266. How to Love Family When You’re Divided On Beliefs with adrienne maree brown & Autumn Brown

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Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things.

Today is a special episode with two of our favorite sisters in the entire world.

We've got four sisters on for you today, two of whom are Amanda and I.

The other two are Adrienne Marie Brown and Autumn Brown.

Adrienne Marie Brown grows healing ideas in public through writing music and podcasts, nurturing emergent strategy, pleasure activism, radical imagination, and transformative justice.

Adrienne's work is informed by 25 years of social and environmental justice facilitation, primarily supporting Black liberation.

Adrienne is the author and editor of Emergent Strategy, Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, Pleasure Activism, The Politics of Feeling Good, Grievers, and Maroons.

Autumn Brown is a mother, organizer, theologian, and artist.

With 20 years of experience facilitating movement, strategy, and strategic development with community-based and social justice organizations, she grounds her work in healing from the trauma of oppression.

She was a founding member of the Rock Dove Collective, a radical community health exchange, a past president of the board of directors of Voices for Racial Justice, and is currently a facilitator with Aorta.

Together, Adrian and Autumn co-host the excellent podcast, How to Survive the End of the World.

If you haven't listened to our first We Can Do Hard Things conversation, which everyone freaked out about,

with Adrian, please go back to episode 239, Why Are We Never Satisfied?

And now we give you the hilarious, the beautiful, the

two who are just truly rooted in joy and love,

Adrienne and Autumn.

Here we are.

I feel so humbled.

Wait, I'm so geeked out that y'all are meeting Autumn Brown.

I don't know if you know this, but last week was her 40th birthday.

So she not only turned 40, but she released the first single off of her new album, which is incredible.

And she released a music video because that's how a Sagittarian turns 40.

Oh, of course.

It is true.

I do believe it might be the most Sagittarian thing I've ever done.

Yeah.

She had a release party as her birthday party with her sweetheart there who had just met her kids.

It was just brilliant, beautiful, intentional, awesome.

So y'all are meeting her in like this peak moment.

of life that is unfolding during the apocalypse.

It's amazing.

Yeah, that's right.

It feels to me that you live on many peaks, though.

It feels like you're always doing a million trillion things.

It just doesn't surprise me that this just happened at all.

I know that you think I don't know you, but I do.

Very old friends.

Oh, autumn, the times we've cried together, the times we've walked together, the relationships we've had.

Y'all have a lot in common because you both have had

what I call real marriages, like bad ones with men that were like real marriages, real marriages as opposed to non-marriages and then leaving that realizing your queerness leaning into a queer life and making art from that place yeah there's a lot there i was thinking about that coming in knowing that we're both divorcees what do i feel like i can say no and amanda you're a divorcee also

yeah but i like

wasn't as creative as y'all and I just married another man.

I think there's nothing wrong with moving.

There's a lot of man dating happening in the circle these days.

So I'll just say.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My new sweetheart, the person that I'm currently deeply in love with is a cis man.

So

and he's okay.

He's great.

One of the things that's been really beautiful about this latest, this newest love relationship that I'm in is

I'm so sorry.

One of my children is calling me and why don't you

miss Mauraid.

And I'm just going to try texting her and telling her.

Please, how old are her babies?

I don't know this.

So this one who's calling now is Tin going on 45.

Okay.

She is like a suburban mom as a child somehow.

It's amazing.

She wears high-waisted jeans.

She's got things and all of these are decisions she's making for herself.

Is she on the HOA board?

She would like to be.

She would like to be.

The list of things that she wants for gifts right now is like a very specific list of facial care, like a facial care protocol that I've never had a protocol anywhere close to this.

And she said, I only want these things.

Oh my God.

So don't get like the knockoff face washing pads.

heart-shaped ones or something.

I think that's smart to call that out, though, because when my sister and I were little, all we wanted in the whole world was Cabbage Patch Patch Kids.

I don't know if you guys remember these.

Oh, I remember that.

Okay.

You wanted those.

Yeah, that was like all, I was of that age.

Just one Christmas, that's all we wanted.

And then so we got our Cabbage Patch kids and they were like homemade Cabbage Patch kids.

They weren't Cabbage Patch kids.

They were

soft face.

Yeah.

The whole idea is it's supposed to hurt if you hit someone with it.

Yes.

And you're not going to take your homemade Cabbage Patch kid to school and say, here's his fake birth certificate.

But here's the thing about that.

It is actually

interesting.

Like, we didn't have much money.

I get it.

Yes.

But also,

there's a little bit of like family dynamics because it's like, so y'all going to be the ones to say that this isn't a Cabbage Patch Kid because we're all here and know this isn't a Cabbage Patch kid, but we're going to have to perform.

We did have to perform

Cabbage Patch Kid and act as excited.

And we did.

And we sure did, because we sure were not going to do that.

Oh, interesting.

So there's something interesting there.

because there is like a gratitude practice right there's some kind of gratitude where it's like if you really unwind it and think about the love that your parent was trying to show you within the limitations of their economy i think as kids we have this like internal thing of like i don't want to hurt your feelings or at least generationally i don't know if that's still the case but i feel like

there was this thing of like, I don't want to hurt your feelings.

And I'm receiving the thing.

But I do also remember a certain age and recognizing, oh, this is privilege.

I was like, oh, this is privilege.

Like the fact that I say I want something even is privilege

as opposed to just being like, if someone gives me a gift, I should just be like, that's so nice of you.

You totally didn't have to do that.

Thank you.

But like now we've normalized the culture such that there's an expectation of like, of course, you're going to get me gifts on these five days throughout the year.

And here's exactly what you're going to get me.

That's just a sign of where we live and the time we live in.

Like, yeah.

And it's compulsory.

It's not a gift.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Speaking of holidays, I was listening to one of your many episodes that I've listened to.

And you two were talking about family holidays.

And I think I heard Adrian say that you, your family holidays used to always end in an explosion.

Yes.

And I bet a lot of folks can.

very much relate to that.

And so many people are trying to figure out how to do the holidays different, which when you think about it is really just how to do family different yes just how to do family why are holidays so hard i don't know what's the common denominator why is family so hard

right i'm around you people yeah so you guys actually found a way to make holidays different which means you must have found a way to make family different

what i find so fascinating about you two is that you just what you do is what you do everywhere.

