.

Many of us have been taught to confuse expansion with access.

We think every opportunity deserves a yes.

Every invitation deserves our time.

Every need deserves our attention.

Every relationship deserves continued access to us.

But expansion without boundaries becomes self-abandonment.

This month I found myself returning to a truth I have had to learn again and again:

Not everything that grows deserves more of me.

• Some things need pruning.

• Some things need structure.

• Some things need limits.

• And some things need to end.

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  ---

The most expansive thing I have done lately is protect my peace without apology.

The most expansive thing I have done lately is choose sustainability over urgency.

The most expansive thing I have done lately is stop measuring success by how much I can carry.

Because one of the pillars I continue to dismantle is Progress Is Bigger/More.

We are taught that if something is working, it should always become larger.

But nature doesn’t work that way.

Growth happens in seasons.

Expansion is followed by integration.

Movement is followed by rest.

Creation is followed by tending.

The question is no longer:

How do I grow?

The question has become:

How do I stay connected to myself while I grow?

That is the lesson I am carrying into the next season.

Not more.

More honest.

Not bigger.

More aligned.

Not faster.

More sustainable.

And maybe that is what expansion was trying to teach me all along.

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If you’re a paid subscriber, the reflection continues below.

This month’s Liberation Lesson, in partnership with arrived at exactly the right moment. While it is typically shared at the beginning of the month, some lessons reveal their wisdom more clearly when we can look back and trace the path we’ve already walked.

Below, I’m unpacking June through the LIBERATE framework and exploring what this season taught me about capacity, discernment, foundations, and sustainable growth.

If you’ve ever wondered how to honor your actual capacity while still moving toward the life you’re building, this part is for you.

Thank you for helping make this work possible. Your support creates space for these reflections, the Academy, the Homestead, and the continued practice of liberation in community.

Upgrade to continue reading.

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Equity Partner — $150/year
Help expand equitable access while supporting the continued development of Liberation Education, The Liberation Method™, and community-based learning resources.

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The Sociology of a Dead Child at 5:15 am

I am writing this from my phone wrapped in my Snuggie, sandwiched between two of my children while the rest of the house sleeps.

There is something strangely intimate about the early morning hours.

The world is quiet.

The algorithms are still working.

And social media continues doing what it does best:

revealing us to ourselves.

For all of its flaws, social media has become one of the largest sociology experiments humanity has ever conducted.

People sit comfortably inside their homes, protected by walls, distance, anonymity, and the absence of immediate consequences. In that comfort, they often reveal exactly what they believe.

Not what they would say in public.

Not what they would say standing in front of a grieving mother.

What they actually believe.

This morning I came across the tragic story of a one-year-old child who lost his life after police fired into a vehicle during a response to what was reported as a shoplifting incident involving diapers.

Before we discuss anything else, I want to remind us of something that should be obvious:

The death penalty is not the punishment for theft.

Not for diapers.

Not for food.

Not for clothing.

Not for property.

And certainly not for a one-year-old child.

What struck me almost as much as the story itself were the comments underneath it.

Hundreds of people responding.

Arguing.

Defending.

Questioning.

Mourning.

Blaming.

Predicting.

The thing is, at first glance, these comments appear wildly different.

They aren’t.

They fall into distinct categories.

And those categories tell us something important about where we are as a society.

Category One: The Grief Responders

These were the people saying:

“Praying for the family.”

“Rest in peace little angel.”

“My heart breaks for that mother.”

“This is so sad.”

These responses center human loss.

They begin with empathy.

They recognize that before this became a political debate, a legal argument, or a social media post, a child died.

There is something profoundly human about this response.

It reminds us that grief is often our first and healthiest reaction to tragedy.

The challenge, however, is that grief alone rarely changes systems.

Compassion is necessary.

But compassion without action can become a way of witnessing suffering without confronting its causes.

These comments reveal something beautiful:

People still have the capacity to care.

But caring and accountability are not the same thing.

Category Two: The Receipt Investigators

A surprising number of comments focused on one thing:

“I hope she has the receipt.”

“Always keep your receipts.”

“I take pictures of my receipts.”

“Your bank account will prove you paid.”

The entire conversation became centered on proving innocence.

Think about that for a moment.

A child is dead.

Yet much of the discussion revolves around documentation.

Evidence.

Proof.

Verification.

Why?

Because many people understand, consciously or unconsciously, that legitimacy determines who receives empathy.

If the diapers were paid for, then sympathy is justified.

If the diapers were stolen, then sympathy becomes conditional.

This is one of supremacy culture’s most powerful tricks.

It teaches us that human worth must first be earned.

That compassion should be distributed based on behavior.

That before we mourn a child, we must determine whether the adults involved were sufficiently deserving.

But even if the diapers had been stolen—

a child still died.

The value of a child’s life cannot be contingent upon a receipt.

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Category Three: The Procedural Defenders

These comments sound like:

“Why did she run?”

“She should have complied.”

“The officer feared for his life.”

“The driver tried to hit the officer.”

“If she hadn’t fled, none of this would have happened.”

These comments are fascinating because they shift attention away from outcomes and toward procedure.

A child died.

But the focus becomes whether the rules were followed.

Whether commands were obeyed.

Whether compliance occurred.

Notice what happens psychologically.

The conversation moves away from:

“Should a one-year-old be dead?”

and toward

“Did the adults follow the correct protocol?”

This is a cultural pattern.

When institutions cause harm, many people instinctively begin auditing the behavior of those harmed.

Not because they are evil.

Because they have been taught to believe systems are fundamentally legitimate.

If something terrible happened, someone must have broken the rules.

And if someone broke the rules, the outcome becomes easier to rationalize.

This is how institutional accountability often disappears.

Category Four: The Skeptics

These comments said:

“This can’t be the whole story.”

“I want to see the body camera footage.”

“Something doesn’t add up.”

“I need more information.”

Of all the categories, this one may be the healthiest.

Skepticism is not the problem.

We should want evidence.

We should want facts.

We should want investigations.

The danger appears when skepticism becomes selective.

When some stories require endless proof while others are accepted immediately.

Healthy skepticism asks questions.

Weaponized skepticism delays accountability indefinitely.

The difference matters.

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Category Five: The System Critics

These comments asked:

“Why were police involved over diapers?”

“Were there no other options?”

“Could they not have used spike strips?”

“Why shoot into a vehicle?”

“How did this escalate this far?”

These people are asking structural questions.

They are not focused solely on the individuals involved.

They are examining the system that produced the outcome.

This is often where liberation work begins.

Because liberation asks a different question.

Not:

“Who is the bad person?”

But:

“What conditions made this possible?”

A society reveals its values through what it is willing to risk human life protecting.

When we see a child die during an incident involving diapers, it forces us to ask difficult questions about poverty, policing, criminalization, and how we define public safety.

Category Six: The Punishment Seekers

Then there were the comments that essentially said:

“The mother is responsible.”

“She should be charged.”

“This happened because she fled.”

“People need accountability.”

These comments emerge from what I often call the punishment imagination.

Many of us have been conditioned to believe every tragedy must have an individual villain.

Someone must pay.

Someone must suffer.

Someone must be punished.

The problem is that punishment and accountability are not the same thing.

Accountability asks:

“How do we prevent this from happening again?”

Punishment asks:

“Who can we blame?”

One is future-oriented.

The other is revenge-oriented.

And societies built primarily around punishment inevitably create more harm than healing.

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What These Comments Reveal

At first glance, these comments seem unrelated.

But they all revolve around one central question:

Who deserves our empathy?

The grieving commenters extend empathy automatically.

The receipt commenters extend empathy conditionally.

The procedural defenders withhold empathy until rules are evaluated.

The skeptics suspend empathy pending evidence.

The system critics expand empathy to include broader social conditions.

The punishment seekers redirect empathy toward authority and away from those harmed.

Every comment is actually answering the same question.

Who deserves compassion?

Who deserves protection?

Whose mistakes justify suffering?

Whose suffering requires justification?

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The rest of this article explores why these responses are so predictable, what they reveal about supremacy culture’s Right to Comfort, and how we practice liberation when tragedy becomes a public debate.

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Continue reading below.

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Before I even begin to break down the Karmelo Anthony case, I want to say (or perhaps reiterate) that I do not move at the speed of headlines.

I have never believed that every tragedy requires an immediate opinion.

Some things deserve space.

Space for processing.

Space for grief.

Space for truth to emerge beneath speculation.

Space for the nervous system to settle enough that we can think critically instead of merely reacting.

There are already many people having powerful conversations surrounding this case and the broader issues it raises. Black scholars. Black organizers. Black journalists. Black attorneys. Black educators. Black content creators.

People who have spent countless hours researching, teaching, grieving, fact-checking, and helping others make sense of what they are witnessing.

I am deeply grateful for that work.

In particular, I am grateful for Black women.

