If you told me my life would be like this, I wouldn’t have believed you.
We’ll begin with Oshun’s flight.
I have been reading In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities written by Joy James. In doing so, I am changing my own life. James is an activist-scholar that has been a pillar of my world-making and dreaming since late college. There is no greater gift one can give a teacher than to allow their words to impress you, to pass through their hands on a page and be changed. I invite us all into a moment of quiet revolution (under the secondary definition, wherein an object in motion moves through an orbit and returns to its starting place different and the same).
From the preface: Oshun’s Flight, as told by Joy James
I do not seek to represent or dishonor any spiritual or religious traditions. If I err, please forgive. I merely note that thirst compels this writing.
I heard one story about the African orisha Oshun. I do not recall all the details so I embroider here to make my own political-ethical points. According to the griot, as the ambitious lofty conspired to overthrow the creator, they mocked Oshun who had refused to join in a coup or genuflect as a political demimonde. Angered by upstarts’ challenges to authority, and the disorder of things, Spirit—Olodumare— withdrew protections. Waters in skies and on lands dried up.
Oshun sided with the lower castes, dispossessed masses, animals-humans dying from malnourishment, parched and perched amid poisoned and absent waters. Oshun so loved the world. Only the embodiment of the beauty of rivers and streams dared to fly to the heavens to petition Spirit for redress and aid to those suffering cracked earth under dry, burning skies. As Oshun flew closer to Spirit, the radiated sun took its toll. Their beautiful peacock-like feathers began to smolder, then burn, and fall. Despite the agony, Oshun focused on the desperation of those left behind and so reached their destination.
Shorn of beautiful feathers, scorched and scarred with the ashen appearance of a gray vulture, Oshun stumbled from the torturous flight to approach Spirit. Oshun bowed. Spirit observed, then agreed to listen to Oshun petition on behalf of those betrayed by life, abandoned by gods, bereft with broken defenses to ward off “leadership” alien to the needs of the mass.
Was it compassion or grace that led to respite from desertification? Or, was the catalyst the beautiful boldness wielded by a defiant orisha compelled to care? Whatever the motivation, Spirit heard risk, love and courage in the pleadings; and ceased to punish the mass for the crimes of arrogant challengers who sought to dethrone— and to imperialize— misery. Thwarted but unpunished, destructive wannabe gods continued to transgress for accumulations. Unforgiven, they were forgotten by many except the dishonored and desperate who recalled and recoiled from their violence. Ignoring the imbalance on the scales of justice, the heavens granted relief from pain by releasing rain to all as Spirit met our desperate needs for flowing waters.
The path of a worthy returnee is a painful sojourn. Oshun flew into scorching skies seeking to sabotage authoritarianism and to serve the people. Taking flight as warrior, Oshun navigated sacrificial labor. Carried by the echo of protective spirits, Oshun’s heartbeat became a radar for struggle. With(out) feathered beauty, their persistence fueled revolutionary love. Thus, the orisha returns wearing the radiance of agape. Reverence seeps through the labors of saints, ancestors, healers, doulas to fall upon captive communities and kin.
Survivors battle catastrophes unleashed by would-be gods— rapists, capitalists, overseers, imperialists, traffickers, abortion bounty hunters, prison guards, environmental desecrators, military-mercenaries, and death squads. Survivors willing to hear the echoes of griot-speaking love also coordinate flights and fights to ensure that— even when muddied— we remain within sacred waters.
Is Oshun’s flight as tortured messenger a form of the Captive Maternal? Or is their labor to give birth to community care a “gift” from a transcendent deity? Are deities captives to agape? Do they (un)willingly suffer or are they emotionally/spiritually compelled to sacrifice? Can all forms of communities —deified, (de)humanized, cyborg—generate or produce Captive Maternals? Oshun is a sovereign. Sovereigns suffer, yet, are captive to love. In the presence of agape, battles for life ensue.