You're doing this love, liberation, justice work all the time in every avenue of your life, which means that family,

which for a lot of us is a frontier of

struggle, for you is the spark for all of our struggles.

Okay.

Right.

It's like the starting ground, the particular struggles that most of us are going to experience in our lives starts in our familial space, right?

So it's like all the norms that were set, all the insecurities that our parents had, all their limitations.

That's the structure inside of which family is happening, and which also means all of their parents' limitations and all the economic crisis of their time.

And what, you know, diet culture was normal.

So you and I are surviving eating disorders.

All of those things create the family dynamic.

And I get astounded regularly when I think about how young my parents were trying to generate something new in the world, which was a family that was coming from two different cultures, two different races, two different places in the deep south.

And I'm like, oh, y'all were 21 and 23

deciding to try to create something that you had not seen before.

So the limitations of that experience for us are like, what were you deciding to do as a 22-year-old mom?

or as a 26-year-old dad or a 34-year-old, you know, all these are ages that are far behind us now.

And I'm just now figuring out how to live inside my own values.

If someone had asked me to do that 20 years ago, I have no idea what kind of person I would have generated in the world, but it probably would have had a little monster in there.

And then we go back and we get together every so often to be like,

how are we doing?

But I think in our family, there's a blessing because our parents were intentionally like, there's some stuff that we don't want to replicate as we create this new space.

So we didn't grow up around a lot of our extended family when we were younger.

We were really in our little unit of five, that unit of five that was like we're traveling around together.

And so, the issues we have are really shaped by that.

I think we've all been as adults learning like how do you sustain relationships longer than two years

and how do you build friendships that can last a long time.

And then, I think from what we've learned, that's what we've come back and brought into our family space.

And I will say,

I think we're doing really well.

Like, it's not that stuff still doesn't come up, but I feel like now we have much more built-in sense of practice and repair, like being like, oh, even if stuff gets tense,

we're like, okay, but we know we, we know how to find our way back to each other.

We have like a regular practice with the sisters of doing a sister check-in.

And then we have a regular weekly,

not meeting, but like a weekly gathering of the five of us with kids and spouses or whoever else is around who wants to plug in.

That started during the pandemic.

And the sister check-in, we've been doing maybe a decade or more now.

What does that look like?

What do you do?

What's a sister check-in?

So, this is something, this is actually a practice that we evolved in direct response to the explosions.

Yeah.

So, Adrian and I have a sister in between us, April.

And we noticed that,

you know, within 24 to 48 hours of getting home together we would end up in a brawl emotionally a very passive aggressive brawl ah like sometimes it was like moving things around and being like mad

you tended to be more passive aggressive but april and i would scream at each other yeah

you're the so everyone has their own roles okay oh yeah

you go at it but

adrian is not gonna yell at anybody.

That's not her style of conflict.

I will yell.

Yeah.

You're good.

And April will just say very mean things.

So it's like,

she remains in control of herself, but she's like, I shall exhibit.

Yeah, exactly.

I can think of any number of those explosive moments where all of us are feeling.

victimized inside of the conversation.

Everyone is feeling misunderstood.

Everyone is feeling hurt, unseen.

And that's what we figured out, that the explosions were happening because we felt like the most important things that were happening in our lives were not visible to one another.

And of course, a family like ours, a very global family where, as Adrian named, we grew up moving around as a pod of five.

And then as we moved into adulthood, you know,

We sometimes live continents away from each other.

And so there's a pressurization that can happen around our family time because of how far apart in the world we live.

So that was a contributor.

The pressurization, the need for it to go well.

Yes.

Our mom's need for it to go well.

You know, so the all of it, our dad's sort of cluelessness about it not going well.

All of the dynamics.

It's been a great time, y'all.

Great time.

Like we're back together.

We're all alive.

What's wrong?

You know, and then what would happen, the explosion would be followed by tears and catharsis, but then it would be draining and exhausting and leave a bad bad taste in everyone's mouth around the holidays.

And so at some point, a little over a decade ago, we had the idea to have this intervention of,

let's make sure that the sisters, at least, the three of us, within the first 24 hours of being in family space, that we get into a room together and close the door.

And at first we said we would set a timer and have a rule.

It was like the most, three most important things that have happened in your life since we all saw each other last.

And no more than 30 minutes, oftentimes we would go way over, but we tried to keep it kind of contained.

And it was incredible the difference it made in our experience of one another because suddenly things that we're feeling so

the invisibleness that I'm feeling that feels so personal to me is like, oh.

Oh, of course, the way you're behaving is not about me.

It's never about me.

You know, I mean, it's the truth of being a human, right?

Which is that someone else's terrible behavior or difficult behavior or negative behavior or whatever word we want to ascribe to it is almost never actually about us.

Yeah.

And it's hardest to see with family, I think,

which is why.

I think Adrian and I are both of the mind that family is such an excellent dojo for practicing a different way of being because all of whatever patterns I'm trying to heal in myself are all right there available to me as soon as I'm with my family.

Whether I want to be working on that healing or not.

That's right.

And now we're all at ages where we can kind of be like, I don't think I want to work on that this year.

Yeah.

I like that.

Hey, that I also think it's like everything shows up right away with family.

I also think family is like, I don't care about your mantras.

I don't care about your talking points.

I don't care about the story you're telling everyone about what you're doing.

I know you.

And

so either you have changed and I can feel that, or you haven't.

And

I know how to push your buttons.

We started doing that as sisters and we still do that as sisters.

And the whole family knows the value of it.

So they actually support us.

It's like, hey, y'all, we have to do the sister check-in because it's going to impact everyone here's experience.

And so everyone like is like, they're on the porch.

Don't interrupt them.

They're doing their sister thing.

Like everyone makes a really big deal.

And like, we have our little tea, our little coffee.

It's very important important that no one can hear us.

We leave our phones far away from us so that it's just like no distractions.

We're really just being present with each other.

And then I think now that we added the family practice on during the pandemic, what I'm finding is it's making it easier to have hard conversations because we have a practice of being in conversation with each other.