Because if we’re honest, much of the intellectual labor that helps this country understand itself is carried on the backs of Black women who are rarely compensated, rarely protected, and far too often expected to educate while simultaneously carrying the weight of collective grief.

Their advocacy, brilliance, research, and generosity create space for others to find their own voice and contribute from their own lane.

That is what I mean when I talk about collective work.

No single person carries the entire conversation.

No single person carries the entire movement.

We each bring what we have.

We each contribute where we are called.

So before we go any further, I want to pause and offer gratitude for the countless Black advocates whose labor often goes unseen while their impact ripples through every conversation we are able to have.

In particular, I want to take a moment to specifically acknowledge

Her work surrounding this case has been deeply impactful, not simply because of the analysis she has offered, but because of the courage required to continue offering it.

As so often happens when Black women refuse to make themselves smaller for the comfort of others, she has been met with a barrage of online criticism, harassment, death threats, coordinated attacks, and attempts by media outlets and commentators to discredit, intimidate, and silence her.

And yet she remains.

Still researching.

Still writing.

Still speaking.

Still standing firmly in her convictions.

Still doing the work.

Whether one agrees with every conclusion she reaches is beside the point.

Because none of us arrive at understanding alone.

Now, with that said, let’s talk about something that has been showing up repeatedly in the conversations surrounding this case.

The insistence that race be removed from the analysis.

And I think that tells us far more than many people realize.

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Every time a case involving race enters public conversation, there is a predictable response:

“Leave race out of it.”

“This isn’t about race.”

“Why does everything have to be about race?”

The problem is that race is not being inserted into these conversations.

Race is already there.

Race is embedded in the history, laws, institutions, narratives, and social realities that shape how people experience danger in the United States.

When people demand that race be removed from the analysis, what they are often asking is that we ignore the context that helps explain why people perceive threats the way they do.

And context matters.

Especially when the conversation is about fear, safety, self-defense, and survival.

Somatic Pause

When conversations touch race, violence, fear, innocence, and identity, many of us leave our bodies and move immediately into defense, justification, agreement, disagreement, or debate.

So before we go any further, I want to invite you to slow down.

Take a breath.

Notice your feet against the floor.

Notice where your shoulders are.

Notice your jaw.

Notice your chest.

Notice what is happening in your body as you read.

Not what you think about what I’ve written.

What you feel.

Are you tense?

Angry?

Defensive?

Curious?

Afraid?

Validated?

Exhausted?

Relieved?

Do you feel the need to prove something?

Do you feel the need to protect something?

Do you feel the need to dismiss something?

Just notice.

No judgment.

No story.

No immediate action required.

Just breath and awareness 🌬️

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One of the challenges of discussing race in America is that many of us have been conditioned to treat discomfort as evidence that something is wrong.

But discomfort is not always a signal that we are under attack.

Sometimes discomfort is simply what it feels like when our worldview encounters information it has not fully integrated.

Sometimes discomfort is what happens when two things we believe to be true collide with one another.

And sometimes discomfort is grief.

The grief of realizing that the world may be more complicated, more painful, and more unequal than we wanted to believe.

So as you continue reading, I want to invite you to stay curious about your reactions.

Not just the reactions you have to this case.

The reactions you have to yourself.

Because what follows is not simply a conversation about one young man, one family, one verdict, or one tragedy.

It is a conversation about the stories we tell ourselves about race, danger, innocence, fear, and whose experiences we are willing to accept as legitimate evidence.

Take one more breath. 🌬️

And let’s continue.

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The Only Demographic We Are Asked To Ignore

One of the most fascinating things about American conversations around race is that race is the only demographic category we are routinely asked to remove from analysis.

• We don’t remove gender.

• We don’t remove age.

• We don’t remove class.

• We don’t remove religion.

• We don’t remove ability.

In fact, we understand instinctively that demographics provide context.

When a woman says she fears a man she does not know, society may debate whether that fear is fair, but very few people argue that gender is irrelevant.

We understand that patterns of male violence influence how many women move through the world.

When an elderly person is assaulted by a teenager, we acknowledge that age matters.

When a child is abused by an adult, we acknowledge that age matters.

When a disabled person is harmed by a caretaker, we acknowledge that ability and power matter.

Likewise, when women abuse men, children abuse parents, or members of any group harm those around them, we do not pretend demographics, power, or social realities suddenly become irrelevant. We examine the context to better understand what happened.

We recognize that human beings do not experience danger in a vacuum.

History, patterns, power, and lived experience all shape how people assess risk.

Until whiteness enters the conversation.

Then suddenly context becomes prejudice.

History becomes bias.

Pattern recognition becomes racism.

And demographics become irrelevant.

The question is why.

Why is race the only demographic category Americans are expected to ignore?

I would argue that the answer is because race is not merely an identity category in the United States.

Race is also a power structure.

And examining power structures makes people (white-bodied people) uncomfortable.

Because once we acknowledge that demographics can matter, we are forced to confront what history teaches us, and the implications of whiteness and how you represent that history.

Women are not cautious around unfamiliar men because they hate men.

They are cautious because enough violence has occurred that caution became adaptive.

The caution is not born from imagination.

It is born from experience.

Likewise, Black people are not cautious around racial hostility because we hate white people.

We are cautious because American history repeatedly demonstrates that white hostility toward Black people can escalate into violence.

The distinction matters.

One is prejudice.

The other is a response shaped by experience.

What people often call “racial paranoia” is frequently historical memory.

• A memory carried not just individually but collectively.

• A memory that remembers enslaved people hunted by patrols.

• A memory that remembers lynchings advertised in newspapers.

• A memory that remembers entire towns destroyed.

• A memory that remembers churches bombed.

• A memory that remembers children murdered.

• A memory that remembers civil rights leaders assassinated.

• A memory that remembers police dogs, fire hoses, cross burnings, and white mobs.

This is what many people fail to understand.

Black fear did not emerge from nowhere.

It emerged from evidence.

And evidence changes behavior.

It is why people lock their doors.

It is why parents teach children stranger danger.

It is why women text their friends when they get home safely.

It is why we wear seatbelts.

We alter behavior based on perceived risk.

Yet when Black people acknowledge racial risk, we are often told to ignore the evidence that informed that concern.

We are asked to become the only people in America expected to navigate danger without historical memory.

Imagine asking women to forget every statistic on sexual violence before assessing a situation.

Imagine asking elderly people to forget every scam targeting seniors before answering the phone.

Imagine asking Jewish people to forget antisemitism before evaluating a threat.

Imagine asking LGBTQ people to forget hate crimes before deciding whether a space feels safe.

The request sounds absurd because it is absurd.

And yet this is exactly what many Americans ask of Black people every day.

Forget history.

Forget patterns.

Forget evidence.

Forget experience.

Then make your assessment.

That is not objectivity.

It is denial.

The truth is that race remains relevant because race continues to shape outcomes.

The truth is that Black people often assess danger differently because history has taught us different lessons.

The truth is that there are moments when recognizing racial reality is not only reasonable but life-preserving.

Not because every white person is dangerous.

But because pretending racial violence is impossible has never protected Black people.

Historically, it has often done the opposite.

Perhaps the real question is not why Black people consider race when evaluating risk.

The real question is why so many white people become uncomfortable when whiteness is analyzed the same way every other demographic category is.

Take another breath 🌬️

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What we’ve explored so far is not actually about Karmelo Anthony.

Not yet.

It is about the framework.

The lens.

The historical and cultural context that informs how Black people understand danger, safety, fear, and survival in a country where race has never stopped shaping outcomes.

Because before we can talk honestly about this case, we have to talk honestly about the conditions that surround it.

In the paid portion of this article, I want to go deeper.

If Liberation Education has helped you think more critically, feel more deeply, or understand these conversations with greater nuance, I invite you to become a paid subscriber.

Your subscription doesn’t just support this work.

It helps create equity access for those who cannot afford it and sustains the ongoing labor of research, writing, education, and community building.

Because liberation has always been collective work.

Liberation Education Subscription Options

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Juneteenth is approaching.

Every year, more people learn about it.

Every year, more corporations acknowledge it.

Every year, more businesses market around it.

And every year, I find myself asking the same question:

Who is benefiting from Juneteenth?

Not who is celebrating.

Who is profiting?

Because while I absolutely believe liberation is collective work, I also understand that we cannot talk honestly about Juneteenth without talking about economics.

For centuries, wealth in this country was built through the extraction of Black labor, Black bodies, Black land, Black knowledge, and Black culture.

That wealth did not disappear.

It accumulated.

It compounded.

It was inherited.

And the effects of that extraction continue to shape who has access to opportunity, housing, education, healthcare, generational wealth, and economic security today.

Sometimes I think we rush too quickly to celebration because sitting with the truth is uncomfortable.

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Juneteenth is a celebration.

It should be.