Notes on revolutionary love and the precarious nature of lovingkindness
Hello, internet friends. It is a Saturday in July. I have, once again, made a video that fundamentally changed the course of my life. I am not charging for any of the care work I engage in. It looks impulsive (because I have mastered the In Real Time video format) but I have been chewing on this decision for months. Announcing this decision on socials solicited a flurry of comments meant to be constructive. Can you just do a donation model?1 What about sliding scale?2 Surely there’s some way you can be paid for the services you provide.
Right! Fine and dandy. Let me tell you about my experience trying to be “reasonable.”
Every session, I would say, “Cost is not a barrier. If at any point in time you find difficulty paying or you need help, all you have to do is say so. The answer is already yes.” Every intake session, I would assert this. Every other week, I remind folks. I would do my best to check in with folks before I sent the invoices on the amounts we agreed on. I took forever to send out the first invoices. People fought to pay me. They would remind me that I have not charged them and I would pretend I did not see the text. If folks did not pay their invoice I would assume it was on purpose and I would purposefully not remind them. It was already giving slip-n-slide!! I was already on a donation-based framework. Do you know what happened when I sent this email?
Ten texts within two hours. All with some effect of, “Oh my word. Thank you Ismatu. I didn’t know how to tell you that I couldn’t keep paying and so I had to stop coming.”
This is how I found out that any associated cost is a barrier. Even on sliding scale! Even on a completely voluntary, please-do-not-worry-if-you-cannot-pay suggested donation model! Even with plenty of people that can pay! When I assured my constituents they should not skip if they could not find the funds, folks still grappled with not attending session in secret!! Rather than just telling me they could not pay and coming anyways!! People would cry to me after session about how bad they felt “getting my labor for free.” I would go blind with rage. The degradation that capitalism instills within us— clearly, it’s not just physical. Lack of access cannot only be structural; it’s not just physical; the barriers aren’t even exclusively financial. Because if finance was the barrier, asking for help when you know the answer is yes would be enough, right? And yet!
We are all brainwashed into attaching our own senses of worth to money. People weep when I tell them they can come for free. They break down on the phone. There’s a follow up text, a shaky voice note: I just feel so bad. You deserve to be paid. It has to be bigger than that. It has to. This is why I push back against the Politics of Deservingness so much, so frequently. “Deserving” is inconsistent at best. At worst, it allows us to exclude each other, to exploit one another, to make loving, supporting care contingent on monetary access. I have to remind folks over and over again that they, under no circumstances, should skip session because they cannot pay, and they do anyways from the psychological weight of having to ask for help. I cannot suffer like this anymore. Shit is intolerable. No matter how much I insist, no matter if I make the sliding scale ten dollars or one dollar or zero dollars, all of those are stepping stools to overcome the barrier. Cost is a barrier. I don’t want any more work arounds. I am taking down the barrier in the first place: no more cost.
Lovingkindness cannot be relegated to what we “deserve.” It is inconsistent. We crave community and that goes past “deservingness.” What do I owe to you? How do we realize our highest good in tandem step?
Do we remember when I said, “every time you reach for power instead of love, you isolate yourself from your community?” Extrapolate with me.
My powers are as follows: I am young, public-facing, professional who was educated at elite, private universities. I have amassed wild amounts of social capital in a short time because I am a gifted orator with a really striking physical appearance. I am precisely and expansively trained in therapeutic services and community building, beginning that training at fifteen years old at my local church. Ten years of cumulative training in leadership, speaking, small group leading, ethnography, motivational interviewing, cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, and confidentiality. Alongside formalized and experiential education in abolition, transformative justice, somatic intervention, Black feminist world making. Absolutely it is easy to convince folks to pay me for the work of building community. No one would argue with me. The above is a combination that actually makes folks feel horrible for not paying. That’s quite a lot of power.
