Hello, everyone, and welcome to Righting Relations radio, an experimental Podcast where we explore perspectives and stories, tools, innovations, experiments with transformative adults education, and radical social change across Turtle Island. And we're joined here, my name is Rehana Tejpar. And we're joined with Jon McPhedran Waitzer, who is someone that we connect in through the Resources Movement that Jon works with. And I'm so happy to have you welcome.
Thanks so much. It's so lovely to be having this conversation.
Yeah, we could talk for hours and hours. And we do sometimes we do.
So this is an extension of that just to open it up to share with others. The just inspiring so much with all that you bring in the work that you do. So, can you tell us a bit about yourself? Who you are?
Sure. So I yeah, my name is Jon. In case anyone listening, everyone's for putting me in third person, I use they/them pronouns. And I grew up here on Turtle Island as a white settler. I grew up mostly in toronto, toronto. And now I call jaggaer. Montreal, my home. And I am a white, Jewish, queer and genderqueer person. And I've ended up working in adult education for the last several years. And I think like a lot of people who are working in adult education, I like didn't conceive of the work that way until it was like put to me by someone else who's like, oh, yeah, this is the field that you're a part of. And, for me, how I came to this work, I guess, was through my search for personal healing in a lot of ways. My my background professionally for the last many years has been working in the nonprofit sector first in like a big international social entrepreneurship NGO called Ashoka. And, and then in a very grassroots community organization in Montreal called Hidden hands, which is a youth support and, and social change, enabling organization. And I have sort of been on this quest to figure out the, the good way for me to contribute my like my gifts to the work of social justice and social change. Understanding that I've been socialized into privilege in a number of ways that make it complicated for me to be a part of movements for social justice. So I grew up in a wealthy household. I'm a white person. I'm not a man, but I was socialized into masculinity. And, and so connecting with resource movement, which is a, an organization that mobilizes young people with with class privilege, to participate in movements for the radical redistribution of land wealth, and power, is something that I that I found, while I was trying to answer those questions for myself, how do I as a young person with class privilege, and other privileges, participate in those movements in a good way?
Thank you. Thank you. And, yeah, for anyone who's interested in the resource movement, I think it's a really amazing resource. And I mean, an amazing body of knowledge and people power that, that have a lot to share. And, you know, so I invite us all to go and look
at them. www dot resource. movement.org.
Awesome. Thank you. And, yeah, we've been we've been chatting about this amazing new book that has just come out by Nora. So Martin, turn this world inside out the emergence of nurturance culture. And it's it's going to weave its way through our conversation. And one of the one of the threads I'd like to just begin to tag on is a little bit on this notion of the fragility of privilege.
Yeah, so the the fragility of privilege. I think maybe the first thing to say is to acknowledge that the fragility of privilege draws directly on the thinking of Robin D'Angelo who coined the term white fragility. And that, you know, what we're what we're talking about here is a recognition that every system of like supremacy and dominance creates fragility in the people who benefit materially from that system. And that the reason that happens is that, you know, while we're benefiting materially from any system of supremacy, we're being harmed spiritually. And, and that it's that like, juxtaposition that makes us fragile. And, and so, for me in the work that I do, specifically with people with with class privilege, so who are benefiting materially from capitalism, the the first step in doing the work together, that supports each other, in being able to work towards social justice, in a good way is to is to recognize the the myths of meritocracy, the myth of capitalist supremacy, that that holds up our society, you know, like the the, the fact that any of us believes, that a person can earn $100 million $1,000,000,000.50 billion dollars, is, I think, if you take a second to think about it, ridiculous, that, you know, like, sort of someone can possibly work that much harder than a person who is holding three jobs and living in poverty, to earn that, that much more money. And, and that the sort of cognitive dissonance, that those of us who are benefiting materially