Black people have every right to celebrate survival.

To celebrate joy.

To celebrate culture.

To celebrate the ancestors who endured what should never have been endured.

But Juneteenth is also complicated.

Because freedom arrived late.

More than two years late for those enslaved in Texas.

And even then, freedom did not arrive with land.

It did not arrive with reparations.

It did not arrive with generational wealth.

It did not arrive with safety.

It did not arrive with equality.

The chains were removed, but many of the systems remained.

And in many ways, they still do.

That is what makes Juneteenth both beautiful and heartbreaking.

We celebrate because our ancestors survived.

We grieve because they should never have had to.

We dance because joy is resistance.

We remember because forgetting is dangerous.

We gather because community has always been one of the ways Black people transformed suffering into possibility.

There is something sacred about the way Black communities have always found a way to make room for joy.

Not because life was easy.

Not because justice had arrived.

But because joy itself became a declaration.

A refusal.

A reminder that our humanity could not be stolen.

Juneteenth carries that energy.

It is the sound of laughter around folding tables.

The smell of food prepared from recipes passed down through generations.

The music.

The stories.

The elders.

The children running through spaces their ancestors could only dream of occupying freely.

It is grief and gratitude sitting side by side.

It is remembering who survived long enough for us to be here.

And it is asking ourselves what we are going to do with the inheritance of their survival.

Because our ancestors did not endure so that we could simply remember them.

They endured so that we could continue the work.

For many Black families, Juneteenth is not history.

It is memory.

It lives in family stories.

In economic realities.

In neighborhoods.

In schools.

In healthcare outcomes.

In whose labor is valued and whose is exploited.

In whose mistakes become lessons and whose mistakes become life sentences.

The past is not past.

It is present.

And if we are going to honor Juneteenth honestly, we have to be willing to hold both truths at once:

The joy of liberation.

And the unfinished work of freedom.

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Somatic Break: Notice What Arises

Before you continue reading, pause.

Take a slow breath.

Then another.

Relax your shoulders.

Unclench your jaw.

Place one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly.

Now ask yourself:

• What am I feeling right now?

• What emotions arise when I hear the word redistribution?

• Where do I feel those emotions in my body?

• What stories am I telling myself about money, fairness, responsibility, or scarcity?

Notice without judgment.

You do not need to fix anything.

You do not need to defend anything.

You do not need to prove anything.

Simply notice.

Discomfort is information.

It is not an emergency.

Take three breaths.

Then continue.

Holding Both Truths

I want to be clear about something.

This article is not an argument against celebrating Juneteenth.

Celebrate.

Gather.

Dance.

Cook.

Laugh.

Rest.

Support Black businesses.

Attend the festivals.

Wear the shirts.

Listen to the music.

Tell the stories.

Joy matters.

In fact, Black joy has always been an act of resistance.

What I am challenging is the belief that celebration is enough.

One of the pillars of supremacy culture is Either/Or Thinking.

Either we celebrate or we critique.

Either we are grateful or we demand more.

Either we focus on joy or we focus on justice.

Either we honor progress or we acknowledge harm.

But liberation invites us into Both/And.

• We can celebrate Juneteenth and talk about the racial wealth gap.

• We can honor the resilience of our ancestors and acknowledge the harm they endured.

• We can gather in community and examine the systems that continue to create inequity.

• We can experience joy while remaining committed to justice.

• We can celebrate freedom while recognizing that freedom remains incomplete for many.

This is what it means to release Either/Or Thinking.

We do not have to choose between celebration and accountability.

We do not have to choose between gratitude and responsibility.

We do not have to choose between joy and liberation.

The truth is that Black communities have always held both.

We have always known how to laugh while grieving.

To dance while struggling.

To build while healing.

To celebrate while organizing.

To find joy without denying reality.

That is not contradiction.

That is resilience.

That is wisdom.

That is liberation.

And perhaps one of the most powerful ways to honor Juneteenth is not to avoid the tension, but to learn how to hold it.

Because freedom is not found in reducing complexity.

Freedom is found in expanding our capacity to hold truth.

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So when Juneteenth arrives

And businesses, organizations, creators, and communities generate additional revenue because of Black history, Black culture, Black resilience, and Black liberation struggles, I think we should be asking a deeper question:

What happens to that money?

Because if Juneteenth simply becomes another opportunity for colonial capitalism to monetize Black suffering, resistance, and survival, then we have missed the point entirely.

This is not about guilt.

This is not about punishment.

This is about responsibility.

It is about stewardship.

It is about understanding that solidarity is not measured by attendance.

It is measured by action.

When I talk about redistribution, I am not talking about charity handed down from a place of superiority.

I am talking about relationship.

I am talking about reciprocity.

I am talking about understanding that none of us arrive where we are alone.

Every one of us is standing on the labor, sacrifice, wisdom, and care of people who came before us.

The question is not whether we have benefited from community.

The question is whether we are willing to invest back into the communities that continue to make our lives possible.

Because redistribution is not just about money.

It is about returning resources to the places where extraction has occurred.

It is about choosing repair where harm has been normalized.

It is about understanding that liberation is not an individual achievement.

It is a collective responsibility.

So for my white friends, white-led organizations, and businesses earning income through Juneteenth events, sponsorships, promotions, speaking engagements, merchandise, consulting, festivals, and programming:

How are you redistributing those earnings?

• Are you investing in Black-led organizations?

• Are you supporting Black educators, artists, healers, and community builders?

• Are you contributing to mutual aid efforts?

• Are you funding Black-owned businesses beyond Juneteenth?

• Are you helping create opportunities that outlast a single day of celebration?

• Are you sharing resources, access, influence, and wealth?

Because redistribution is not charity.

Charity often allows people to remain comfortable while giving away what feels convenient.

Redistribution asks us to examine how resources have accumulated in the first place.

It asks us to participate in repairing harm.

It asks us to move from sympathy to solidarity.

Juneteenth commemorates freedom delayed.

The work before us is ensuring that freedom becomes material, not merely symbolic.

Practicing Your Praxis

Self

Ask yourself:

• How have I benefited from systems I did not create but still participate in?

• How often do I consume Black culture without materially investing in Black people?

• What would ongoing redistribution look like in my life?

Action Steps:

• Commit a percentage of Juneteenth-related earnings to Black-led organizations.

• Create a yearly giving practice rather than a seasonal one.

• Support Black educators, artists, farmers, healers, organizers, and entrepreneurs.

• Learn about the racial wealth gap and the policies that created it.

Home

Ask yourself:

• What conversations are happening in my household about race, wealth, justice, and responsibility?

• How do my children understand Juneteenth?

• What values are we practicing, not just discussing?

Action Steps:

• Learn the history of Juneteenth together.

• Support Black-owned businesses as a family practice.

• Discuss the difference between equality and equity.

• Create a family giving fund and decide together where those resources should go.

Work

Ask yourself:

• Is my workplace celebrating Juneteenth while maintaining inequitable systems?

• Who benefits financially from Juneteenth programming?

• Who is being compensated for their labor, expertise, and leadership?

Action Steps:

• Pay Black speakers, educators, consultants, and artists fairly.

• Audit vendor relationships and intentionally invest in Black-owned businesses.

• Support equitable hiring, promotion, retention, and compensation practices.

• Move beyond statements and into sustained investment.

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  ---

Somatic Break: From Scarcity to Interdependence

Stand up if you are able.

Place both feet firmly on the ground.

Take a breath.

Look around the room.

Notice five things currently supporting you.

The floor beneath your feet.

The chair holding your body.

The electricity powering your home.

The food available to you.

The countless people whose labor made your day possible.

Take another breath.

Scarcity culture teaches us that there is never enough.

Liberation teaches us that we belong to one another.

Interdependence is not weakness.

It is how communities survive.

It is how movements endure.

It is how liberation becomes possible.

For Those Feeling Defensive

If this conversation makes you uncomfortable, I want you to sit with that for a moment.

Not because discomfort is the goal.

But because growth often begins where comfort ends.

Notice whether your body wants to argue.

Defend.

Explain.

Justify.

Withdraw.

Those responses do not make you a bad person.

They make you human.

The invitation is not to drown in guilt.

The invitation is to move toward responsibility.

• Guilt asks, “Am I a good person?”

• Liberation asks, “What am I going to do with what I know?”

Those are very different questions.

Not because anyone can undo the past.

But because all of us help shape what comes next.

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Community Resource Spotlight

If you are looking for a place to begin practicing redistribution, consider supporting community-rooted spaces doing the slow, often unseen work of healing, connection, education, and liberation.

One such space is The Healing Homestead Collective.

The Homestead exists as a living practice of community care, collective healing, education, food, creativity, and belonging.

In a world that profits from isolation, spaces like what myself and are curating create opportunities for people to reconnect with themselves, one another, and the possibility of a more liberated future.