So, you know, as the pandemic was unfolding, it was like we need to have hard conversations about how everyone's holding these boundaries around covet 19 and hard conversations around masking and vaccines and travel are we going to the theaters not going to the theaters are we traveling are we not traveling and we got the reps in and it's so helpful now because it's like okay there's this situation going on in gaza and we actually have a family practice that allows us to get on the phone with each other and say we're going to spend two hours and we're going to talk about this and we have different perspectives and like small things, but like,

I really appreciate that my dad, for instance, if I interrupt him, which I might do, because I get, you know, in my feelings, I'm like, I already know everything you're going to say.

And he'll pause me and be like, if I can finish what I was saying.

And that is like a cue to me that I'm like, I'm not hearing him.

I may think I know what he's saying, but that doesn't mean he doesn't get the right to say it.

And that doesn't mean I actually do know.

And like, let me slow it down.

Let me hear him.

And then be able to come back from a place of not like I'm trying to correct you or fix you, but just like you are telling me where you're at.

Let me tell you where I'm at.

And we're not going to resolve this in our family.

It's not resolved in the world.

So we're not going to resolve it here.

Right.

But we can get more information.

We can get more in alignment around this in such a way that like I feel no shame about where anyone in my family is sitting on this, right?

Because we've talked it through.

I understand and I can feel the humanity of each person inside of it.

And then I feel supported in the actions that I'm taking or the risks that I'm taking.

I feel like I'm out here being like a loud voice of ceasefire.

And I know that my family is like at my back, like, we love you.

We understand that.

And, you know, I look over and I'm like, oh, there you are, Autumn, like ceasefiring on your, you know, things like that, I think matter so much in these moments where I have so many friends who are like, I'm fighting it out in the world and I'm trying to fight it at home.

And I'm trying to fight it with my friends and with my funders.

And it's like, well, where do you feel flanked?

Like, where do you actually get to take a position and be a human being in it?

Where do you feel flanked?

That's a beautiful damn question.

Yeah.

My family has the first experience of flanking, but my sisters, like when I came out as queer, my sisters like, were like,

we are here on either side of you.

And if our grandparents are not going to let you come visit and bring your partner, then they will not be visiting by us either.

Like they did not go.

They didn't take the kids.

They would not go until I was welcome.

That's, I'm like, flanked.

Right.

And no questions asked.

Yeah.

Not even a hard decision.

It's like so wild that we usually don't do the things we know to do.

out in the world with our family.

Like what you're talking about.

So you're saying saying people need to feel seen before they can hang out.

Like, oh,

some revolutionary shit, y'all.

You know that.

But it's ironic that family is the only place.

We don't do that.

We're like, we know that's best practice.

Everybody agrees, but you can't bring that shit to your family.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's a, I think there's an interesting dynamic where

I think we've certainly noticed this and we've navigated it in our family.

I navigate it in my family that I'm, you know, now guiding.

It's the balance of family is a safe place to dissolve and come apart with my children.

I want them to know that I am a safe place for them to have some level of dissolving and coming apart, particularly if they have places in their lives where they feel like they have to be really armored up.

And that can get out of balance.

Because it's one part of our coping and healing.

But I feel like as we get older, as we become more adult, as we become more responsible for our own selves, then we build the resilience to be able to dissolve and come back and dissolve and come back.

And I think part of what can happen in some families is that the family system itself doesn't build the resilience around that kind of like dissolving, reforming, dissolving, reforming.

So then people come together and they just

come apart.

and they don't feel responsible for their behavior.

Ah,

yeah.

So if I know, if I don't feel like I'm responsible for how I behave with my siblings or with my parents, and it sort of feels like, yeah,

anything kind of goes in this,

then I'll do things in that environment that I would never do with friends or with colleagues.

I love that.

That's so true.

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Do your parents get real and show up if you're not talking about issues, like if you're not talking about Gaza, but you're talking about

your own personal lives, do they bring their full selves to you like you do as sisters?

I feel like they do.

Our parents are southern people,

so I do think there's a certain degree of what is the right time and place

for

conversations to happen.

But when it's just us, I can really feel them.

And I'm not sure when this shift happened.

Maybe, Autumn, you have a sense of it.

I really feel like there's been a shift such that our parents now are really like, we're learning from y'all.

And so a lot of times they will come to us with something that's like, what do you think about this?

Or like, here's something that's going on.

And like, I'm not sure what to do about it.

But it feels like they'll turn.

because they know that we have opinions, but also I think they know that we are working on this stuff.

Like we're working on

doing our own healing work around our bodies.

We're working on figuring out how to have justice in our workplaces.

We're working on these things.

And so, like, we, there was recently a conversation that was around body image and body safety.

And for me, I'm like, okay, I'm working on this eating disorder stuff.

And it's an opportunity to come into the conversation and let them be curious.

I noticed that they were able to say, like, I'm feeling,

I'm feeling kind of triggered.

You know, they're like, like, know, triggered.

Is that the word you crazy kids say?

Trigger y'all say, but like, I'm feeling like it's hard for me to be in this conversation.

And here's why it's hard.

Wow.

I was like,

this is huge, right?

This is huge.

Because in the past, I think what happens and what mostly happens amongst humans is.

it's hard to be in the conversation.

And we don't say it's hard to be in the conversation.

It just shows up that we are struggling and we're trying to get ourselves out.

We're like, how do I, you know, finish this or shut it down?

So a lot of times we'll be like, you know what?

I'm not talking about this anymore or I'm leaving or whatever.

Except

I'm on my way out.

Throw and dagger.

Exactly.

Right.

And then what we're waiting for after that is for the other person to figure out how wrong they were and come and apologize correctly about all the wrong things.

And then we will re-engage.

And we never get that.

And life goes on and people die and we miss them.

And I think that for us, the idea is: oh, in this moment, while this person's still alive, we're having a hard time talking about something.

And we can say, why?

Why?

Oh, because we all created some of these fucked up conditions for our bodies together in our family.

It's like, we're none of us are innocent here.

Like, if I have an eating disorder, I was in an eating disorder family structure, right?