from capitalism experience when that like deep knowledge of the sort of the falseness of the of the myth of supremacy that holds it up, runs up against the sort of the comfort that we that we gain from accepting those myths, that common dissonance is super hard to hold. And that it leads us to numb certain parts of ourselves in order to not experience that, that dissonance, and and that that's, that's, you know, what it looks like, usually, like, from a pretty young age, to be socialized into a system of supremacy. And that that's like a wound that we carry. And, and, and that that wound makes us really fragile. Because we're on a deep level, we're aware of that wound, wherever we go. And when we when we bump up against things, that that sort of, you know, threaten to touch that, that part of ourselves that we've numbed. It's like, it feels really scary. And, and so, we we were talking earlier, you asked me like, What does it mean for me and yeah, we come up together with sort of like the these these two pieces where we, when we're fragile, we we perceive difference as a challenge, because difference suggests that the myth of like, things being the way they are because they need to be the way they are, isn't true. And then also, when we're fragile, we perceive challenge as an attack. Because we are so invested in the myth of things being the way they are, because the right way for things to be that any suggestion that it might be otherwise it It threatens to bring us into contact with a part of ourselves that we've known, and that's so painful. And so it feels like an attack, even though it's not actually and that's, that's a core part of the work that we do amongst each other is to work on deconditioning those, those that fragility, building up our resilience, so that we can we can be with different so we can be with challenge and, and not become reactive, you know, not collapse and get into like flight mode, not be be triggered and become sort of like reactive and get into fight mode. And actually be with difference. And, and, you know, from what I understand of the work that, for example, men's groups do together when they're working on sort of building nurturance culture. And, and from what I've experienced with the work that white anti racist groups do together. It's essentially the same work. It's this work of excavating these wounds that we've accepted as the price we pay to be a part of a system of supremacy
and then looking at those wounds together and like you know, caring for them in a way that allows us to reconnect authentic, authentically and accountably with people who are on the other side of that, that system of supremacy. And I ever since you brought up Norris book, there's this So, there's this quote that's in the book that that I find super powerful. And it's a quote from Adrienne Maree Brown, who is, of course another brilliant, brilliant person who we love, really. And who has two books out now, emergent strategy and pleasure activism, both of which everyone listening to this podcast should read. Absolutely. But so Adrienne's quote, you know, touching on, what we were just talking about, is where we are born into privilege. We are charged with dismantling any myth of supremacy. And where we are born into struggle, we are charged with claiming our dignity, our joy, and our liberation. And, yeah, to me, this, this has always felt really powerful because of how it points to our paths to personal healing being the same, or at least being very connected to the paths that we need to walk to sort of play our part in healing the world. Yes. I don't know what that means for you. Yeah,
I hope says, Well, what's coming up for me is that we that quote, is, is so profound. And immediately the first time I heard it was like, I'm both those things. And, and then you said, Yes, we all are. We all are trying to, you know, dispel the myth of our supremacy in some aspect of our of ourselves that has been deemed supreme. And we're also trying to reclaim our own dignity and, and deserving this of joy
for parts of ourselves that had been deemed unworthy. Exactly.
And that and then at the, at the holding those two pieces at the same time, or pined. In our last episode of writing relations, radio spoke about seventh direction. And, and it reminds me of being in the seventh direction. So we have the the four directions of north east, south west, we have the earth and sky, and the seventh direction is inside us. Yeah. So we are the seventh direction. And so being able to hold both that the multiplicity of truths of, of needing to honor ourselves as sacred and divine, and at the same time humble ourselves to that we are not more sacred and divine than anyone else. And balancing those scales is is it comes with that, that real in internal centeredness, that that space of of seeing in all directions.