Whether through financial support, volunteering, sharing resources, attending events, or helping sustain the work, redistribution can look like investing in the communities you want to see thrive.

Reflection Questions

• What is the difference between charity and redistribution?

• What resources do I hold that could help create greater equity?

• How have others invested in my growth and well-being?

• What would a liberated relationship with money look like?

• What is one action I can take today?

Conclusion

Before you leave this article, choose one action.

Not ten.

One.

One person to support.

One organization to invest in.

One conversation to have.

One assumption to challenge.

One practice to begin.

Because liberation has never been built through awareness alone.

It is built through action.

Through courage.

Through relationship.

Through accountability.

Through redistribution.

Juneteenth is not simply a celebration of freedom achieved.

It is a reminder of freedom delayed.

Freedom resisted.

Freedom still unfinished.

So as you prepare to celebrate, I invite you to ask yourself:

How am I helping build the world that Juneteenth promised but has not yet fully delivered?

And if you are benefiting financially from Juneteenth this year, perhaps the most important question is this:

What are you willing to give back?

In Solidarity and Liberation,

Desireé B. Stephens
Educator | Counselor | Community Builder
Founder, Make Shi(f)t Happen
Writer of Liberation Education
Steward of Selenite & Sage Healing Homestead Co.
Where Reflection Meets Transformation

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There is something beautiful about watching a dream come to life.

There is also something deeply confronting about it.

Because eventually the thing you’ve been praying for stops existing as a vision board, a notebook entry, or a someday dream.

It arrives.

And when it does, it asks something of you.

Not perfection.

Not hustle.

Not sacrifice.

Capacity.

As we move through June’s Season of Expansion, I’ve been sitting with a question that has become the heartbeat of this season:

How do I grow without abandoning myself?

Because if we’re honest, many of us were taught that growth requires self-abandonment.

That success requires exhaustion.

That impact requires overextension.

That the price of building something meaningful is sacrificing ourselves in the process.

But liberation asks a different question.

What if expansion is not about doing more?

What if expansion is about becoming capable of holding more whilst remaining in relationship with yourself?

That is the lesson this season has been teaching me.

Somatic Pause: Making Space for Expansion

Before we talk about growth, take a moment to notice yourself.

Not your to-do list.

Not your responsibilities.

Not the next thing waiting for your attention.

Just you.

If you’re able, place both feet on the floor.

Take a slow breath in.

And an even slower breath out.

Notice the places in your body that feel supported right now.

Perhaps it’s the chair beneath you.

The ground beneath your feet.

The weight of your body being held.

You do not have to carry yourself in this moment.

Allow your shoulders to soften.

Unclench your jaw.

Take another breath.

As you inhale, ask yourself:

What am I carrying?

As you exhale, ask:

What can I set down, even for a moment?

One more breath.

As you read today’s reflection, I invite you to get curious about the question that will guide this entire Season of Expansion:

How do I grow without abandoning myself?

Notice what arises.

Not what you think the answer should be.

What you actually feel.

Let’s begin.

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Expansion Is Not Bigger. Expansion Is Capacity.

When people hear the word expansion, they often imagine growth.

• More followers.

• More opportunities.

• More visibility.

• More income.

• More responsibility.

And yes, some of those things are happening.

But what I’ve discovered is that expansion is not simply getting bigger; That would be 2 of those 15 pillars of supremacy culture: Progress is bigger/more and Quantity over quality.

Expansion is increasing your capacity to receive what you’ve been asking for.

Your capacity to stay grounded when opportunities arrive.

Your capacity to receive support.

Your capacity to be seen.

Your capacity to share leadership.

Your capacity to remain connected to your values while everything around you changes.

This season has been stretching that capacity in ways I never expected.

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What Is Capacity?

I keep using this language over and over, and I want to ensure I give it a proper spotlight.

Traditionally, capacity is defined as:

The maximum amount that something can contain, receive, or hold.

• A cup has a capacity.

• A room has a capacity.

• A storage container has a capacity.

When we exceed that capacity, things begin to spill over.

Yet many of us have been taught to think of ourselves differently.

We’ve been taught that our capacity is limitless.

That if we’re overwhelmed, we should simply work harder.

Push through.

Stay strong.

Do more.

Carry more.

Become more efficient.

But our bodies tell a different story.

From a somatic perspective, capacity refers to our ability to remain present with what we are experiencing without becoming overwhelmed, shutting down, or abandoning ourselves.

It is our ability to stay connected to ourselves while navigating life’s challenges, opportunities, emotions, relationships, and responsibilities.

In other words:

Capacity is not how much you can carry.

Capacity is how much you can carry while remaining connected to yourself.

Because there is a difference between holding something and being crushed by it.

A difference between growth and overwhelm.

A difference between expansion and self-abandonment.

This distinction feels especially important during this Season of Expansion.

Many of us have spent years praying for more.

More opportunities.

More visibility.

More impact.

More abundance.

More community.

But what happens when those prayers begin to arrive?

The question is no longer:

“Can I get more?”

The question becomes:

“Can I hold what I have been asking for?”

Can I hold success without burnout?

Can I hold visibility without losing myself?

Can I hold responsibility without carrying it alone?

Can I hold abundance without operating from scarcity?

Can I hold community without reverting to power hoarding or martyrdom?

That is the work of capacity.

And that is what this season is inviting us to practice.

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The Return of Ms. Dare I Say

One of the most unexpected gifts of this Season of Expansion has been the return of a voice that has been with me far longer than many people realize.

Many of you know me through Liberation Education.

• Through workshops.

• Through frameworks.

• Through community building.

• Through the Academy.

• Through the Liberation Method™.

But before all of that existed, there was writing.

I began writing online in the early days of WordPress and Tumblr.

Back when blogs felt like diaries with comment sections and the internet still felt small enough for people to stumble into one another’s lives.

I wrote about love.

Relationships.

Heartbreak.

Healing.

The strange and beautiful process of becoming.

Eventually that writing led to working as an advice columnist for Quarter Life Magazine, where I explored relationships, identity, and the wonderfully messy reality of being human.

After my first divorce, the writing became even more personal.

I began documenting my own journey through dating, motherhood, faith, self-discovery, and rebuilding a life I hadn’t planned for.

Sadly, much of that work was lost when my original Facebook account disappeared.

Entire years of writing.

Entire conversations.

Entire chapters.

Gone…

But the voice never left.

It simply evolved.

As I moved through divorce, college, parental death, remarriage, a premature baby, three children in seven years, estrangement from my eldest child, entrepreneurship, and the ongoing challenge of trying to build a meaningful life inside capitalism, the writing continued evolving alongside me.

At one point that voice became Dare I Say God.

I was serving as a pastoral leader, a women’s ministry leader, and a Christian writer.

• I wrote about faith.

• Spiritual disciplines.

• Biblical interpretation.

• Fasting.

• Leadership.

• The questions I was wrestling with inside my own spiritual world.

But growth has a way of disrupting certainty.

As my questions deepened, so did my writing.

Eventually, that journey led to Musings of Selenite and Sage, where I began exploring the ways spirituality, religion, ancestry, and power intersected.

I was asking different questions.

• Questions about liberation.

• Questions about decolonization.

• Questions about the origins of spiritual practices.

• Questions about what had been lost, hidden, or repackaged over time.

• Questions that would eventually become the foundation of the work I do today.

  ---

Throughout all of those seasons there was one thing that remained constant:

Community.

Facebook groups.

Patreon communities.

Mighty Networks.

Discussion circles.

Learning communities.

Experiments in belonging.

Experiments in asking what becomes possible when people gather around truth and transformation.

Then in 2020 something unexpected happened.

TikTok gave me my voice back.

Not my writing voice.

My speaking voice.

For the first time in years I was saying things out loud as quickly as I could think them.

No drafts.

No editing.

No polishing.

Just truth.

And when I returned to writing in 2023, I returned with a very different life than the woman who first opened a WordPress account all those years ago.

By then, conversations had become communities.

Communities had become learning spaces.

Learning spaces had become intentional educational ecosystems.

And intentional educational ecosystems require structure.

• Frameworks.

• Methodologies.

• Learning arcs.

• Curriculum.

• Pathways.

People were no longer simply asking for reflection.

They were asking for tools.

For guidance.

For application.

For transformation.

So my writing evolved again.

I learned how to teach.

I learned how to build frameworks.

I learned how to meet people where their nervous systems actually are.

I learned how to create containers that could support people moving from awareness to action.

And I am deeply grateful for that growth.

After all, my company is called Make Shi(f)t Happen.

I’ve been helping people navigate transformation since 2008.

But here’s what this Season of Expansion has taught me:

Growth does not require abandonment.

Just because one version of you evolves doesn’t mean another version has to disappear.

Because there are still parts of me that don’t belong inside a framework.

Parts that aren’t trying to teach.

Parts that simply want to observe.