That

we all are having to unlearn diet culture.

We all are having to unlearn fat phobia.

It's not like I will just go off and do that by myself and return and like be this, you know, fundamentally different creature.

I also think there's something about the growing up, the idea that we're all growing, which for me is really helpful.

And my parents, I'm like, oh, you're still growing.

And I feel like maybe sometime after college, that clicked for me that I'm like, oh, you're not.

completed.

I grew up in it.

I grew up like, you're done.

You're my mom.

Like you're done.

You are doing, you're finished.

This is what you're doing.

And you should be better because you're grown up.

You should be better.

Why are we talking about this?

You're an adult.

And now it's like, oh, you're going to keep changing

until the last moment.

And I'm going to keep changing until the last moment.

And getting our parents to see us as adults and be like, oh, y'all are grownups, still changing, but you're not the kids you were.

You have grown-up issues and we're going to have grown-up conversations.

Like that to me has felt like such a revelation.

And I think collectively building the wisdom within our family to know that we all might also be wrong about most things that we think and believe.

That's right.

You know, and it's so easy as the younger generation.

I think in some ways.

me having children and then my children aging into their teenage years, it's been one of the places where I can see it with the greatest ease.

You know, it's easy as the

teenager becoming an adult, becoming middle-aged person to be able to really believe I'm right about the things that I'm right about.

And my parents are, you know, they, they did the best that they could for the time period that they lived in.

And, you know,

and then,

but I'm here knowing the actual facts and truth.

And then my children are coming along.

And they're knowing their actual facts and truth.

And I'm like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, you know, trying to expand and make sure that my mind is flexible enough, that I can keep up with the things that are now becoming true that I couldn't have foreseen because it's so far beyond the horizon that I can see, you know, and then that wise mind, trying to develop the wise mind of just knowing, yeah,

I might be wrong about almost everything.

So then

if most of the things that I think I'm right about,

are just, it's not knowable to me,

then I have to get really really focused on my values, right?

I had to be really focused on my values and my purpose and what motivates the way that I behave.

Values.

For me, it feels like it's a, it's like a step behind what I speak into the world.

Yes.

You know?

Yes.

I feel that too, Autumn.

I feel like I'm always just writing.

I feel like I'm my own self-help author.

Like I'm writing it.

And then I'm like, I'm trying to do that.

Right.

That's the smartest version of me.

All the time.

I'm actually like,

I'm working right now with people who are like, you know, that book you wrote, Emergent Strategy.

We're going to use it.

We're going to use it.

Okay.

What does that mean?

Like, yeah, they're like, we're going to use it.

Like, we're going to budget with it.

And we're, because I was like, I need to, for instance, I was like, I need to stop this war right now.

Like, we need to do something big.

They're like, but small is all.

And you know that that's how change happens is relationships.

And you know that you have to create more possibility.

They're just like, we're going to use it.

Like, what is the most effective thing you can do that's at the scale of your actual existence?

And I'm like,

you're like, that sounds really smart.

No, this is really helpful ideas, right?

It's really helpful.

This is great.

And then bringing that into family where it's like, my sister, you know, you talk about fugitivity.

And I'm just like, oh, yeah, we are living in a family of people living in the south with white family that are still struggling with race, struggling with like what it actually means to be a white person.

And I'm like, oh, yeah, Autumn is writing the text that is going to liberate our family that was also learned in part from living in our family.

Oh.

Okay, I have a question for you, Autumn, about that.

Then

I was trying to explain to my sister, how am am I going to ask this question?

Okay, so I

okay.

We all believe in you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

So I heard you on a podcast long ago talking about how when you were young, everyone would say, What are you?

What are you?

What are you?

So they could figure out all the things, how to treat you, where to set you up in their minds hierarchy, which is how I feel about gender completely.

So

you

said that you used to just start saying white, mom, black, dad.

Right?

Mom, white, dad, black.

Mom, white, dad, black.

Mom, white, dad, black.

Okay.

So when you said that,

I just can't stop thinking about it because my children are mixed race.

Yeah.

And my son is not white presenting at all.

He's Japanese.

And he just is in a new world of figuring out who he is.

And it took him to get to college to where now he's like, oh, these are my people.

This is who I am.

You didn't teach me

i actually don't know you anyway yeah talk about thinking i feel like i'm between generations i spend most of my day looking one way and saying why didn't you do better to my parents than looking the other way to my kids and saying i did the best i can just can you please just relax

yes and not seeing the irony okay

But right now you see it.

Right, right.

I do.

I do actually.

It's just in the moment.

I feel like I can actually see it, but in the moment when they say something to you.

Because it's it's devastating, it's devastating.

Nothing helps you forgive your parents more than watching them grow up behind you and you're going, oh my God, you really do just do the best you can in the moment you're in, and we know we don't know shit.

My question is: this:

What does it mean?

Because now I understand right now that I am not just my children's mom,

I am my children's white mom.

And by the way, just PS, like I'm my children's white anorexic recovering mom.

So, I'm like,

whiteness is like,

look, real white over there, Doyle.

Real white.

I won.

I won white woman.

You're like, I'm all the way up.

Okay.

So they gave me a challenge and I fucking nailed it.

I almost died.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

I just know that there is so much in my babies that is

from being a mom white, from being of whiteness, that they're unlearning.

So like, what does it mean to have a mom white?

A mom white, a mom white.

Yo, yo.

It's such a beautiful question.

Thank you for asking that question.

As Adrian referenced, I have been doing a lot of work around the political concept of fugitive practice or the notion of in order to practice freedom or that we can practice freedom as a temporal state that we can create

even inside of unfree conditions.

And

so much of it is about finding inside of ourselves the places where we

feel safe

inside of white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, et cetera, et cetera.

We feel safe through compliance.

or we achieve a sense of a false sense of safety through compliance with the forms and norms.

It's helped me sort of, I guess, re-express to myself something that I have held very true my whole life related to my mom white,

which is that if I truly don't believe that white supremacy should shape the world, I have to be able to release all of the lies associated with white supremacy, including the way that resisting white supremacy might make me want to

reject her

or

would make me think that in order to find my dignity and ground, it has to come at the expense of hers.