There's something that comes up for me when Yeah, when you sort of named the seventh direction of like, I guess I hear it as in, right, like the, the sort of, like, northeast, Southwest, up, down and in Yeah, and, and I'm going to go back actually, to Norris book, where she does a lot of weaving of sort of the Yeah, the personal and the interpersonal and the systemic, which we've talked about. And, and she draws on this concept from psychology of attachment theory. Where, you know, there's briefly that like that there's this notion that we develop really strong sort of, like patterns are instincts around how we how we navigate intimacy, when we're very young, based on the experiences we have with our parents or caregivers. And that there was, you know, some of us who receive closeness and autonomy in what feels to us like a healthy balance. And so we end up having a secure attachment style, where we can pretty easily navigate distance and closeness when we with someone that we feel intimate with. And then there's a lot of us who didn't receive what felt like a healthy healthy balance of those things. And that we have an insecure attachment instinct, and that either manifests as sort of anxious where we, we, we protest, and we like, you know, try to control when we feel distance that we're not comfortable with. Because we have this like fear that we're going to be abandoned. And then others we have an avoidant attachment style, which means that we sort of like cut, cut people off and we're afraid that I might abandon us so that you know, we can like abandon them first. And that's all of this comes from a sort of a lack of connection to ourselves. And then in particular, going back to the the fragility of privilege, that yeah, being conditioned into white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, whatever Again, it cuts us off from a part of ourselves. And that like, so much of what manifests as like harm in society is, you know, like us grappling in an insecure way with like, the wound of being detached from ourselves. And, and that the answer to that is, is healing versus like sacrifice or versus, you know, like further erasing the self, but that the answer is actually turning inwards and like moving towards the self. For me anyway is like such a liberating concept
100%. And it sounds like this, this this work of, of healing. Acknowledging this separation, it's it's interesting because you're speaking of it in the context of a privileged group. And I'm reminded of Sherri Mitchell, who wrote that sacred instructions indigenous with wisdom for living spirit based changed at Penobscot, attorney and speaker writer from from Penobscot territory me, and and she talks about how colonization has as impacted every single one of us. You know, it's impacted the colonizer, the colonized, and all of it is connected to separation. That's what colonization has done is separated us from ourselves from each other from the land. And that this work that we're doing now is, you know, like, some call it the work that Joanna Macy, the work that reconnects
totally Yes. Or
some say that it's the great turning or the decolonization or writing relations or, but it is that re, that we, that reconnecting that bridging those divides. And it's, and it really does start with the self that, that the more space I can hold for myself, the more love I can have for myself, the more space I can hold for you, the more love I can have for you. Because I'm not separate from you actually. It's an illusion that we're separate. Sherry talks about this a lot, as well as the greatest myth that we've ever been fed is that we're separate from totally everything. Yeah, we're individuals. And, and so we're, yeah, we're in this time of grappling with it that that rebonding and it being okay to, to need to be fragile to need things to say, I love you to say I'm in pain to express I feel kind of jealous right now, I feel insecure about the way that you know, and, and, and how to also just unlearn this notion of competition. And when you talked about this, the difference gets perceived as a challenge. And the challenge can get perceived as an attack. And in the notion of this fragility, of, of privilege, I think about it. And maybe it's because the privilege to have curated this society, this dominant society, at least in its likeness, that even in in conversation amongst people who are not supposed to, like, quote, unquote, privilege, I feel like that if a person in is saying something that's not in alignment or agreement, that it's often perceived as an attack, it's often perceived as a Whoa, we're not we're having a debate. Now we're having and it's going to be about who can win this argument, who's got the best idea, and I feel school system also put, you know, turns out this type of behavior. And I wonder how we can, you know, shift those mindsets and develop the skill sets to communicate in a different way that is really about deep listening, holding each other up, still expressing our truth, even if it is different from what another says, without it, spiraling into conflict, because of our differences,
I'm really interested in that and like curious about it in terms of, you know, there being certain types of fragility that that are specific to being socialized into one or another kind of privilege. And then there that there are Yeah, there are other kinds of fragility that are just about being in this culture and, and that, that makes all of us less able to connect with each other and also with ourselves because of how, you know, inside of ourselves, nothing is linear. In the world, nothing is actually linear and And yeah, that this sort of like this, this myth of the possibility of control is something that, you know, I think I think maybe it's those of us who are socialized into like a privileged position in like, hierarchical hierarchical hierarchies hierarchized society have are like conditioned to have a harder time letting go of that myth. But that yeah, of course, you know, we're like, we're, that myth is fed to us, regardless of our of our position in society.