Wonder.

Question.

Tell stories.

Laugh.

Explore desire.

Explore relationships.

Explore self-abandonment.

Explore the wonderfully complicated reality of being human.

That’s where Ms. Dare I Say lives.

I’ve jokingly started calling her Liberation After Dark.

Not because the work is less meaningful.

But because it is less interested in behaving.

It’s where the Bronx girl gets a microphone again.

It’s where the advice columnist gets to ask uncomfortable questions.

It’s where the relationship writer gets to sit down with liberation work and ask what it means inside our marriages, our friendships, our dating lives, our sexuality, our desires, and our everyday choices.

It’s where all the parts of me that don’t fit neatly into educational content finally get a seat at the table.

One of the first pieces published there is called Pussy Is Not Your Price. (Also the name of the publication)

Pussy Is NOT Your Price

Pussy Is NOT Your Price

Somewhere along the way, women were handed a lie and told it was wisdom…

Read more

2 months ago · Ms Dare I Say

It’s a reflection on decentering men, reclaiming self-worth, and refusing to negotiate your value through access to your body.

It’s liberation work.

Just with a little more side-eye and a little more sass.

Alongside that writing, another project emerged: Men Cum in Socks.

Yes, the title makes people laugh.

Good.

It was supposed to.

Because underneath the humor is a serious question:

What happens when women stop organizing their lives around male validation?

What happens when we stop treating partnership as the pinnacle of our existence?

What happens when our dreams, our healing, our purpose, our pleasure, our friendships, our communities, and our becoming become the center of our own lives?

Men Cum in Socks isn’t anti-men.

It’s pro-self.

It’s a reminder that women are allowed to be the protagonists of their own stories.

That our lives do not begin when someone chooses us.

And perhaps that’s why both of these projects feel so aligned with this Season of Expansion.

Because they are both asking the same question:

• How do we grow without abandoning ourselves?

• How do we expand without leaving pieces of ourselves behind?

• How do we create lives large enough to hold every version of who we are?

Ms. Dare I Say isn’t a departure from my work.

She’s part of its lineage.

She’s what happens when every version of me is finally allowed to sit at the same table.

And that’s what expansion really is.

Not becoming someone new.

But developing the capacity to hold all that you’ve been.

And perhaps that is why the Academy and the Homestead feel so significant to me right now.

Because this season is not only asking me to hold more of myself.

It is asking me to hold more of the vision.

For years, much of this work lived inside notebooks, journals, conversations, workshops, and imagination.

Ideas.

Frameworks.

Questions.

Possibilities.

But eventually every vision reaches a point where it asks to be built.

Not someday.

Now.

And building something that can outlive you requires a different kind of capacity altogether.

The Academy Is Becoming What It Was Always Meant To Be

For years, the Liberation Education Academy existed primarily as a vision.

A framework.

A possibility.

A collection of ideas waiting for the right season.

This season, that possibility has become tangible.

The curriculum is expanding.

The certifications are taking shape.

The systems are being built.

The architecture of something larger than myself is emerging.

And perhaps the most beautiful part is that it is forcing me to confront my own relationship with capacity.

Because building something that can outlive you requires different skills than building something you can carry by yourself.

It requires trust.

It requires systems.

It requires collaboration.

It requires releasing the belief that everything depends on you.

For so many years, I carried this work through sheer determination.

Many of you know that Make Shi(f)t Happen was born from conversations.

Conversations that became communities.

Communities that became learning spaces.

Learning spaces that became transformational experiences.

Now those experiences are becoming a structured educational ecosystem.

Not because I want something bigger.

But because I want something sustainable.

Something that can continue serving people long after a single workshop ends.

Long after a single conversation ends.

Long after I’m no longer the only person carrying the vision.

And perhaps that is one of the greatest lessons of expansion:

A vision grows the moment it becomes larger than your individual capacity to hold it alone.

The Healing Homestead Is Becoming an Ecosystem

If the Academy is becoming a school, the Healing Homestead is becoming an ecosystem.

What began as an idea is growing into a living community of healers, educators, artists, movement practitioners, storytellers, culture builders, and people committed to creating intentional spaces for belonging.

This season we welcomed two new stewards into the Homestead Collective.

And honestly?

That feels like one of the most important milestones of all.

Because one of the supremacy culture pillars we are actively dismantling this month is Power Hoarding.

The goal was never to build a community centered around me.

The goal was always to build a community where many people could contribute their gifts.

Where leadership is shared.

Where healing is communal.

Where people are empowered to step fully into their own medicine.

That is what expansion looks like when it is rooted in liberation.

Not accumulation.

Not control.

Not becoming indispensable.

But creating spaces where others can thrive alongside you thankful for for what we are co-creating Ive waited years for a partner such as her, and what a blesing it is to do life with her in this way.

What Stewardship Makes Possible

The moment we stop believing everything depends on us, something beautiful happens.

Space opens.

Space for other people to bring their gifts.

Space for new ideas.

Space for collaboration.

Space for community.

This season that space has been filled by incredible people bringing their own unique offerings into the Homestead.

Leah is offering astrology gatherings.

Corrie is bringing sound baths.

Felicitee is creating line dance and trail-ride-inspired experiences for children.

Mo is creating opportunities for Adult Nights Out.

This Friday we launch Open Mic Night, which will continue throughout the summer.

A space for storytelling.

Poetry.

Music.

Laughter.

Witnessing.

Connection.

The kinds of experiences that remind us healing doesn’t only happen in workshops.

Sometimes healing sounds like applause.

Sometimes healing sounds like laughter.

Sometimes healing sounds like someone finally telling the truth.

And of course, Somatic Sundays continue inviting us back into relationship with ourselves, our bodies, and one another.

Each offering is different.

Each practitioner is different.

Each pathway into healing is different.

And that diversity is the point.

Community was never meant to be one-size-fits-all.

Neither is healing.

What I’m Learning

The greatest lesson of this season is that expansion and self-abandonment are not the same thing.

For many of us, they have been intertwined for so long that we struggle to separate them.

We’ve been taught that growth requires urgency.

That leadership requires over-functioning.

That success requires sacrifice.

That impact requires carrying everything ourselves.

But I’m learning something different.

Growth can happen without urgency.

Leadership can happen without power hoarding.

Community can happen without individualism.

Success can happen without self-sacrifice.

Expansion can happen without abandoning ourselves.

In fact, sustainable expansion requires the opposite.

It requires deeper relationship.

Deeper discernment.

Deeper boundaries.

Deeper trust.

Deeper capacity.

Not less.

And that is what this entire season has been teaching me.

Capacity is not how much we can carry.

Capacity is how connected we can remain while carrying it.

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If you’ve been looking for a place to practice liberation beyond theory...

If you’ve been craving community rooted in care rather than performance...

If you’ve been wondering how to grow without abandoning yourself...

I invite you to join us.

Join us for Somatic Sundays.

Join us for Open Mic Night.

Join us for workshops, gatherings, movement, healing, and community.

Join us as we continue building the Healing Homestead Collective.

Because liberation was never meant to be a solo journey.

And neither is expansion.

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In Solidarity and Liberation,

Desireé B. Stephens
Educator | Counselor | Community Builder
Founder, Make Shi(f)t Happen
Writer of Liberation Education
Steward of Selenite & Sage Healing Homestead Co.

Where Reflection Meets Transformation

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As we approach the Blue Moon and prepare to leave the Season of Blooming behind, I find myself reflecting on a threshold I crossed nearly two decades ago.

In 2008, I became a Star.

At the time, I understood that crossing as an initiation.

A ritual.

A degree.

A moment.

What I could not have known then was that the real degree would take the next eighteen years to complete.

Because some teachings are not learned in a room.

They are learned in a life.

For the past few weeks, I have found myself revisiting the Order of the Eastern Star, the Heroines of Jericho, Queen of the South, and the teachings that shaped a younger version of me. Not because I suddenly felt called back to the organization itself, but because I realized something surprising.

The principles never left.

The rituals faded.

The meetings stopped.

My active participation ended somewhere around 2010 or 2011.

Yet the lessons remained.

And now, standing at another threshold, I can finally see them.

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The Persistence of Ritual

I was raised within Irish Catholic traditions.

Long before I understood theology, I understood ritual.

Candles.

Holy days.

Processions.

Symbols.

Sacred pauses.

Thresholds.

There was something in my spirit that responded to the language of ritual even as my relationship with religion evolved. (I’m fairly certain this is because of my ADHD)

Years later, that same longing drew me toward the Order of the Eastern Star.

Not because I was searching for certainty.

But because I was searching for meaning.

Looking back, I realize that what I loved was never hierarchy.

It was symbolism.

It was story.

It was the understanding that transformation deserves to be marked.

That crossing from one season of life into another deserves witness.

That becoming deserves ceremony.

