Transcript

[adrienne maree brown] And what are the snippets of times that I do feel safe? Where am I? How far away from the world? Who am I with? I feel healing when I know how to articulate what makes me feel safe and when I feel agency to move towards it. I feel healing when I'm able to hear my inner voice and hear the boundaries that I need and honor those, when I feel agency in my life.

- [aja monet] Hello, listeners. You are listening to The Sound Bath, and my name is aja monet. This podcast is brought to you by Lush Cosmetics. I am so excited to have you join us today as we are in conversation with adrienne maree brown. Informed by 25 years of movement facilitation somatics, Octavia E. Butler scholarship, and her work as a doula, adrienne has nurtured emergent strategy, pleasure activism, radical imagination, and transformative justice as ideas and practices for transformation. She is the author and editor of seven published texts including Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, as well as her newest book, Fables and Spells coming out in November, to name a few. She's also the founder of the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, where she is now the writer in residence. We are so excited to welcome her to the show. Let's get started. Well, so, so very excited to begin this conversation with you, adrienne. I had the honor of having conversation with you before in the middle of this whole little panorama. And my, oh my how the times have changed and not changed so very much but--

- [adrienne maree brown] I know.

- [aja monet] It has been quite the journey. And so I'm just really grateful for your time and energy and just presence with me right now. So I wanted to just say thank you for accepting this invitation. And as we begin, I wanted to ask you what best describes who and how you see yourself in the world and what you do, and what ways do you find yourself now in your life that maybe you didn't before?

- [adrienne maree brown] I love this question because it's always changing. And I'm always giving myself that permission to be like, what is it today? You know, what is it right now? Writer is the most consistent thing. If I've got one line, I've got one breath, I can just say one thing, it's always gonna be writer. And the form of the writing changes and then the interpersonal dynamic of it changes. But the act of writing is something that occurs every day of my life, and it's something that I really enjoy. And the way that I look at the world is what is this earth trying to express, and can I be of service to that expression. I also really think of myself as an earthling. You know, I've always known it, but lately I really feel like I'm like, "No, I really belong to this planet." Like I love this planet and I feel responsible for protecting this place and our human experience of living on this planet. And I think that we are in a very precarious moment of, can we earn our place here? Can we keep any compatibility? Can we stay here? 'Cause I'm really into it. And when I feel grief, a lot of my grief is related to that question. Can I help other people fall in love with this place in time for us to still get to be here? So yeah, earthling, writer.

- [aja monet] Mm. That sounds great. Yeah, it reminds me of Wole Soyinka has this interviewer where he talks about how selfish he actually is. Because I think they're talking to him about his stance on politics and all the things that he's done to try to be vocal and put his actual body on the line for the things he believes in. And it was so interesting to me that he was like, "I like my peace. I really enjoy my peace. I love my solitude and stillness." And paraphrasing of course, "but me like fighting or resisting or speaking out is really a selfish desire to be able to be at peace. And I can't be at peace if you're over there disrupting the world."

- [adrienne maree brown] I resonate that so deeply.

- [aja monet] Me too, me too. And so it made me think about, even when you think about the emergent strategy or these ideas of how you see yourself as a doula and a healer, while they're often seen as like these acts of service and giving, in what ways does it fill you and in what ways does it serve also yourself? Because I think there's this assumption that when we're doing this work, there's this narrative that has become really rampant among mainstream conversation or popular conversation that like activism and organizing, it's just so tiring, it's so exhausting. And while that's really true, while that's valid and there are days and there are moments and there are experiences, that is temporary, that is not like the most consistent state that I find myself in at least, there's really a lot of beauty and joy. A lot that you get in giving. So I wanted to ask you, what are the ways that you feel you are fed and fueled by? Not just the real act of pleasure, but also the act of labor and fighting and showing up and being present and resisting.