The model of counselor : counseled meant that I could never be a part of the spaces I am trying to serve. Reaching for the power of Legitimized, Impressive Professional isolates me from the very communities I am trying to build. There is no mutuality in that. Such hierarchy posits that I am above them, that I am thee expert, that there really is no us because I am The Professional in Residence I (and I alone in the space) can provide a service that you, community member, cannot. How do I demonstrate vulnerability and healing, free and open exchange from on high? How, when humans learn best through mirroring, example, and storytelling? How do I ask people to risk skin in the game when I am safe, up above, well-paid and never having to depend on the communities I create in the first place? I wanted the strength of mutual aid and there I was settling for a charity model. I am not clinical. I’m not allowed to practice clinical psychotherapy without catching a case, and anyways, I wouldn’t want to. I want to be in and among the love so that I know it’s good and built to last. I don’t want to be all alone. So why am I still doing it like the systems I came from? This is the private practice model! Me: professional, on high, always charging. You: coming to me completely bereft, unable to support yourself. You lean on me and I stand upright. How? How do you design community that gives people a love that you yourself never allowed to pass through your own body in the first place?
[in the audio reading there is a strong pause to sip tea here].
Charging also fucked me up on the receiving end. I was constantly worried about whether the experience I was providing was life-changing enough. It gave me incentive to shy away from the sticky, awkward, unpleasant moments that are necessary for community-building, because I know folks don’t enjoy paying to have an uncomfortable time. I had to worry about being marketable. I had to ratio paying folks to folks that couldn’t to make sure I could make my bills. That felt unnerving; alarming; felt like the Disney Fast Pass system. Just throughly icky. Even though I built a space outside of the private practice model, I was still operating as if insurance was tracking my progress. Are we moving fast enough for this to be worth it? Is this worth the money? Would I pay this money? Do I even want this money?
Maddening. It was not working. I could not sleep.
So I annexed cost before I had the financial infrastructure to do so3. Was it deranged and out of pocket? Yes. Am I at peace being completely out of my mind? Absofuckinlutely.
The sense of wellbeing that washed over me once I sent that email and settled into myself— that peace will carry me and touches me still. A peace that transcends time and mugs of tea. I hadn’t slept in a week, on account of the screaming. There was a small one (girl child, eight years old) that screamed every time I sat down to collect payments. Screaming. All of the adults around me tried to counsel me into finding some peace with accepting payment. They stress self-sufficiency and autonomy and the reciprocal nature of things. I tried to be a reasonable, autonomous adult. I really did! It’s just that my politic is alive and she will kill me; she is also eight years old and ruthless. Eight was the age when I realized there were many, many adults that would let you die if you could not pay. Eight years old was the first time I asked for medicine to aid with body pain and was denied because I did not have the money to purchase ibuprofen, even though I could see it right there. We have been desensitized to how batshit that is. Adult me resigns themself to the brutality and the negotiations; eight year old me screams. That’s the way of the world, I continue to hear. And she screams. Even last week, when I announced I would not be accepting any more payments, the tidal wave of well-intentioned just be reasonable messages came en masse.
Listen. Listen to me in this part if no where else. Settling for what’s in front of us is exactly how nothing ever changes. Why are people so hellbent I settle for what I can see? When we are tasked with creation? Where’s the divinity in that— settling to be a servant in someone else’s imaginings of the world? NO. NO! I tried to be reasonable; it turns out I have no interest in this iteration of reality. There is no way to build revolutionary community and charge folks to participate. I refuse to negotiate my dreams.
So I embark on my own flight. I pray that morning [adonai, have mercy on me] and collapse into community. I burn a bit in the process; it turns my skin molten; I prepare myself for a new body. A shedding. I realize I haven’t eaten in…? some days…? because I still fast when I need something in my life to move. I get myself a smoothie with the credit card that wasn’t yet affected by the negative thousand dollar balance in my bank account. I enjoy a body that hums with itself, pleased, resonating, finally aligned enough to yawn. I’d slept maybe twenty noncumulative hours over the previous seven days and felt no side effect until then. Safe enough within myself to feel sleepy. What a blessing.
