on vulnerability, finesse, & who is wellness for
Hello all—
I know that I’ve been a bit slow with the newsletters lately. In honesty, I’ve just been moving pretty slow; I had a pretty traumatic thing that occurred in my life a few weeks ago and also had an uptick in my day-to-day responsibilities, so it’s been a bit hard to really carve out time to write and think. Thank you for your patience with me & your gentleness.
I’ve been thinking a lot about vulnerability a lot; about braving the depths to go towards sharing myself more openly both with people I love and have loved for a long time and with people who I am just getting to know. And how to trust yourself as you embark on a journey of vulnerability, to go towards the unknown and to know, that regardless of the outcome, you have to pour trust in yourself that you’re going to be okay, that you have the skills and resources to help yourself and protect yourself and make it out okay.
There’s a few things that I’ve been thinking about in regards to vulnerability, that I want to share.
The first is that my friend Krista Franklin sent me this really beautiful talk on vulnerability, Black masculinity, manhood and patriarchy on Father’s Day and Juneteenth with Danté Stewart, Robert Jones Junior, Joél Leon, and Frederick Joseph and it was really beautiful to watch and listen. I love the phrasing that vulnerability, especially in the age of social media, is the ability to be wrong and to admit when you’re wrong. The ability to change and grow, even when there’s documentation. The ability to abandon a thought pattern or programming that no longer works for you, and to admit flaws. And the ways that we all have internalized all of these horrific systems to some extent, and need to be active about dismantling them in us, which requires the ability to admit wrong doing, to mistakes, and to growth.
I also loved the part about vulnerable and brave friendships across lines of systemic harm. And how the bravery in being able to be friends with someone who comes from an identity group that has caused your folks harm can be such an inspiring act of courage, and a spark to actually commit to the daily practice of wanting to show up and be better.
I also loved the part about what does it look like to radically be alive. And how much I’ve been feeling the need to feel that more, to feel alive, to feel connected, to feel vulnerable and intimate with people, to spend a life moving towards that rather than anything else.
In a meditation I did this week with a healer named Kenneth Jover (who I talk about so much in this newsletter lol), he spoke about how a lot of folks are looking to be absolved from things, because the weight of the complication of our pressed humanities can be too overwhelming at times. But actually, none of us, can be absolved from anything. We need to understand deeply that our existences are so close to each other, and that none of us can move through this capitalist world in a way that’s squeaky clean. And this doesn’t mean that we say—fuck it, we can’t do anything. This doesn’t meant we give up. This means we say: we commit to this impossible task of accountability, of vowing to view all life as sacred, because it’s worth our time and being and energy to do so.
And that’s precisely it to me: it’s worth trying to show up, every day, and love and work to combat all these incredibly complex intersecting systems of oppression and harm because a better world is possible. Knowing that we fuck up. Knowing that we make mistakes. Knowing that some of the comforts we experience often come at the expense of others; but working to understand that expense, working to understand our fuckups, working to understand the ways that we harm and are harmed. And everyday, insisting in the belief of a better world.
I’m not saying anything new. I know this. But it’s been on my mind.
(Kenneth was also using the example of how we all have phones and the child labor and exploitative labor of the mining industries that make those phones possible. Which, speaking of, if you haven’t seen Neptune Frost yet, I would highly recommend.)
My friend Vince Martell just released a web series called FINESSE that I was lucky enough to be an Executive Producer on. I watched Vince work diligently on this series for two years, film in the height of quarantine and the 2020 Uprisings, put his heart, soul and body into this. I watched him raise funds in an incredibly economically challenging time, with such little support. I watched him love his crew and cast, take care of them, and work to create an environment of love that so counteracts the norms of exploitation that exist in our industry. I watched him break, over and over, to get to something new, to get to a freer version of himself, his art, and the truth.
Please watch Finesse. Let it blow your mind. Let it show you a glimpse into what is possible, what can be, and what storytelling can look like.
Another friend of mine, Fariha Róisín, just released a beautiful book called WHO IS WELLNESS FOR. It is a deep and incredibly vulnerable exploration into the wellness industry, and does so much important work in naming the violence of the wellness industrial complex, and how much it steals from people of color. It examines Fariha’s own exploration of trauma and journey into wellness, and pulling back some of the layers on healing practices and modalities that have been severed from their original contexts, and been marketed and commodified to the west. As a South Asian person, reading this book was incredibly healing for me, and helped me to locate some of my lineages in a world that has tried to erase them.
I hope that some of these works cause a balm in you, expand gentleness, and open into possibilities of vulnerability. May we all stay so radically connected to each other.
xo