When I eventually moved away from organized religion and stepped back from active participation in Eastern Star, I thought I was leaving those worlds behind.

What I now understand is that I wasn’t leaving ritual.

I was carrying it with me.

• The Academy is ritual.

• The Three Houses are ritual.

• The Bridge is ritual.

• Seasonal living is ritual.

• Community agreements are ritual.

• The pauses I create before teaching are ritual.

• The thresholds I build into my work are ritual.

I didn’t abandon ritual.

I translated it, transmuted it.

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F.A.T.A.L.

Before revisiting these teachings, I found myself laughing at the irony of the acronym itself.

F.A.T.A.L.

To someone unfamiliar with the tradition, the word evokes danger.

Death.

Evil.

Something to fear.

Yet the phrase stands as a reflection on character, integrity, faith, love, endurance, and becoming.

The contrast made me pause.

Because it mirrors a pattern I have witnessed my entire life.

There is a long history in this country of Black gatherings being treated as suspicious, whilst white gatherings are treated as ordinary.

• Black organizations are asked to justify their existence.

• Black community is scrutinized.

• Black solidarity is feared.

• Black ritual is exoticized.

• Black spirituality is demonized.

• Black joy is questioned.

• Black success is explained away.

• Black power is framed as dangerous.

This article will help you understand the concept more.

Meanwhile, organizations tied to white supremacy have often been remembered through softer language.

The women of the Ku Klux Klan were frequently described as civic-minded women engaged in community service and moral reform.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy helped shape generations of historical memory, erecting monuments and influencing school curricula while presenting themselves as guardians of heritage and tradition.

White women’s organizations that actively supported segregation, racial hierarchy, and Lost Cause mythology were often granted legitimacy simply because whiteness itself was treated as legitimate.

The point is not that Black organizations are beyond critique.

No institution is.

The point is that critique is rarely applied equally.

One of the most effective tools of supremacy culture is not simply exclusion.

It is naming.

The ability to decide what is respectable and what is threatening.

What is civilized and what is primitive.

What is godly and what is demonic.

What is tradition and what is cult.

What is community and what is conspiracy.

What is history and what is propaganda.

The older I get, the less interested I am in accepting inherited narratives.

Which is perhaps why I find myself relating more to the Queen of Sheba than ever before.

She did not rely on rumors.

She did not outsource her discernment.

She made the journey herself.

And perhaps that is the invitation.

Not blind acceptance.

Not blind rejection.

Discernment.

When I first encountered the acronym F.A.T.A.L., I understood it one way.

Today…. I hear something entirely different.

I no longer hear beauty.

I hear wholeness.

Because the older I get, the more I believe the opposite of liberation is fragmentation.

Supremacy culture teaches us to separate ourselves.

Mind from body.

Work from rest.

Power from compassion.

Self from community.

Spirit from action.

We are encouraged to perform versions of ourselves rather than inhabit ourselves.

But “altogether” suggests something different.

Altogether means integrated.

Altogether means no longer hiding pieces of yourself to make others comfortable.

Altogether means allowing every version of yourself a seat at the table.

The teacher.

The mother.

The seeker.

The healer.

The activist.

The lover.

The builder.

The dreamer.

The woman becoming.

Perhaps it was always about integration.

Perhaps it was always about becoming whole.

The Heroines Revisited

When I first learned the lessons of Adah, Ruth, Esther, Martha, and Electa, I understood them through the eyes of a young woman steeped in a colonial Christian worldview.

At the time, there was comfort in the familiarity of the stories.

I had grown up immersed in biblical narratives. The passages felt recognizable. The language felt familiar. The symbolism felt sacred.

In many ways, the Order of the Eastern Star returned ritual to me.

It offered a way to engage stories I already knew through a different lens. One that emphasized character, virtue, reflection, and becoming.

Back then, I did not question much.

I accepted the lessons as they were presented.

I accepted the interpretations I had inherited.

I accepted the roles these women were meant to play within the story.

And like many women raised within patriarchal religious traditions, I often interpreted their value through the lens of service, sacrifice, obedience, and submission.

The women were held up as examples.

Models to emulate.

Lessons to learn.

Virtues to embody.

But rarely were they presented as fully realized human beings.

Rarely were they afforded the same complexity, agency, contradiction, or sovereignty granted to the men surrounding them.

Time has a way of changing how we read.

And liberation has a way of changing who is allowed to be fully human.

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As I began dismantling the colonial and patriarchal lens through which I had been taught to view scripture, something unexpected happened.

The women became more real.

More complex.

More alive.

I stopped seeing them as symbols first and women second.

I began seeing them as women first.

Women making difficult choices within systems they did not create.

Women navigating power.

Women navigating loyalty.

Women navigating grief.

Women navigating uncertainty.

Women navigating love.

Women navigating survival.

Women finding ways to exercise agency in worlds that often denied them authority.

The lessons did not disappear.

They deepened.

• Adah no longer speaks to me of obedience.

  • She speaks to me of integrity.

  • The courage to remain faithful to what I know to be true, even when the cost is high.

• Ruth no longer speaks to me of duty.

  • She speaks to me of chosen kinship.

  • The radical act of building belonging through commitment, reciprocity, and care.

  • A woman who chose her people rather than simply inheriting them.

• Esther no longer speaks to me only of courage.

  • She speaks to me of sovereignty.

  • A woman discerning when to speak, when to wait, and when to risk everything for what matters most.

  • Not a passive queen, but a strategist. Not merely brave, but wise.

• Martha no longer speaks to me of endurance.

  • She speaks to me of trust.

  • The kind of faith that remains when certainty disappears and all that is left is relationship.

  • Not faith as compliance. Faith as presence.

• Electa no longer speaks to me of charity.

  • She speaks to me of love mature enough to survive complexity.

  • A love rooted not in perfection, but in practice.

  • Not in performance, but in devotion.

What surprises me now is that life did not change the teachings.

Life deepened them.

The stories remained.

But the women expanded.

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And perhaps that is what happens when we revisit old lessons with new eyes.

The lesson is no longer confined to the page.

The lesson begins to breathe.

The heroine is no longer an ideal to imitate.

She becomes a companion.

A mirror.

A conversation partner.

A reminder that wisdom is rarely found in perfection.

It is found in the messy, complicated, beautiful work of being fully human.

And maybe that is what I hear now when I revisit these teachings nearly two decades later.

Not instructions on how to become a good woman.

But stories of women reclaiming their humanity.

Stories of women exercising agency.

Stories of women navigating impossible circumstances with dignity and wisdom.

Stories of women becoming whole.

And in that way, perhaps they were teaching liberation all along.

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The Queen of Sheba and the Wisdom of Returning

The lesson that has surprised me most is the one I found in Queen of the South.

For years, I thought the story was about Solomon.

Or perhaps more accurately, I was taught to notice Solomon first.

He was the wise king.

The builder.

The judge.

The center of the narrative.

And to be clear, centering Sheba does not diminish Solomon.

A decolonized reading is not about replacing one center with another.

It is about restoring what was omitted.

The Queen of the South degree itself is built around an encounter.

Not a conquest.

Not a conversion.

Not a hierarchy.

An encounter.

A wise king and a wise queen meeting one another.

A conversation.

A testing of ideas.

A recognition of character.

A mutual exchange.

Solomon’s wisdom matters.

His journey matters.

His discipline matters.

His seeking matters.

The scriptures tell us he sought wisdom above wealth and power. He listened, learned, discerned, and cultivated understanding.

But what strikes me now is that whilst Solomon was gaining wisdom… Sheba was crossing the sands.

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The older I get, the more I wonder why I remembered one journey so clearly and overlooked the other.

Because Solomon stayed where he was.

Sheba crossed the sands.

She organized the caravan.

She gathered the gifts.

She undertook the risk.

She left what was familiar.

She made the journey.

She sought the audience.

She asked the questions.

She tested what she had heard.

She did not simply receive wisdom.

She pursued it.

That changes the story.

It ceases to be a tale about a wise king impressing a queen.

And becomes a story about two sovereign people who valued wisdom enough to recognize it in one another.

What moves me now is not Solomon’s answers.

It is Sheba’s dedication.

Her willingness to leave certainty.

Her willingness to make the journey.

Her willingness to discover for herself.

Because Sheba does not rely on rumors.

She does not outsource her discernment.

She does not blindly accept what she has been told.

She goes and sees.

She listens.

She questions.

She weighs what she encounters.

And then she returns home.

Not diminished.

Not dependent.

Not converted.

Transformed.

That feels deeply resonant to me now.

Not only because of my journey through the Order of the Eastern Star…

But because it mirrors so much of my life.

Nobody handed me liberation work.

Nobody handed me decolonization.

Nobody handed me somatics.

Nobody handed me community building.

I crossed many sands myself.

• I sought teachers.

• I asked questions.

• I challenged assumptions.

• I left traditions.

