Social Impact, Privilege, and Collective Healing: Soul Connection Call with Brigette Iarruso-Soto
As the host of Soul Connection Calls, I love having conversations that challenge the status quo and push us to think differently about spirituality, business, and social justice. My discussion with Brigette Iarruso-Soto, a social impact business coach, was particularly enlightening as we explored the intersection of spiritual work, systemic change, and conscious business.
Episode Highlights:
The paradox of building profitable businesses while challenging systemic oppression
Understanding how religious trauma connects to capitalistic systems of power
The difference between "healing" versus "healed and healing" mindsets
How privilege can be leveraged to redistribute resources and create positive change
The importance of accessible spiritual spaces and conscious business models
Key Insights on Collective Healing
One of the many powerful moments in our conversation was when I shared my perspective on healing: "The most important thing we can do to heal the world is to heal ourselves." But this comes with an important caveat - there are two stages of healing. The first is what I call "healing," where we're striving to reach some perfect healed state. The second stage is "healed and healing," where we recognize that healing is ongoing and that we can't do it alone because we're part of a larger collective.
The Role of Privilege in Creating Change
During our discussion, I emphasized how my business framework focuses on leveraging privilege to create positive change: "How can I eventually leverage my privilege to reallocate resources into these communities that need it, that don't have the access that I've had?" This approach acknowledges both personal responsibility and systemic inequities.
Brigette's Powerful Insights
Brigette shared some particularly striking perspectives, including this observation about capitalism: "We often say the capitalist system is broken, but in fact, it was designed explicitly to do what it's doing." She emphasized how conscious business leaders can work within this system to create meaningful change.
She also discussed the limitations of individualistic spiritual practice: "Western spirituality and Western spiritual communities often speak about collective wellness among their community... but there's this sort of unspoken rule of we don't really think about or talk about the people in the world that are, for example, subsistence farming and don't literally have enough food to eat because we would be manifesting negativity." This powerful critique highlights how spiritual bypass can perpetuate systemic inequities even as we work on our personal growth.
Moving Beyond Surface-Level Spirituality
Our conversation challenged the common spiritual bypass of focusing solely on personal development while ignoring systemic issues. We discussed how true spiritual growth must include awareness of and action toward collective wellbeing.
A Call to Action
If this conversation resonates with you, I invite you to watch the full episode on our YouTube channel or below. The depth and nuance of our discussion goes far beyond what I can capture in this blog post. Subscribe to our channel to stay updated on future chats, masterclasses, and rituals where we continue to explore these important intersections of spirituality, social justice, and conscious business.
Remember, as I learned through this powerful conversation, true transformation happens when we align our personal healing with collective liberation.
All My Love,
Safrianna Lughna
The Queer-Spirit Guide
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*Transcript was created in Descript and may not be 100% accurately transcribed.
Sacred Disruptors with Safrianna & Brigette Iarruso-Soto===
Safrianna: So welcome to our soul connection call. These are just live streamed conversations that are based on a loose agenda where we just chat and see where it goes. And Bridget, I'm so glad you've joined me because you are a. Beautifully vocal person in the online space and you really speak up against injustice and you talk about privilege and you talk about intersectionality and all of these things that I think are really important for people to talk about.
So why don't we just start with some introductions? If you don't mind orienting yourself to my audience and then I'll orient mine to yours.
Brigette: Sure. So my name is Bridgette and I Call myself a social impact business coach. And so I help people with the traditional business things like sales, right? And attracting clients and their pricing and their offers.
But I do it through the lens of how do we create impact and change through our business in a way that is in alignment with our core values. And many of the people I work with care deeply about creating abundance and creating a more healed and a beautiful world for all and not just the privileged few, which is a bit of a paradox in the coaching industry.
So a lot of what I seek to do is to be a person that's in the space of the possibility of yes. And yes, you can build a profitable, sustainable business that allows you to be financially abundant and resourced. And you can also leverage that business to create social change. So a lot of the people I work with Are disruptive social innovators.
