Business Inner Guide: Pleasure, Success, & Politics
As I step into the role of supporting others stepping into their roles, super meta I know, I’ve been going down the rabbit hole of understanding the interconnections between pleasure, politics, and what the fuck is success anyways.
On success
Let’s start with a gentle and fierce reminder that regularly peaking into strangers experiences through social media can get us real out of center. It can make us aspire to things that we don’t even want. Do things we don’t even like. Promote things we don’t understand the nuance of and may compromise our values.
As a recovering people pleaser and a self employed, online pleasure educator, I have to check in with myself often after I engage with instagram.
“Oh gosh, this person I admire is doing this thing! They’re cool! I should do that!!!”
***instantly starts feeling more stressed and inadequate***
There are so many different ways to have success.
But white supremacist, cis heteropatriarchy culture has manufactured and sold a certain dream of success that for some of us can be really challenging and confusing to disentangle from!
These DRAINING and dissociative expectations impact all aspects of our lives. In order to stay centered, I have to continuously challenge my internalized “shoulds” in many different ways.
For example, I check in with how often I engage with social media, at what times, how I set up my business (who I partner with for example) and what boundaries and policies I create. I get to remember that my business is up to ME. I also need to come back to asking myself what I want to focus on that will actually be effective AND feel in alignment with my values and happiness.
This is a regular practice and not something you figure out once and then never think about ever again.
Because if I am not careful, I will start falling into the trap of doing something to be accepted rather than because it makes sense for me: my skill set, my identity, my happiness and my values.
There isn’t a formula for success because success looks different for different people. For example, it's going to look real different depending on if you're more extroverted or introverted and a million and one other reasons.
A personal story: when I first started my business, Pussy Witch, I was making herbal medicine, facilitating sexual empowerment classes, and offering 1:1 coaching. I started too many things at once. I needed to build one fire at a time and let one get rolling so only that one fire needs some tending before trying to build a new fire.
A big part of my spiritual practice is worshipping plants, but some part of me knew that I didn’t feel this translated into the work I was doing with herbal medicine in a way that held integrity.
I believe in radical herbalism practices that challenge white washed practices, provide affordable health care to community, and centers those facing the most intersections of oppression. While I believe in this work, it just didn’t fit my skillset or my personal passion.
My favorite practice in herbalism is growing them and making yummy smelling oils. This can be done in a good way, but, I realized, if I was going to financially sustain myself I would need to scale and that just didn’t sit right.
I didn’t pivot until I had the help of psychedelics that led to a deeply uncomfortable ceremonial type experience that led to cathartic grief release. This helped me come to terms with the fact that my skills and role needed to be focused elsewhere. I stopped selling herbal products and I don’t regret it one bit.
Success for me isn’t about monetizing every one of my passions, how visible my brand becomes, who I get to partner with, or how full my schedule is. While having money flowing offers me more choices life, it isn’t the central focus or my ultimate sign of success. Read onto hear more deeply my connection to this.
Don’t let any “shoulds” in your head define success for you. You don’t have to monetize every single one of your passions! And don't let white supremacist, cis heteropatriarchy culture sell you a default idea of what success needs to look like.
Really, just don’t let anyone definite success for you, no matter if you agree with it or not, it just may not bring YOU joy.
You have to make space for yourself to FEEL this out. To get clear in an embodied, rooted, crystal ball clear kind of way. Maybe that means taking psychedelics and crying...or whatever your equivalent to that is.
Of course nothing is linear AND it’s great to get more in tune with our compass and role. That’s one of the many things we will be exploring in Boss Witch.
So, what does success look like for you?
How will you know you are successful?
What will it feel like?
What will you be able to do?
How will you spend your days?
What will you focus on?
Who will you surround yourself with?
Will you be able to be present with those people?
What does success taste like?
What will be the results and impacts of your success in the WORLD?
On Politics
I invite you to read this prompt with nuance. I want to acknowledge that I'm writing this from the lens of existing as a white femme with a lot of cis passing privilege raised catholic with a savior complex, finding my role in collective liberation. For some of you reading this, your existence alone is way more political than mine. However you care for yourself and take up space as a business is radical and impactful and I love you. I invite to marinate on this quote...
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
-Audre Lorde
I still encourage all of us to read this though and to navigate how we can all love ourselves more fiercely and love others who have intersecting identities and struggles and barriers from the oppressive systems that are different from our own. We need all of us for this fight and struggle.
If we truly care about making our business about liberation and liberation our business, this is a lot of work that many Black leaders and native leaders have laid out before us and can’t be described in one post. Each post I write doesn’t have the capacity to hold all of the complexity and nuance to teach intersectional feminism, a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw. (Although, I recommend you listening to her Tedtalk if you haven't already.)
Here are some of thoughts for how politics relate to business...
There is a difference between making money OFF of a movement or a pandemic and making money during one. The former is just straight up exploitative, the latter is more nuanced.
This is a prompt for YOU to get serious about your politics and centering them in your business. If you don't, you might risk exploiting a movement and/or staying silent.
This work isn’t formulaic. Like Andréa Ranae shared on instagram when speaking about liberation,
“it’s not a checklist.”
However, one important thing we can do is to be more transparent to ourselves and our communities about our politics. I know I can fall into this trap of just using buzz words like activism and “doing the work.”
Stating what we actually believe in and want to work towards publicly can feel vulnerable because it holds us more accountable. But when we do so from a grounded and non performative place, we are also likely to build communities that we feel more aligned with and excited to support/be a part of. It also helps us create offerings that we feel proud of. And creating an offering that you feel proud of is the biggest thing that will help you share about it/market it. If any of this feels off, it will quickly lead to burnout and/or fear of sharing about your work!
Again, there is a difference of making money OFF of something and making money to help END something.
For example, if I do my job well, my work will no longer be required! My ultimate goal is to put myself out of business with this work.
It’s important to regularly ground our words into concrete political directions and actions to back them up. Education is a very real and valid piece of action. So as businesses, but more importantly as leaders (which we all are), it’s important to be loud and proud of what we stand for, so let me be clear. I am...
Pro Black lives matter
Pro reparations (and that we shouldn’t wait on the state to start dishing out money, white and non Black folks need to be giving money to Black folks regularly)
Pro trans
Pro queer
Pro woman
Pro choice
Pro abolition
Pro rights of nature. (I’m an animist)
Pro sex work
Pro disability rights
Pro free health care for all and pro affordable housing
I am against fatphobia, racism, sexism, ableism, and I don't think billionaires should exist.
I know I am missing some things and I am committed to doing better and updating as I learn and unlearn.
Here’s a reminder to not wait to get it "perfect" to write this out because perfection doesn’t exist. Perfection is rooted in shame and caring what others think. Getting clear on our politics and being open to learning more radical politics, on issues that directly impact you and don't, is about care. Self care and community care. Both are radical acts!
It’s important for businesses, leaders (which we all are), public figures, creatives, or whomever to be out loud about our politics and actions AND to do things just because we care, and not because it’s about building our brand. I've noticed for me this makes my work and personal life feel more aligned and therefore everything more sustainable and effective.
A way I practice this, is by doing things and then tell no one about them. Just donating. Just showing up to an action. Not needing to publicize and have it look good for me or my business. Yes, for me and my platform it can be important to lift up and spread campaigns that are raising money, but it’s also important to just do the work in my local area, because I am a community member who gives a fuck, rather than because of what it does for me visibly.
Figuring out what you need to do to find this balance of business and personal is not simple or linear. It's like a somatic practice of continuously checking in with yourself, learning, listening, and adjusting.
Some journal prompts to chew on (I recommend setting a timer and just pouring it out):
Where do you stand politically?
Are you loud and proud of that?
How are you showing up and backing these beliefs?
How are you tying this with your business?
How are you showing up when no one is watching?
On Embracing Non-Linearity
Your connection to your business, your activism, any type of leadership, isn’t going to feel linear.
Some days will feel great. However, everyday isn't going to FEEL in alignment.
Some days there will be discomfort, grief and confusion, while other days will feel FULL of purpose.
We can let the good feelings FUEL us and the discomfort teach us, but we have to be careful not to become addicted to or discouraged by these highs and lows. We need to learn to focus our goals on the process of showing up and collective LIBERATION.
To move towards what feels right, but don't discount the discomfort either. To be with it all and allow each feeling to provide a new lens towards liberation.
For example, when my business and platform allows me to raise money for Black trans lives, or when I receive feedback from a student about how my work has allowed them to experience their first orgasm, or when I see folks apply to my scholarships, or when I am in the flow of writing - I feel this deep sense of meaning and purpose.
But then there are days, almost always right before I bleed, or when I just listened to a podcast on systemic racism, or I let capitalism get inside my head saying my worth is connected to how much I product, or I learn of another Black trans person that has been murdered, or I learn of another public figure who has caused harm, or even when something good happens in my life and I feel guilty - I feel discouraged, confused, dissociative.
These are the times that I DON'T want to just push away and shove under the rug.
They are times for me to re-center and ground myself and not try to rush to answers. To just sit with it. Sit with the yuck, the terror, the lack, the ughhhhhh. And slowly, gently, feel what is there and what message it holds for me.
You don’t have to be a martyr, you don’t have to bring on self inflicted suffering to have an impact, but you do have to sit with discomfort and the UNKNOWN. It’s a part of growing and it’s a part of liberation work. You do have to notice when you are basing decisions out of urgency or out of grounded alignment, but that takes experimenting and practice. You have to be willing and brave enough to experiment, even if you don’t know everything. Because, guess what? You never will.
There will ALWAYS be things you don’t know, but you do have a role, you were born in a body to have a voice and shake this world up.
This work is about you and it isn’t about you.
Get familiar with the process of showing up again and again.
On Pleasurable Work
Where do pleasure and business overlap?
Pleasure and work?
What is pleasure?
First, if you haven’t read the Uses of the Erotic, by Audre Lorde, I highly recommend reading or REREADING that and then coming back here.
“For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
This is a central compass to the work I do. Does my work help me come ALIVE in service. Is it generative?! Is it WAKING me up? Commanding that I face the pieces of myself that I feel scared to look at, but know with every bone in my body that I must? Is it bringing me to fullness?
It’s the type of feeling once you’ve experienced, you can no longer ignore it.
However, I can distract myself from this aliveness during quick feel good rushes from social media likes. We live in such a disconnected world. Where we turn to our phones for any fragment of feel good, of being seen, or being heard. I can get pulled and addicted to the attention and the approval.
But this isn’t it. There is something else.
A deep awareness of interdependence, a palpable sense of connection. That my grief is tied to my joy. A knowing that you, we, are connected, and not in a spiritual bypassing way. An intense awareness that my actions and inactions are tied to someone’s HUMANITY.
It’s facing our power…and with that, our responsibility. That to exist and to care, is to be vulnerable. And if I truly want to feel alive, rather than numbed out and apathetic, it comes with deep pain, but also huge pleasure.
If you’ve ever witnessed death or birth, or have given birth yourself, or if you’ve ever orgasmed. YOU KNOW THIS ALIVENESS.
These deep dives of grief and ecstatic yes’s aren’t something that can be televised or properly put into words, let alone described in a post on social media.
As soon as it’s put into a box, our projections and patterns start filtering through, like for me, saviorism, superiority, and guilt.
It can’t be packaged or consumed. But it can spread.
You know when someone feels alive, they are electric. You may not have words for it. But it stirs something inside of you. Sometimes it makes people violently respond, sometimes it gets people to stand up and face what they’ve been avoiding themselves.
Colonization strips and sterilizes that palpable sense of aliveness away.
Feeling alive is a sense of liberation. Even in the biggest throngs of my grief, it feels liberating because the moment is TRULY my own. At the same time, It’s such a big energy that we cant hold it on our own.
It doesn’t belong to anyone. When you sense and you feel it, you want to share it. Because you know it’s human, you know others have this power to sense their own aliveness.
When I connect to the aliveness, I have a deep well of resource that grounds me into a sense of belonging. It helps me have more empathy, to be a better listener, to be a better human.
Some journal prompts for you:
What brings this sense of aliveness in my life?
How could I cultivate more aliveness?
Is my business contributing to my sense of aliveness?
Is my business supporting others aliveness?
If not, is something I wish to shift? If so, how?
Boss Witch: On Bringing it All Together
As I said at the beginning, these are the big thoughts and ideas I am holding as I step into the role of supporting others stepping into their roles.
Showing up for your unique blend of leadership in business feels vulnerable as fuck. But I know you can do it. And I will be there to walk this path with you.