Breathing Room: What it Looks Like to Resource Black Women to Dream
Homer, AK 2022
Think about the last time you felt the abundance and fully resourced? What were the conditions? Did you just pay off a bill? Were you well-fed and surrounded by good company? Were you finally able to get a full night of sleep? Were you sitting outside having some much-needed solitude?
In a 2018 episode of Hidden Brain titled, “Too Little, Too Much: How Poverty and Wealth Affect Our Minds”, Eldar Shafir comments, “The poor, people who are lacking financial resources, find it very hard to think about anything but money or at least spend a lot of their cognitive resources, a lot of their attention, on financial juggling.”
Being well-resourced creates both stability and buoyancy that opens up a world of possibility. So much more is possible when you aren’t constantly preoccupied with how you will pay rent, where the next meal is coming from, if you’ll be able to afford a medical procedure, or countless other issues that arise when you’re financially stressed. Being “resourced”, can mean a multitude of things – stable housing, a full fridge, affordable healthcare, access to childcare, etc. – but here, I’m talking about financially resourced because, in a capitalist society, money underscores everything. There is the common phrase that “money doesn’t buy happiness” (this likely was first said by a wealthy white aristocrat) but what it does give you in a capitalist society, is safety, stability, and autonomy.
So, what can happen when Black women are abundantly resourced and have space to dream?
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In the summer of 2021, I was awarded an 18-month fellowship funded by the Hewlett Foundation and Pisces Foundation. The purpose of the fellowship was to allow me space to “focus, take risks, and go deeper” as well as co-create a longstanding fellowship. It came on the heels of the departure from my role as the co-director of People of the Global Majority in the Outdoors, Nature, and the Environment and provided the space I craved to take stock of my experience and to create what I knew was needed in the field: a fellowship that gave unrestricted funding to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color who broadly work in the environmental field. During my career, I’ve witnessed countless Black, Indigenous, and People of Color with brilliant ideas to mitigate environmental degradation and heal our connection to the Earth, but unable to pursue them because of the lack of financial support. I believe that resourcing these folks directly would create much-needed innovation in the fight for environmental, climate, and racial justice.
It became clear early on that before I could create what I wanted to see, I needed to fully experience it myself. I’ve always been an advocate of resourcing individuals and now my conviction is deeper and clearer. I could go on and on about the many ways being granted this fellowship freed up brain space for me to pursue ideas but there are three emergent themes that I want to share with you.
Resourcing Black Women has Ripple Effects
As a queer Black woman, I’m situated at an intersection of identities that demand I dream the world I want to live in into reality. Even as anti-blackness, misogynoir, classism, and a myriad of other oppressions push Black women to the edges of our society, we are also inextricably linked to the communities we come from and chose to be with. We are the backbones, feeders, connectors, nurturers, truth-tellers, curse breakers. Because of this when one of us is resourced, a community becomes resourced. Living in a society that doesn’t expect us to survive, forces us to create frameworks and shift paradigms that create space for us and others to exist within.
On a personal level, the resourced allowed me to support family members, take care of myself, and feel stability that I’ve never had before. Another byproduct of the fellowship was the ability to be selective with my schedule and time and to put energy towards the paradigm and mental shifts that I craved.
It’s always been a goal of mine to be able to hold a collective dream space with other Black folks. In Spring 2022, I started hosting Black Folks Dreamin’, a monthly collaborative space with Black folks to be in validating, affirming, and dreamy conversations with other Black folks who are navigating this world with a lot of curiosity, tenderness, and limitlessness. The hour spent together was full of connection, laughter, and just witnessing each other. It’s a scared space and one I look forward to bringing back later this year.
Around the same time, I started setting aside Mondays for Black folks who want to connect on a range of topics – career musings and making connections amongst other things. This ongoing practice has allowed me to put into practice my goal to decenter whiteness and moved me away from connection with Black folks as “nice to have” as a “must have” – something that I haven’t been able to prioritize when working within institutions.
More broadly, I have committed to using the additional space I have to collaborate, network, and provide support to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color through 1:1 connections, organizational support, mentorship, and being a connector. I have said yes to getting on the phone with more than 40 folks who work in the environmental space and have been able to support numerous organizations with the skills and network I’ve developed.
Access to Creativity
As noted above, being resourced frees up space in your brain to focus beyond survival. It’s because of this I was able to develop my love of writing and move it closer to the center of my work. Before the fellowship, writing had to live in the background and I would only pick it up in the rare times of spaciousness amongst my other obligations. I’ve learned it’s the medium I’m most drawn to as a way for me to communicate how I understand the world.
With this new understanding, I scheduled quarterly writing retreats for myself with supplemental writing experience throughout the fellowship. I organized self-guided writing retreats in Joshua Tree National Park and Mendocino and attended the Storyknife Writers Retreat for Women in Homer, Alaska for two weeks, I had the resources to connect with Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, on how to prepare to write a book.
As I’ve put more writing in the world, I understand the need for more Black women, more queer Black women, to write ourselves into history and to affirm and uplift our experiences in the world. bell hooks said, “No Black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much.’ Indeed, no woman writer can write ‘too much.’ / No woman has ever written enough.”
Exercising Choice
Racist policies, poverty wages, and state violence are a few of the many ways systemic racism and oppression undercut the power of choice from Black and other oppressed people in the U.S. School choice, housing choice, food choice, and many other choices become moot in a society that systematically operates in a way that seeks to disembody those it seeks to oppress.
Being able to exercise the full range of choices as an individual is a privilege. Being that I wasn’t operating from a place of scarcity and necessity, I was able to say no to opportunities that didn’t align with my values or trajectory. I found myself working on projects and further ideas that were liberatory, joyful, and imaginative– something that I didn’t have the space to do before. This allowance of discernment provided clarity on where I needed to head and how I wish to get there.
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The breathing room provided by this fellowship helped me expand beyond my wildest dreams. I now possess a sharper understanding of the specific tools and perspectives that I bring to the movement toward liberation. What I have been able to access during this fellowship has empowered me to feel the full range of my power and gives me the ability to pour into others.
The Social Change Ecosystem Map created by Deepa Iyer, Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at Building Movement Project, is one of my favorite visual representations of the ecosystem needed to implement change. I see this map as a framework for funding – to address the deeply woven threads of injustice, there needs to be a diversified ecosystem of funding that resources the many levers being pulled to resist, reimagine, and thrive. It’s important to remember that people are what make up organizations and movements and we must resource them.
I am grateful for the world the fellowship opened up for me and I’m looking forward to building more opportunities to give more Black women much needed breathing room.