They are looking at shifting or breaking down old systems of how we did business in the old bro world marketing, looking at how we can embrace a less toxic form of capitalism while still acknowledging that the system is inherently bad. built to oppress. And I read something the other day, which was really powerful and I wish I could remember who wrote it, but I've seen this a few times, which was very much a mantra that I keep in mind, which is that we often say the capitalist system is broken, but in fact, it was designed explicitly to do what it's doing.
So it was designed to exploit and extract as much as possible from certain groups of people, so that other smaller groups of people could have a higher level of wealth and power and privilege. And so for its original design, Unfortunately, the system is actually working as it should. And so I work with people who are looking at how to do things differently within that system, how to disrupt it from within and how to still find balance and live a good life and find joy and pleasure while also holding the duality of that system being really inequitable and many people being harmed in it.
So that's really the lens that I bring to this general idea of business coaching and sales coaching.
Safrianna: Which is so unique and so important. When I say unique, it shouldn't be unique, right? This should be the norm of let's make sure everybody is supported and everyone has access to the care they need, but you're totally right.
And I love that. In wherever you read that, I've read it somewhere too. It's been deeply on my mind, this idea that the system is, it's working as intended for the people that it was intended for. So, and it's Bridgette. Did I, am I saying that right?
Brigette: Yes. Thank you so much. So
Safrianna: absolutely. Names are important.
Names are very important. So I'm Safriana Luna. I'm co founder of Living Lunas, and we are a brand centered around uplifting the others of the world. So we're doing the social justice from the angle of being a social movement, a podcast and a community. And. I myself am the queer spirit guide, and I host rituals, retreats, and other spiritual experiences that are non denominational and let everyone come into their own authentic spiritual alignment.
So that's what I do. And yes, that's disruptive, right? Because I've been speaking on this lately, and I'm sure you see this too religious trauma is real. And the whole religious indoctrination in our society. Goes hand in hand with the capitalistic system of power that's in place.
Brigette: Yeah, it sure does. And I think that a lot of the ways that we may be conditioned to be people pleasers or to be afraid of ruffling feathers or being too much or causing problems very much come out of this kind of Western religious construct, which is really about conditioning people to be docile.
Yeah. Do not question authority to follow rules without has, without again, questioning things and to not be a problem. And ultimately when I look at the way religion has been interpreted, right, the way that it's been applied, it really is a perfect framework to ultimately enslave people. And a lot of the narratives that come out of my particular faith system of Catholicism and Christianity have to do with poverty, with being grateful for being the chosen people and being poor, which again, if you're looking at a very small group of people, Looking to systemically oppress and exploit a group of people for their own financial gain.
It's a very well designed narrative to teach those people that they should be grateful for being poor, that working hard brings them closer to God, that they should deny themselves earthly pleasures, that if they do engage in too much rest or relaxation or pleasure, that they are sinful, wrong and bad and should be punished, right?
So a lot of what I've seen as like this, the most recent wave of shift in the coaching industry is complex because I do see a lot of powerful, intention to reframe and unlearn some of these harmful constructs around denying ourselves pleasure looking at poverty and charity as something virtuous, right?
All these constructs that keep us often as people who care about the world under resourced, underpaid working hard to then feel that we're valuable only when we're working hard and producing and withholding pleasure, joy, and happy experiences because we feel that we haven't done enough to earn those things.
So again, like when we look at so much of what the coaching industry Is working to, to un unlearn or to help people unhook from it is really about unlearning a great deal of those constructs, right? From these religious narratives that come out of many people's upbringing. And then when you look at how religion and colonialism work together, oh my gosh, religious slavery work together, it's deeply problematic.