Yeah, the image that's coming to me is the triangle. And thinking like a pyramid, and thinking about the training, I recently did a dialogue for peaceful change. And how we learned about this, that this, what is underneath conflict is this, this this hierarchical structure that says that, you know, at the top, you're, you're in power, you're in control, you have, you're, you're the winner. And if you're at the bottom, you're the loser. And, and so you're, you know, fill in the blank with whatever derogative term you would like, poor, useless, whatever. And everyone in this socialized in this society is trying to climb this ladder to get to the top. And it's cutthroat. It's like a dog eat dog world, you know, and it were taught that if you don't, you know, fight, if you don't climb, you will end up at the bottom, and people will step all over you, and you'll be homeless, and poor and miserable. And so maybe that's in our, it's so deeply interwoven in our sense of survival now, that I'm not going to let you win this argument, because I'm trying to, I'm trying to I'm trying to win at life, I'm trying to survive,
and life is a zero sum game, it's like what you get needs to take away from me. Exactly, exactly. Totally. That actually brings up another quote that that I first thought of, and sort of like looking for actually, when when you when you brought up the the the teaching from? Sherri? Sherri Exactly. But yeah, that this quote is from from James Baldwin. And it always makes me think about how, yeah, the purpose of all of these systems of domination is to is to sort of create a world where we don't have to face what it really means to like, connect with ourselves and each other, because of, because of this feeling that we don't have the tools to do that. And like, what does that come from? You know, and I think that again, one way of understanding that is, is that we, we all come from some kind of trauma. And, and that sort of the, the system that have been created by the groups that are currently dominating society in the world, were created as a response to trauma as a response to, you know, not feeling enough not feeling safe. And, and that, in order to get to a place where, you know, we as members of those groups, and then those groups as a whole, stop harming other people, we need to get to a point where it's like, where we can actually believe that, you know, we'll be safe if we don't create others, to sort of like offload our insecurities and our rage and our fears and our grief on and so get James Baldwin has this quote, where he says, I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be accepted by white people, still less to be loved by them. They the blacks simply don't wish to be beaten over the head by the whites, every instance of our brief passage on this planet, white people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other. And when they have achieved this, which will not be tomorrow, and may very well be never, the Negro Problem will no longer exist, because it will no longer be needed. And so, yeah, you know, like really putting his finger on sort of, and this is something he did throughout his life, right was to push back when when curious white people would ask him to talk about the Negro Problem. And where he'd be like, no, no, like the problem of racism in America is a problem with like, the collective soul of white people. And I don't want to talk to you about like a problem that black people have. I want to talk to people about the problem that white people have and have created these exactly these
divisions of race constructed this difference.
Yeah, first place. Wow, that's beautiful.
So my mind is going in two separate directions. I mean, the first thing that I that come came up as I was listening to you was the the prophecy of the seventh fire prophecy of the Anishinabeg and then lighting of the eighth fire, which is which is alive right now, you know that was in the seventh fire. So we're hoping we can light the eight fire. And so, you know, for those of you have not read that Shawn Mitchell does a wonderful job of recounting this prophecy at the end of her book as well, that there have been several fires, which mark different times in history, a documented sort of the they prophesized the admission of a people, including the coming of the Europeans and colonization. And then when they talked, talked about this time, I'm not going to go into the whole prophecy. But speaking of this time, they said there would be extreme, you know, they didn't say extreme weather, but they said that, that there would the Earth would shake that she would have a fever, that the fire that the water would light on fire, that there would be all these storms and, and that they're there, yes. And we see this happening now. And that there would be that there would be those who would listen to the waves of the old ones of the elders that would go back to listening to those elders, and some of those elders will have gone quiet, because no one would have listened to them for so long. And they will have forgotten that they have something to share, some will remember and will share. And those people who come from all the all the all the all the all the nations would remember the ways of the circle, listening to those old teachings, and would come together to protect the Earth. And at the same time, the white people, being the most powerful people would have the final straw, essentially, if they chose to remember the ways of the circle, they could save themselves and all of humanity and the planet. And if they chose not, then they would die. And so would
all of humanity die and kill everyone else. Kill
everyone else. Yeah. And it speaks exactly to what James is saying. Like when you when the white people can, can heal themselves. And remember, you know, who they know
that when the right white people and the rich people and the man? Yeah, can all do that or not.