- [adrienne maree brown] That's great. You know, I feel like a very ... like I work a lot. I love working. And I think it's hard for me sometimes to sort of rest down or to relax my system. But I think part of it is because I don't feel stressed about the work I do. I'm tied into justice. Like I'm tied into being in a right relationship with this earth and it changes how you sleep at night. So I am stressed because I'm still trying to help myself and others awaken to like, well, how do we do this, and not knowing the answer and not knowing that we'll get there in time, or the idea of justice that I think I grew up with and the sense of urgency inside of it and the sense of everyone's gonna get to this place and we'll all like "aha", realize what we're up to and what we need to do. That's not really gonna happen. Like the forces that are working against that are loud and well-sourced and they're not gonna disappear. But the work that I'm doing is more important every day. The more people are not paying attention to this earth, the more important it is that I am. The more people are not attuned to justice for Black people, the more important it is that I sing. My role feels very, very clear inside of this time for me. And I think a lot of suffering actually comes from not having that clarity, right? Looking at the world and being like, "Oh, I don't know what to do." Or "I'm overwhelmed. I don't have that experience." I have a list of 50,000 things that I could be doing at any given moment, all of which would be advancing justice. And a lot of the guidance or feedback, or maybe it's wisdom, but a lot of what I'm trying to offer is just like dedicate yourself to this place. Earth needs you. The people of this planet need your creativity. We need it. And when you realize that and you stop living for success in the way capitalism defines it and you start living for like, "Oh, this planet that I am a part of needs my contribution," it really shifts something really fundamental inside. I no longer feel like I'm in competition with anybody for what I accomplish in this life. I'm not waiting for a formal accolade. Like it's great if that kind of stuff comes, but I'm not creating around that or for or towards that. I'm just like the earth wants to sing a song through me. Am I hearing it? Can I hear it better? And then is there anything I'm afraid of that's keeping me from being able to deliver my gift to people? For a long time the answer to that was yes. Overwhelmingly. Literally, I'm supposed to be singing, but I have fright around performing songs. So I'll just go over here and do something else. And it's like, well, the songs are gonna keep coming, and you're gonna have to deal with that. Now I feel like I can teach other people the songs, or I can sing the songs. There's so many more options. All I have to do is make sure these songs get heard. All I have to do is make sure this idea gets read. The next step feels fairly clear most of the time for me.

- [aja monet] Mm. What you shared just really resonates, can't speak for everyone. I think what I struggle with is like how art has become this thing to be consumed now and creating is like, it's about how much can you produce to consume rather than how do we create a more equitable world for others to experience that sort of presence with themselves.

- [adrienne maree brown] Yes, that's right.

- [aja monet] And sharing art helps us access that because obviously if there was somebody's song that helped me learn how to sing. Or somebody's poem that gave me the strength to write. And I think that that's beautiful. But I guess I never thought about it from the way, or at least not intentionally like, "Oh, this thing is coming through me and this is what I need to be contributing to the world."

- [adrienne maree brown] Well, and not all of it is. I have gotten more protective as I've gotten older of my process of emoting, period. And I think, when I was younger, I think a lot of it was like, "Oh, every emotion that I have is part of my art or part of my offer and I need to write about it and I need to put it out into the world." And that has really shifted a lot for me, which is not to say that those things won't flow out into the world because as they become integrated into who I am, they show up everywhere I am. But I just need to feel it. I just need to be in this moment. I'm going through this. I'm experiencing this. That's all I have to do. My job right now is just to be heartbroken. My job right now is to worry about the earth. My job right now is this and that. And I really feel like I've been starting to make that distinction a little bit more clearly in myself that some of my life experience is just for me to live it. And if there's something that gets made meaning of for other people inside of that, wonderful. And then there's some stuff that's like, "Oh, this is meant to be delivered." When Emergent Strategy came through, it was very clearly like, "This is a gift that I have been given because of the way that I shine in the world." And my job is to shine a light on the truth of this, which is a truth that is in the earth. The earth was like, "Look, I know a lot about how to survive here and I need more of y'all to hear about it." I knew that it wasn't gonna behoove me to sit around and try to edit or change it in a certain way because it was like, this is a direct transmission and my job is to transmit it. And so there's some work that comes that way, and then other work that's an immensely personal experience that I'm having. And it may or may not ever be for sharing, or it may not ever be for direct sharing. But I'm learning it and I'm integrating it and I don't know if you experience this, but I'll go through a major change and in very indirect ways, it changes how I'm able to show up for other people. I don't know that particular experience you're going through, but I know how it feels to have your heart break. And it sounds like what you're going through is heartbreak, and I'm able to be with you in this. The doula development process is living your life and knowing that you can lose everything at any moment, but you can gain everything at every moment. And there's nothing you're doing that hasn't ever been done before, but you'll do it in a different way. That's wisdom. So I feel like a kind of doula for myself and a doula for my own creative processes these days.