• I returned to traditions.

• I kept what was alive.

• I released what was not.

And perhaps that is why this story has found me again during this Season of Blooming.

Because blooming is not passive.

Seeds do not simply wake up one morning as flowers.

They split open.

They reach.

They stretch.

They risk.

They move toward the light.

What I find myself appreciating most now is that the Queen of the South degree honors both journeys.

The wisdom required to cultivate understanding. And the courage required to seek it.

The wisdom required to teach. And the humility required to learn.

The wisdom required to speak. And the wisdom required to listen.

Perhaps that is why this story feels so alive to me now.

Not because I needed to choose between Solomon and Sheba.

But because I finally learned to see them both.

And in doing so, I found myself in the story as well.

Not as a queen seeking a king.

But as a woman willing to cross the sands in pursuit of wisdom, wholeness, and truth.

Because wisdom did not come to me.

I went looking for it.

And somewhere between the young woman who crossed a threshold in 2008 and the woman writing these words today, I realize I have been making that journey all along.

The Blue Moon Initiation

As this Blue Moon approaches, I find myself recognizing that another initiation is taking place.

Not in a chapter room.

Not through a ritual book.

Not through a degree.

Through life itself.

Eighteen years ago, I crossed a threshold.

Today, I understand that the crossing never ended.

Every heartbreak was part of the degree.

Every friendship.

Every community built.

Every community lost.

Every lesson in motherhood.

Every season of healing.

Every act of liberation.

Every moment I chose integrity over comfort.

Every time I returned to myself.

The degree continued.

Maybe that is the greatest lesson of all.

The most meaningful initiations do not end when the ceremony is over.

They continue unfolding across a lifetime.

As we prepare to leave the Season of Blooming and prepare to enter the Season of Expansion, I find myself grateful for the younger woman who sought wisdom through ritual.

And I find myself equally grateful for the woman I have become.

The one who finally understands that the ritual was never the destination.

It was the doorway.

The blooming was always going to take years.

Practice Your Praxis

One of the most common mistakes I see in liberation spaces is the assumption that freedom requires us to either preserve everything exactly as we inherited it or reject it entirely.

Neither approach requires discernment.

One clings.

The other discards.

Both surrender our agency.

Liberation invites something different.

Liberation asks us to become wise stewards.

To examine what we have inherited.

To question it.

To wrestle with it.

To understand it.

To release what causes harm.

To reclaim what carries wisdom.

To transform what can be transformed.

To create what does not yet exist.

This week, spend some time reflecting on the traditions, teachings, and stories that shaped you.

Consider the following:

Self

What beliefs, rituals, traditions, or practices have remained meaningful even after your worldview changed?

What did you leave behind that still contains wisdom worth reclaiming?

What part of yourself is asking to be welcomed home?

Home

What family stories or inherited traditions deserve a second look?

Which ones still nourish connection?

Which ones require healing, revision, or release?

How might you honor your lineage without becoming confined by it?

Work

What systems, institutions, organizations, or professional practices have you accepted without question?

What assumptions deserve reexamination?

Where are you being invited to practice discernment instead of blind acceptance or rejection?

Reflection

What if liberation is not about throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

What if liberation is learning how to separate the wisdom from the conditioning?

The medicine from the hierarchy?

The lesson from the indoctrination?

The lineage from the domination?

What sands are you being invited to cross in pursuit of wisdom?

And what might be waiting for you on the other side?

Before You Go

As this Blue Moon rises and the Season of Blooming draws to a close, I hope you give yourself permission to revisit what you once thought you had outgrown.

Not everything inherited is meant to be carried forward.

But not everything inherited is meant to be discarded either.

Some things require excavation.

Some things require grieving.

Some things require release.

And some things are waiting to be reclaimed.

The stories.

The symbols.

The rituals.

The teachings.

The pieces of yourself hidden beneath someone else’s interpretation.

Perhaps wisdom is not found in preserving the past exactly as it was.

Nor is it found in burning everything to the ground.

Wisdom lives in the discernment required to know the difference.

To honor what nourished you.

To release what harmed you.

To transform what can be transformed.

And to create what does not yet exist.

As we leave Blooming and step into Expansion, may you trust yourself enough to ask the question.

May you trust yourself enough to make the journey.🌬️

May you trust yourself enough to cross the sands.🌬️

And when you arrive at whatever wisdom awaits you there, may you have the courage to bring it home.

Not diminished.

Not dependent.

Not converted.

Transformed.

Altogether.

Whole.

In Solidarity and Liberation,

Desireé B. Stephens
Educator | Counselor | Community Builder
Founder, Make Shi(f)t Happen
Writer of Liberation Education
Steward of Selenite & Sage Healing Homestead Co.
Where Reflection Meets Transformation

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One thing

that is guaranteed in these United States of America, and of her children… is that if there is Black people’s business… white people will be right there ready to disrupt it.

Not because you actually want to participate.

Not because you suddenly care about ethics.

Not because you are deeply invested in equality, or equity for that matter.

But because supremacy culture has conditioned whiteness to remain psychologically, emotionally, politically, and socially oriented around Blackness in ways many white-bodied people still refuse to confront honestly.

That is why a Black doctor directory becomes national outrage while countless identity-, religion-, language-, and culturally specific provider directories quietly exist without scrutiny.

That is why Black affinity spaces —intentional spaces created for Black people to gather, heal, organize, learn, connect, and exist in shared cultural understanding and safety without needing to explain or defend our experiences to whiteness— are treated as suspicious whilst every other form of communal self-preservation is framed as normal.

That is why Black boundaries are interpreted as hostility.

And that is why so many people remain more invested in monitoring Black people than examining the systems of domination operating inside themselves.

Because for too many white-bodied people, fixation on Blackness functions as avoidance of confronting whiteness.

And avoidance is far easier than interruption.

Take a breath before you continue.

Seriously. 🌬️

Because this article is going to ask you to sit with something uncomfortable:

Whiteness is not just an identity.
It is a socialized behavioral system.

A relational system.
A protective system.
A nervous system pattern.
A survival framework built inside institutions, communities, bodies, and beliefs.

And like all systems, it produces symptoms.

This article is going to pathologize whiteness in ways many people are unaccustomed to witnessing, not to dehumanize people, but to honestly examine the behaviors supremacy culture normalizes and rewards.

That discomfort you may feel while reading?

Stay with it.

Defensiveness is not reflection.
Avoidance is not healing.
And intellectual agreement alone is not transformation.

You can do hard things.

More importantly:
you can survive being decentered long enough to meet yourself honestly.

So take another breath. 🌬️

And keep reading.

In a recent Facebook post shared a response to the outrage surrounding FindABlackDoctor.org and the absurd claims that a directory centering Black physicians is somehow “segregationist.”

Since Dr. Travis Morrell wants to sue FindABlackDoctor.com, he might as well sue all the other identity-, religion-, culture-, and language-specific provider directories.

There’s lots of them out there. Some are for physicians broadly, some are for mental health clinicians, and some are membership directories or culturally specific health networks. But the basic concept is not unusual at all: people search for providers who understand their bodies, culture, language, faith, community, gender, sexuality, or lived experience.

Here are just a few:

JewishPhysicians.com

JWiz Jewish Directory

Christian Medical & Dental Associations Member

ChristianDoctor.com

MyCatholicDoctor

MuslimDoctors.net

musDir Muslim Doctors & Healthcare Providers

Asian Medical Council – Find Doctors

Hispanic Physicians IPA / HPIPA Provider Directory

Latinx Therapy

NativeAmericanDoctors.com

Indian Health Service Physicians

So this stupid-ass argument that FindABlackDoctor.org is some bizarre, uniquely segregationist is boolshyt.

There are Christian doctor directories. Jewish doctor directories. Muslim doctor directories. Hispanic physician networks. Latinx therapist directories. Asian health provider networks. Native American doctor searches. LGBTQ-inclusive provider directories.

And nobody panics until Black folks build a tool that says we need doctors who know us.

FOH!

In this post, she pointed out something important:

There are countless identity-, faith-, culture-, and language-centered provider directories already in existence.

Jewish physician directories.
Christian physician directories.
Muslim physician directories.
Latinx therapist directories.
Asian provider networks.
Native physician searches.
LGBTQ-inclusive healthcare directories.

Nobody panics.

Nobody suddenly becomes deeply concerned about “division.”

But let Black people create something intended to help Black patients navigate systems with documented racial disparities, medical bias, dismissal of pain, and disproportionate mortality rates…

and suddenly people act like civilization itself is collapsing.

After reading her post I shared it with the following caption:

“I wish y’all hated us in the way of leaving us alone… but y’all hate us in the way you hate yourselves, so you need to bother us.”

And honestly?

The more I sat with it, the more I realized this is not just about racism.

• It is about fixation.

• It is about avoidance.