So can you tell us? Can you share a little bit? You know, I'm sure there's a lot of people that that are resonating with this right now. But then they're asking themselves
like, what what does that look like? How
do I totally what did these spaces contain? What are the what are the elements that what are the conditions that support healing of this kind and totally an adult educator, maybe share some of this the tools or things that you might bring in?
Sure, yeah. And I guess, like, I want to bring Adrian's quote, back here to sort of scope the kind of healing work that that I focus on in my adult education practice. Where so yeah, again, Adrian said, where we are born into privilege, we are charged with dismantling any myth of supremacy, where we are born into struggle, we are charged with claiming our dignity, joy and liberation. And, yeah, like you and like everyone else identify with both of those paths. And, you know, there are, there are parts of that Personal and collective healing work that I do in community with folks who I'm in struggle with, you know, with, like, sort of my my queer and trans and genderqueer family. And, and that's a part of my personal practice and my my organizing practice, and, and it's not the work that, that I'm most excited to talk about with you today. But I guess I just want to say like, you know, that, that that is all, of course, still so important, and and we all need to find ways to reclaim our joy and do the Liberation with our communities that we struggle with. And then there's the other part, which is sort of working with the people, our community of people who with whom we share privilege to dismantle those particular myths of supremacy that that feed our privilege. And so I can, I can share a little bit more about what that looks like within resorts movement, where we are a national movement of millennials and Gen Zed, folks. So young people define very loosely, in terms of like 18 to 40 years old, which is great for me, because I'm 35. So like not a youth by most measures of a word. And in the work that that we do is is really particularly focused on dismantling the myth of capitalist meritocracy, which is capitalist supremacy, which which shows up as the myth of meritocracy that sort of, we deserve our economic positions within society, based on how hard we work. And what we find when we try to face that together is is that there's like so many, you know, subtle ways that we end up like propping that myth up in our lives. And, and where that myth ends up separating us from other people. And the other thing I should say is that we are incredibly fortunate to draw on, and we've only been around for two years. But we're able to draw on 20 years of work by an organization called resource generation, which is based in the US. And that was the direct inspiration for our work. So the results generation has had 20 years of being like in community and like in movements and thinking this through, and they've been so generous with us in terms of sharing their materials, sharing their learnings, incredible. And so, you know, what they've developed, and what we've adopted is, like a series of tools and practices for coming together, in circle among people who share this particular experience of privilege, and then who are often really different in terms of where we fit into privilege and struggle in the rest of our lives. So, you know, a lot of us are, like class, privileged, or wealthy, and also queer or also, female are also trans are also racialized. And then some of us are, you know, all of like, wealthy and white, and male. And, and it's a really like rich exchange there. But what we focus on the, the, the shared path to healing that we have because of the shared privilege of of like, class privilege.