- [aja monet] Hmm, yeah. The idea of transmissions really resonates. I definitely have been feeling and thinking through that a lot lately. I think somewhere you said you grow healing ideas. I was wondering what does it mean to grow healing? Like the idea of growing, I love that juxtaposition.

- [adrienne maree brown] I feel like when you experience healing, so much of what you're doing is your own process and it's your process of growth. So that's how I experience my own healing. This whole experience of pain that I'm having is in some way to grow something up in me. And I can accept the assignment and I can grow. I can resist the assignment and I can struggle and suffer a lot. I can do a little bit of both and, which is usually my fave. I'm just sort of like, "Hmm, I'm not gonna do it until I absolutely have to." But that's what being alive is, is growing and learning these lessons. And what I realized at a certain point was I don't think of myself as creating these ideas in the same way like when you plant kale in your backyard. You're not creating the concept of kale, but you are saying, I'm gonna dedicate myself to watering this kale and I'm gonna make sure it's in a good place to receive maximum sunlight that it needs and I'm gonna protect it from bugs, or whatever else I'm gonna do to grow this to be healthy and nourishing. And it'll be a symbiotic relationship because I love kale. So I feel like that with these ideas where I'm like, okay, emergent strategy existed in the world and I really believe that people were really paying attention to change since the beginning of human existence. I believe there have been people who have been really tuned into pleasure since the beginning of existence. There have been people who've been deeply tied into how imagination can unlock new futures. All of those are things that have been here. And what I'm doing is being like, that idea is super nourishing for me and it feels super nourishing for my community. And I'm gonna grow that. I'm gonna invest in it. I'm gonna water it, seed it. I'm gonna do everything I can do to make sure that it flourishes, and try to be a good steward of the concepts that I've been gifted. And the work of it doesn't finish. Like growing versus being I originated this or created this. I'm like emergent strategy, I'm still learning it all the time. I just did this song building workshop with a whole group of folks that I'm working with. And I learned so much about emergent strategy from how we were building the songs collaboratively. I write my songs in voice memos on my phone usually while crying. So I was like, how am I gonna bring other people into that experience? And then there we were doing it together and singing together and stopping and hearing the song and learning and listening. And it was such a sacred, beautiful experience. And humbling 'cause I was like, "Oh, I'm not the only one who knows this heartbreak. Everybody in this room has something to offer to this heartbreak." We can Michelangelo a song out of this raw material of our hearts and of our bravery to say, "Well, what about this way?" 'Cause it's always brave. I think it's always brave to create. I'm gonna say that this doesn't exist and it deserves to exist. I'm gonna take the time to do that. I think a lot of times, especially founders of stuff, it can become hard to protect the space for the idea to grow. And you're, "Oh no, it's just the way I did it. Trademark, blah, blah, blah." And I'm like, "No. This one was trademarked by the universe." I don't get to control everything about it and it's better for that.

- [aja monet] Yeah, I love that trademarked by the universe. Aren't we all? Yeah, I love hearing you talk about this 'cause I've been writing a lot through heartbreak.

- [adrienne maree brown] It's hard.

- [aja monet] It is. I guess a lot of what I've been thinking about is loss, the many forms of heartbreak, the many ways that our hearts are broken. It reminds me of that Rumi quote where like, the wound is where the light enters you or something like that. Which is true because I think about how many people, for fear of having their heart broken, don't ever step into the true pleasure of love, and like the risk of life, of living openly and lovingly and full of life with audacity and bravery. To your point, there's a lot more openness around these conversations then when I was growing up. And it's so exciting and very much encouraging while also feeling like sometimes we conflate a lot of lofty language with almost this inability to name accountability or responsibility for things that we need to do. So there's this balance between knowing that a lot of us have healing to do. We talk about restorative justice and restorative processes now in ways that were never talked about before. Then, oftentimes in society, we have this binary of right or wrong, good or evil, healed or not healed. And I was wondering, like for you, what is that word? What is healing? What does that mean in today's society where everyone is touched by some form of harm. Like none of us are untouched by having been hurt, having been let down, having felt a sense of loss or heartbreak. What does it mean to heal? Is that a thing? And then also what is the role of the wound? What is the importance and the necessity of being kinda hurt? I don't wanna romanticize it and make it like this poetic thing. But part of life is going through struggle, is being in conflict with one another, and not necessarily running from that, but learning how to approach it. So I'm wondering what is healing and what is being hurt? Not that you have all the answers.