And it's very complex.

It's very complex the ways that we all get pitted against each other.

And then

as I've started to see over time,

that the world definitely wants me.

for whatever set of reasons to reject my mother.

But my mother would never reject me.

My mother has always been,

and this is not the case for, you know, many, many people with our racial identity have white parents who did not protect them.

We are very in the lucky position of having a badass white mom.

I have so many memories of this woman.

walking up into schools that I attended and

having direct confrontations with teachers, particularly over race.

Yes.

She would come into school and she would say, You do not get to tell my child anything about her racial identity.

She is the only person who gets to decide what language she uses for her racial identity, and you will not say a word to her about it.

That's not your job.

Your only job is to teach her math.

Period.

So she never hesitated to protect my dignity.

Now I'm an adult,

and I've had to ask myself, oh,

would I hesitate to protect her dignity?

What do my politics actually require of me?

As I evolve in my understanding of this massive collective lie that we are like constantly navigating together, surviving together, and many of our adaptations for survival make a lot of sense.

And I have so much gentleness, compassion for myself, and for everyone living under late-stage racial capitalism for the ways that we have adapted to survive it.

And yet it's, you know, as you were naming Adrian with the emergent strategy concepts, if I do believe that small is all, if I do believe that everything important is going to happen inside of relationship,

then

I have to take seriously that how I orient to my mom white and to my dad black, you know, how I orient to them as individuals who are like worthy of inherent dignity and freedom themselves, that will matter, even if it doesn't make like immediate obvious sense to me, or it doesn't feel like there's immediate obvious impact.

You know, so it's been deep as we've, as we've navigated conversations

as a family, because I, you know, I have mixed race kids who also two of my children really present as white and one doesn't.

I have that too.

So that's a dynamic too.

As we've been navigating their unfolding childhood, I've brought the same sensibility that my mom brought to me, which is I'm really encouraging and creating the conditions for my kids to self-define, protecting their room to self-define, even though it actually, I mean, I have so much compassion for her now because creating room for them to self-define means that they're going to self-define in ways that I don't necessarily feel comfortable with.

So it's pressing on my edges.

And then I have to say, okay, well, what again,

what do I mean when I say freedom?

Oh, listen, that is so correct.

Yeah.

What does freedom mean?

I mean freedom my way.

It reminds me of Abby when our kid dresses totally butch and she's like, freedom.

And then my kid puts on some femme shit and Abby's like, she's just like totally listening to the patriarchy.

I'm like, I think

that also might be supportive.

I think we have to support all of it.

Well, but I do think that there's this also thing of phase.

I think the only thing I want to add, Autumn, because I feel like you really captured this beautifully, maybe two things.

One is there's this non-monolithic aspect.

Like for me, I'm like, I don't want to be set in a group and dismissed because someone has externally defined something about me.

And so they have decided, oh, you're that.

Boom.

Anytime I'm fighting against racism, against transphobia, Islamophobia, any of it, I'm like, that is the fundamental behavior that.

that is most harmful to us is being like, I have decided externally who you are and I dismiss your humanity because because of that.

And so I'm like, I don't do that to anyone.

If I don't like you, it's specific to you.

If I, you know,

specific to,

I got, I know enough.

I listened to what you said and I don't like it.

And it may feel.

No, no, no, I'm sure I don't like you.

I can tell you all the reasons why even if you're curious.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Right.

And part of that is because I'm like, I've grown up around Republicans.

I've grown up around people who are conservative.

I've grown up around gun-toting people.

I've grown up around farmers.

I've grown up around people who were way under the poverty line.

I've grown up around all the different kinds of people.

And what I have to do is...

And elitist Democrats.

Don't forget those.

And so many elitist Democrats.

And what I have found across the board is...

There's a goodness of heart in people that doesn't fit into a lot of these things and is not visible unnecessarily on the surface.

And there is an evilness of spirit that is also not visible in those ways.

And what I'm curious about is

that part of us that I think is beyond socialization.

I think each of us has a part of us that is beyond socialization, which is how our parents found each other and fell in love, because they both came into circumstances where everything around them said that their lives were going to be a certain kind of life.

There was a certain path.

There was a certain kind of person they were going to marry.

It was all predefined.

And neither of them felt that that made any sense for them.

And when they found each other, it was like, you make sense to me.

And what we're going to create will make sense to us.

And our little weird family makes a ton of sense to everyone who's in it.

And it's love-based.

So that means that every friend that we've had over the years of every kind of background, all the partners we've had, everyone who has come around, like love has been the primary experience that they have received from interacting with our family.

And that to me is

that's where I'm like, my deep respect for my parents is rooted in that where i'm like i don't know how you got there but it gives me faith in humanity that you got there and now you get to keep growing like the fundamental quality that my parents have both of them have mom white dad black is a deep curiosity that they're like i'm so curious about who you are and when i came out to my mom she was like and what was that like

you know like it wasn't like you know they there was no surprise she wasn't surprised

my dad also wasn't he was like well i knew that one time when you went to go to new year's eve with that person and i was like that's when you knew why do you tell me i've been on here

doing all this stuff anyway but they're both fundamentally curious both about themselves and you know for my dad in his

Black southern family to watch him and his Black Southern family is so magnificent.

Like he's so curious with each person about what they're experiencing and how he can support them, how he can help them.

And my mom with her family.

And it's challenging.

I would say the most, the most challenging place in our familial structure is actually our white family in terms of how we relate to them.

And I feel like we're in a tender moment right now where we're my parents have moved back south and we're slowly reconnecting.

And I think the emphasis is on the slowness.

For a long time, I was like, I don't have to do this.

I will pull all the way back and I will never talk to y'all again.

And I'll be, I will be okay with it.

I'm, you know, I'm sad that it went this way, but you had all this time to know that I was a black person and to choose something different.

And you still voted for Trump.

And I just can't deal with you.

Right.

And now I'm like, okay.

I still might have to make that choice.

You know, every time we interact, I'm like, this may be it.

But

one of the things that's most interesting to me is I can feel how much these people love me.

And I don't know what to do with that.

I'm like, I don't understand how you are sitting here looking at me.

