Mutual Aid Crash Out

it's called MUTUAL aid for a reason

Hello Beloved Friends

is it just me or does the disco ball kind of look like a zit?

I can’t wait to tell you all about the Hello Kitty Tea Party I had last weekend!!!!

The cunty flyer designed by my homie DIO

reposting the flyer in case u forgot how good and fun it looked. If you love Dio’s work, consider throwing some coin there way!

First, I want to tell you how we can party together!!

Me and my podcast co-host, Nisha, are holding this grief party on Feb 27!

It is inspired by Sonobofu Somé’s essay, Embracing grief. In her essay, Sonobofu writes

Communal grieving offers something that we cannot get when we grieve by ourselves. Through validation, acknowledgement and witnessing, communal grieving allows us to experience a level of healing that is deeply and profoundly freeing. Each of us has a basic human right to that genuine love, happiness and freedom.

That’s just the last paragraph! The whole, short essay is insightful. I have, since the inaguration, become acutely aware of our need to grieve together. I hope you will join us in virtual play and grief space

You can register here

It felt so on brand for my crashout to involve cooking lamb in the middle of the night

Guys I was on the radio last week!!!

When I was an isolated teenager in South Carolina I found expansive community in NPR, specifically the This American life Archives, so to end up as a guest on a public radio station Atlanta was a dream come true!!

you can listen here

I had a great conversation on WRFG 89.3 with Mirth, Rian, and the incredible Psyche (@collective.echoes). Their show is every Tuesday at 7pm and it’s called Alternative Perspectives! It’s a trans mission // transmission.

I am going to be releasing a series of conflict navigation classes

The more I hear the words “mutual aid” and “we are only going to survive this by coming together” the more I’m like “oh fuck, I really got to get information on how to navigate conflict to the people”

Api has been in conflict with his teeth! He’s finally getting them removed next week…not all conflict can be resolved, I guess!

I’m starting with a class called How to Say No, you can join the waitlist here.

It is what it sounds like, a digital workshop designed to support you in saying no.

I’m starting with this topic, because being able to say no is a core skill.

Without this skill, navigating conflict or upholding boundaries is impossible. Saying yes is impossible. I think being intentional becomes impossible.

I think we spend a lot of time thinking and talking about boundaries. how to have better boundaries, boundaries 101, etc etc. but not enough time talking about how to enforce them, or what keeps us from enforcing them.

We all have boundaries, and most of us know what they are, but I think many of us struggle with enforcing boundaries because it can feel scary or dysregulating.

Having better boundaries is less about learning what a boundary is and more about self regulation

Thats why this class, How to Say NO , is so crucial. Because if we can say no, we can say yes!

yes with enthusiasm

yes and mean it

yes with energy to follow through

yes to ourselves, to our pleasure, to our greatest joy and dreams

the WAY I said yes to this bowl of collards greens and lamb curry….the lamb had been cooking for 16+ hours by the time it landed in this bowl.

I want to teach more courses in the series! I have my own ideas, but want to hear from you!!! If there’s a topic that you want to know more about from me thats not on the poll, email me or dm me at opulenceabundanceconsulting@gmail.com or @opulenceabundance (across platforms)

ok enough updates!!

LET’S TALK ABOUT MY MUTUAL AID CRASH OUT

I’m a leo rising taurus sun, so of course I want the mic at the party and I want to tell u what to do cause its written in the stars, i’m a glamourous know it all OK?

I don’t know if u guys have noticed, but I’m not really publishing the newsletter with the same consistency I previously have! And thats because I’m a big believer and practicer of Crip Time.

I don’t feel fully qualified to explain Crip Time, and I am thankful for this essay, Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time by Ellen Samuels. Here is a short excerpt:

Crip time is time travel. Disability and illness have the power to extract us from linear, progressive time with its normative life stages and cast us into a wormhole of backward and forward acceleration, jerky stops and starts, tedious intervals and abrupt endings. Some of us contend with the impairments of old age while still young; some of us are treated like children no matter how old we get. The medical language of illness tries to reimpose the linear, speaking in terms of the chronic, the progressive, and the terminal, of relapses and stages. But we who occupy the bodies of crip time know that we are never linear, and we rage silently—or not so silently—at the calm straightforwardness of those who live in the sheltered space of normative time.

Anyways, I just haven’t had the capacity because I’ve been so present with my living community, and also because I have been crashing out.

Who knew a crash out could be so beautiful and that it would involve so many onions in a blender…

I am deeply impacted by politics, it turns out.

As much as I block out the noise, I can’t help but watch it, and what I see has me so horrified that I had my most productive mental health episode to date!

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I’m putting the rest of my mutual aid crashout deep dive behind a paywall! I do this to protect myself and my community and to create a little intention in my work. If you love my work, I encourage you to subscribe and help me thrive!

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