S2E26: How We Build a Future of Collective Care with Emily Race-Newmark
About this episode:
In the season finale of the This is How We Care podcast, we reflect on the journey we've taken together, exploring the concept of collective care and envisioning new possibilities for our world. This episode is designed to resonate with both long-time listeners and newcomers, offering a comprehensive recap through the lens of five main topics: health, economy, environment, relationships, and raising children.
Mentioned in this episode:
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** If you want to hear more from the guests below, click on their name in the transcript to be directed to their full interview. **
Emily Race-Newmark:
Hello and welcome to the season finale of This is How We Care. Whether you've been following along with the journey so far, or you're brand new, just tuning in, this episode has something for you.
If you're new here, welcome. We're all about imagining new possibilities for the world that we live in, and entering this season, we approach this from a place of curiosity, specifically looking at the world through a lens of collective care, wondering what would it look like if we stepped away from self care exclusively, and instead looked from a collective orientation.
We had many conversations over the course of the season, touching on questions from the perspectives of health, relationships, raising children, and more. Behind the scenes, we were asking ourselves questions about our values, our own vision, and who our audience is in its most aligned sense.
What became clear is that we're having conversations particularly geared towards those who are thinking beyond themselves. Those who are thinking about what the generations to [00:01:00] follow will be inheriting. Those who are looking at the bigger picture of how our actions today have an impact beyond our own lifetime.
Another thing that we experimented with this season was this idea of connecting people to the topics that we care most about . Of course, this is something that constantly evolves, and what you're most attuned to, today may shift and change within a different season of your life.
We explored a wide range of conversations, but for the most part, they fell within these main topics of health, economy, environment, relationships, and raising children.
We're going to start to experiment with this idea that there are these five areas to focus on moving forward , and we'll recap the season through the lens of these five topics today.
In all of our episodes, and particularly this one, we focus on visions of possibility because we want to be able to dream and imagine what's possible. We want a place to create from, rather than focusing solely on problems, or on what we don't want to see, which seems to be the case with mainstream media these days.
Possibility and vision [00:02:00] give us direction, hope, and focus. But we also don't want to stop there. There are practices, experiments, and ways of embodying and playing with these ideas in our lives. And that's how we start to move from vision to reality.
We will touch a bit on these ideas in this episode. But you can also sign up for our newsletter by visiting thisishowwecare. com to receive prompts for practice, embodiment, and play in your inbox. We hope that this is an invitation for you to take what you hear in these conversations and bring them into reality in your own day to day, to move beyond just visioning and into action.
First, we're going to dive into the area of relationships.
This season, we explore this from a couple different angles. One was more from the lens of how we strengthen our relationships with one another. What would it look like to approach relationships less from a place of dominance and power over, instead from a place of really seeing one another, even in the face of difference.
To speak to that we'll hear from James [00:03:00] Olivia Chu Hillman, Simon Wolfe, and Sarah Elise.
When I think about relational joy, I think about showing up to an encounter with another in mutual appreciation in mutual desire for connection and recognizing that, even if I don't like you, even if I disagree with you, even if something about your presence vexes me, that your very existence is a miracle, and so is mine, and that what you need to thrive in this world is just as important as what I need to thrive in this world and that they are not at odds.
And the joy in that isn't necessarily any more than just the recognition that like, Oh, wow, our connection is our natural state and I experienced joy in that.
That might not be true for everyone. That is how I choose to move through the world.
In order to relate competently and be with difference in a generative way, the three things that I'm looking to are my desire to [00:04:00] do it, do I want to? Does my spirit actually even want to cultivate peace?
Do I have the skill? Have I learned things that I can get better at and practice that are going to cultivate peace? peaceful relationship with you? Can I do the things?
And then capacity. Am I resourced? Do I have space in my body? Do I need rest? Do I need some hydration? Do I need community support? Do I need support from my ancestors? Do I need to be with the land? What is it that I need to support my own capacity? And we very often are talking about capacity as though it's this personal thing. And I have. borrowed and given so much capacity in community that none of us would ever have individually,
What I really long for is a world where the new normal or the baseline is secure attachment, where like people feel a sense of belonging for who they are authentically, where they don't have to hide or [00:05:00] mask or contort who they are in order to access resources and in order to feel a sense of belonging.
We're talking about belonging where it's not conditional, Right? Where we don't have to give up some part of ourselves in order to receive love. That's actually not love, you know?
I think love really is about this ability to be accepted and be embraced for exactly who you are. And I want to be in a world and I want to help create a world where everyone feels a sense of worthiness of that love. An ability to, like, give and receive love in reciprocal ways.
And what would the world look like if we all had permission to actually be our true selves?
I love a role. I love not being in charge. I love someone being in charge, but I want to consent to that, right? I want it to be negotiated.
I love consent because I think it's just all about our ability to choose.
As a person in the world, in your body [00:06:00] vessel, you should have the ability to choose what happens to your body, what your life looks like, who you engage with, who you love, the work you do.
Emily Race-Newmark:
We also explore this through the lens of collective relationship. How do we relate to one another on a larger scale? What's our evolving relationship to community? And what's a vision for where we'd like that to go?
We heard from a number of people on this because community is a theme that continues to come up almost as a way forward. If we really want to imagine what's needed to meet the moment of time, community is a foundational piece. And so now you'll hear a couple of visions on the quality of community and the ways in which we may interact with one another. From Adrienne Marie Brown, Toi Smith, Antonia Perez of Urban Cura, Sarah Elise, and Madam Gandhi.