- [adrienne maree brown] I know everything about this. Well, a few things always come to mind, but I think one of the biggest things for me is there's levels to this game. There is hurt that is inevitable and then there is hurt that is unnecessary, extra, socialized, systemic hurt. So I think a lot of the big systems that we've been coming up in this movement moment have been trying to get at that bigger systemic harm. So we look at Black Lives Matter and Me Too, and how people are trying to change this prison industrial complex and even how people are shifting what happens with philanthropy or tons of what's going on with how people deal with and don't deal with patriarchy. We recognize that this is not a natural pain. This is not just the pain that comes from like I was alive and life comes with losing people 'cause we all die and that's just a part of it. No, no, no, no. Someone created a system of extra pain. So when I think about healing, a lot of times I'm thinking about that extra pain. Something happened that was unnatural and it wasn't your fault and it shouldn't have happened. So part of our work in the realm of healing is to say how can we recover. What would it look like to recover? Is recovery possible? And when I say recovery, it's like I always go back and this is what helps me move through the world all the time is, I often am looking at people like, you were a baby. You spent months inside of someone else's body who listened to you and thought about you and wondered what you were gonna look like. Maybe they wanted you. Maybe they didn't want you, the complications start right away. You came into this world not able to take care of yourself and somebody or set of somebodies took care of you, right? And that humbles me every time. And then when I see kids, when I spend time around children, my focus is playing, I'm really about this playing.

- [aja monet] They're so serious about their play.

- [adrienne maree brown] They're so serious about playing. It's like, my niblings every single time I see them, they have taken on a different specialty that is now who they are. "Oh, I'm a singer." "Now I'm a DJ, now, I'm a dancer." "Now I'm this, now I'm that." It's just like very seriously engaging in whatever the next thing is with laughter and fun and love and all of that. We lose this, many of us lose this along the way. What happens? And can we recover the part of us that's like, "I'm here to create and to play and to experiment and to figure out what all this life has to offer and what part of that's gonna come through me. I wanna recover that. I wanna recover my sense of safety." And not everyone gets that as a child. And I feel like that's one of the things, it feels like that's been slipping away more and more. But when I was a kid, I felt very safe, and my parents did a lot to create that experience for me. But I can make mistakes. I'm safe to mess up. I'm safe even if I fail this class and even if I disappoint my parents. Fundamentally, I'm still safe and I deserve to exist. So those are some of the things that I think certain trauma steals away from us. And healing is like recovering. Oh, well, what would it feel like to feel safe again? For me, now at 44, what do I need in order to feel safe? And what are the snippets of times that I do feel safe? Where am I? How far away from the world? Who am I with? I feel healing when I know how to articulate what makes me feel safe and when I feel agency to move towards it. I feel healing when I'm able to hear my inner voice and hear the boundaries that I need and honor those. When I feel agency in my life. That's the biggest one for me. It's this sense of, I'm living a sovereign experience over here and I get to determine what's gonna happen, you know? So there's definitely a relationship between healing and power. The idea of it is to return, your sense of power over your own life to you. So those are some of the things, I think it is, and that's also why for me, I think a lot of it does happen in community, is it's actually really difficult to recreate the conditions of safety. If you don't have people around you that can have your back, right? It's hard to let down hypervigilance if you don't have anyone else who looks out for you. And it's hard to rest in the idea that you deserve to be here if no one fully knows you, if you feel deeply alone in your most intimate space. So I'm trying to learn that all the time. How can I be even more available for love and for connection, and when did that become unhinged in me, and ah, there's a place for healing.