Right? And then, but then we get into the nuance of how do we do that? How do we reclaim rest, pleasure, abundance, right? Rejecting the idea that we're bad, naughty, or evil if we are enjoying ourselves and not working hard and getting to live a good life and being paid well. How do we do that without replicating some of the very same systems of oppression that we are railing against or speaking against, right?
This is where the rub happens and this is where there's the complex dance in a lot of Good intention coaches and healers may be actually promoting narratives or even modeling practices that are. Not fully acknowledging the lived experience of those people who may have been harmed and oppressed by the system and whose identity is such that they may still be harmed in the system.
And I think a lot of people get really upset about that. these conversations, it can be really painful and hard because we can get into a place of feeling like shame or are you trying to tell me I'm guilty of this? And I didn't create the system, so why are you asking me to do something about it?
Right. And that's where there's this place where people can feel into that kind of fragility or reactivity. And it's like, It begs the question for a person like myself, who's mixed identity and I'm predominantly European ancestry in my appearance. I, while I hold some other identities like from my African ancestors, indigenous ancestors, I am still predominantly a white European woman in how the world perceives me.
I have to then question and ask myself, even if I didn't create this system, if my ancestors participated in it moons ago and created it, do I still Number one, have a responsibility to dismantle that system because I hold a position of privilege in that system and have access in many ways to some of the people.
that may be able to change that system in a different way. They may relate to me differently. Unfortunately, often people of white bodied privilege like myself listen to other people of white bodied privilege before they would listen to a person of color who's black or indigenous, right? That's just part of what may be at play.
So then the first question is, do I, Is it important for me to play a role in that system and in, in breaking it down or shifting it? How? And then the more icky question, which is the one that's really hard to sit with, which is even if I'm a good person and I don't have bad intentions and I'm not consciously aware of it, am I still benefiting from that system of oppression?
Right. And that's the really difficult part. yuck, yucky shadow conversation to have, which can just look like, do people make decisions around how much money they spend or with whom they would spend money based on that person's cultural identity or how they speak or how they look or what level of privilege they hold in the system.
Not everyone would make decisions based on that, but the reality is that many people do. And again, it doesn't necessarily mean that we're consciously aware of this. It's subconscious programming. And this is where the shadow side of healing comes in because so often in Westernized spirituality, which is so, again, so often about, Personal realization, personal development, personal joy, personal ascension from pain and grief and suffering and personal wellness.
It is often disconnected. Maybe, again, unconsciously so, from collective wellness. Right. The community is so important. And collective ascension. Now, Western spirituality and Western spiritual communities often speak about collective wellness among their community. Right. It's not that this topic of collective wellness is not brought up, but we're really, there's this sort of unspoken rule of we don't really think about or talk about the people in the world that are, for example, subsistence farming and don't literally have enough food to eat because we would be manifesting negativity.
And bringing our vibration down or harming, somehow harming the collective by talking about these bad negative things in, in, in there's this kind of somewhat. Strange, for me, nebulous, mirage y belief system of if we don't talk about systemic oppression and racism and poverty, and if we don't pay attention to it, and if we only focus on lifting our own personal vibration and living our best individual life and our individual best wellness, somehow, we're going to lose it.
Those problems will simply dissipate. And I have a really hard time with that because I have a beautiful life and I have a great deal of privilege and I have a lot of spaciousness and resources to allow myself. The privilege of not thinking about or talking about these things if I don't want to.
I don't have to. They don't affect me, but I'm going to say with certainty that every time I reach a higher level of spiritual ascension and every time I heal my shadow, I do cause less harm in the world. Yes. That is an absolute truth. And yes, we all need to do that healing so that we are not recycling trauma.
Right. And that's one big part of it. And I'm so grateful that we are really beginning to understand that we're all not responsible necessarily for the trauma we've experienced, but we are responsible for healing it and continuing to cause harm. And people of privilege. solely focusing on their own wellness and healing.