I imagine lots of small groups of people, smallish groups, 100 to 150 maybe, of people who care for each other and who have systems that really work for [00:07:00] them. And the things that we can agree on as a planet are like, Do no harm to this planet, do whatever you want to otherwise, in terms of your systems, but whatever you do, you don't hurt the homeland, this home place that we have here.
Just having that basic agreement would be a complete transformation for our earth.
When I look at like my own friend group, for instance, if we were like, we're able to function with each other and we take care of each other and we live in this close proximity to each other, I live in Durham, maybe there's 500 groups like this that make up the society of Durham. And there's a way that those groups can work together to make decisions that serve the whole, but the day to day, work of tending a piece of land and nourishing the community around it, that happens at a smaller level.
A lot of what I'm talking about is, there's nothing new about it. It's the way Indigenous and Aboriginal peoples have lived for years and years and years around the world.
So a lot of what I'm talking about is a decolonized future, right? Which is, [00:08:00] let's remember that there was a nature of tribalism that actually seems to be part of the design of how we're supposed to be in relationship to this place. But there is a need for modernizing that because we have now tasted the global connectivity and how incredible it is to have access to all of that.
What does it mean to be in right relationship to the place and people we are of and in right relationship to all the other things that we could be in relationship to? I think that's a good problem, but I think it'd be such a more interesting thing to to deal with from a place of, you know, I come from a community that I'm accountable to.
The norm for humans would be, I am in community. I am in relationship with others. It's something I wrestle with in myself because I'm so comfortable with immense, immense amounts of solitude. And I'm like, that's, that's, socialized, right? It's also great for me as a writer.
I imagine that in this dreamy future, I've got my nice [00:09:00] little shed and I've got my space to do my writing. And then I bring that writing and I get to read it every night to people in community. And there's other people who are creating songs and they're singing them every night and other things like that.
I've been thinking a lot about community from like a zip code perspective. Who are my neighbors? Who are they? What are their name? What are we aligned with? What are we not aligned with?
How can we support each other even if we're not aligned with certain values? What are the resources we have that we're open to sharing? You don't all need to have a snowplow in upstate New York.
I'm in that space of being really curious of what that looks like, especially living rurally right now. I'm really feeling that isolation, especially in the wintertime. My vision that I'm feeling is knowing who the people I live around are and strengthening that and being in conversation and in [00:10:00] that process.
Can I be like, so connected to my neighbors that like, there's no gate, there's no fence, but we chill in this open space all the time? can we share the burden? In the dream world, can I have a few homes on some land and we do communal dinners and I don't have to worry about cooking all the time?
I want people to really think about it. How exhausting it is to do life in the way that we've been forced to do life in the system. You got to think about cooking for your family every day, cleaning up for your family all the time, being isolated all the time.
But what if we said, no, fuck that, I'm not doing that. Actually, we're all going to live in this space and that cuts our rent in half. And so now we have more time to be together and we have more time to dream and question and be in possibility. Because what actually also happens is when we exist in these systems in the way that we're forced to work so much, we're forced to labor within our nuclear family so much, is that it stipends our, like, creative [00:11:00] juices.
How we can think about even doing something differently because we're so worried about just surviving. So how do we free up the space to open up our imagination? And part of it is where are the spaces where we can have shared burden and then not critique it as we're unsuccessful or less than.
Treating our friendships as integral parts of our life and our life building, really investing in our friends the same way we do our family and our partners and taking away the binary that a lot of us have of "these are my friends and this is what we do. We drink, we. Hang out. We have a fun relationship. We party together. And then this is my partner who I am romantic and sexual with. And then this is my family who I actually rely on for things that I need because they owe me."
None of us actually owe each other anything and we can build a [00:12:00] more fortified life and community if we allocate our resources and also our expectations and our desire for building a life together with many people, not just one person or not just compartmentalizing it into these defined groups that are defined from these archaic viewpoints that we've been told that don't really make any
Going back to what you were saying about mothering, what if we created a network that moms could feel held in so that there was this reciprocal energy exchange that people who aren't moms also benefit from and the young person also benefits from, and we all benefit from this energy exchange that we can recreate a life with.
Yeah. I'm just interested in that. How do we question all of that and get to a new place that actually feels [00:13:00] connected and mutually beneficial and abundant.
A lot more inclusivity. You see somebody working on something and they're like, Hey, come on over.
There's a lot of inclusivity. There's not this kind of fear. Clicky, in crowd, out crowd. In my shows, I also try to create a very inclusive environment. My access feels inclusive. My desire to bring people in is inclusive. That's a big one. And it's Overlooked.
When you look at some of the places in the world, the quote unquote blue zones where people are living past 100 years old, the number one thing is a sense of community and within that sense of community is a sense of purpose.
Oh, this person's really good at this thing. This person is really funny. This person we know because they're da da da. So when you're part of a community, you know that you're missed and you know that you have a positive influence and you actually matter at least to one other person. And that if you do go, it would have a sad consequence on somebody else's life. So you choose life. You don't choose to just allow your life to be sort of dimly lit and then pass.
I have this gift and I [00:14:00] have this light and I really want to share it with you because when I light you up, I feel I want to keep living years on the planet. My life has meaning. My life has great profoundness.
My life has great depth. So I cherish my life. I get up early with excitement and a desire to give.
If you look at mother nature as the great feminine archetype, it's abundant. It's of course, it's my joy to shine the sun for you. It's my joy to grow these gorgeous blades of grass for you. Oh my God, please come and smell the flowers. When you smell the flowers, I feel good.