• It is about triangulation.

It is about the psychological architecture of whiteness and the ways supremacy culture survives by keeping people externally oriented rather than internally accountable.

Because the truth is:

White-bodied people are so busy monitoring Blackness that they never notice whiteness operating inside themselves.

And that is the real crisis.

So sit back, take a breath, and let’s get into it.

I am Desireé B Stephens, and I pathologize the system of whiteness.

This Is Not About “Bad White People”

One of the greatest protections supremacy culture has is the belief that whiteness only exists in its most overt forms.

The racist slur.
The violent extremist.
The openly hateful person.

So many white-bodied people separate themselves from “those kinds of white people” without realizing whiteness is not merely about individual morality.

It is a socialized relational system.

Which means even deeply loving, politically conscious, queer, community-oriented white people can still enact the patterns of whiteness unconsciously.

Not because they are evil.

But because supremacy culture is ambient.

Inherited.

Normalized.

Embodied.

And if we only examine overt harm, we miss the far more common ways whiteness quietly reproduces itself through orientation, projection, emotional positioning, and relational dynamics.

The following is an example involving people I know personally, people I trust, love, and have welcomed into my home.

That matters.

Because this lens is not about punishment.

It is about seeing clearly.

A Real Life Example of Fixation, Avoidance, and Triangulation

The following was shared publicly by a white queer friend of mine:

“Like most people, I’m hanging on by a thread. Realized when we were driving Arie to work today in Marietta that we had a leak that was quickly dropping air even after stopping to put air in it. I dropped Arie off at work and honestly was stressed as a visibly queer person finding somewhere near her shop to go that would be kind and also everywhere near her shop within a mile or two seemed to be closed for the weekend.

Also having CPTSD and autism getting stranded is overwhelming on its own and requires emotional and executive function bandwidth I have struggled to find lately so my anxiety was through the roof.

I pulled into a Spanish speaking shop with tears running down my face because I was scared of getting stranded and figuring things out on my own and honestly my bandwidth is just really small right now thus the tears, he agreed to help me out.

After he patched it, he said they were actually closed today so I owe nothing.

In that moment of a Brown immigrant helping a scared and tired white queer person it reminded me there is goodness in this world and we all can be the healers.”

My response was:

“Helping a scared and tired WHITE queer person.

You named them as Brown and immigrant and admitted the people you would be scared to be seen by would be your own fellow white people.

Yet you were served by someone that you are a danger to simply because of whiteness.

When white people leave out white they cast themselves as the default and fail to see the inherent danger you pose by simply existing in a white supremacist society.

As an example what could’ve happened if one of the bigoted whites you were afraid of happened to see you in a space with a Brown immigrant man and crying.

They would see beyond queer and clock you as a white woman crying and this man must have caused that and now his life freedom and family are in danger…

Your whiteness will always come first and that’s what decentering whiteness looks like.”

And to her credit, she received that feedback with openness and accountability.

She responded:

“I agree with what you are saying and I have edited my post to name that I am a white person.

I deeply appreciate their help.

I didn’t choose to go there specifically but happened to pull in because my tire was going flat and I happened to see this shop and this turned out to be the dynamics.

I was trying to highlight the goodness of humans who are often mischaracterized and unfairly judged and feeling hope in that moment in what humanity truly can be.

I totally own I always have white privilege at play and appreciate you making sure that is clearly named here and challenging me to be sure to be specific about that component.”

And I responded:

“Thank you for always seeing my point.

It adds to the depth and richness of what you are saying when you name that because in spite of you being afraid of your own folks the one person in this story that can be harmed by both you and those you fear extended their kindness and that’s the global story and truth of the humanity Black and Brown people consistently extend…”

What Most People Missed

What fascinated me most was not the original post.

It was the comments.

Because nearly every response emotionally centered the white queer vulnerability being expressed while failing to interrogate the racial power dynamics operating underneath the interaction.

And this is exactly how supremacy culture reproduces itself relationally.

Not necessarily through overt violence.

But through unconscious orientation.

The Brown immigrant man was framed as evidence of humanity, kindness, and healing.

And he very well may have been all of those things.

But almost nobody stopped to examine the deeper truth:

He was the person in the story facing the greatest structural danger.

Not the crying white queer person.

Him.

Because whiteness remains structurally protected even when individual white people experience marginalization in other areas of identity.

And that is the part many white-bodied people struggle to hold simultaneously:

Whiteness does not guarantee safety from all oppression.

But it does fundamentally shape proximity to systemic danger.

Especially in relation to Black and Brown people.

The white queer person in this story feared other white people.

That fear was real.

Valid even.

But the Brown immigrant man was navigating danger from both directions simultaneously:
from overt white supremacy…
and from the structural vulnerability that proximity to whiteness itself creates.

Including proximity to well-meaning white people.

That is not accusation.

That is structural reality.

And that is why naming whiteness matters.

Because when white-bodied people leave whiteness unnamed, they unconsciously cast themselves as universal, neutral, default, or simply “human.”

Meanwhile Black and Brown people remain racialized in the narrative.

Described.
Observed.
Positioned.
Interpreted.

That imbalance is not accidental.

It is one of the primary ways whiteness maintains invisibility while still operating socially.

The Private Conversation That Deepened the Lesson

Later, another white queer person messaged me privately about the situation and said:

“That post. I’m bothered.

Not just by her lack of naming herself white but also seeking safety with more marginalized people.

When will white people understand that part of liberation work as a white person is standing 10 toes down on who you are and facing the potential harm that comes from being a race traitor.

Maybe it’s just my mood this morning.

But I don’t like it.”

I responded:

“She’s still learning and that’s a lifetime and I know she’s living the work daily.”

They replied:

“I wasn’t saying it makes her a bad person.

I think it has more to do with the fact that I am super visibly queer whether I dress in pride or not.

And I don’t get to hide myself that way.

Also I had a experience with a group of fem queers yesterday that was gross and problematic.”

And I said:

“Then your issue is a white one where you can’t hide queerness inside of whiteness and she could.

The Brown guy plays no part but triangulation.”

They replied:

“I mean I have no desire to hide inside of whiteness.

And I know folks are on a journey and others don’t have my ‘I don’t give a fuck’ but it gets tiring.”

And I responded:

“Of course it does.

I was just pointing out that is an internal issue that would exist with or without us existing.”

This Is The Part White People Avoid

So many dynamics projected onto Black and Brown people are actually unresolved internal fractures within whiteness itself.

And instead of confronting those fractures directly, supremacy culture triangulates Blackness into the conversation.

Black people become the mirror.

The distraction.

The emotional site where unresolved white tensions get displaced.

This is why fixation, avoidance, and triangulation matter so deeply.

Because none of them require overt hatred to function.

Only unconscious orientation.

And that is far more common.

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And this is precisely where most conversations stop.

At recognition.

At intellectual understanding.

At the moment someone says:
“Wow. I never thought about it like that before.” (can’t you actually hear that)

But awareness without interruption changes very little.

Because supremacy culture is not just ideological.

• It is embodied.

• Relational.

• Somatic.

• Behavioral.

• Spiritual.

Which means this work cannot live solely at the level of information consumption.

You cannot read your way out of domination patterns you still enact relationally.

You cannot “good person” your way out of conditioning your nervous system still defaults toward under pressure.

And you cannot heal what you are unwilling to sit beside long enough to honestly witness.

That is why I created The Liberation Journey™.

Not as a performative anti-racism course.

Not as shame-based punishment.

Not as a place to memorize the “correct” language.

But as a 9-month relational and somatic container where people willing to do the deeper work can begin confronting the architecture of supremacy culture within:

• the body

• relationships

• parenting

• conflict

• leadership

• community

• emotional regulation

• power

• fragility

• avoidance

• urgency

• projection

• and selfhood itself

This is not fast work.

It is not aesthetic work.

It is not work for people seeking proximity to liberation language without relational accountability.

It is work for people willing to practice interruption.

Willing to sit in discomfort long enough to become honest.

Willing to move beyond performance and into embodiment.

If while reading this article you felt something shifting…
tightening…
cracking open…
or confronting you…

that may be the invitation.

The rest of this article — including the deeper analysis of fixation, triangulation, supremacy culture as nervous system conditioning, and what embodied interruption actually looks like in practice — is for paid subscribers.

You can support this work and gain access to the full Liberation Education archive by becoming a subscriber:

$10/month
$100/year
$150/year Equity Partner tier

Scholarships are also available because liberation work should remain accessible to people called into it.

For scholarship inquiries:
scholarships@desireebstephens.com

And if you are ready to do this work relationally, somatically, and in community…

I invite you to join The Liberation Journey™. Join Here

Not to become perfect.

But to become accountable to your own becoming.

In solidarity and liberation,
Desireé B. Stephens
Educator | Counselor | Community Builder
Founder, Make Shi(f)t Happen

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