- [aja monet] That's so great. Thank you so much for that. I think all of that really deeply resonates. And I wonder about, as I'm aging, one of the things that I find so magnificent about that process is that just having the ability to age. Thankfully, the ability to like know that I'm taking care of myself in better ways than I was before. I'm making better decisions. I'm learning about my body. I'm feeling different degrees of power and strength and pride and who I am and ways that I was made to feel insecure before and creating better boundaries. This aging thing ain't so bad. But there was like Maya Angelou was this, of many things that she offered, the best example as a woman, as a young Black woman that I got from her, was this joy about aging like this. She sounded so pleasure-filled by like aging. It was like girls if you think thirties are something, wait til you get to the forties and then when the fifties come, and then she's like the sixties, and the fact that she actually had the grace to age. And I wanted to talk to you about that because I think that this society really, really looks down on, we don't reward aging, which is so ridiculous to me because getting to be an elder is probably one of the greatest honors of life. So I wanted to ask you, what role has aging as a woman, as a person in this world has it played in your pleasure, in your emergent strategy, in the ways that you see the work that you do. Because some of your insight is so profound and sometimes I think young people be like, "Damn, I got none of that." You know, none of that.

- [adrienne maree brown] It's such a trip to hear you say this because one of the greatest gifts of aging for me is getting to a place where I'm like, "I'm not that bad." And you brought up earlier this idea of being a good person or a bad person. For such a long time, my reaction to socialization was I'm mediocre. I just felt like I constantly was arguing with myself about my right to take up space and my right to exist. And did these people think I was worthy? Did these people think I was smart enough? I was so externally defined. So externally defined. And that made me very insecure and it made me very miserable. And the greatest gift for me of aging has been maybe I'm mediocre, but it doesn't actually matter what anyone else thinks about it. Like what matters is all the success I've had as an adult, has been kind of striking out and just being like, I'm gonna try this. Like I'm just gonna try it, and I'm not gonna really care too much what anyone else thinks about me trying it. I need to try it. I need to just see. The emergent strategy was like that. I have done movement the way I was told to do it. It doesn't work. And that might upset a lot of the people who politically developed me or the people that I'm working with right now. And yet I have to just try out what happens if I listen to different teachers and the result is this methodology that works. And it doesn't work because I'm so smart. It works because the universe is so well-designed for collaboration and for changing, right? That's in the design. And I think as we get older, we realize we're also part of the design. Me having my heart broken even, that's part of the design of this experiment, is taking risk and experiencing loss and learning from that. I don't know why that's part of the design necessarily. You know, I definitely have moments where I'm in it and I'm just like, "I could have done without this lesson." But I also love that with age, you start to see your own patterns. So now when things happen I'm like, "Oh girl, there you are doing that thing. And you do that thing because of shaping that's been with you since you were two." And I have a lot more patience with myself. I'm more self-interested in the way of literally just being like, "Well, adrienne, what do you think about this?" What's your opinion? What do you need here? I just pay attention to that much more than the external voice. What does everyone else in this circumstance need? And what do they think of what I need? And what do they think of what I'm thinking? Aging in that way has been a massive gift. And then I also think there's something around the humility of aging. No matter how brilliant I am or how big my impact is, I'm not gonna get extra time. So the randomness of knowing the most brilliant people in my life, many of them died very early. And so the whole impact of their lives was what happened before they were 16, before they were 35, before they were 43. And I'm still deeply impacted by those lives and I miss them and I love them. And so I let that be with me. I don't know how much time I'm gonna get here, but each day is more than this person got. And what am I gonna do with it? Well, I'm gonna enjoy it. And that seems to be working pretty well. I will say, and I'm trying to think of how to say this well, but there may not be a way to say it well. But there is something also about the consistency of tragedy that lands as you get older, where it's just like a good day is not to be taken for granted. The next day is not to be taken for granted. The tragedies are there. Every day that I have that's like an incredible day, there's someone in my life who it's one of their worst days. That's part of what I'm starting to really understand and internalize and get used to. And with my friends, I feel like we're getting better at letting that all be concurrent. On my best days, someone else is devastated. That full range is human life. It's human existence. I had the best week ever this past week and this massive hurricane hit Puerto Rico. Those things are both happening. They're both true. And my work is to develop more and more capacity to be with all of that is true and I can attend to all of it from the same pool of energy.