I want to live in a world where we can receive with great joy and say, wow, thank you. Your gift lights me up. Your intelligence is an inspiration to me. I love the way you dance. When I saw you sing the other day, you made me go home and want to sing myself, even though I don't know how to hit the notes.
Emily Race-Newmark:
One thing I noticed is that it's easy to imagine almost this utopia idea around relationship in a way that may not even feel realistic or feasible.
And in reality, there's no such thing as perfect, you [00:15:00] know, without conflict. Ray Felder from the Boston Ujima Project and Adrienne Marie Brown will both speak to this..
My vision is really that we can all live together and thrive together and love on each other.
That people are born into a space where they know that their community is going to be there to support them. That they don't have to worry about that if they need to borrow the lawn mower from two doors down, then they can.
This doesn't mean peace and harmony, and there won't be conflict. What it does mean, though, is that people get out of this individualistic grind mindset and that they know that there is always supports and support systems to help them achieve the life that they see for themselves.
Conflict would necessarily arise because we have difference from a very young age. One of the things we've been learning about is how to restore from conflict, how to turn and face conflict, how to set [00:16:00] boundaries. How to have discussions about what you really want and structure your relationships that way, but there would be a culture of when things break down, it's the community's responsibility to help it restore.
Emily Race-Newmark:
To build on this idea of restoration and resolution, as we're building a new world, it's also important to acknowledge the past that we've inherited together, where we're coming from.
And again, not to just wave this magic wand and be like everything's perfect, but to also create a vision for what has to shift along the way. What does it look like to repair and heal?.
The vision that's been developing for me is learning how to belong in my relationships with native people here, they don't want us to leave. The circles that I'm in, that hasn't been the ask. The ask has been, learn how to belong.
Learn how to become a good relative. Learn how to be in reciprocity. Learn how to be the right size human [00:17:00] being, not too big, not too little. Learn how to share. That's what's being asked for that I hear. Again, I'm overwhelmed by the grace of that because that's a very unlikely conclusion to this whole project that's happened.
Right. I've heard it over and over the trust and the grace and the forgiveness that's been shown to me Makes me want to step up to that and say yes.
Emily Race-Newmark:
As we're exploring ideas of community and relationship, it felt important to be fully inclusive of all of our neighbors, including those who find themselves unhoused.
This is such a big fracture, really a symptom of broken systems. To see fellow humans living unhoused, without shelter, without adequate resourcing, and the ways in which we've almost come to accept this reality as the norm. It's super unsettling, and something I wanted to personally envision new worlds around.
This particular vision doesn't look at things from the lens of homelessness doesn't exist.
Rather, it comes from a [00:18:00] place of, well, it exists right now, and so what's our vision within that? You'll hear now from Kevin F. Adler of Miracle Messages.
We look at all the systems and we look at the work that needs to get done, it can feel insurmountable like, why bother? Where do you start? I think we flip that and we start with actually a very simple thing, which is getting to know one person who's experiencing homelessness, because I know you, Emily, and you listener, whoever's out there, I know you're capable, smart, intelligent. Good problem solver, well networked, well resourced, and I know if you get close enough doing what Brian Stevenson talks about of getting proximate to our unhoused neighbors, getting relational, extending social capital to people who may not have any relationship social capital outside of other people experiencing homelessness and caseworkers and law [00:19:00] enforcement, I have no doubt that you'll get close enough to them to identify the unique wrinkles of challenges, context of why that person's experiencing homelessness and what barriers they're facing to housing. I think relationships precede almost everything else going on that we're talking about. hearts and minds on this issue, identifying ways to help. You got to be in relationship first.
I would just invite folks to get to know an unhoused neighbor as a neighbor and as a friend and see where that takes you.
Emily Race-Newmark:
When it comes to relationships, we want to explore this beyond just the human world, but also to look at the more than human world, because all of these things are interconnected, right?
But to specifically narrow a focus for a moment, here are some of the visions we heard around our relationship to the Earth. First, let's hear from Antonia Perez of Urban Cura.
If I had one superpower, what would it be?
Making as many gardens as possible. All that stretch of green and the highways, all the lawns, turning all of that into food and medicine. No lawn left untouched. So much would change just from that, like, Everyone has food because we're growing all the food that we need and all that abundance of food is bringing us to preserve all that food.
That means we need to then come together and learn these skills for preserving. That means we need to come together to tend to The land, all of the resources and all the seeds and beautiful soil is available so that we can do it and we have the time to do it and like money for jobs are going towards that.
Everyone's growing food and medicine, not just for ourselves, but for all the pollinators and all the animals. We're spending our time restoring and tending to ecology.
Emily Race-Newmark:
I love this [00:21:00] vision so much that in the interview I started to giggle in delight. I think this really speaks to returning to the Earth as a starting point. , when we reconnect with the Earth, as one of our guests, and that's Lee Lopez Torres, put it, we then start to care about the Earth.
And this shifts our orientation to everything. To our health, our relationships, everything. To speak about this concept further, we're going to hear from adrienne marie brown, Simon Wolff, Della Duncan, and Hilary Giovale.
If I was painting with broad strokes, everyone would have a deep, deep, deep relationship to the land that they live in, the water that they're dependent on and their relationship to.
And to the other people who share that space with them, and there'd be a lot more migration most likely than we currently feel comfortable with. But it would be like, where are the fertile places? How do we move in right relationship to that in the earth? Rather than being like, we're going to stay in one place and we're going to milk it for all it's worth, you know, that would be a big part of it.
I yearn for, long for, envision a world where we have the most beautiful aspects of the ways that our ancestors lived before these bigger troubles. I envision a world where literally all humans care about the earth and take care of it.