I post the videos and turn my phone off and hope I get enough to pay rent.
It’s not that I don’t understand the precarity this put me in. I do. It’s that (1) I personally would rather be bullied by the world than keep negotiating with my childhood self. She really learned to be bitch before she learned to be a woman. Lil homie will tan my hide. And (2) love which requires instability is the way of the life that I’ve always known. Revolutionary love is precarious. Both revolutions: the revolutions of a journey that takes you back to your starting place changed and the revolution that calls for death so you can build something life-giving upon the grave. It costs you something. If I cannot trust myself to leap and fall into these communities that I built, why did I build them? If these communities I say that I cultivate cannot lean on each other instead of the false safety of individualism, why are they here? What do we do this for if not the risk of caring for one another well?
A thesis comes to light: if I do not have community that I can collapse into, I don’t have community.
How can I build these spaces where I encourage interdependence, mutuality, vulnerability and then stand upright myself? How can I expect to move and shift culture with no skin in the game? Where the fuck is your courage, Ismatu? Love that is actually good for us is precarious by design. Love which allows newness requires the trust to bloom and be fragile with that process of opening. Trust like that happens easiest in the absence of systems that surveil us with unblinking, fluorescent floodlights, so we have to make something new where we keep one another safe. Blooming is uncomfortable! It’s ugly and awkward for a good long while! Community requires space to unravel and be helpless. What happens when we regard one another sweetly in the presence of exhaustion? What kind of love would it take for you all to look at me disheveled and uncurated and not coach me toward sanity or regulation or self-reliance? What kind of love would it take from you all to look at me unraveled and feel honored rather than panicked?
You know what else I am? Frustrated that folks keep trying to move me towards individualism. There’s your thesis. Stop that!! “But you have to take care of yourself—“ shhusshh! Hush. Don’t you see what’s happening here? Do you not see me radicalizing in real time? I don’t give a fuck about calls for autonomy and self-care if they’re not followed up by HOW DO I CARE FOR YOU? HOW DO WE CARE FOR YOU? The ever-present beast of carceral thinking rears his big and shiny fangs: somewhere else, away from me. Ismatu you should be able to take care of yourself. Ismatu, why are you so unsightly in public? Don’t you think you should care for yourself? I am going to stab myself in the eyeballs. Do you know how good I am at caring for myself? It would not be hard to live a life where I only accepted money from paying clients, I made sure everyone paid, and I made myself a little individual safety nets from that money. It wouldn’t be hard. Do you know how long I’ve been self-sufficient and how hard I worked to make myself enough for me? I moved out my parent’s house when I was seventeeen! I am so good at self-sufficiency; I love my own company; I am incredibly resourceful. Yes, I am enough as I can be! I know I am enough! I want bigger than enough! I want excellence. I want excess. I want not enough to survive and take care of me, I want enough space to be able to erect community love where it was previously a barren land. I want communal sovereignty. Stop asking me to settle. I want feasts for us all; it feels like y’all are asking me to settle for manna because there is risk involved.
There’s risk involved in depending on other people! Of course that’s the case when it’s skin in the game! Okay???? Buck the fuck up! Do you have the courage to deal with the inevitability of getting hurt? Can you stand the idea of it being hard? Isn’t it terrifying knowing that you could fall, that sometimes you will fall, and there will be no one to catch you even when you thought that people would? And then, aren’t you frightened of the way people tire of the world? Aren’t you scared and scarrred by how much we pretend we’re safe in our little individual caves? Do you feel safe? Do you feel safe on your lonesome? When you alone provide for you, do you feel safe to rest and cry and slow down and unravel? Doesn’t everything come crashing down? Isn’t that the nature of life? Are you risking being back to the floor anyways because there was no one else to catch you?