I really push back and question whether that alone is enough to restore balance universally and offer back resources, access, power, and privilege to those groups who have been historically marginalized or denied those resources. Like I can't figure out how me living this beautiful life in Spain, going to women's circles and womb healings and sound healing and sound baths and retreats.
And again, just continuing to do all this beautiful work in my family system, healing our family system trauma. I'm not sure yet how that is going to restore land. And opportunity back to indigenous communities in Puerto Rico where my mother was born. There is no, it's not going to happen just by that sort of magical energetic infusion of like Bridget is mixed Puerto Rican woman healing her trauma in Spain.
She's doing this beautiful inner work. And then by virtue of that is enough. That the system is going to become healed.
Safrianna: Yeah. You know what comes up for me as you're saying all of that is one of the things that I say to my clients often, and this is my belief, is that the most important thing we can do to heal the world is to heal ourselves.
And here's why, because I see there being two stages of healing. Two. I know it's like a big claim. I call it healing versus healed and healing. Healing is this I've got to strive. I've got to reach, I've got to reach this healed place where everything's going to be fine and there's no problems anymore.
And all of my trauma is going to go away. That's the belief when we're in the first phase. And then when we hit the healed point, We recognize, oh, the healing is never done. The healing is never done. I love myself enough now to recognize that this is going to be ongoing and that I can't go it alone because we're this part of this bigger collective.
And so by doing that work to come to love ourselves, we start to see our humanity in others even more, I think. And that's where I think, yes, doing the personal work and the shadow work and whatnot. does yield a global impact because if we're truly in that healed and healing stage, I don't think we can help.
But assist other people and serve other people and show up and reallocate our resources, right? Like my whole business framework that I've started from, I'm, I am very white. My, my ethnic and historical background is pretty much all white European. I don't, except for a little bit of Jew. I do have some Jewish heritage and we did have family in the Holocaust, but other than that, I don't have that racial trauma.
Of being a person of color, like at all in any way, shape, or form. However, I'm in, I intersect with other areas of less privilege in being queer and in being femme and those things. But again, when I'm able to heal my stuff and look at where I intersect, I'm like, okay, well, everyone else has their own intersections going on too.
How can I help them rise? And so my business has been, how can I eventually leverage my privilege? to reallocate resources into these communities that need it, that don't have the access that I've had. And that's the
Brigette: key. That's the key. You just said it. It's like when we're healed, then we have the spaciousness and the capacity to help others from a place that is Really healthy,
Safrianna: right?
And I didn't come from a healthy background, right? Like I grew up in poverty. I grew up with trauma. I grew up with every kind of trauma except for war in my backyard. And I've had to do years and years of therapy and years of coaching and years of shadow work to get where I am. But that's if I don't own that, right.
And that's what I try to do. I try to really own that as a white woman. Yeah. That you can't bypass the stuff and just hope, oh yeah, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna live in my own little bubble over here and it's gonna be great because you are doing more harm when you do that.
Brigette: Yeah. And I think that's the duality.
It's again, there's great wisdom and we all need to be doing our healing again to not continue to cause harm. And there's this challenging dynamic in the system where the people that cause the most harm are the least self aware and the least likely to do that type of healing, right, like old white men in power who are proliferating the world with violence to continue to amass greater wealth and land and power.
And so the challenge is then We have to look at who in the system can continue to get access to those individuals with their proximity to privilege and whiteness. Even if we hold other marginalized identities, we still are in a position of proximity to that privilege. And how can we, by being grounded, conscious leaders who are disruptive, creative, innovative, figure out inroads To access opportunity and create wealth or access wealth that exists in the system and redistribute it.
And this is one of those challenges that a lot of my clients have, which is that because they're such heart centered people, they're very purpose driven. They want their business to make an impact around a very important social https: otter. ai All these issues that so many of the kinds of people that we're in community with care deeply about.
And so what happens in the business model perspective is that often we get caught up in only doing business with other creatives and coaches and healers who they themselves may also have somewhat limited access to resources. And then we have all these like really generous, wonderful, over giving people trying to move money around this like circle of a relatively small ecosystem.
