In 2020, like every other human on this planet, we were thrown into cycles of uncertainty, change, and loss. These cycles also started to crack open fissures in the foundation of our realities. As with you, we were forced to pause…pause work and working in the ways we knew, pause sending the children to school, pause spending time in person with our extended families and friends. In the depths of this unknown space, fear, questions, and clarity arose.
Together, we began to radically imagine how we want to live and be in relationship with ourselves, each other, our communities, families, friends, non-human family, and the planet.
We grappled with the unsettling questions of:
Is this really all there is to life?
For so many of us, life can feel challenging and more challenging than it needs or should be.
Why are we still fighting for our humanity and dignity?
Are we really here just to work until we are elders and then maybe just maybe get a few years of no work before we transition to other realms?
Who benefits from us believing this is the only “way to live”?
Why do we have to pay to exist on the planet?
We live on a planet abundant in the resources each living thing needs to exist, and somehow, we bought into / were coerced into the belief that to live is to work and that we have to pay for the very things all living things need: food, shelter, water.
How did we get here?
How did we unlearn the knowledge of how to cultivate what we need to exist?
How long can we witness others that we know and those we don’t know struggling, starving, and dying because of a systematic and oppressive state of “lack”?
Who said I have to “earn” a living?
I exist. You exist. Isn’t that enough reason to “earn” the right to live?
When, why, and how did we take on the false narrative that we weren’t worthy…not even worthy enough for the most basic of our human needs to be met. We have had to prove in numerous ways that we are indeed, beyond worthy of life and living. And that our worthiness has nothing to do with our productivity/ability to produce, consume, take, acquire, conquer, or hustle our way to.
We are worthy because we exist.
We are worthy because we exist.
We are worthy because we exist.
So how did we determine we have to earn a right to live? Who determined this for us? Who continues to determine this for us?
What are we saying when we say “Earn a living”?
Why do we work?
Our lives are centered around work. Understandably so, when all of our essential needs are tied to working. If we don’t sell our labor, then we will literally go without.
Why?
Who benefits from our labor?
Can a fulfilled life exist without engaging in waged labor?
How does this way of existing in the world impact and shape the planet we all share?
Our ancestors across several lifetimes have shared in various ways the old adage that “all things are interconnected.”
One is but part of the whole.
If we hold this to be true, then how does the way we live connect to and interact with all other life on the planet, including the planet itself?
How does my identity shape and impact my lived experiences, perspectives, social positioning, and choices? And how does that (and more) shape and impact the world around me/us?
How can we return to more local, indigenous wisdom-led, community-sufficient, ecologically diverse, and healthy interspecies habitats that center our communal health, love, care, joy, effort, ease, rest, and liberation?
How do we have authentic conversations with those around us about what we can do together to create an interconnected and authentic community that allows each of us to be free?
These questions are expansive and often lead to even more questioning, investigating, thinking, and feeling. We don’t hold all the answers, but this questioning has gained us more clarity for ourselves.
In this space, we want to remain curious alongside you.
We want to explore with you, share resources, hold space for dialogue, and be a container for radical imagining and building with authenticity, care, and liberation at the center.