And we do storytelling. So one way that we unlearn I want to bring back Adrian's words exactly, yeah, one way that we dismantle the myth of of class supremacy. amongst ourselves, is this tool that we call money stories, where we recognize that the stories that we mostly tell each other about money and society are shaped in a few ways to continuously prop up this myth. One of those ways is that there's this massive taboo against naming numbers, naming numbers around income numbers around wealth savings, inheritance, that there's this like massive, sort of like cult of secrecy around money that we're usually not even aware of consciously. So true. Yeah. And of course, that reinforces the myth of meritocracy, right? Because we don't have access to the information that would allow us to actually understand what someone else's situation is. Right? And so when we tell our money, stories, we name numbers. And, and then the other part of of the money stories in society as a whole, that serve to prop up the myth of meritocracy is this sort of, like, persistent pattern of not naming unearned advantages in our like family stories of wealth, and not naming participation in structural violence. So, you know, like, the classic Money Story of like, oh, yeah, like, our family is rich, I guess. And, you know, like, there was like, a great uncle somewhere who, you know, started with nothing and worked super hard, and like, you know, made a fortune and whatever. And it's like, okay, well, what is under that? And so when we tell funny stories, we we do both those things together, as a way of like, deconditioning ourselves from that mythology. If you'd like I could actually share my money story with you right now. Sure. Yeah. It's like, sure. Yeah, I'll do I'll do like a condensed version, because they can they can take a while. But so yeah, I grew up moving between an upper middle class household and a wealthy household. My parents divorced when I was young. And I have I come from a family that has worked super hard. And that has experienced both unearned advantage and undeserved oppression. And that has participated in structural violence as a part of building the material security that that we now enjoy. And, and so on my mother's side, we're from Scotland in England, we came over to Canada, six generations ago, settled in Manitoba. Several generations of like working class farmers who received land through the Dominion Lands Act that was directly stolen from the indigenous peoples of that of that land. And that's what allowed that family to you know, subsist as a working class family, but still sort of secure and stable. And then my grandfather was in the Air Force in World War Two. And already, you know, like the Air Force was the most prestigious wing of the military and it was mostly white men. who served in the Air Force, after the war came back to Canada and through the Veterans Assistance Program was supported financially to go to veterinary school. So do University, first person in the family to do University. That program, in theory was available to all Canadians. But if you if you look at who was actually able to access those government supports, pretty much no Francophone Canadians were able to access it, and pretty much no racialized Canadians were. So it was basically like a transfer of wealth from everyone, to white men. In Canada, and, and it allowed my grandfather to be class mobile. And, and then there was also a transfer of wealth, or creation of wealth that is sort of like erased from the story, which is my grandmother, while my grandfather was in veterinary school, she was working super hard to support them. And, and that's not, you know, that wasn't I did this Money Story conversation with my mother, that she sort of brought that to light in terms of like, the hidden, the hidden labor, that is erased from family histories because of patriarchy. And, and so, my mother grew up, upper middle class, rural, she went to university, she became a sort of prominent figure in the, in the Canadian Women's Movement, she has an incredible work, I'm so proud of her.
When my parents separated, there was a question of, you know, like, where my brother and I would live with my mom, and a very wealthy participant in the women's movement, offered to support my mother in purchasing a home for us to grow up in. And, and that money came from family inheritance via an insurance company that was built in the Great Depression. And that, you know, basically extracted wealth from poor Canadians, via the insurance system, which is designed to concentrate wealth. And, and so we, I was able to grow up in like, a nice home in downtown Toronto, with my mom because of that wealth. And, and, and so, yeah, my mother became an academic is now a senator. And, and so my whole life I've had access, you know, through her to a lot of social capital, that I've been so grateful for, and, and that I didn't do anything during. And, and then, on my father's side, and because we're on a podcast, I'm not going to name numbers for my parents, but I will make up my own numbers. On my father's side, my my ancestors come from Germany and Russia, Jewish, fled persecution over there, moved to the US. And that afforded our family access to class mobility. And so my, my grandparents both grew up sort of middle class, upper middle class, their parents had entered into the pharmaceutical business. And the story that we always casually had was that my grandfather, my grandmother, my father moved to Canada, when my dad was a kid, because of a family conflict, and came came here with nothing. And then, you know, worked super hard to rebuild. And, and it's true that they sort of were downwardly mobile, and then worked really hard to rebuild. And a