And I can feel the authenticity of love that is in you, even as I know in the next moment, you might say something that is highly offensive.

And that part of humanity befuddles me that I'm like,

I don't understand it.

And because I don't have a whole framework for it, you know, maybe someone does.

But to me, that keeps me curious about humanity also.

That I'm like, I think socialization makes us say things, but I'm really interested in getting under that to the part of us that feels things.

And I think the part of us that feels things is the part that we'll be able to knit together and move forward together as a species as the structures of socialization fall apart.

That's how my therapist told me to think about.

you know, when we talk about our kids and what we probably did that wasn't and we thought we were right.

And but then they're going to have a different, and I used to obsess about what is he gonna think about this thing or what does he think about what i think about this what do they think about my stance about this and my therapist just said could we just let's for a second stop talking about what they think of you what would you say say they feel about you yes how do they feel about you glennon do you think they feel loved do you think they feel safe do you think they feel cared for

and that like it just helped me so much because i don't know what the hell they think of me.

I can't figure it out.

But they don't either.

They don't either.

But I think I can say what they say.

I think family is not a social media app.

Right.

Which also helps me is I'm like, oh, I'm not trying to perform something or present something to keep myself from being canceled as a human.

In my familial space, I'm being.

In all of my relationships, I'm being.

You know, every day I think maybe I'll get off of social media and just spend the rest of my life just being because I'm like, in that space,

it feels like people are constantly like, well, what do you think about who you are?

And are you real?

And are you good enough?

And are you this enough and that enough?

And I'm like, I don't know, but I do know that when I get off of this space,

what I find myself doing is singing to children, playing games with my friends, doing organizing that I really care about, writing stories that I really care about, and being in real relationships with real humans, all of whom have a multitude of stories and lineages that are flowing in and through them.

And

I think that's how we get to the other side of the painful impacts of all these constructs.

Because I'm like, these things were done to us.

These things were done to us very strategically.

Like it's so smart to be able to create a condition where someone thinks they have to turn against their mother.

And like Disney.

kills off all the moms, you know, like there's something really structural about the way our society tells the story of a parent, that it's like a parent is something you have to survive and get rid of, as opposed to in so many other places I've traveled to, it's like your parent, your elders, your ancestors, you honor them, you respect them, you listen to them.

You don't follow every single thing that they say.

You challenge them.

You're in relationship, but it's a relationship of like, oh my God, you gave me everything and I want to give you everything for the rest of my life.

And I think that that feels more.

righteous to me than this other way where it's like, oh, I can't wait to be done with you.

And, you know, this is the other thing I've been telling Autumn's kids who I text text with, so I'm like, we cancel bad ideas.

We don't cancel people.

And

a lot of times the people who are older than us, we're socialized by really bad ideas, but that doesn't mean that they're bad people and we don't give up on them.

And you can't save everyone.

But I'm like, there are a couple of my uncles that I'm like, I do want.

to pull you further along on this path.

And I will keep looking for the openings that help you to see that you're out of alignment with your own humanity and your own relationship to God.

And maybe I'm also out of alignment in some way.

Like, do I really know how to plant anything?

You know, one of my uncles is like such an amazing gardener and planter.

And I'm like, I would want to be near him when the apocalypse hits because he really knows how to make food.

You keep you alive.

He's going to keep me alive.

He also survives the end of the world.

You know, but I'm like, but, but I think he could also call me on.

He's like, you love to talk all this stuff, but do you actually know how to grow some collard greens?

And I'm like,

Well, you know, growing collard greens is a little triggering for me because of what your ancestors did to mine.

But Rio, you know, to me, like being able to have a sense of like we can talk about reality, what our ancestors did to us.

Oh, yeah, exactly.

Thank you.

That's the complexity.

That's the complexity.

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Autumn, do you know the answer?

or an answer to what Adrian was just talking about?

Because

I want someone to tell me

about the answer that like i love you

queer person i love you trans person i love you black person and these are the decisions i'm making politically which i had always just been like well that's bullshit that's not love that's something different Oh, but then I'm listening to you with the wise mind and I'm like, maybe I don't know shit.

And maybe it's the same thing as the parents.

It's like, you love me so much, but you did this thing.

You love me so much, but this happened.

Is that the same construct as the like, I love you, but I vote?

Like, what is happening there?

Tell us, Otto.

I love you, but I vote.

I mean, this, to me, this is these juicy questions.

This is where I love to live.

First of all, I just want to say that.

I love being out here on the edge.

Happy to be here.

Because I kind of feel, it's like, oh, we're all right out on the edge of our own thinking right now.

And I feel like this is where I've been spending a lot of time in the last year is just being on the outer edge of my own thinking, being like, I don't know, maybe this.

It could be this.

Again, for me, this is where the, where fugitive practice comes from.

The fugitive from the plantation doesn't know what's beyond the border.

All they know is they have to get out.

And so they go off into the forest, knowing that like that could be more dangerous, but

probably better than to continue being enslaved.

So I like being in the borderland on the edges.

Because to me, it comes down to this, the question is also kind of like, well, what do I actually believe the human heart is capable of?

If I can hold the nuance and complexity that, yeah, we're capable of feeling incredible.

love, incredible grief, incredible joy.

I really believe that joy and grief are actually the same emotion.

We can feel all of that and also still act against our own highest good.

It leads me to some interesting places in terms of what do I think a human is?

Because when we do things like that, it's like when we're like, we love,

we love, and then we kill.

Then oftentimes what initially comes up inside of us is like, that's so inhumane.

You know?

What's happening in Gaza right now is it's so abhorrent and it's so hard to understand.

And it, and I think it breaches our, our sensibility of what humans are capable of.

And yet, this is also humanity.

It's not not humanity.

Cyclical, too.

It's a cyclical humanity.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And

we exist inside of a lot of dissociation and confusion.

And that dissociation and confusion that we experience on on a daily basis in our relationships inside of ourselves inside of our families i think that that's all strategic you know like it's very strategic for these systems for us to feel confused for us to feel dissociated for us to not fully feel what we feel because the more confused we are the more dissociated we are the more at odds we are with ourself,

the less we can act, you know, the less easily we can act in alignment with what we believe.