Do you see how it’s fear either way? Put some goddamn skin in the game.
I really did try not to yell but, also. While I’m here being honest as hell trying not to cuss y’all out and failing. Lmao it’s giving Tyra. It’s giving when my mother yelled at me like this it was because she loved me!! How dare you!! We were all rooting for you!!!
The reason I was not scared about rent money is because I trust you all. The reason I keep asking and asking you to say hello to me or to engage with me evenly is because I am trying to be in community with you. There were many many folks that asked me to be reasonable— to find a workaround the barrier when I want the barrier gone. And then there were folks that CashApped me a dollar, two, or many so that I would not have to be precarious alone. Some people did both! Enough such that I paid my rent. Such that I have the money again to consider what it would be like to be housing secure. It’s been a full year since I was housing secure. I forgot it was something I could ask for.
[an editor’s note from the audio reading: I’m still not quite housing secure. I’m in an airbnb at the moment desperately trying to get my papers in order. But enough people sent a dollar or two that it reminded me like… “oh. Maybe I should ask for enough money to be housing secure. Maybe it’s not enough for me to be precarious on my own, silently. Maybe the— the— the sadness and the anger that I feel at finding out that so many of my clients were struggling silently instead of asking for help— maybe that’s how y’all feel about me. Maybe I’m not the only one yelling.”]
Thank you for bolstering my ability to not negotiate. I cannot stress enough how much it means to me to have such agency to steward my life and space. I cannot tell you all how much I think and think of you. I’m on the phone with my folks all the time— how do I say this in a way that makes sense? I’m teaching through this concept and I just don’t feel like we’re getting it. I didn’t expect this question; how do I expand? I have taught myself new ways of speaking, of writing, of teaching to be here with you all in vulnerability. I am now unfolding in ways which require me to acknowledge that I, in part, belong to the people. So I don’t think of this as gambling. I think of this as trusting that this extended community of folks I asked to see me in lovingkindness would manage to catch me if I fell.
All of this— not negotiating, moving in a love which requires precarity, leaning in instead of staying upright, making community mutual— it reminds me why I have skin in the game. This is my calling in life and I am coming back to it. Healthcare should not have financial cost as a barrier. Of course it feels manic and uncurated and wild. You alol are watching me expand in real time. Do not witness me choose revolutionary action and ask me to shrink. “But how are you caring for yourself? But you need to take care of you!”
My sweet friends. Maybe we do not have the same eyes on the world. If you can’t look me up and down and see that this shit is so much bigger than me by now… my word. If I look crazed? I am. Accept that I am wild and untethered and insane. And then once you accept that, look again.
In all my delusion— how well am I loved and cared for? How well am I taken care of? For all my “failures” to care for myself?
For all your sanity and your self-sufficiency. The upright, prim and proper balancing act of individualism. Are you frightened of the way people tire of the world? Are you happy on your tightrope, sane and alone?
I would never tell you to jump without building you a safety net. Because that’s my job in this life, and I’m not going to shy away from that anymore. I am crazed and so I build one. Wait and see. I got some tricks up my sleeve.
I hope the work of your day passes through your hands with ease.
Ismatu g.
Did we assume I had not thought of this. Pls be so serious.
Truly this is like when folks ask me if I’ve heard of all about love by bell hooks. I just… yes. I have. I don’t mean to sass— or maybe i do! Some tea some shade! Be SO srs!!
That’s not to say I have no plans of support. I give y’all the illusion of In Real Time because it promotes the most learning. Time is very wibbly wobbly. Most of the ideas I’m sharing online, I’ve been contemplating them for months or years. I have ideas for infrastructure outside 1:1 payment I’ve been workshopping for many moons. I was planning on doing this campaign in August. I still will! I just got to a point where I was like… not one more cent. Not one more. So here we are. Not one more cent. Thank you for reading <3
Revolutionary Love costs you something.