- [aja monet] Yeah, I think the multiplicity of experience, it's always changing and shifting is really important because I think that many of us, there are times where you like look at someone else and you can resent or envy or there's just the range of a human emotions, boy, they are very extensive. And I think that you can see how, not just in the country but in the world, that when you are lacking and when you are without basic necessities, basic things, it's very easy to be angry, you know? And aggravated.

- [adrienne maree brown] And it's actually wise.

- [aja monet] Yeah.

- You know? Giving myself permission to feel whatever I'm feeling and trusting that that's the right emotion is really important. When I was going through my heartbreak moment, the sort of most intense periods of it I was like, "This is exactly what I should be feeling right now." Everything that has played out here, this is the correct emotional response. I was engaged to someone who I'm no longer engaged to. My heart is broken and that's the right thing to feel right now. And I should be more worried about myself if I'm not feeling that. Climate despair is actually correct. What we've done to the planet and what we're gonna have to deal with. That's all true. The right response is to actually feel upset about it. If you're living in poverty inside the richest nation in the world, being angry about that is completely correct. To me, it's not about it's okay or justifying. It's like, no, that's the right feeling. Then what do you do with it? I'm not gonna do anything with it that continues to empower those who are putting me in this circumstance. Capitalists put me into this situation. How am I gonna liberate myself from living a life that's inside the boundary that they've created for me?

- [aja monet] Yeah, what I find most people doing, which is it makes sense, it's survival is like, okay, well, now I gotta learn how to play the game just as bad, just as tough, just as equipped as the next person because what I've witnessed is someone that, just being completely frank, as someone that made a lot of sacrifices and said no to a lot of things that other people said yes to. In the long run, you believe in something and you wanna stand for something. But you standing for something alone, it does nobody any good. Not that it doesn't do anybody any good, it's important. But I do think that collectivity, making a statement or taking a stand is really where the strength, the impact of a decision like that can be felt. Sometimes what is frustrating is that we don't see that if we don't all do it together, if we don't all not participate, if we don't all say no, then it continues to happen and replicate itself. But it can't just be a few. And so what I find is that we get hurt or disappointed or insulted by other people's anger and outrage and righteous bitterness about the system and the way that the system is rather than having compassion to see those expressions as a form of love and really heartbreak. So when we look at people in third world countries who are resisting dictatorships and regimes that are oppressive and terrorizing the people and we see people taking drastic actions to resist those things, we judge the action more than what caused the action. So we find that we judge how people grieve and how people are outraged. We focus on the violence of those who have been violently harmed, or the expression of hurt and the expression of rage, and righteous rage and anger, about things that they are experiencing that are downright wrong and injustices. And some people say, "Well, that's not the way I would resist. There's other ways. I would do it this way." But as a woman getting older, part of my struggle has been I don't wanna struggle. Part of my struggle is I don't wanna struggle. I don't wanna fight all the time. I don't wanna resist all the time. I don't wanna hold that anger and that rage all the time, although it is there. And more than anything, I want to be able to one day have a child or if that's even possible in this dying world at this time, I mean, I wanna believe that there are other dreams that I've yet to hold and yet to experience that I will get to. And so I think we struggle with, are we in that together? Like are we trying to make a more equitable, loving world for each other? And do we see the rage that others are holding as a part of that love, too? Like as an expression of that love, too. I wanted to ask you, what are the ways or examples of anger and rage that you see being able to equip us towards the healing world that we need?