And so that question you asked of like, yeah, how is it that someone can love and then vote in this

way that's so obviously counter to a love ethic, that to me, it's dissociation.

You know, that it fundamentally, like any behavior where you're acting against, you're acting against your stated beliefs or you're acting against your own best interests or the best interests of your family or the best interests of your community.

You can only do that if like there's some internal

like cracking that's happened where parts of yourself are not making contact.

And that dissociation is very, it's such an effective tool of

systems of dominance and supremacy.

All systems of dominance and supremacy use that tool.

That's right.

I've been thinking about that too.

It's like the demonic energy.

I don't think there's like demons.

I think there's a demonic energy that shows up as this kind of foggy, numbing, confusing,

enforced inhumanity, right?

That it's like, I'm going to create a condition where even your story of yourself doesn't make sense.

Because I think that that happens so often where you're listening politically to someone and I'm like, what you're saying doesn't make any sense to me.

Like you're telling me that you are a Bible-thumping Christian.

And so thou shalt not kill is.

the top thing on the list of things that you should not be okay with ever, period.

It doesn't say thou shalt not kill except for these little clauses it just says don't don't do it

right who thou

yeah who thou thou say thou who thou you know shall what shall not shall not and shall never right and it's so interesting because i'm like it doesn't say thou shalt not fornicate with your girlfriend it says thou shalt not kill but you are killing to keep me from fornicating with my girlfriend it literally doesn't make sense right and i think i've been thinking about this a lot lately that i'm like if you're telling me a story and it doesn't add up then i feel like there's a demonic energy afoot and i'm like who benefits from you being so confused

who benefits from you being so confused and i think in this time so many people are benefiting from our mass confusion our lack of critical thinking skills that were not developed you know like we're really in a in an interesting bind right now where i think relationship is the only thing that's going to pull us through.

It's not a meme or a graphic or saying the right thing on social media.

That's what you're saying.

It's not that.

Damn.

I don't think that we're going to be able to do it through social media.

I think what Autumn, I think, you know, that practice of fugitivity that you talk about, when you talk about Autumn, what I think about is like, who would have to show up and be like, you are enslaved and I know a way to freedom that I would trust to be like,

oh, you're saying everything around me that feels normal and safe to me, even though it's scary, but I have survived it thus far.

You're saying it's worth it to leave this condition

and go with you.

And what we're saying to white people all the time is like,

the thing that you think is great, where you have this like superiority complex, it's not great.

That's why everyone's depressed.

That's why everyone's killing each other.

That's why no one ever feels secure.

It's not actually working.

It hasn't worked.

It's not

good for you.

This thing is not working.

Any system that's like, we are superior in some way and we deserve more literally is at odds with this, the whole species surviving.

So the sooner we can get you to leave that, come out here into the wild land where we don't know what we do if no one's superior.

We don't know how to do it.

And we also don't know how to grow collard greens.

So we'll learn.

I bet we all have to learn how to grow collard greens, though.

I bet that that's actually a part of it.

Or like grow something.

Like I'm trying to be like, can I just grow this aloe?

Is that the movement?

You two, over and over again.

You are the movement.

We are part of the movement.

We are the movement.

What is the movement?

Where are we moving to?

Well, we're leaving the plantation

and

we're going into the forest.

And we don't have a map of the forest.

That's where we're moving to.

That's why it's so scary.

That's why it's so scary.

But we've heard stories.

We've heard stories, some from the past, some from the future.

So we know that there's some islands.

We know that there's water.

We think that there might actually be other people who are already free.

And so we have to go find them.

But there's a lot we don't know.

Okay.

I'll follow you too.

And I think we have

leaders.

I love what you talked about with like when your kids start coming back and being like, I know more now than you do.

And I remember that when your eldest sat me down and was just like, I'm going to give you a lecture about communism.

And I'm like,

me?

You're going to tell me about it?

And then they did.

And I was like, damn, you're right.

You literally had done more research than the rest of us combined.

I've read more books.

I took several classes.

I've been living in my life.

There's just this beautiful moment about like youth shall lead us.

Yes.

Indigenous peoples shall lead us.

The earth itself shall lead us.

And if we can listen to any one of those three, we can head in the right direction.

So true.

I love you both.

Thank you for this hour.

I think, seriously, we got to one of our questions for you.

Awesome.

Damn it.

Well done.

If you're not going to be able to do that, I knew that my sibling relationship is going to be like we might have to do

an annual gathering or something.

Because I don't feel like there's a lot of people out there who are sister pairs or sibling pairs doing a podcast that is all about revealing as much as we can about what it means to be a human being in this time.

It's so exciting for me to know that y'all exist and that you're covering the pod squad and you have your folks.

And it's so exciting for me that we exist and we've got our, you know, I do think there's something about siblingship and about the

honesty and the love and the like, just we're going to be in this for the rest of our lives, this

of siblingship that is actually a part of the medicine that we all need right now.

So it's so good to get traveling with y'all.

Let's keep.

Yeah, what magic.

What a gift to be here with you guys.

It's wild.

Every minute has been magic.

I really want to thank you for this hour.

My head is flooded and I can't wait to just go digest it all.

And I really appreciate what, adrian what you're saying about not giving up on our people

and

autumn what you were saying about

my

mom would always step in for my dignity and would i step in for hers and about the dissociation how how we

don't make

any sense and aren't acting in alignment with our values when we dissociate from ourselves.

And, like, you're refusing to follow the world's pressure and disassociate from your mother

is keeping that unity of you two, saying, I'm not going to make this real tidy for you, world, like, but this

is the, this is my truth.

And y'all work out your confusion on your own.

That

is so beautiful.

I'm just, thank you.

That's the answer.

I'm going to be thinking about it for a long time.

I also feel like family is the antidote to policing, if that makes sense.

Like what, so much of what you're talking about is that people are going around and they're policing how everyone else navigates their relationships, their family, their identity, their actions.

Policing has gotten so deeply ingrained in the West and especially in the U.S., so that we're constantly walking around either policing or being policed by others and thinking that that's a normal interaction.