Not just theoretically, but literally are connecting with the earth every day and tending it and listening to it and being in dialogue with it, a world where our children and our elders and everyone in between are in a reciprocal and just in right relationship with land and with water and with the more than human world and with the ancestors.
And so it's really an animist vision, meaning an earth and body honoring way of life.
It might seem a little like kind of a fantasy, but I don't want to let go of it because I do feel like there's a difference between fantasy and vision. I think that it is a reasonable and meaningful vision that we cultivate a [00:23:00] world together as the old world composts, where we're building our capacity to be in right relationship and remember how to do healthy intimacy with all of our relations.
Part of this is helping children to practice consent with the plant world.
If you want to harvest something, ask for permission. You want to pick that dandelion, can you ask that dandelion if it's okay for you to harvest it? And there's going to be an answer. Sometimes we might doubt ourselves of whether or not we can actually, like, hear the response from the more than human world, but it's there.
It's about remembering and restoring that channel of listening. That's really what it feels like to me is there's a sense of receptivity. There's a sense of humility. There's a sense of reverence. There's a sense of respect. And ultimately there's an embodiment of love.
It would look like a turning towards life and to life flourishing and life [00:24:00] thriving. Turning towards one another, calling each other in, it would be a lot of love and forgiveness and compassion and having difficult conversations out of love.
In terms of our neighborhoods or ecological systems, it would be much more reverence and respect for the waterways, the health of water, the health of the bees and the butterflies and the birds and the trees. It would be just so much more living with, not power over, the more than human world, living in relationship and reciprocity and connection.
It would be in general humans having a much smaller ecological footprint, but a much larger ecological handprint. So we would really be stepping into our role as stewards of place and supporters of living ecosystems and human and planetary flourishing, instead of trying to be like smaller and smaller and reduce and reduce, but really like coming into our role as that.
This sense of creating place together, place that's [00:25:00] based on acknowledging ancestor and indigenous peoples and native plants, maybe, and also acknowledging the people who currently live here. Really celebrating them and diversity and unity and all of that too.
Oh, my magic wand. It has to do with land back and rematriation.
When I think about my experiences with indigenous communities over the years, fighting so hard for their sacred spaces. When I sit in those spaces and when I listen to indigenous peoples, especially the elders, talking about why we need to save these spaces, what their oral histories are in relation to those spaces, what their stories are about those spaces, how they feel about it, what their prayers are. When I listen to those things, I think, We just need to return this land.
Anything else that we could do is just going to be a band aid.
It's happening all over the place already. [00:26:00] There are some like parcels of land that have been held in families that are now, instead of being passed to their heirs, they're being given to indigenous projects or communities.
There are some indigenous communities that are raising a lot of money and buying huge parcels of land back. There's a movement toward co management of federal lands that are national parks. There are partnerships. My husband and I are in a partnership with an indigenous friend. To buy a piece of land that she is in charge of she's taking care of it and that's happened together.
It's a partnership.
It's exciting because every case requires different legal strategies, financial strategies, relational strategies, agreements, different ways of doing things, but it's happening all over the place.
Emily Race-Newmark:
It's interesting that when we asked a lot of the guests this season an action that could be taken right now to bring about the world that they envisioned. So many guests said to go outside.
I think this speaks volumes how such a simple action [00:27:00] can give so much.
Another area of curiosity that we explore this season was around health and starting to break open different understandings of what health means.
On that, we'll hear from Dr. Rupa Maria, who offers an alternative vision of health.
Dr Rupa Marya: I don't see health anymore as an attribute of an individual. I see health as a phenomenon that emerges when systems are in harmony. And those systems are human systems, ecological systems, social systems. economic systems.
There are places and people on this planet where there is a vision of health, where people are living in relationship to the web of life, and people are living in relationship to each other in ways that nurture and foster care. In those circumstances and situations, health emerges. And then it becomes an attribute of the whole, not something you could look at a person and say, you're healthy, you're not healthy.
So [00:28:00] that's how I talk about health now.
Wellness is important. Spending time learning how to quiet your mind is important. Spending time nurturing your heart with creative activities and with the company of elders and children. Those things are really important for wellness.
It's absolutely critical that we understand how to take care of ourselves in our personal lives and in our communities. The problem with wellness culture is that it then ends there and doesn't extend to the collective we.
How do I make sure that as I'm fed, my community's fed so that if we all took that up just a little bit, we would be in a different place.
Emily Race-Newmark:
When we start to think about health from a collective perspective, the earth is of course a part of that. And as Medsley Lopez Torres put it, we are the earth and the earth is us. To speak of this interconnection, we hear from Sarah Elise Antonia Perez on a vision for health that encompasses food and the plants that we are in [00:29:00] relationship with.
I would love if everyone had access to whole organic food That would change so much beyond alleviating world hunger. So much of even what's given now in schools or in community free food projects or stuff like that is shitty food. It's sugar and stuff that is creating all these illnesses in people from a young age.
Imagine what the world could look like if folks in all communities could have access to plentiful gardens and also garden education that they learned in schools, which honestly, I would also say abolish the schools at this point.
We need a completely new system of Raising and also learning from young people and valuing how they contribute to the world, education around how to [00:30:00] grow and harvest and prepare food that helps your body and helps your mind that would take away so much illness. It would take away so many mental health issues.
The world would just be a completely different place just with that one very magic wand
My brother one day was like, it should be as easy as getting a pack of cigarettes or a beer at the corner store to be able to get some herbs.