piece that I didn't hear until I really asked was that my grandmother's father had given them an interest free loan, to be able to sort of start a new business in somebody's life. And, and they, you know, use that really carefully. And also, they use it to build a business where, you know, they paid people, basically, you know, close to the minimum that they were allowed to pay people, which which we know is not what people's labor is really worth. And that my father experience class mobility, because of that economic behavior that was encouraged by society and by community. And so my dad became a corporate lawyer. And he became a corporate lawyer around the time when the economy started to transform from a an economy that was growing at a rate that, you know, to different degrees was benefiting everyone in terms of like income growth over time, if you look at like World War Two through the 19, early 1980s, you see that whether you were rich or poor, incomes were growing. And then if you look at how the economy has grown since the 19, the early 80s, wealth creation and income growth has exploded. For those of us in the top 10%. And especially in the one in the top 1%. It's more or less stagnated for folks in the middle, and it's actually gone down for the poorest folks in society. And that's, you know, financialization of the economy, corporatization of the economy and neoliberalism. All of that started in the early 80s, which is when my father became a corporate lawyer. And, and he's a person who whose commitment to social justice, I still respect in many, many ways, and he's a person who became wealthy being a part of the system that has concentrated wealth extracted well for the majority of society, and I grew up with access to that wealth. And so me personally I, I was able to, you know, take lots of risks growing up, because I had this like financial cushion and this sort of like belief that anything was possible for me. And so I've had a bunch of different kinds of jobs. I had what I had personal savings. When I first started, like thinking about this, which was a few years ago of about $70,000, which were all savings that I that I had saved from jobs I'd worked, in which I thought of as my own, until I did a mental calculation of the amount of cash transfers that my parents had given to me since I was 18 years old, for like, they paid for my university, I graduated debt free, they gave me $1,000 a month, while I was in university, so that I could pay my expenses. They paid for my therapy in time when I wasn't making much income. And all of that adds up to about $70,000. And so, you know, at the time, when I was thinking about those savings of my own, actually, I would have still been paying off student debt, if I hadn't received those cash transfers, let alone vacations, I got taken on and sort of like private school and went to all of that.
And now the process actually of receiving early inheritance, from my father and my stepmother, which which I'm which $250,000, over three years, in which I'm, I'm using 50,000 of that to support, basically subsidize my work. So I can do this organizing work unpaid. And then redistributing the other 200,000. And, and that wouldn't have been possible if I if I weren't in this community, of people who are supporting each other to recognize like what's not ours, and to recognize the, the the healing work that comes from undoing those myths of supremacy, that that conditioned us to believe that, you know, we deserve the things that we have that we didn't actually work for. And that make us fragile to any connection that might threaten those stories, that that that we tell ourselves, let make us comfortable. And so yeah, that's, that's my money story.
Thank you so much for sharing that. Thanks for inviting
it and holding it. And one thing I want to say about that story, is comes back to fragility. And comes back to that notion of those of us who carry fragility because of our privilege, hearing, difference or challenge as a tax. So, feedback I've often gotten when sharing that story is that people who have wealth, feel attacked by the story, feel like what I'm saying with the story is you need to give everything away. And I guess I just want to be really clear that that's not my intention with this story. And that, you know, what I believe and what we believe within results movement is that everyone deserves to live in abundance. And that, you know, it's it's, it's up to each of us to figure out what we need to feel safe and secure. And that those of us who are socialized into class privilege have work to do to push ourselves to recognize when we are like in a scarcity mindset, but that's actually not our material reality. And so, yes, like, we do need to push each other to build our comfort with letting go and giving away but that yeah, being in relation with others, as far as my class religious does not, in my opinion, mean, giving away everything you have. I guess it ended up being kind of long after all,
it was it was very inspiring, it actually really illuminated so much of my own money, story and connection that I hadn't completely made. And so I'm gonna I'm really going to sit with that and maybe the next time I see you and I'll share with you my money story, I would love to hear it. I would love to think it and put it together. Thank you so much. You're such a gift to this world and oh my god for all that you're you're doing on healing yourself and your relations and bringing to the light things that have been secretive. Thank you
for being a part of my healing and for healing with me.
Oh, wait. Thank you, Jon. Thank you for listening to Righting Relations radio. This song is written by RJD2 To find out more about us, find us at rightingrelations.org