That it's normal that someone would be like, you need to drop drop your mama.

What are you talking about?

My mother?

My mother?

I need to navigate my relationship with anyone in my life based on what a stranger interprets the circumstance to be.

That is policing.

That's policing.

And so my job is to love.

In this lifetime, I'm trying to love as many people as I can.

as deeply as I can.

That's my work.

And when you love people, you don't need to police them.

You hold them them in a relationship and you change together.

And that's what always happens.

And sometimes you're changing in the direction of the good and sometimes you're backsliding in the direction of things that cause harm.

But like,

it's my life.

I've got to live my own life the whole way through.

The whole way through is how you live.

To the end.

It's all, it's mine.

And I've got to live it.

And I've got to be accountable.

And I've got to find out who makes sense for me to be accountable to.

And one of those people is my mom.

The other is my dad and my sisters.

Like they're always with me and they don't care what anyone else thinks about me.

They care how I treat them.

My family, the biggest changes that I've made in my life have come because my family was like, we want you to be more present.

We want to feel you more.

We want to see you more.

We want to know you more.

Like if you're out there struggling with your food, we want to know.

If you're feeling suicidal, we want to know.

Like that has actually changed me much more than any external pressure from anywhere else.

Because I'm like, these people love me and they're in this for life.

Now, I know we're lucky.

We have a family that is dedicated to doing this, but I think we're also a model that other families can look to.

That's why we're telling the story of it.

That it's like, I think you're giving your family for a reason.

I think there's things only your family unit can heal.

I think only you and your family know what they are.

And that shouldn't be something that someone's blasting in from outside.

The youth will tell you.

The youngest people in your family are the ones who will come back and be like, hey, family, here's the next piece of work for us to do.

Their children will reach them, just like all these leaders.

You see, all these people's children who are coming out and being like, I don't support what my senator dad is doing.

Like, it's the Jewish young people are leading all these actions.

Youth, I'm telling you, I have so much faith in what kids can do and what young people can do.

And that's also a big reason why I'm like, ceasefire, ceasefire, because all these children, we need them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We need all of the kids.

They're the ones who take us into the future, right?

So, and that spirit is different, though.

That spirit that you're talking about.

I bring to you my gift to this family is to come bring tidings of great joy, which is that there is betterness for us.

There's better.

As opposed to, I have a tendency to mix the policing with the family, which is it is my job to defend my humanity by policing the shit out of you people.

Exactly.

And telling me what you did.

Instead of saying,

I get to change the culture of our family.

I get to change the culture of our family to being one where we ask questions.

I get to change the culture of our family to one where we have hard conversations.

And we don't have to have them all the time, right?

Because I do know there's people in my family who like, I don't know, for some weird reason, don't like talking politics all the time.

Weird.

Weirdos.

My 10-year-old being one second one.

Literally, every time we're sitting down and she's like, are we going to talk politics?

Oh,

we have to play Monopoly.

Regimen to take care of.

She's like, I would get my face together and play Monopoly.

And I'm like, oh, no.

Monopoly.

Watch out.

But we just have to love her through this so that it can be a phase and not

something she has to rigidly like.

I will tell you, I have no doubt about where she will land.

And I think that she is, I think she will make a great manager of the revolution.

Okay, great.

I kind of got

big CEO energy.

She does.

She's like, she's big CEO for freedom.

I think, Adriana, you know, this, my

call for ceasefire that I did on the interwebs

was

a direct result of watching my baby

and their friends

and the work they're doing and their

Palestinian friends, their Jewish friends, what they're risking.

It's just what they're doing together in their little groups, what they're doing with their families, what they're doing out in the world.

It was family.

Yeah.

It was family.

Oh, I love hearing that.

And it was backwards.

It was them.

It was, and it wasn't policing.

It was, it was nothing, none of that.

It was learning what they know.

Yeah.

And watching what they do and being so, oh, yeah, of course.

That's the way.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

It's that deep moment.

Yeah.

How dare any of us think that we are taking a risk by saying

the truth?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's amazing.

That's the privilege of the young people, but being young young enough to be like, I'm adaptable and flexible.

I can make the change.

If you want to rescind the offer you made to me, because I speak up on behalf of not killing kids, then that's okay.

I want a job where I can do that.

And by doing that, your kid and all these other kids change the culture so that

free speech is actually a real thing that can happen.

And so that never again means something.

And all these things, these are cultural shifts we're inside of.

And

the people I feel the hardest for are the ones who are like

resisting it, like going rigid in the face of the cultural shift.

Like, that's where you end up with the most painful things inside of a family or inside of a society.

So it's always inviting that, that softening.

Like, you softened when you saw your child standing up for something.

You were like, I'm going to soften and move towards it.

And I'm going to let it reshape me.

That's so beautiful.

That's beautiful.

Good job, mama.

I love you too so much.

And also, next time we talk, I want to talk to you guys about how you love each other, but also differentiate because I haven't nailed that yet.

We're actively working on this, and I'd be so excited to talk about it.

Okay, good.

Let's do it.

Yeah, we can do part two.

I mean, I'll say the quickest thing is as the older sister, just to know that the person is another person.

Okay, so that's, I need you to admit that require back to the first time.

That's too advanced.

That's how I did.

Okay, guys.

Way to start with adversity shit, Fox.

Pushed you into the deep end.

Okay, never mind.

We'll get to that at the end.

But I will just say it's blowing my mind that I'm like, wow, you're just a different

person.

Like,

not influenced by me.

No, I don't understand.

I am influenced.

No, but there's things you do now that I'm like, oh, you just did that.

Like,

completely without you.

That was completely without.

Like, she just was like, I'm doing my album release party.

And I'm like,

just with other people?

intriguing proud of you i'm proud of you i'm happy to be intriguing and i love you i thank you i thank you for your support i know that you love me she knows that i love you so nice to meet you both oh my gosh thank you for having me you're the best daughter

she knows it's time to end

I have to go pick up my child.

No, you go.

I'm going to text her to comfort her until you get to her.

Okay, pod squad, we love you.

We've just tried to go.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

We love y'all.

See you next time.

Bye.

Bye.

Thank you.

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