- [adrienne maree brown] Yeah, I wanted to say, I really appreciate what you just shared. 'Cause I think that that's the balance. That's the tightrope, right? For many of us is I see all this and I wanna be in relationship to it and I also don't wanna be struggling and suffering all the time. And when pleasure activism was first coming out, this felt like the number one misconception. It's not just a hedonistic escape from being alive in the world. It's actually about focusing your attention and in whatever circumstance you're in, being able to say, where do I bring my attention in order to experience more life and more wellbeing and more ease and more joy and more love and more abundance? And usually the answer is some form of community. That's the shortcut. But I will say, for me, I've had to learn to respect my anger. And I think a lot of us need to learn to respect anger and to respect the sources of anger, like where it's coming from, and where people are when they have it. I think about this a lot, that when Black Lives Matter took off, I'd been doing direct action organizing and training people in how do you take nonviolent direct action. So for years. And for years trying to make a case for it. And then it took off. And I was like, kkay, great. Now we're gonna be in this period of just immense, nonstop action until we get justice. And it hasn't really played out that way. There was this period of immense action. But then everything comes and goes in waves, and those waves include backlash and those waves include history, having other plans and COVID. And there's just so much concurrently happening. So part of what I've been rocking with is when anger is present in me, when it's alive in me, that I'm responsible for figuring out how I move with that. And I'm responsible for figuring out how I bring community into that dance with me. Community theoretically is this beautiful concept, but it takes a lot of vulnerability and work and time to lean in and actually let it be a solution in your life. And right now, I think it's the primary solution for almost everything we're dealing with, is what does it mean to think, I'm taking this anger, I'm in this anger, and can I find anyone else to be in it with me and to organize with me to change this situation? And one of the things that's helped me let go of is the idea that I have to get every single person interested in every single thing that I'm angry about. Actually, we need a lot of different people being angry about different things because there's so much right now that deserves our rage and our organizing. So instead of trying to recruit people to be angry about what I'm angry about, I'm always just like, what's moving you? What makes you feel alive? What are you willing to make sacrifices around? Here's what it is for me. For me, it's the planet. This is the thing that if we don't address it, we won't have anywhere to have the rest of our struggle and our arguing and our solutions. We won't have a practice ground. We need to protect home, protect our practice ground, protect the place where we get to be. But I know, my job is not to try to recruit everyone else to my thing. It's just to do this fight well and to find the people who are already in community with that orientation. So how many people do I need to have around me to safely live that life? How many people do I need to be responsible to and accountable to? And a lot of times when I'm the most stressed out about what's happening in the world, in some ways it's because I'm trying to pay attention to way too much. I'm not paying attention to those people who are actually around me and who I can help. I'm paying a ton of attention to people who I worry about, but I don't do anything for. And how do I shift that? Now if I read something that really moves me, I'm like, what can I do right away to help out with this? 'Cause right away is when I will actually do something. I don't wanna just be angry about it. I wanna see what can I do. This hurricane Fiona happened to Puerto Rico? Okay, Taller Salud, María Fund, who is on the ground helping? Can I help them? Right? How do I make my attention a shining light on it?

- [aja monet] Yeah, girl, that's what we try.

- [adrienne maree brown] Yes.

- [aja monet] I hear it. Thank you so much for that. Your insight is always so, so, so just helpful and affirming and I'm just grateful for the world that you are here with us right now. So just thank you for choosing to be here at this time and of all times. And before we end and close out, this is a question that we typically ask folks. Is there a sound, or it could be several sounds that deeply resonate with you that either bring you a sense of calm, peace, familiarity? Just sounds that you really, really resonate with and feel close to.

- [adrienne maree brown] Yeah, I mean, I'll say the sound of the ocean is a really big one. For my birthday this year, I went to the ocean and was somewhere where I could hear it all day, all night. And it was so good for my system and for my sleep and for my sense of self as a salt water body that's constantly in motion. It was just like, oh, right. I'm vast like that and I'm actually doing pretty fucking good at this life. And the ocean is winning at life all the time. And all it's doing is like flowing and having storms. Yeah, the ocean just does it for me.

- [aja monet] Hmm, yes, I love it. Oh, adrienne, I can't wait to see you in the flesh and actually hug you.

- [adrienne maree brown] Oh yeah, we got good hugs coming.

- [aja monet] Yeah, yeah, yeah, I look forward to it. So I'm gonna manifest that something in the universe makes that happen soon. Thank you for your time, your thoughtfulness, and your insight, your energy, all that you do in the world.

- [adrienne maree brown] Thank you.

- [aja monet] Okay. Thank you for listening and I encourage you to tune in next time to The Sound Bath. Please enjoy this beautiful sonic meditation.