And so one of the things that I talk with my clients about and a lot of leaders, CEOs of conscious coaching companies, conscious, businesses of any kind, how can we demystify and also humanize people who hold power, wealth and privilege, right? So this is a really challenging spiritual exercise, which is those people are causing harm in the system, but they are people who are traumatized and deeply unhappily and deeply unhealed.
Right? Like they are men who are struggling and suffering with toxic masculinity and generations of just being coded with ways of having to be that are utterly soul depleting and exhausting. Exhausting and just driven by the accumulation of wealth, hoarding of wealth, the fear of losing that wealth, and all of that circular, toxic, intergenerational traumatic energy of the toxic masculine, the patriarchy the taking, the having more, the holding, more the hoarding, more.
That's what creates poverty. There's a great book written by a woman named Lynn Twist, where she talks about. Poverty is not a problem of poor people. Poverty is a problem of the people of privilege and wealth who are afraid of losing the resources that they've amassed. Now that's to say there is a certain percentage or portion.
There are other people who have. Come into families of wealth or have created wealth in other ways that are somewhat less harmful that have resources that are actually people who do want to do a better job with reallocating resources or how they spend their money or where they invest their money. And I look at it as like people in our industry need to get creative and think about how can we.
help those individuals in the system who are also hurting with their personal spiritual development, healing, life coaching, right? Trauma, healing, all those things. And again, moving out of demonizing those humans that cause harm in the system, right? Because a lot of the spiritual journey and going back to your, where we started this great conversation about religion, which is all about, Good people and bad people and sinners and virtuous people, all humans inherently, I do believe we are built to be good.
But unhealed trauma and where we are in the system and how we were birthed into that system, into what position in that system, can cause us to be in a place where we cause greater harm. Yup. Or less harm. So it's not that we're like better people or worse people or naughtier people. It's, we are less healed or more, more healed, causing lesser or causing greater harm, right?
So this is where there's this need for like expansive thinking, creative thinking and not demonizing or dehumanizing those that cause harm. Right. You're saying all this, but also taking into consideration that some people who hold certain identities are not the people to approach and work with those people, right?
Let's use a solid example for the audience, a black. Trans woman who is the human on the face of the earth, most likely to be murdered just for existing in their chosen expression, like just for being a person, they're the most likely to be brutally murdered, a trans black woman, that trans black woman.
Definitely is not the person to be charged with the task of reaching out to and working with and healing old white male humans who are actively targeting and harming black trans women. Right. That would be an example of that's a creative, we have to look in the system creatively and be like, Who has proximity to that group through what means are we working with that group of people directly?
Or are we working with other groups of people on the periphery of that group to transform them? What is the system and how do we continue to heal and transform the system and look at where are people in the system and who in the system Can do the work with greater safety and with less if negative harm or impact to themselves, right?
And that's all none of this is like black and white. It's complex It's so complex and this is the stuff that I find in the coaching industry We shy away from. It's like we want to oversimplify everything. Like your thoughts create your reality and every bad experience you've ever had in your life. You attracted it by virtue of your energetic field and the energy you put out to the universe.
No. Young girls, women born in a war torn country who are raped and traumatized. No, they did not think bad thoughts. Exactly. Yeah. Attract harm. They did not attract it. No, these are like the kinds of things that again, going back to this bigger picture conversation about the coaching industry and healing.
It's like we have to have this mindful, nuanced, intentional lens around like what are the tools, the narratives and the stories that we're sharing around healing and abundance and personal development that are affirmative. Positive, constructive, while also acknowledging and taking into consideration that other people's lived experiences and other people's identities are such that they may be having a completely differing experience than the one that we're having from a position of privilege.
Right. And it's like, how can we be in, again, the yes and of I'm living my best life expressing myself, aspiring to greater levels of healing. Personal development, ascension out of trauma, fear, conditioning, right, ascending to higher levels of consciousness, which in and of itself has some questionable dynamics in how we think about that.