That is one of the motivations behind Plants to the People. Part of the vision is more accessibility for the plants, more accessibility and resources going towards growing herbs in urban environments. And putting that power and responsibility in people's hands who actually know how to grow these herbs and know how to make medicine from them.
More accessibility to receiving and being able to access plants [00:31:00] that are culturally recognizable to us. When I say us, immigrant communities.
Emily Race-Newmark:
We also talked about health through the lens of the cycles that exist within us and around us, and how we could bring more consciousness to when we're moving in alignment and in flow with these cycles.
To speak to cyclical consciousness as an aspect of health, we hear from Sarah Elise, as well as Kit Maloney.
Where are we pausing for when we're on our cycle? Where are we pausing for when we need rest? Where are we pausing when we want to prioritize sharing a meal or having a connective moment with a loved one versus working in that moment.
We're so geared to this production mentality that we're not allowing ourselves to be in a natural flow with The rhythm of ourselves and what our body needs and also the flow of the earth around us.
So I think the cadence would be flexible to allow for what we need.
Because it's all there for us, [00:32:00] right? And that's where the ease perspective also comes from. Why are we forcing things when the gifts are right in front of us? Why not just accept that this is the gift of this moment?
When I really feel into the vision that I hold for the world now, it is this deep, deep reverence for our cycles. And I mean that in the specific sense of the menstrual cycle.
This is the cycle that brings us together. Continued life. We've all come from this cycle. Every single human being is here because of the menstrual cycle.
To vision a world where that is really celebrated so that those of us who go through menstrual cycles are supported in that journey and really revered for all it takes to maintain a healthy connection to that cycle.
And [00:33:00] I see children of all gender identities really just having a lot of connection to the earth and to the plants and to the cosmos.
Getting ourselves back into our bodies, back into our wombs, our womb space energy, and to our hearts is really the vision that I hold so that we can look after each other in a much deeper way. .
Emily Race-Newmark:
We also heard from Kit on her vision for health as a system and how we may think. We also heard from Kit Maloney on her vision for how we may view and hold health culturally.
We would really hold health as our focal point.
That would be what we champion. We would restructure ease and resources around nourishing food, around making sure people had great sleep and an appreciation of sleep. It would not be exalted [00:34:00] to stay up all night to get a project done. That would be seen as like, oh no, you have a sleep disorder rather than you should have a promotion.
Exercise, sexuality, these things that really support our health would be ubiquitous to how we live our days, and supported by our systems and rituals.
We would be addressing root cause. Always root cause. It wouldn't make sense to us to think we had had a successful appointment with any type of healer if all they were offering us was symptom management.
We would start to see that as somebody you wouldn't want to go back to because they just didn't get it. It didn't make any sense. And that would really shift so that everything is about how do we get you back to health. What is the root cause blocking you from that? That's what I like to see.
Emily Race-Newmark:
To add more layers to this vision of health, we heard from Mesli Lopez Torres on the role of spirituality in prayer, from Mike Sagoon on his vision for men's health [00:35:00] specifically, as well as Virgie Tovar, who shares her vision of a body positive world.
So 50 percent of our health in our perspective is going to be the prayer.
We really need to connect with the spiritual world. There is no other way to understand this and to really heal. And this doesn't mean we need to go to church or things like that, because I don't go to church. It's really have a spiritual life and really understand that we all have this spirit and we need to be respectful of it, and we need to call for it too, when it's needed.
I have been practicing this for so many years. It heals. When we start seeing these miracles happening, it's amazing because we have been so far from it, but it's part of all of us. All of us, we have it. We just need to go back to it.
My vision for men is that they first learn how to take care of themselves, their emotions, their emotional body, their physical body, their spiritual body. [00:36:00] before they go off and be purposeful and provide. I desire for men to do deep personal healing work for themselves. Healing work is not just like sitting in a men's group, but healing work is also really healing their bodies.
Cutting out alcohol, Stop smoking cigarettes, being outside more, exercising more, getting more sleep. Oh, that's a huge one. Drinking more water. All of these things I desire for men to just take care of themselves in that way more. And I think the physical body is like the easiest thing to tap into because it's most accessible for us.
But then the next step further is like taking care of our emotional body. So that's hiring a therapist, going to group therapy, hiring a coach, sitting in a men's group or even having a guy's night where you sit and play games, but you also ask provocative questions. And so I want men to have more spaces where they feel like they can be okay being a human being and being a man with other [00:37:00] men.
The greater vision really is a world where like our nervous systems are not on edge all the time. No matter what size you are, it's safe to be in a body and it's safe to not have a shirt on or not have a bra on and really where it's a delight to have a body. What's amazing is it's visually very different than the culture we have right now for the most part. But I can feel the difference. It's just that sense of the nervous system down regulating.
In that world, we've never been introduced to diet culture, to fat phobia, to like weird ideas about food and health and body.
We are children who have natural, gorgeous, magical relationships to the world and our body. And we Become adults who don't ever have that interrupted. So we know how to take care of ourselves because that's human's birthrights. Humans know how to do that.
Just think about a world where your relationship to movement as a child, which is natural, [00:38:00] intuitive, and pleasure focused, it doesn't ever go away because no one interrupts it, you know? Yes.
Emily Race-Newmark:
We had a number of conversations around alternative economies and the intention here was really to begin imagining beyond capitalism.
When I first entered the season of recording episodes, I was more in a neutral place around capitalism. I definitely threw around critique, especially in my day to day life, when it felt like capitalism was to blame for so many of our problems. Specifically our hyper focus on upward mobility and productivity at the detriment of our health. At the detriment of our environment's well being, and at the detriment of so many people's ability to have their basic needs met.
