Reclaiming The Power of Our Belief, Faith, and Trust

For The Worldbuilders Ep. 039

Betye Saar, Black Girl's Window (1969) Image Description: Flat against a blue background and a set of sheer curtains, a black figure presses up against a transparent surface. Facial features disappear into the black silhouette, with the exception of two eyes cut from a lenslike material that creates the illusion that they open and close as the viewer moves around them. (Source: MoMa)

I will generate 6-figures this year. I will close on my house this year. I will attract a publisher in deep alignment with the book my body needs to write. I punctuated the spells with the usual ceremonies. I prayed, I walked, I soaked in lavender water steaming with epsom salt, I wrote, I wrote, I wrote, I meditated, I danced. I kept remembering what Céline Semaan told me on a call one day, “fear is an indication of desire”. The words echoed across the landscape of the weeks. The cards are telling me to step into my power. Every message I’m receiving is inviting me to stretch. I hear the whispers, “we will catch you, haven’t we always?” The cards, the sky, the page. I pulled out all my tools and still couldn’t dig through to the other side of my dis-ease, my doubt, my skepticism in my own possibility — in my own inevitably.

While walking through the forest, with the time keepers as my witness, it hit me. I realized I’m in a season of making double the monthly income than from my previous salaried job, with much more control over my labor, but I still didn’t feel as secure as I felt when I was working for a company I had no control over. Why is that? Perhaps it’s because I am so used to, have been taught to, have been socialized and expected to relinquish the power of my trust, belief, attention and faith to sources outside myself.

This is the moment of clarity, the shock of recognition¹, the truth I could chew: We have spent large portions of our lives in a practice of projecting our power, belief and trust onto systems designed for our death. This realization got me thinking about the potency and potential of our collective power which I reflect on in this episode. 

For those of us interested in creating offers that interlock and serve the vision of collective liberation, let’s brainstorm how mutual aid is designed into the pricing and/or delivery of our offers. If the individual healing work is not preparing us to be in relationship in these sometimes uncomfortable but very necessary and liberating ways then we have to ask: Are we healing our nervous system to be better participants inside capitalism or are we healing our nervous system for what comes after?

YES.

1. Let’s address the childhood wounds and unmet needs that severed us from our desire and the potency of our play.

2. Let’s address all the ways we’ve misplaced our power in search of the safety we needed in childhood.

3. Let’s address the ways in which we need to cultivate somatic security to welcome income, ease and reciprocal community provision².

And let’s remember all this healing work is in service of cultivating a culture of care beyond individual prosperity.

The Seeda School Treehouse launched this month and on Thursday we have our first meeting. The Treehouse is a speculative space for Seeda School Alumni Worldbuilders to dream up creative solidarity economies, revisit our community agreements and facilitate skillshares. Because we’re not engaging in this work to stabilize capitalism in its late stage. No, our strategies always ask, “how might we destabilize capitalism while simultaneously creating nets to catch each other when these structures fall?”

This might be my favorite episode yet. Tune in for strategy, tip, and remembrance seeds to plant inside your week as we reclaim the power of our belief, faith, and trust. Listen to this latest episode “For the Worldbuilders” on either Apple or Spotify and let me know what you think by commenting below or replying to this email.

With desire,

Ayana

1. Toni Morrison interview at Princeton (1992)

2. “Care is not just about how we treat each other; it’s about also how we care for the planet. It’s about enduring a world that is precarious, collectively. My friend Elliot Cooley, who is a brilliant organizer, always says that relationships are the most important resource we have. And that points to a culture of care that needs to exist, right? There will be actually no safety that we don’t make through collective care. And collective care, I always talk about and think about it as a form of reciprocal community provision. It’s how we make each other possible.” — Mariame Kaba in an interview on the Seizing Freedom Podcast with Kidada E. Williams