While also. Keeping our eyes open and our hearts open and listening to people who are in a very different place in the universe and in the system and believing them and not gaslighting them that Oh, if all these just indigenous women in the mountains of Peru. Peru could just really up their manifestation game and wake up every day and like really dial in that Deepak Chopra abundance affirmation and really believe that they are creating from, listen, I know those women in the mountains of Peru and they are beyond manifesting abundance.
They have so little. to work with and what they create from limited resources is mind boggling.
Safrianna: Yeah.
Brigette: And the way they carry themselves and find joy and meaning and purpose and continue their indigenous ceremonial practices and continue to live rich lives. Whilst also subsistence farming and having barely enough access to resources to provide enough food to their families, let alone any overflow, even send their child to school, which is not an option for many people living in the Highlands of Peru.
Children are in the fields working still, right? This is just like the reality of the world. How can we continue to not from a place of charity and, oh, these poor people, how can we save them? Because these poor people don't need us to save them. They have been living and thriving for centuries following massive systemic oppression and harm.
To their cultures. So they are like next level, right? Resourceful, resilient, abundant, constructive, positive, powerful people. They simply don't have access in the system to the same level of resources that other people do. So right, going back to your beautiful point again, about how you're looking to use your business to, to redistribute, to move resources, to pay them forward.
Let's get creative because yes, there is no lack in the system. There is enough resources in the system. There is not adequate access or redistribution of those resources to all people. So these are very different problems. So then again, me, a person of relative privilege, infinite possibility, infinite creativity, how can I get out of my own scarcity and thinking, I can only work with clients at this level, or I can't charge this much, or I can't work with people who are wealthy or privileged for this, that, or the other story that I can create.
And I get really creative and think, you know what, there's all kinds of people in the world. With financial privilege, with access to resources that want to do something, that want to create change in themselves, in their organizations, in their family system and in their communities. And I can help people with different levels of financial resources.
And I can charge a premium for the work that I do. And I can even inform people that they're paying a premium to work with me because of the values that my company upholds because of the level of intentionality that I bring to working with people as a consultant, as a coach and also inform them that they are by investing in themselves or their company or their organization or their family, they are investing in a triple bottom line business.
That means that they're going to benefit. I'm going to benefit. And there is a third group of individuals that are also going to benefit from my business and from that investment. And that's the shit that excites the fuck out of me that hardly anybody talks about in the coaching industry, which is building a social impact business model, a triple bottom line model that is not broke or broken or built on scarcity or poverty mindset.
It's not a charity model. It is a model of Creating a wealth and abundance and then having the freedom and the choice as a CEO of a conscious company to move those resources and make them accessible to anybody that we choose. Right. Because we have that freedom in ways that I never had working in the nonprofit sector or working at UC Berkeley or working in a whole bunch of dysfunctional organizations that were coming with a white savior, charitable mindset, going into countries with less resources and causing havoc.
Right. I've always felt
Safrianna: so weird about that. Like just, I, I've never participated in anything like that and it just, yeah, I've never loved that. It just didn't feel right. Right. Consent is so important. And this concept that you're talking about of like it not coming from a charity lens, but yet it being this triple bottom, everybody's benefiting, but ultimately.
Because I think that so many businesses do just go into it from a charity lens and then end up doing that harm because they're not asking, what do you need? Or how can we support you? They're just like, Oh, we're going to support you by coming in and doing this for you without you having ever asked. And that just doesn't make
Brigette: sense.
And that's, like you said, it's that consent and the sovereignty, right? So, my business doesn't give charity at all. I essentially. have a access model where I charge people of financial wealth and resources or people that would already be spending that money elsewhere. I charge them a premium to do the work with me.