I'm so grateful for our conversation that we had with Della Z. Duncan, which you can check out in but she really looked at different economic models through the goals that they're serving, and within that, the goals that capitalism specifically is serving.
So I encourage you to check that out if this is of interest to you, to dig into some more. One of the other things that I found to be really helpful was hearing from [00:39:00] Nia K. Evans, from Boston Ujima project who helps us expand our understanding of economy beyond a singular binary lens.
My vision is embracing all of the different ways of being when we think about, economies. Economy is plural. We embrace economies. Solidarity economy, mutual aid, time, banking, care, kindness, collectivism, cooperativism, being able to depend on each other. We do all of that already, and we have done it. Economy, and this is borrowed from movement generation, just to give proper attribution, but economy actually needs care of home.
And so then the other vision is, economy is not reduced to profit, and it's not reduced to money, but when we think of economy again, we're thinking of economies and it's expansive and that at the root of economies is care. Care is at the root, not profit.
Emily Race-Newmark:
What's really [00:40:00] beautiful about this visioning process around the other types of economies is noticing how much of those actually exist right now. It's not something we need to wait for. It's something that's here. And it's actually just a matter of feeding those visions, playing with them and experimenting with them to bring them more into our day to day lives.
We're going to hear more from Boston Ujima Project, as well as Della Z. Duncan, on some alternative economic models and choices that we can make to play within these.
The easiest way to think about solidarity economy is that it's just another socioeconomic model, except unlike other models, it's centering care and equity and all the good yummy stuff that we wish that we had in our everyday lives.
At Ujima, we have a time bank, which essentially is the idea that you're doing favors for one another, instead of exchanging money, instead of a regular bank where you're putting money in and you're taking money out, you're actually putting your hours and your time and your effort in for someone else. And then someone else will put their hours and [00:41:00] their time and their effort into you.
Some of the other activities that you might find within the solidarity economy is thinking about working cooperatives. Gifts, fair trade, thinking about how you purchase, can you collectively purchase? A CSA is an excellent approach to cooperativism and to solidarity.
In every action in our day to day life, we can make alternative choices that are unhooking ourselves from capitalism and more engaging in gift economy, solidarity economy, cooperative economy, etc.
Moving our money from an extractive exploitative bank to a cooperative bank like a credit union, shopping at a cooperative grocery store, going to the library, or supporting a small local independent business instead of an Amazon book purchase.
There's alternatives to Uber and Airbnb, there's renewable energy cooperatives for our energy needs, there's babysitter collectives or child care collectives that have emerged, there's share shops and community fridges and little free [00:42:00] libraries.
However, I wouldn't want folks to stop there because it's also good to expand to the systemic level and to see what are the systemic changes that you want to support or change.
For example, the movement for public banks, moving our City and regional money from corporate banks to public banks that are accountable and transparent and open to the public and that can bank in more in alignment with the needs of our communities.
Also changing laws, changing policies, political organizing, all of that really shifts these ideas on a larger level.
The degrowth movement, for example, abolishing planned obsolescence, moving to the four day work week. Moving to end food waste. There's the circular economy. How do we make it so that we don't just throw away things, but we reuse them?
Moving from ownership to usership is another example. There's all these different things that we can do on [00:43:00] different levels.
Emily Race-Newmark:
To help us dream bigger within the vision of what's possible around our relationship with money on a collective level, we're going to hear from Vanessa Roanhorse, Dr. Rupa Maria, and again, from Della Z. Duncan.
If we think about money more from a place of this should just help us to do this collective achievement for this community to have X, Y, and Z. Then as a community, they can decide.
I think a lot about other tribes who have community events where multiple times a year during harvest, during maybe the salmon season or Buffalo season, they come together and they look at the things that are in excess and they distribute it equally amongst people.
They open it up to people who don't have those things. So that's the regenerativeness of an economy that could happen. And honestly, who knows, maybe money becomes obsolete and different. Maybe what we start to value is [00:44:00] storytelling and teaching. And we start to value learning and value shared happiness and shared prosperity.
Maybe money doesn't have to be the thing, but at the same time, it'll always probably be here. I just hope it's not the only type of commerce we have.
Imagine if carers were really centered in an economy, what that would look like. Imagine if carers who were taking care of the earth and making sure that the soil was healthy and that the water was clear and free of toxins, that the air was safe to breathe, that those people were uplifted and taking care of themselves so that the care work could continue.
If our health starts with healthy soil, and healthy water and healthy air, if the earth is healthy, then we will be healthy . If farmers are supported in taking care of those systems, they should be paid like the stewards of health, like doctors and nurses and other healthcare workers.
A world where our human needs are met, where we feel not [00:45:00] a sense of scarcity or lack or fear or mistrust or precariousness, and instead we feel abundance, we feel joy. We feel celebration and ease.
We may also feel a sense of calling and hard work and effort and endeavor.
I don't think that would go away, but I think that it would be really more in alignment with that, which brings us joy rather than that, which we do because we have to, to meet our needs.
What if our work in the world was our spirituality off the cushion, like the way in which we contribute to this time? And there's so many different ways that we can contribute.
And I mean this beyond the paid work, including our parenting, our art making, our activism, caretaking of place as well, that all of these things are part of our right livelihood path. They are part of our endeavors.
I love that because it feels much more balancing. That yes, we do have [00:46:00] resting and being and quieting.
But we also, have, moments of energy or of inspiration or wanting to exert and contribute.
And so that rhythm feels more healthy and helpful when our work in the world can be in greater alignment with service and our values for the world.
A more specific zoom in of my vision of the future is that there are no for profit businesses anymore.
We're like in a post profit world. That doesn't mean there's not, as I said, hard work endeavor, even enterprise. It's just that people are paid living fair wages. The supply chains are ethical, sustainable, regenerative, circular economy and everything, but that any profit That is generated is redirected for the mission driven work, the social and environmental work.
Emily Race-Newmark:
To bring it back to Dr. Rupa Maria's vision around centering and valuing care work, which is really an inquiry of this podcast as a whole.
How can we make [00:47:00] care work more valued in our society? We'll hear more from Della Z. Duncan on some options there.
One thing that folks might come to in this way of thinking is universal basic income, that then all our labor and efforts, including parenting, would be valued, or we could do that work without having to worry about the payment for it.
In investigating universal basic income, What I've come to is actually what would be more supportive is universal access to services and universal access to commons, meaning that we have access to place where we could grow food, we have access to adequate free health care, that's quality, we have access to adequate education, like we just take these things off the market and we universalize them and that they're care filled.
I think those would be some ways to support folks who are parenting that that is part of their livelihood garden in so many ways..
Emily Race-Newmark:
And lastly, we heard from Amanda Young, who shares her [00:48:00] vision on how we might relate to prosperity individually and collectively.
On one basic level is simply a nervous system in relaxation mode, and I bet that sounds overly simplistic, but it's a state of being.
A feeling of contentment, a feeling of enoughness, a feeling of satiation.
It's a sense of being able to take a deep breath and really be present in our bodies and in the moment we're in.
From there, we will also magnetize more prosperity in various forms, right? One of them being potentially money, but also the other forms of prosperity, which are community connection, nature.
Starting to have understanding that prosperity is not this thing that comes from outside that [00:49:00] we're going to get out there.
We are wired as human beings for connection and there is co regulation that is what takes place when we're in community and we're hugging each other, our arms around each other, looking into someone else's eyes and feeling their eyes meet yours and feeling seen.
If we're to redefine what is prosperity, one of the behaviors would be generosity because that presupposes fullness, right? True generosity. That's coming from a full tank. That generosity is like, Hey, my door's open. Come over. Like I'm going to serve you dinner. Be here with me. Or do you need something? I'm going to show up for you. Generosity in some ways is where prosperity meets community.
Emily Race-Newmark:
The last area that we looked at was through the lens of parenting, including visions for how generations that are growing up now will be loved, held, and cared for. And how we can care for the caregivers.
On this, we'll hear from Liberty Gonzalez, Brittany Chambers, [00:50:00] Andela, z Duncan, around some visions for how we may hold children and caregivers alike.
I'm not saying we can really go back to the way things were in the ancient ways, but If we look at Indigenous communities, for example, there is a lot of intergenerational interaction, even in some cases, intrafamilial interaction, where everybody is taking on a role of care.
The child that's being raised in a society where aunties and uncles and siblings and gender non conforming people are all engaging in acts of care, it isn't just the parents who are responsible to meet the All of the needs of the child and all of the needs of their partner themselves, that care becomes a co creative process.
I would love to see every community exploring what that could look like for them and breaking down the barriers that keep us in our little ticky tacky boxes.
For anybody who is looking for that kind of expansion, start [00:51:00] imagining for themselves what it is that they want and need, and start talking to the people that you trust about that. Keep dreaming and imagining.
Central to Our humanity is touch, is responsiveness, is being social relation with one another. My vision is that we remember this about ourselves.
That we eschew notions of separateness, of hyper independence, of rugged individualism and we remember that in order to thrive and survive as a species, we could extrapolate this out to our planetary climate crisis, we have to remember that compassion for each other, for our babies, for our planet is essential.
We need to reject this notion that success has one way of appearing, that it's the house with the fence with the cars in a neighborhood separate from our neighbors, maybe living next to each other. Where we all go off [00:52:00] and do our own thing all day and then come back together with our nuclear family.
And then nobody has conversations or cooks together or raises kids together. We need to return to our roots in so many ways and actually connect and work symbiotically and use each other's strengths as complimentary services. There's a lot we could do outside of capitalism, even. I think that people could grow food together, raise kids together.
Parent co ops are a great example of this happening. Being okay with vulnerability is central to this, right? We've lost our ability to admit that we need help parenting and that we were never meant to do this alone. Our parental biology, the maternal energy expenditure required to parent one baby is almost mismatched biologically.
We were evolved to have many hands on deck, right? So returning to a model of care for [00:53:00] mother, baby, for families, for parents, for communities, where we can work as one is essential.
We as humans when we're born really come into our relationship of gift paradigm from our parents. We really receive as if a gift food and housing and love and care hopefully from our parents, from those around us.
And we also gift give to our families as well, or those who raise us. And then it's as we're older that we are socialized into the exchange paradigm to do something for what it gives to us. The gift paradigm is I give to you for what it gets to you.
Like, how can I support others through mutual aid and support? But also, how can I request what I need? If you need child care, creating a child care collective where on Mondays, one person takes care of the kids on Tuesdays, another person takes care of the kids.
No money is exchanged and yet kids are cared for. And there's the [00:54:00] added benefit of multiple friendships growing and time off for the parents, et cetera.
Emily Race-Newmark:
I also spoke with Max Stossel around how we might support our children in developing healthy relationships with technology. Here's his vision for what that might look like.