And then for those people who I think are also incredible candidates to work with me, great clients, social innovators, leaders doing the most amazing things who just simply don't have the same access to finances. That's the only differentiator. If anything, some of those clients I've worked with have a greater level of.
Ingenuity, innovation, right? Because they're working with your resources. They're like really disruptive, social enterprise, problem solvers, business leaders, right? They have so much working for them. They just don't have the same financial resources. So in my business, I have opportunities to do work with me in programs that just cost maybe 200 and something dollars a month to participate in a mastermind.
And someone else is going to pay 1, 000, 999 a month. Or 2, 500 a month to work with me and they're going to get a high level of service impact. They're going to get transformation with me in a way that they might not with other coaches because I am going to be helping them unpack whiteness
Safrianna: and
Brigette: privilege and fragility.
Or even if they're a person of color doing decolonization work and looking at deconditioning themselves from trying to be palatable and relatable to everybody. So I work with people of privilege of all different colors that have financial resources. The, those that can pay a premium to work with me do, and those that can't, I just create access.
I just try to keep it simple and I try not to create like too many things because again, one of the biggest challenges that the kinds of people I work with have is that they are so generous, caring and heart centered that they are trying to do everything and help everyone.
Safrianna: Right. And it's
Brigette: really depleting and they are in the end, probably not actually making enough to be fully resourced.
And they are, you're
Safrianna: speaking to me like three, three months ago. I'm still there, but it's I'm literally leaving my trauma therapy job to go full time into activism and speaking out on these things and trying to do the work in the world. And yeah, like I totally get that being in that place where you want to make a difference.
And yet you don't even know where to start and communities like ours, our community Livian Luna, the community itself, completely free to just come hang out with other people who don't judge you based on the color of your skin or who you love or how you love or anything like that.
There's not a lot of access to even that. There's not. And so, making these making the social networks available, making information accessible, making programs like yours accessible, all that's so important in doing this unpacking work of the trauma that we have held for generations and generations as a planet, right?
It's planet wide. It's not just one group of people. It's everywhere. This division, pain, and.
Brigette: The planet is a whole other conversation. I have to say at four, I'm 48 years old now. I have a nine year old daughter and there are a lot of things in the world that I think about, but when I think about the one thing that deeply concerns me for my daughter's future is the health of the planet.
The madre tierra, the planet, our mother earth, that I've learned through my own slow, painful process of deconditioning and slow decolonization, slowly realizing how disconnected the way that I live, the way I was raised, how disconnected it is from the earth, from earth based practices, just like trying to take baby steps to re to remember.
to walk the path like my mentor Marita has helped me with so much. And there's a couple of things that I've learned as reminders when I feel a sense of overwhelm or grief at the things that I know are real in the universe, like again, we can be in this beautiful path of spiritual development. And if we're not looking at that.
Our actual daily impact on this planet and the planet's capacity to withstand more pollution, more garbage, more plastic in the ocean and a growing number of aging humans that were never in fact designed to live as long as we do with as many health conditions as we have as we're kept alive longer, we have to really begin to think about those things.
And it is not it. easy, which is why, again, a lot of the people that I tend to work with are thinking about the environment, environmental justice, sustainability, right? All the things. And one thing I want to mention, another mentor that I've followed for years, because I always like to drop names. I'm a name dropper and I'm a very purposeful, intentional name dropper.
And I like to always seed people with the possibility of listening to and learning from black indigenous mentors that I think are really. Doing just game shifting work in our industry from a place of true integrity. My mentor, one of them is Myesha Hill, and she wrote a book on being an ally or a co conspirator and how we need to heal our way forward.
And one of the things that she talks about that I think is so important for people like you and I and what we're talking about being often people trying to do all the things right, niching down. And often we get so. As multi talented, multi creative people, we get so fucking resistant to niching down in our businesses because we're like, no, I want to do a million things.
And we can desire that and we could find joy in different creative outlets, but when it comes to creating impact. in our business and through our activism, there is often a need to niche down so that we don't get overwhelmed. And then what Myesha talks about is how we get overwhelmed, try to take on too many things, try to do good in so many places.
And then we ghost the journey. We ghost the program. possibly because we're still hooked back into toxic productivity and the idea that doing more is better, doing more is better. And in fact, we're causing ourselves harm by being burnt out and then we're harming others. Right? So my words of wisdom are Threefold, twofold.
Check out Myesha Hill's book and her work, Heal Your Way Forward, and check out her community on the Co Conspirators Lounge if you're looking as a white person or a person of white body privilege like myself who's mixed, to niche down and focus your efforts around activism in a way that feels good and be in community.
And then my other mentor, Marita Esteva, is a wonderful indigenous healer that has helped me reconnect with deep ancestral wisdom around how to heal shadow, do shadow work, spiritual shadow work that's rooted in decolonization. That's not whitewashed Western spirituality and how to leverage the mother earth and the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom with beautiful plant medicine and tools like cacao.
How to. Yeah. And be in relationship with those ceremonies and tools so that we can continue to heal and cause less harm in the world. Right. And so that we can be resourced to then go and create impact in these ways that we have decided are worth living. aligned for us so that we're able to give from a place that's resourced because we also get to be healing and resource and we get to have joy and pleasure while we do the work to disrupt and dismantle the system.
Right. That's my final word of wisdom. It's like we do get to have that balance.
Safrianna: We do. And it's a choice. It is a conscious choice. And thank you for that. And thank you for this conversation. You spoke on so many things that I talk about in our podcast that I'm just so, I feel so validated in hearing because I do strongly believe that demonizing The quote unquote other side just contributes more to the division.
We need to understand that we are collectively dealing with mass amounts of trauma, and that doesn't excuse continuing to cause harm, but it's an important part of the picture. When we're looking at it. So, all of this was so illuminating. And I, again, I'm just like, glad to meet other people like me in the world because sometimes it feels very lonely out here doing this work especially, as a white presenting person or a white person, like doing this kind of work.
feels very scary because when you are simultaneously the oppressor and the oppressed, it's real, real complicated. So we need to be able and willing to unpack that to do your work. It's so, and I,
Brigette: oh my God, I would love to have that conversation another day about how we have to have permission to be messy and make mistakes and just be available for correction.
And acknowledging harm. And that's again, part of white supremacist culture. It's you make a mistake, you're out, you're othered, you're, basically ostracized and that's part of the culture of cancel culture. Right. And it's just it doesn't mean we can't speak directly to harm, call people in, point out things, but always with an eye to Okay.
How can we do better? If someone comes to me and I make many, I can give you examples. If you want examples, come to me, DM me and I'll give you examples. I've made plenty of mistakes and then it's just how can I receive the feedback, however it's delivered, even if it's not delivered wrapped in candy, right, and all soft.
And how can I not fall into a spiral of shame and guilt? Just get over my own shit and be like, okay, I'm human. I'm flawed. I have a lot of shadows to heal. I can do better. And I'm always learning and growing like, how can we just receive the feedback as a gift and not get caught up in
Safrianna: it? Expansive model instead of a limiting model.
Absolutely. So yes, I'd love to have more conversations with you in the future. Of course. Thank you for those of you. I know we had, I think people were just so riveted by this conversation today that they did not. Comment live, but I saw several people coming in and dropping in for this conversation.
So we'd love to know what you thought, how you would like to continue this conversation. Open invitation to reach out to Brigitte or to myself. Brigette, I'm going to get this name. Okay. Everyone get our names. Safriana. I get Sephira. Saffirina,
Brigette: Saffron, Sapphire, Bridgette. All beautiful, but not yours.
Safrianna: Yes. All beautiful, but not yours. Bridgette, thank you so much for joining me for this. Feel free to reach out to either of us if you enjoyed this conversation. And until next time, goodbye, friends.
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