I would love for there to be collective understanding that we don't give kids smartphones until, I don't know, like eighth, ninth, tenth, I'd be down for all of that grade, where we create more developmental time, where kids are able to learn, focus, patience, how to be without their devices, how to deal with each other, how to deal with boredom, challenging emotions that come up when we don't have instant distraction.
In these developmental years, trying to give the kids more spaces that are not dominated by this outer space esque social media and smartphones everywhere culture.
That's what I would love to see, and like, a better education system on how to navigate life. This is highlighted a lot of ways that like education is falling short. If you don't know what your feelings are, you don't know how social media makes you feel. If [00:55:00] you don't have the mindfulness skills to watch your phone buzz and not have to reach for it, you're going to be in for a world of hurt. Our communication skills are not excellent. Digital communication is even harder.
I would love to see a different philosophy to how we are preparing people for this world and with AI coming down the line in the way that it will be even easier than it is now to get an answer. If the object of school is to get the answer, you can pretty much do that on a computer super easily all the time.
What are we doing here? What are we learning? What are we creating with each other? I would love to see that mindset shift.
Emily Race-Newmark:
All of these visions are so beautiful in theory, but at the end of the day, even if they give us a place to look towards, a place to look forward to, and even some ideas for possibility of our own, the truth is, life as it is can be challenging sometimes.
Sometimes we just don't have enough time to devote to new ways of doing things or practicing things. We may be completely under-resourced mentally or physically exhausted in running on empty, especially if you're in a [00:56:00] caregiving role.
We may struggle to find any time in our days to even fill up our own cups in. This, again, is a product of the systems in this society that we're trying to make shifts and changes to.
So, how do we not get caught up in this current paradigm, while also co and weaving together a new paradigm for living?
We're in this challenge with you, and we want to offer support to one another as we play with new ideas, new ways of being, and new ways of living together.
We believe that this is so much easier to do when we're doing this with a group of other like minded folks, when we're sharing resources, ideas, wins, and struggles, and can have fun, hopefully, while we're doing it.
And this is the other piece here. We all have enough work on our plates. In fact, one of the aspects of our current or old paradigm of living is really in this identity of being overworked, of the person who has a million things on their to do list.
And we're saying, wait a minute, we do not need to replicate that here. We want to bring play, experimentation, and fun [00:57:00] into our lives. We want to try new ways of living that easily integrate into the way that we're living now. So it doesn't feel like a whole bunch of work, but rather a creative process to lean into.
Each of our guests share wisdom on what it might look like to start bringing these visions to reality in your own lives today. And I want to leave you with this quote from Toy Smith,
A lot of people are like, what's the solution? First, I ask people to distance themselves from big S solution, like one solution. It's going to be solutions. It's going to be continual little solutions as it has always been. Taking yourself out of like, I need to change the world, right?
That's a big ask. I'm not even trying to change the world. I'm trying to do my part with my little pocket of time with my energy. Also understanding that there are systems trying to harm me. And what does that mean that I need to do? It means I need to be soft and take care of myself, move slower, all the things, taking it out of I need to change the [00:58:00] world because that's going to overwhelm you. You're not going to make moves there.
What are your 500 square feet? How can you maybe change your relationships with your children? Are you like mini dictator to your children? Or do you see them having agency? Start with your parenthood. Maybe look at that.
How do you relate in your relationship with your beloved? Are you upholding a certain like dynamic that was force fed to you?
How about your community? Do we know anyone on your block? Could you go knock on a door maybe and say hello?
What are you reading? What are you studying? Or what are you listening to? Because part of the thing is, if I keep saying we are swimming in this water, it means you have to be doing something to counter it.
How are you looking at the unhoused population in your community. These are little things you carry cash on you so that you can maybe give to them.
How are you connected to the schooling system?
How are you with the natural world? What do you even think about the air that we're [00:59:00] breathing? Who has water, the plants, all the things?
What are you doing with your money? And this isn't for wealthy people. This is for all of us to think about. Maybe you just have a few bucks for mutual aid. What is that practice?
If we're all doing these kind of moves. Doesn't that change the world in some direction?
Emily Race-Newmark:
I love Toi’s sentiment so much because it really speaks to what we believe here on this is how we care, which is that it's through the small actions, the questions that we ask ourselves, and the ways that we practice new ways of doing things, new ways of being, that get us to create this new world that we heard in these visions today.
We have packaged together practices and prompts. including questions that you can engage with your community around, whether that's at the dinner table, or the playground, or wherever you're meeting up with friends and family. Maybe you want to journal on these prompts, maybe you want to engage in these practices alone, or with your kids, your partner, your sister, your friends.
The [01:00:00] whole idea is that each of these are access points for you to start discovering something new, to play with these ideas as we co create a new world.
So please join us by signing up for a newsletter at this is how we care. com where you can receive these practices. prompts, and ideas for experimentation right in your inbox.
You can also follow us on Instagram @thisishowwecare.
We hope that in the coming seasons, as we continue to produce this show and have more conversations with amazing visionaries and leaders like the ones you heard from today, that we'll continue to grow our audience and be able to form a community of our own, spaces for gathering both online and in person, where we can start to have real time conversations with one another. Practicing, playing, and experimenting on these ideas.
When that time comes, we'll be sharing about it on our newsletter. So again, please make sure you sign up if this is something you'd like to be kept in the loop around.
And as always, thank you so much for listening, for being a part of this exploration [01:01:00] together. We'd love to hear from you and look forward to continuing to co create this new world together. Take care.
This episode was produced by me, Emily Race, co produced by Kimberly Ann, with final editing by Andrew Salamone, and music by Eric Weisberg.
Full Episode Transcript: