Latest / Soul Salon with Ayandastood / 23: disposability culture & my fear of being cancelled

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23: disposability culture & my fear of being cancelled · Soul Salon with Ayandastood

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  So many of us face the fear of social annihilation, of judgment, of embarrassment, of cringe-worthiness,
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  and of just being dragged. Yes, let's get into it. Okay, let's get into it.
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  Hello sunshine and welcome back to paradigm shift with I understood. A place where we reframe what is
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  and reimagine what could be. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Let's paradigm shift together.
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  Hello darlings, welcome back. I hope that you are being kind to yourself. I hope you are
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  treating yourself with all the compassion, babes, you deserve it. There's nothing you could do that
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  would not make you a member of this divine universe and earth. And just remember that even though you
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  may experience shame and you may experience the feeling of not being enough, you are inherently
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  not shameful. You are inherently literally magic. There was such a small chance of you even being
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  here on this earth as you are. And so I just want to say you are divine, you are part of the universe,
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  you are cosmic magic. Okay, today we are going to be diving in to the topic of fear a little bit
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  deeper, because you know, we love going deeper over here. I've been speaking about creative fear
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  and I've been having these wonderful interviews and conversations with some of you on your experiences
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  of creative fear. And what I wanted to do is dig a little bit deeper in the sense that I wanted to
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  kind of give you more insight into what exactly I fear, because I feel like I've told you, oh, I'm
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  really afraid, but I don't know how much kind of depth I've gone into of like, what is this
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  doomsday scenario situation that I fear the most? And then how does that fear affect how I behave
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  and how I create? So the specific fear we're going to be talking about today is the fear of cancellation.
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  And it is going to be such a wonderful conversation. I just know it already. And the fact that I've
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  built enough confidence in myself and in my voice to say that before it's even happened makes me feel
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  very good and very precious, okay, which I am. So anyways, before we jump in, I wanted to also give
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  a little bit of context of like, why am I saying this? I've been on a couple of calls with people
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  where they've said, you know, you're so fearless. You're just saying things on TikTok. You're just
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  sharing your views and you have this fearless energy to you. I said, I'm terrified. Like, I'm literally
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  once a week at least on the phone with my best friend. Like, what am I doing? What if I look back
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  and I regret all of this? Like, oh, my goodness. Like, what have I done? What am I doing? What is going on?
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  Like, why am I putting myself in this very precarious position of being perceived and being up for
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  being kind of taken apart? Like, who wants to be taken apart? I want to be together with myself.
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  And so I wanted to kind of like tell you more about that today. So I am not fearless. I'm very afraid.
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  And this is also why I've shared that essay by Audrey Lorde so often. The words literally like come
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  into my consciousness all the time. And of course, I am afraid because the transformation of silence
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  into language and action is always fraught with danger. I literally think about those words every
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  single time I face fear. And I'm so happy that I've integrated that essay into my life so deeply
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  that it comes to me so naturally. You know, those words because it reminds me that like, yeah, I'm
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  terrified. This is terrifying. Why would it not be? Especially in the culture that we are living in.
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  So I just wanted to say like, yes, babes, I'm scared. I'm afraid. But let's talk about why?
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  Who? What way and how? Okay, let's talk about it. Let's get into it. So there's going to be
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  four parts to this conversation, not her with the structure, not her with the layout. Okay, I'm
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  impressed. I find myself very, very intrigued, very, very excited and enticed. So the four parts
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  are this. Okay, number one, like, what does she fear? What does she afraid of? Like, cancellation?
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  Interesting. What exactly? Okay, number two. Okay, how does this fear show up for her? What is it
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  prevent her from doing? Like, what is, you know, what's going on with the fear and how it literally
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  shows up in a very tangible way so that we understand? Number three, how has she experienced this
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  before? Like, when you're afraid of something, sometimes you've experienced like a taste of it.
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  So what's your experience with cancellation? And number four, I mean, she keeps posting. So
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  so clearly she's like, what is she telling herself in reaction to this fear? You know what I mean?
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  So that's kind of the the uplifting side, which is what I've been focusing on in most of these
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  episodes is like, how can I provide something uplifting? But let's go on a journey. Like, you know,
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  you have to have the climb before you can actually, I guess that metaphors not working because the
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  best part of the mountain would be declining. But I want to basically say that what goes up must
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  come down. Like, you have to have the count to weight. I don't want you to just leave you with fear.
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  And you know, anxiety and and and and and despair. I want to give you the hope and the light and
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  the excitement. Okay. So that's what we're going to do today. Four parts. And it's like I'm interviewing
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  myself and I'm having so much fun. Like, this is what I was born to do. I just know it anyways.
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  Okay. So takes deep breath. The first thing that I said to you that I would tell you about
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  was what do I fear? And that's naturally the most, you know, natural question to be asking.
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  What are you so afraid of being cancelled? Okay. Being cancelled is terrifying. And the fact that
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  you're going to be publicly dragged in front of everyone, it's so daunting to me. It is so terrifying.
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  I read the book The Mountain is You. And I wouldn't recommend it to you unless you genuinely feel
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  you are the only thing between you and something that you're going after all pursuing. If there are
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  many structural barriers between you and this thing, I think the book will incredibly frustrate you
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  because it's written from that very white, wealthy, western view of life. The only thing standing
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  in your way, not racism, not poverty, not capitalism, not white supremacy, not colorism, not
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  anti-fabious is you. Like give me a fucking break. Give me a fucking break. But I was at a point
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  where with my creative works, it was truly me. It was me. I was the drummer. I was the one saying to
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  myself, why aren't you doing this thing and not doing it? So I really felt, okay, I need someone to
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  just like, sometimes I just crave a little bit of like a little bit of like just tell me what I'm
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  doing wrong. Sometimes I'm a masochist. What can I say? And that's what I was craving. But if you
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  are like, no, dude, like I have no time. I have no money to do this. I have no community to do this.
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  Do not read that book because it's not going to serve you. It's not going to serve you. Okay.
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  It's not going to serve you. So I fear. I'm terrified. Oh, sorry. Oh, that's why I told you about this
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  book. It's like it's not for no reason. I was reading this book in a cafe and I started
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  boiling my eyes out because what that book says is essentially self sabotage is kind of misunderstood
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  because when you are so quote unquote sabotaging yourself, there's an unconscious unmet need
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  that you are actually protecting. But now that version of you no longer serves you. And the reason
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  I started crying is what I realized was when I was thinking about like, oh, how are you kind of
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  holding yourself back? And I feel like I'm kind of like even though I'm on TikTok and I'm posting,
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  I could be posting more. For example, I could be like going, you know, posting more on my
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  podcast at the time I had taken a six month break. So I felt the sense of like, why am I silencing
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  myself? You know what I mean? And what I realized while I was reading the book, the reason I started
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  crying is I was afraid. And I was afraid of being too known or seen because when you have a lot,
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  a lot of followers, especially as a black creates on internet, people are looking to tell you down.
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  You know what I mean? We've seen it with so many creators. The creator that incident came to my
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  mind was lip gloss, who is a creator and was a TikTok creator. I think she left TikTok. And that
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  was a really sad thing because she was just like so celebrated and loved on TikTok, but she had to
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  do what was best for her. And I can't speak for her or her reasons, but I do know that it was just
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  so painful to see all the hate on Twitter that was kind of spread her way by cis straight black men.
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  And just it's just like this constant pattern. I think this also happened with Alia where there's
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  just like people who are so willing to criticize black women when we get to like having a really big
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  following and black people in general, black queer people, black women like black non-binary people.
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  I just think that black trans people, I just think that there's a lot of, you know, people lifting
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  you up just to take you down. And it's really, really painful to watch in others. And it's of course
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  just brings in the fear that like it's inevitable. And so therefore keeping yourself back from
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  that like extreme level of TikTok, like fame is something that I definitely do. Okay. And so that
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  is such an example of this fear that we need to preserve ourselves. Like is it self-preservation
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  or is it self-sabotage? As a human being, you are designed to protect yourself from danger.
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  And so when you feel something is unsafe or makes you vulnerable or makes you precarious in some
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  way, you are going to protect yourself from that threat. And so me not posting on those platforms
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  was me trying to protect myself is me trying to protect myself from the threat of public shaming
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  and public cancellation. Okay. And the reason why it's so scary to me, social death is the words
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  that came to me as as I was reading the mountain is you. It was like, oh, the two things I fear the most
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  in life is physical death, both my of my family and like loved ones and of myself and is social
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  death. Those are the two things that I'm like, oh my goodness, how will I survive this? Well,
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  the one you simply weren't my love. But the second it's like, how would I survive everyone
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  hating on me? And then also the weird thing about the internet is unlike other forms of work,
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  if you, if something happens to you at your job that is not on the internet, nobody's going to know.
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  Like the people who are going to know are the people who are involved, which is very natural. It's
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  very daunting. It's awful. It's humiliating because it's still your like social circle. It's
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  still terrible. I'm not trying to say that it's not horrible. I'm not trying to say it's less,
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  but it's something very different than when everyone in your life, including the people you don't
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  know and the people you do know, will know this feeling that I'm going to fall or trip. And it's
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  not only that people on the internet will know, but like my friends will know and we've all delighted
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  in someone else's pain. Like that is what Twitter is and the internet is like it's literally dragging
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  people and laughing at them, making fun of them. It's like finding out something about them
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  that you feel justified in taking them down for. That's the other thing that I want to just emphasize.
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  When it comes to the fear of cancellation, we may think, fuck the haters. You know what I mean?
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  What if the haters are right? What if the haters are right? What if the haters are right? Like what if
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  they say something that I'm like, damn, like that's true. You know what I mean? So it's not only
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  the feeling that I'll be dragged for some non-sensical reason and how day you say this to me,
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  that is really painful as well because it sucks to feel like lies are being sprayed about you.
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  That would be very painful, but I think what my ego, my sense of self-fears most, I obviously have
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  insecurities. Obviously I fear those being publicized, something where I'm like, damn, you got me,
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  you caught me in the act. What if there's legitimacy to what they're saying? That's what I mean.
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  So it's the cruelty and it's the legitimacy and it's the precarity. You know what I mean?
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  It's the fact that to be precarious is to be, it's almost like if you're made to walk on a tight
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  rope, you don't have security. You are always able to fall. You're made to live in a way that you
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  are not protected. You're precarious, right? And so it's like when you're posting on the internet,
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  anything at any moment could go negatively viral. And so you are precarious. You've got to face
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  the truth. There's nothing that's going to protect you. If you are posting on TikTok and Twitter,
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  nothing on only, I don't know why Twitter keeps coming up, but I think that's because that's where
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  the cancellation happens most. I feel like. Yeah, so it's like anyways. So that also holds me back,
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  by the way, from having a Twitter presence, it's like, I don't need that smoke, I don't need that
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  heat. But you should get taken to Twitter anyways. And then they hate on you there. That's what
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  happened to lip gloss as well. You know what I mean? There's just vitriolic things happening on that
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  platform. And so it's this fear of wow, like people at any moment could just start saying heinous
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  things about me. And I'm sensitive. And I don't want, you know, listen, let me tell you this,
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  this would be a different conversation. If I say to you, you know, the one thing I want more than
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  anything is to be famous. And I'll do anything it takes to get there. But babes, that's not the case.
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  For me personally, I do not aspire directly for fame, but I aspire to live on this earth, my calling,
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  which I feel like has to do with using my voice, like this transmission of a message that is charged
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  with energy that you can feel from this person that she's speaking from this place of aliveness
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  and of deep thinking and of deep feeling and of like using her heart and her mind and her soul
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  and her wisdom and her doubts and her fears to serve others. That's what I was put on this earth
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  to do in a way. You know what I mean? I was put on this earth to be in community with others and
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  to love and to be like, I think the West has definitely taken this idea of purpose and made it
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  really about like a commercialization of self. But what I want to just say is let's just go back
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  and say, I think my darn my purpose to serve is to use my voice. And the consequence of continuing to
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  do that on these platforms, because obviously if you think you have something meaningful to say,
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  shouldn't you say it to as many people as could benefit from what you have to say? So that's what
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  keeps drinking bringing me back. You know what I mean? It's a fact that like this is bigger than my ego
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  and my need to protect myself from the harm of being cancelled. So to make sure you understand
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  this fear, it's this fear of this dehumanizing feeling of like, cancel, I understood. She did
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  this thing or she said she was this thing and now she's not this thing or just some sort of fear
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  anything could go wrong. Anything could happen. Like literally anything, there's no one fear.
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  It's the fact that anything can go wrong at any time. You know what I mean? The other fear
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  besides like cancellation is just the physical harm that can come from being known. You know there's
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  people who get stalked. There's people who the government attacks demonizes or criminalizes in
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  some way. There are people who are physically attacked and harmed because they're now known. They're
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  vulnerable because they're recognizable. So that's another fear that I have is that people,
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  black people have been killed or put down or just put into distress for saying a lot less. And here I
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  am. I'm creating content on decolonization on the states on individualism and I'm worried sometimes
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  about that level of precarity. You know what I mean? That level of being attacked and being
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  endangered for having an opinion as a black person as a black woman on the internet. So that
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  terrifies me. Okay, that's scary. That's not the focus of this episode. This episode is really
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  about the fear of social death. The fear of everybody punishing my name and all the people in my
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  life knowing. You know what I mean? The people who I went to or the other people you fear whose judgment,
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  the people you fear may not really be rooting for you, but probably are not even thinking about you
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  or the people who just may delight in you falling on your face. You know what I mean? Luckily my closest
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  friends are not those people and we're going to talk about solutions or like ways I try to reframe
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  this, but that is a huge fear I have. So just to give you some flavor of what I was reading when I was
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  thinking of this idea of social death is this is chapter one of the mountain is you and reminder that
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  it's a very individualistic take on what stands between you and what you want. And I was in the
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  position where it really was about me and it really was about the fact that I had the time to be
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  creating a podcast episode per week. It doesn't take that much time. I had the time to be posting
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  more in TikTok. It doesn't take that much time, but I was too afraid. It was really about me and
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  obviously there's many structural forces that shape your fear. So that's true like anti-blackness
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  and anti-woman sentiments and all of these things, but I really felt like the mountain was me and
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  so I read this book. Okay, so the mountain is you. Queue the music please babes. If there is an
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  ongoing gap between where you are and where you want to be and your efforts to close it are
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  consistently met with your own resistance, pain and discomfort. Self sabotage is almost always
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  at work. On the surface, self sabotage seems masochistic. It appears to be a product of self-hatred,
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  low confidence or lack of willpower. In reality, self sabotage is simply the presence of an unconscious
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  need that is being fulfilled by the self-sabotaging behavior. And this is really the paradigm shift
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  that I do think can offer a lot of people something. It's the idea that we just say, oh, I sabotage
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  myself. What we don't say is there is an unconscious need that I am meeting through this behavior.
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  So in my case, not posting or not sharing myself or kind of holding myself back, I was trying to
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  preserve and protect myself from the dangers that come with being overly seen and perceived.
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  And it was this feeling that what goes up must come down like the more eyes that are on me,
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  the more precarious, the more in danger I am, the more in danger of attack, the more in danger of
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  cancellation, the more in danger of being dragged, the more in danger of having something to lose.
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  So why not protect myself from having something to lose? So she says we must go through a process
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  of deep psychological excavation. We must pinpoint the traumatic event, release unprocessed emotions,
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  find healthier ways to meet our needs, to reinvent our self-image, and develop principles such as
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  emotional intelligence and resilience. It is no small task and yet it is the work that all of us
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  must do at one point or another. Then she goes on to say self sabotage is a coping mechanism.
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  Self sabotage is what happens when we refuse to consciously meet our innermost needs,
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  often because we do not believe we are capable of handling them. I think that's so, so true.
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  And in my case, the innermost need was the need to feel secure and safe.
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  And something that my therapist said is that you have to give yourself that feeling and your
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  community needs to give you that feeling. And we're going to get into what I do in response to
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  these things and that's really related is that no one can give you safety in this case, like on
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  the internet. But can you exist in such a way that you feel so much love for yourself, for your
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  community, for the people you are trying to serve, that you are in some ways, you're meeting that
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  need consciously rather than trying to protect yourself subconsciously. She says in the end,
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  self-sabotage is very often just a maladaptive coping mechanism. A way we give ourselves what we need
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  without having to actually address what that need is. But like any coping mechanism,
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  it is just that, a way to cope. It's not an answer, it's not a solution, and it does not ever
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  truly solve the problem. We are merely numbing our desires and giving ourselves a little taste
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  of temporary relief. That's so interesting. We are numbing our desires. The self-sabotaging
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  behavior is a way to numb our desires, whatever that behavior may be. And obviously this is not my
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  only self-sabotaging behavior. This is just how it's manifesting in this conversation. Okay,
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  I'm going to read one last quote from this section of the book, which is that self-sabotage comes
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  from irrational fear. Sometimes our most sabotaging behaviors are really the results of long held
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  and unexamined fears we have about the world and ourselves. And that is so, so, so true. Like,
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  it's so true that I have this irrational fear that I'll be cancelled and it will be the end of
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  the world. Everyone's going to attack me. Everyone's going to know and it's never going to end.
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  The reason why that is irrational is even if I am cancelled. It's going to be a finite event.
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  It will blow over. Like, I will survive it. I'm not the only person who's gone through this.
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  I've received just so much love from the people in our community and the people who follow me.
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  That it's just, it's a little bit irrational because it's not based on real evidence.
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  But it could always happen. So I just feel as irrational. But even if it did happen,
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  I think it's this fear that it will be this insurmountable challenge that will last forever.
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  My whole life will be changed and nothing will ever be the same. That's irrational.
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  Even if I am completely cancelled or dragged, I think that that will be an event. It will blow over.
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  Things will evolve. I'll learn things from it. Nothing ever comes in one side. There's always
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  the side that you learn the growth, the generative side. I think especially as Black creators,
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  there is this feeling that we are disposable. Another thing that happened that shook me and that
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  made me feel the sense that I was not incorrect for having this fear is the incredible, wonderful
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  sensational creator. Say him on, I don't know if how you'd pronounce their name, but they are
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  TikTok creator and Twitter creator as well. And they're just incredible. They do so much
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  education on anti-racism and white supremacy on just like therapy and healing. They are literally
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  such a divine presence and I'm obsessed. Okay, and I always, always love everything they post.
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  And it was really painful or really triggered this fear to see when one of their videos,
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  which was about how people pleasing can be manipulative, which I agree with, by the way,
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  and I'm a people pleaser. And I think that yes, I mean, even whatever, this is not the focus of
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  what I'm trying to say. But as a result of that video, they received a lot of hate. On Twitter,
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  they received so much vitriolic hate for saying that people pleasing can be manipulative.
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  And so many people literally were saying such vitriolic and awful things that I will not repeat
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  here. And I was like, this individual has literally given so much of their energy time. And even
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  if they hadn't, first of all, this individual is a human being of this earth and no one deserves
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  to be disposed of. And as black people, and it was black people doing this, and as black people,
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  how can we treat each other with such disposability? Well, it's all structural. We've been made
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  disposable. And so we inflict disposability on each other. But this divine human being has given
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  so much time, energy, love to educating people and put themselves in danger. Like it's always
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  dangerous. It's always dangerous to tell the truth. And they are a radical trutella radical trutella.
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  And here's how you like, this is how we treat people who are trying to do their best to use their
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  platform to spread messages that can bring healing and that can end forms of oppression. Like
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  it's just so wrong to me. It's incorrect. It's not okay. And so I just felt like, wow, that was
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  such a tangible and poignant example of how disposable black creators are. Like it doesn't matter how
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  much it does not matter how loving and how, you know, freedom fighting you are. As soon as some,
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  you say something that people disagree with, they will throw you away. And it's hurtful. And what
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  I always say, the reason why you will never, you will never see me criticizing a black creator on
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  the internet is because you never know. In fact, criticizing creators in general because I just have
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  like better things to do. But you, but I understand that some people like spread harm and so on. But
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  the reason why you won't see me criticizing black creators who like are aligned to love and liberation
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  and all of these like leftist or whatever you want to call it, anti-capitalist, anti like white
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  supremacist or the things like those types of creators. The reason why you'll never see me dragging
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  those creators is that you never, never know someone's mental state. You never know how close to
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  the edge they are. You never know how they feel in their daily life just because you see someone
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  posting on the internet or they may have a million followers, 100,000 followers. However many,
• 23:35
  you have no idea what they are carrying in their personal life. And the fact that you would
• 23:40
  create something that may make their burden even heavier when we're all carrying things is so
• 23:45
  painful and hurtful to me. Why would you do that? Even if you strongly disagree with what someone has
• 23:50
  done. Like, especially what I don't like is when there's already been like a takedown videos and
• 23:55
  then black, why do we make the ninth? Like, why can't we just say, okay, it's been said like that,
• 24:00
  I don't understand the pylon culture that we impose on each other. And it's really painful to think
• 24:05
  that and I'm going to talk about my experiences with cancellation next, but it's just like I will
• 24:10
  never pile on to pain. Why would I do that? You know what I mean? It's just like, why would you do
• 24:14
  that? Like, why? You know, you know, this person is receiving so much hate. Why give them more?
• 24:19
  You know what I mean? Why? As we talk about disposability, I want to read you this quote from Adrian
• 24:26
  Marie Brown. And this is from the book emergent strategy. This quote really is something that I
• 24:33
  returned to again and again and again. And it really speaks to how we can learn from nature as a way
• 24:40
  to combat disposability culture and cancel culture. This is a whole longer conversation because there's
• 24:45
  a bit of nuance when it comes to cancel culture, but I don't want to get into it right now. So I'm
• 24:49
  against disposability culture. I'm against treating people like they can be thrown away. And this,
• 24:54
  these two segments from the book emergent strategy are really going to elucidate why? Adrian Marie
• 25:00
  Brown says, nothing in nature is disposable. Part of the resilience of nature is that nothing in nature
• 25:09
  is wasted. The earth swallows it all through mouths or soil or water. This is such a simple,
• 25:17
  beautiful truth. Everything in nature is food, fuel, compost, a home for some other creature.
• 25:26
  And then she concludes this quote by saying, nothing is disposable. The cycle of life ultimately
• 25:33
  makes use of everything. And I think that is so, so profound, right? That there's nothing on this,
• 25:40
  this manure, this, this compost, this everything becomes something generative. Nothing is ever wasted.
• 25:46
  And now she contrasts this to humans. We are nature, but we don't act in accordance with ourselves
• 25:51
  as nature. Listen to these words because this is truly sensational, brilliant, and so profound.
• 25:57
  And it so speaks to the experience I just shared with lip gloss, with say him, with what my own
• 26:01
  fears are, with cancellation, with disposability and with precarity. Listen to this. Humans have made
• 26:07
  of ourselves a hierarchy of value in which some people are disposable. Can fail at being human,
• 26:15
  can be killed as a punishment, can be collateral damage, can be wasted or tortured or locked
• 26:23
  in a small box for their whole lives given no hope of transformation or a future in society.
• 26:31
  And even those of us who critique these punitive methods, who are committed to justice,
• 26:38
  practice our own versions of prisons, blacklists, takedowns, and public executions.
• 26:45
  When we do not agree with each other, we destroy each other. When we feel competitive with each
• 26:52
  other, we splinter and destroy the other. We say we don't care, and then invest time and energy
• 27:00
  into cultivating conflict with each other. When we feel scared, we destroy each other instead
• 27:06
  of working to get to the root of our fear. Like wow, can we just talk about that?
• 27:16
  And what she's inviting us into is if we are abolitionists, if we believe in a world
• 27:20
  that is free from the punitive structures of the state, that is free from state violence and
• 27:26
  violence of all forms, that is free from prisons, that is free from harm, we have to become
• 27:32
  vessels of microcosms of that world. I love what she says about we say we don't care,
• 27:39
  and then invest time and energy into cultivating conflict with each other. This looks like every
• 27:42
  single fight on the internet I've ever seen. I don't care what you say but and then it's tear down,
• 27:47
  tear down, tear down, you do care. Why don't we get to the roots of our fear? Why don't we say
• 27:51
  that hurt my feelings? You know what I mean? Why don't we hold each other instead of tear each other
• 27:56
  down? She asks this question and I'll end here. How do we shift into a culture in which conflict
• 28:03
  and difference is generative? Just as nothing in nature is disposable. So this idea that everything
• 28:09
  becomes useful for something else. How could we hold each other in such a way? Not just hold each
• 28:13
  other accountable, which I think is something that's become such a like common saying, but also
• 28:17
  hold each other in love and hold each other in such a way that repair is possible. And restorative
• 28:23
  justice as a framework is really powerful here. We're not going to get into this because this
• 28:27
  episode is getting longer than I had hoped, but that's okay because we clearly have a lot to say
• 28:31
  and so it will be said. So this reflects on those stories I shared around the creators, but it also
• 28:36
  is a bigger conversation around abolition that needs to be had. Okay, so the next thing I want to go
• 28:42
  into, number two, the second part she gets to at 30 minutes. How does this affect me? Like how does
• 28:47
  this affect how I show up? And it basically affects me by limiting myself. Like I limit myself.
• 28:53
  It may not seem like this to you because obviously I post a lot, but I have so much more that I do not
• 28:57
  post. There's so many things that I am afraid to say or there's so many things that I want to say,
• 29:01
  but I'm afraid of. And there's just been so many, I have like full hundred drafts on TikTok of
• 29:06
  videos that were perfectly okay, but I just am too scared to keep putting myself out there. And so
• 29:11
  I'll have these bursts of posting 10 videos and then not posting for two weeks trying to be
• 29:15
  consistent and then not. And then similarly with the tick with the podcast, I told you that I
• 29:19
  recorded the first episode like five times. That did not need to happen. You know what I mean? I was
• 29:23
  trying to protect myself from saying something that could get me, you know, dragged in some way,
• 29:28
  where it would be like, oh, you didn't include this person or that person. And I think with my,
• 29:32
  for example, my work on beauty, even though I love tackling the beauty culture and beauty hierarchy,
• 29:38
  it is scary to tackle an entrenched system. Like it's scary to go against what has been, you know,
• 29:44
  the status quo. And I think the idea that you're just fearless, it's very, it's almost dehumanizing.
• 29:48
  Obviously, it's meant to be a compliment, but I just think it raises the fact that it's always
• 29:52
  scary to speak out against an institution that is established and that is beloved. It's always
• 29:57
  going to be terrifying. Like you're never going to be like, yes, I'm speaking out against this
• 30:01
  prized institution that so many people love and that is core to their identity. Of course, I'm
• 30:05
  afraid so many people make sense of the world through beauty. So many people practices that bring
• 30:11
  them beauty, the identity of beauty. It's so central to their worldview that of course it's terrifying
• 30:16
  to sometimes attack that and obviously you focus on the love and the freedom that lies on the other
• 30:20
  side, but the idea that you just aren't afraid, like, for example, I'm afraid to talk more about
• 30:26
  like prison abolition and go against the state of the US because like, and even though I really
• 30:30
  want to do that, it's terrifying. Like it's very scary. So it's like, there's so many views I have
• 30:36
  on imperialism and on capitalism and on the state and on are like, especially like prison
• 30:40
  industrial complex where especially the US, like I live there, I've lived there for 10 years,
• 30:44
  it just scares me as an immigrant to be speaking out against the state. You know what I mean?
• 30:49
  That's scary. So yes, I'm afraid. So it holds back what I post. It holds me back in terms of how
• 30:55
  often I post and there's this perfectionism element that, okay, like if I'm going to do this,
• 30:58
  I have to do it perfectly, which is also a form of silencing and it's a form of self sabotage.
• 31:03
  As in your meeting, the unmet need of protecting yourself from being fully vulnerable because
• 31:08
  there's a connection between vulnerability and being allowed to be seen as imperfect.
• 31:13
  And so I think that, like, that's another way that it shows up. Okay, now we're going to get into
• 31:18
  the juicy and spiciest part of this episode, which is let me take a sip of coffee.
• 31:24
  Ooh, I just was trying to create a sound effect of like the clinking ice against the glass,
• 31:29
  but I ended up just spilling my coffee. Okay, this is the spiciest part of the party. Okay,
• 31:35
  let's talk about my experiences thus far with cancellation. And just the fact that I'm now able
• 31:40
  to speak about this means I've grown, which is amazing. So lovely. So I've had two experiences
• 31:46
  of cancellation. And the first one was when there was a vogue cover, there was a vogue cover of black
• 31:54
  women models who were all dark-skinned. I think mostly Sudanese. And it was a really powerful cover.
• 32:00
  I think it was by Edward, any feel, any full. And I posted a video on TikTok and I said that even
• 32:06
  though this may seem like it's inclusive, it's still anti-farts and fat phobic and anti-fartness
• 32:12
  is rooted in anti-blackness. And wow, did they not drag me for food? They dragged me for
• 32:19
  food. They dragged me so hard and I'm a cancer. I'm sensitive. It was very painful. Anyways,
• 32:24
  so people were like, how can you say that anti-fartness is anti-blackness? So you're saying that black
• 32:31
  people are only fat, which was an interestingly anti-fat thing to say because what would be wrong
• 32:36
  with that. But anyway, like there are black thin people, fatness is not intrinsic to blackness.
• 32:40
  And I had put in the video, you have to read Sabrina Strings book,
• 32:45
  fearing the black body, where she explains that the whole idea of anti-fartness as an
• 32:50
  ideology came to bear because from these white colonizing men, from the concept of anti-blackness.
• 32:58
  Like it was in shaping the notion of blackness that anti-fartness arise at Rose. And you have
• 33:03
  to, it's too nuanced to me to explain here, but if you search Sabrina Strings, you can learn
• 33:08
  more about this. But the point is, people were dragging me. They were being so mean. They were
• 33:13
  like really, really rude. Obviously, you must be so miserable. The social justice warriors are
• 33:19
  going too far these days. All of these things. I can't, the problem is I can't really portray
• 33:24
  the vitriol that they shared because I've like blocked it from my mind. But I just felt like the
• 33:28
  whole world was against me. And then when I went live, someone commented, hey, did you know that they've
• 33:34
  taken your video to Twitter and they're dragging you there? No, I did not know that. So I just felt
• 33:42
  so attacked. And it felt like the whole world was against me. And I remember my cousin sent me a
• 33:46
  text like, cause I stand by you. And also that made me feel weird. Like I'm glad she texted me.
• 33:50
  But I was like, damn, like people are seeing this. And so that's what I was saying. It's not just
• 33:54
  that you're being dragged, but everyone in your life knows. And I love my cousin, but it was just a
• 33:57
  testament in my brain confirming the belief that everyone was in the know. You know what I mean?
• 34:02
  That I was being dragged for what I said. And the other thing about this type of being dragged
• 34:07
  is it's by your own people, which makes you like, oh, what if there's truth in what they're saying?
• 34:11
  So this was coming from a lot of black women and a lot of African black women specifically saying,
• 34:16
  this is our first cover, you know, of only African women on Vogue. It's a big deal. And it means
• 34:20
  so many people like, why would you ruin it for these women? Why are you trying to ruin this moment?
• 34:25
  And so that, I mean, there's truth in that. I hear what you're saying. Like I get it. People didn't
• 34:29
  say it in this way. But this is how I read it with compassion now of like, yes, these women are
• 34:32
  all thin, but they've all faced a lot of anti-blackness and colorism in their industry. And so a
• 34:38
  win is a win. You know what I mean? Which I understand. And now I can see the others like,
• 34:43
  I can see that side. And that was really the commentary was like, we can't have anything like
• 34:47
  just lit at risk. I was trying to kind of problematize this idea that just including thin black
• 34:53
  women means it's inclusive, which I still disagree with. Like it's not inclusive. And it was just
• 34:57
  painful. It was really painful to have so many people against me. The other thing that they
• 35:01
  said in my life, which is also why I kind of stopped going live after that. But you see, that's
• 35:07
  me predicting myself because going live would actually probably be like, wonderful now. But anyways,
• 35:12
  was they were saying that did you know that a lot of big, big TikTok creators commented in agreement,
• 35:16
  you shouldn't have posted this video. Like a lot of big creators said, girl, like, stop. This is not
• 35:21
  necessary. And that made me feel afraid as well. At that time, I might have had like 40,000 followers,
• 35:26
  30,000 followers. And so I was like, oh, my word, all these big creators, I want them to like me,
• 35:31
  or like hating on me. And again, that's also why I said, like, I'll never do that. Like you never
• 35:36
  know what if, oh, my word, in this little three-minute section, if you just trigger warning and
• 35:41
  aliving yourself for the next like four minutes, no more than that. So in that moment, those
• 35:46
  experiences of feeling like everyone was against me, I have literally like never felt so low.
• 35:54
  You know what I mean? I've never gone to those places. I don't, I'm blessed in that. I don't
• 35:59
  bless. I'm lucky in that I don't suffer from suicidal ideation. But for the first time in my life,
• 36:04
  I did during that period. And it's so interesting to reflect on that now. And like I was the reason
• 36:09
  why I try to protect myself. And I'll tell you how is that I never want to feel like that. Like my
• 36:14
  life is worth so much more than like being made to feel worthless for something I posted on the
• 36:19
  internet. And yet you can know that intellectually. But like, I just didn't feel that way. I felt like
• 36:25
  everyone was against me. I felt like I would never live this down. It would never end. I would
• 36:30
  always be known as that goal who just couldn't let black women have a vote cover. I would always be
• 36:35
  dragged. And when I posted again, I tried to post like a apology video or something. I don't know
• 36:39
  what it was. It was kind of like a, it was one of those trying repairs and everyone was just
• 36:43
  hating on me again. And it was just so painful. And I remember my spirit feeling so low. And it was
• 36:49
  like that song from Euphoria. I never, I never felt so lonely felt so no, no, no, you know,
• 37:00
  that song. Oh, that's literally the feeling of like that Euphoria grief and pain and suffering.
• 37:07
  And it was so long ago now that you can tell my energy is distant from that moment. So the
• 37:11
  emotional charge of it. I can't like fully transmute to you because I feel like I've overcome
• 37:17
  that incident. And so that really was really terrifying. The other hate comment experience I've had
• 37:23
  is when I was basically, which I wouldn't make this video now, but because I've grown, but I was
• 37:28
  basically talking about Zendaya and Tom Holland. And I was basically saying that in heterosexual couples
• 37:33
  between black women and white men, black women are made to when we date outside of our race. There's
• 37:38
  this different kind of beauty standard wayler white man. If he dates a black woman has to, the
• 37:44
  black woman has to meet the beauty standard, the Eurocentric beauty standard. But when black women
• 37:50
  date white men, they do not have to meet that beauty standard. I still like, I understand the
• 37:55
  sentiment of what I'm saying, but people who love Tom Holland, oh my word, I was even like who
• 37:59
  is Tom Holland? And obviously he's famous. And now I actually really like him. And like I just wouldn't
• 38:04
  like talk about a human being that way. Like why, you know, why would a man be there? Like why,
• 38:09
  why would I do that? Like it's not a good use of my platform. Or like it's not a good use.
• 38:14
  I don't want to spread that kind of message, right? It also is rooted in like look is him and beauty
• 38:18
  standards. But listen, I'm not going to be defending like anyway. But anyways, a lot of Tom Holland
• 38:23
  fans were breathing down my neck. I had the straight white men being like, what do you mean who is
• 38:26
  Tom Holland? Who are you? You know, I'm praying for you. You must be so miserable to post something
• 38:33
  like this. So yeah, so like, yeah, like that did not go down well. And what did she learn from
• 38:43
  these two expiry haunts is she learned to never criticize celebrities on the internet. Like you
• 38:48
  wish it was a higher listen, babes, that was the listen. I am too weak. I'm too. My spirit is not
• 38:54
  strong enough to deal with the heat and the hate that comes from criticizing celebrities on the
• 39:00
  internet. That is when you will be dragged the worst. If you people have no God in the society,
• 39:06
  so they cling to celebrities, you know what I mean? Like people by by that, I mean, obviously a
• 39:11
  lot of people believe in God. What I mean is that so many prized and cherished institutions have
• 39:16
  been robbed from people. There are less, you know, young people engaging in collective spiritual
• 39:23
  activities. There's less third places. So they pin all of their spiritual aspirations and love
• 39:30
  onto celebrities. So celebrities are the gods of society for a lot of people on the internet.
• 39:35
  So when you critique those people, it's like you're critiquing their God. It's literally like
• 39:40
  blasphemy. You know what I mean? Like that's how they feel about it. Like that's why like if you
• 39:44
  criticize like Beyonce or like anyone who's loved babes get ready for the heat, you know what I mean?
• 39:51
  And I do think people should be like no one should be impenetrable to critique. That is a very
• 39:57
  oppressive way to live. You know what I mean? That creates, you know, that's, you know, protecting
• 40:01
  these like millionaire, billionaire class from critique is not correct. But it's just not not going
• 40:06
  to be me carrying that load on my back. I don't have to be the one criticizing this celebrity. I know
• 40:11
  other people are going to do it. And I'll hit like and I'll hit reshare. You know what I mean? Because I
• 40:16
  mean there are things that people do. Now though that I am, you know, in this position, I feel a lot
• 40:20
  more compassion towards when like something very drag worthy happens. I'm like, you know, you never
• 40:26
  really know the fullness of the situation. Like you don't know what happened. Let me just like
• 40:30
  try and be a manifestation of love on this earth. Like that's what I think I'm here to do. It's a
• 40:34
  complicated conversation because it's not that I don't believe people should be held accountable
• 40:38
  for things. It's just like there's a vitriolic and mean way that it doesn't need to happen in.
• 40:43
  So anyways, I just wanted to like give you those two examples because they completely changed my
• 40:48
  approach to TikTok in the sense that I stop criticizing celebrities. Even though those videos will
• 40:52
  go extremely viral, extremely viral. Like if you come out and say, here's one thing I don't like
• 40:57
  about or here's one thing this person did wrong. And it's like a famous person. Obviously,
• 41:01
  it's going to go super viral, but it's going to go negatively viral. And that's not what I want.
• 41:05
  That's not what I need. Okay. So I wanted to give you those two examples. So you kind of understood
• 41:09
  that I experienced those experiences. I felt extremely low. I felt worthless. I felt like,
• 41:14
  damn, I'm never going to live this down. This will never end. And that is the irrational nature of
• 41:19
  the fear. Like it does end. It does end. You do move through it. And now what I tell myself is
• 41:24
  whatever you fear has already happened. So if you fear being canceled in a way you already have
• 41:30
  been and yet here you are, you know what I mean? And even now, like I don't read every single comment
• 41:35
  on TikTok, but I'm pretty sure a lot of like some of them are negative. You know what I mean? So
• 41:39
  what I fear has happened and here I even it's happening now. Like they could be someone right now
• 41:43
  leaving a hate comment on my TikTok. And I'm alive. You know what I mean? I'm alive. Like I'm alive.
• 41:49
  I'm alive. You know what I mean? And now I really want to protect that aliveness from being
• 41:56
  vulnerable to other people's opinion of me. That brings us to section number four. Our final
• 42:02
  section of today's podcast, which is so much longer than I promised myself my parties would be
• 42:07
  30 minutes. But I guess I had a lot to share. Anyways. So part number four is the uplifting part
• 42:14
  of the story. Like what have I, what do I tell myself in the face of the fear of social death,
• 42:19
  in the face of the fear of annihilation, in the face of the fear of cancellation? What do I tell
• 42:24
  myself? Okay. Here's how I respond. And some of these are like spiritual advice and some of these
• 42:29
  are like tactical. So I tell myself become unconsolable. And you may think that that means one thing,
• 42:37
  but it means something else. So when you hear the words become unconsolable, you may think, oh,
• 42:41
  become someone that no one would cancel. That doesn't exist. So what I mean by that is become
• 42:47
  internally, do the work internally of loving yourself so much that no one could say something that
• 42:56
  would let you throw yourself away. Become someone that is so rooted in her truth and in herself
• 43:04
  that she cannot be completely toppled over by people's hate towards her. Now I think as a social
• 43:11
  being, this is not maybe fully possible. We're always going to be susceptible, vulnerable to other
• 43:16
  people's opinions of us because we're social beings and we were designed to need each other,
• 43:21
  to be interdependent, right? And that's what's happening. I'm interdependent with others, yet
• 43:26
  others are the ones who may actually end me in some sort of way. But become create a sense of
• 43:32
  peace, stability and love such that you are not so easily blown and toppled over. What does that
• 43:40
  look like? It looks like creating spaces for self intimacy, things like journaling. It looks like
• 43:47
  things like writing a love letter to yourself, things like staying deeply in touch with what you love
• 43:52
  about yourself. Listening to this again, I realized that I wanted to provide something that anyone
• 43:57
  could access and I know that many people don't have community and loved ones and a support system.
• 44:02
  And so I just want to be clear that in an ideal world, you wouldn't have to pour so deeply into
• 44:07
  yourself. You would be affirmed and supported and loved by a community of people. But I just know
• 44:12
  that a lot of people listening to this don't have that support or alone are isolated. And so I
• 44:16
  wanted to provide examples of something that the self can pour into itself. However, it is of
• 44:23
  course really important to say that if you can, if you have access to, if you have love in your
• 44:28
  life from your community, from your family, from your loved ones, from your pets, from nature,
• 44:33
  like seeking these forms of support and love can so counteract this fear of cancellation.
• 44:40
  Because when you fear being canceled, it's almost as though your online life is taking this huge
• 44:46
  priority in your life. And I'm going to talk about this further on, whereas like what I think
• 44:50
  really matters, maybe as well, if you don't want to think about it in a binary, in a binary way,
• 44:55
  is how we connect to our local community. That could be the people there or it could be the plants,
• 45:00
  the trees, like any sort of activity or something that brings aliveness into our world in a very
• 45:08
  tangible way such that like being canceled is not our huge, just, huge fear or concern because
• 45:13
  that's like online and we're living offline. Okay. And so I think become rooted in love and become
• 45:20
  rooted in something higher than other people's opinions of you. Like no one can determine you.
• 45:26
  You know what I mean? You're never, you can never be, oh, the second thing I tell myself is,
• 45:30
  you can never be reduced to one thing. I have created a whole body of work and none of that work
• 45:37
  could even represent me. But what I'm saying is if I have a video that goes negatively viral,
• 45:41
  I have like a thousand more. And like that's what I found so unfair about the sayhem example,
• 45:46
  is that no one takes into account the fullness of you. They see this one thing and they're just
• 45:51
  ready to like topple you over. And I think that's really unfair. And it kind of makes you like,
• 45:56
  okay, then what is the point? Like what is the point if you could lose it all? But then you just
• 45:59
  have to remind yourself that like those people were maybe never for you if they were so willing to
• 46:03
  dispose of you. That comes to the third point. Build an intimate community of people who deeply
• 46:10
  are invested in being in loving community with you. Who will hold you? Who it's not that you could
• 46:16
  do no wrong. It's not an unconditional and toxic kind of love. It's more the fact that they're not
• 46:20
  going to dispose of you because they're choosing a specific orientation and relation to you that is
• 46:25
  rooted in love. But basically when you're in community with people, you're not disposing of them.
• 46:30
  You're not looking for their mistakes. That's the other thing. When you create content, especially
• 46:34
  like this, you have to decide, who am I making this for? Am I making this for the people who are
• 46:37
  going to disagree with me? In which case you put all these caveats exceptions, you're like
• 46:41
  trying to be so careful. Or am I making content for the people who do support me and who want to hear
• 46:47
  the best and what I'm saying and who want to give me the benefit of the doubt and who want to hold
• 46:51
  me and grow with me? You know what I mean? Who want to pour into me and who I want to pour into?
• 46:55
  So that's been really critical as well. That is why I started a sub-stack because it's like
• 47:00
  you're not going to go to someone's newsletter or podcast and this you really like genuinely
• 47:05
  fuck with them. Like I know that if there's a content creator that I listen to their podcast,
• 47:09
  it's because I genuinely fuck with them. There's not something that they could do that would just
• 47:13
  make me like fuck you and then and publicly be like, you did this and this. I dashes not how I relate
• 47:19
  to people. So it's simply like I would want to love them through that. I would want to hold them
• 47:22
  through that. I make question what they did. Obviously sometimes you see something and you're like,
• 47:26
  I don't agree with that, but I'm not going to externalize or punish someone. I'm just going to say
• 47:30
  like, oh, maybe I don't know the full story and move on with my die. You know what I mean? I move on
• 47:35
  with my day. So that idea of create an intimate space, a space where you can more deeply connect,
• 47:39
  where you can share yourself in this way that you're not like susceptible to everyone just like
• 47:44
  criticizing you. I think that's so important and I would say if you're a content creator or a
• 47:47
  spy creator, even if you have nothing to say, just have a link in your bio. If only I done this
• 47:53
  from the beginning where you have a newsletter, please because you have no ability to speak to your
• 47:59
  audience unless you have their email addresses. Otherwise, the algorithm owns your connection to
• 48:04
  the people who resonate with your voice. And I think that's so incorrect. So make sure you have
• 48:09
  just a landing page newsletter where you can take people's emails who really, really fuck with you.
• 48:14
  That's going to be so, so helpful. The fifth, I don't even know what number it is,
• 48:17
  thing I tell myself is this feeling connects you to so many people. That's something I say often.
• 48:24
  If you're afraid of being cancelled, if you've been cancelled, you're not the only one. And no,
• 48:29
  I'm not the only one. Like you're not the only one. You know what I mean? There's so many other
• 48:35
  people who feel that way and who have felt that way and who have overcome it. Like being cancelled,
• 48:41
  how many people around the world right now are sitting in their rooms like crying or who just got
• 48:45
  over this experience are feeling like public. It could be they were cyber bullied at their school.
• 48:50
  It's like a human experience now of like being on the internet is that you are you are vulnerable
• 48:56
  to people hating on you in a public way. The sixth thing I tell myself is that no one can die for you.
• 49:02
  So if you stop yourself from sharing your voice and sharing your truth and putting yourself out there,
• 49:07
  you have to remember that like if you're doing that to protect yourself from what other people
• 49:11
  think of you, you're letting them control you and decide for you when when it comes to your day,
• 49:16
  my day of death. They're not going to die for you. And they shouldn't. I'm not saying they should.
• 49:21
  And so I think even though that may be a bit jarring, it reminds us. It's just like that book. I
• 49:26
  haven't read it, but there's that book that's like the five regrets of the dying. One of those
• 49:30
  regrets is I wish I had had the confidence to live a life that was true to myself. It's something
• 49:37
  like that. And I just think that's so true. You are the one who must be true to yourself. Like it's
• 49:42
  like, who are you? I'm the one who's going to die. You know what I mean? And so I'm the one who's
• 49:46
  got to live in accordance with that truth that I feel within myself. So if you feel cold to do
• 49:51
  something, babes, you have to do it. You don't have to do anything. But like let yourself live a
• 49:56
  microversion of that. You know what I mean? That's what I think. The seventh thing I tell myself,
• 50:01
  this is actually probably much higher on the list, but whatever is build an offline life that you
• 50:06
  love so much that your online life is irrelevant. And next year, I really want to join like a dance
• 50:12
  group like I started dance classes, but then I stopped because of resistance. But next year,
• 50:15
  I wouldn't do that again because I want like some sort of community element that is so not rooted
• 50:20
  in this idea of you as a content creator, because it's like the ego, honestly, like it's the
• 50:24
  ego death that needs to keep happening. The eighth thing that I want to leave you with, and this is
• 50:28
  my favorite of all of the things that I've left you with in terms of what I tell myself is
• 50:34
  there's this idea that the internet is a shallow place that being a social media content creator,
• 50:40
  oh, you must be so shallow. You must be so frivolous. You know what I mean? Like you must not have
• 50:45
  like this deep value system, right? Like if someone says, oh, I'm an influencer, I'm a creator. You're
• 50:49
  like, oh, like you create little videos on the internet. Like I'm not like that, but a lot of people,
• 50:53
  that's their reaction. I've had this in my life as well. They're like, oh, you just like, you know,
• 50:57
  they belittle what you're doing. Nothing is one thing. And there's paradox in everything.
• 51:03
  Paradoxically, this journey of sharing myself publicly has made me have to face myself in such a
• 51:10
  deep and intimate way, face what I don't like about myself, face what I'm afraid to be seen as,
• 51:15
  face my truth and face my voice and my power, face that I have things to say, face that I have an
• 51:21
  energy within me that deserves to be transmitted. We all do. But that like, this is my calling. I've
• 51:26
  had to face that. And in this process of facing the self, such deep and generative growth has
• 51:32
  happened, such self love and self intimacy and self understanding has happened from this so
• 51:37
  called frivolous channel. And so there's this idea that the things that trigger you are your
• 51:42
  invitation to really look more deeply at yourself. So my fear of being canceled is tied to my need
• 51:48
  to people, please. You know, my fear of being canceled is tied to the feeling that I feel
• 51:53
  disposable in myself. I throw myself away when I'm not doing a good job at something. I'm the
• 51:58
  one. I'm the one who gets to decide like that I am disposable. You know what I mean? And I do
• 52:03
  that to myself. I'm like, Oh, you're worthless now. You know, because this shameful thing happened
• 52:08
  to you. And so I want to love myself so much to the point of number one that I'm never worthless.
• 52:13
  I'm always full of worth. We all are. We're always worthy. And the beautiful thing about this idea
• 52:18
  is that your message, your message, that's what Sahara Rose, I love her podcast. By the way,
• 52:22
  it's called the highest self. She has like 500 episodes. So you definitely will find something
• 52:26
  that resonates with you there. But essentially, she says that whatever you feel wounded by,
• 52:31
  it's like it's your work to help that wound heal in society. So if you are feeling wounded by
• 52:39
  shame, which I am, you can bring people the idea, the notion that they are not shameless. And that's
• 52:47
  what I try to do. I take this pain that I have and I try to make a generative for others. I say to
• 52:53
  them, there's nothing that you could do that would make you worthless. There's you are the universe.
• 52:58
  You are natural. Every manifestation of you, everything you do, even if you feel so embarrassed
• 53:02
  by it is not intrinsically embarrassing. It's that you live in a society that shames you out of
• 53:07
  being yourself. All of this messaging, where does it come from? It comes from my spirit. It comes
• 53:13
  from my sensitivity. And that's the paradox of sensitivity that's so profound is that the
• 53:19
  beauty of sensitivity is that you are sensitive to the world. That means you are able to be
• 53:24
  attuned to the world and to yourself. But the pain of sensitivity is that you are sensitive to
• 53:30
  the world. And so that is the real energy that I draw from. Is my being sensitive? Is the fact
• 53:35
  that there's many people who say things like, Oh, I don't care what people say about me. I'll
• 53:39
  never be one of those people. I do care. But as such, there's a part of the human experience that I
• 53:44
  can tap into that resonates with people because it's rooted in feeling, which we are. We are
• 53:50
  feeling beings. So it's like this thing that you're so afraid of actually could be what makes you
• 53:55
  so like powerful at the thing that you want to do. You know what I mean? Like that is your craft.
• 54:00
  That is your work. That is your energy. Is this pain that you are afraid to move towards? If you
• 54:06
  are willing to face it and be like, This is what I fear. This is the pain. This is the shame. This
• 54:11
  is the uh, you can use that make a generative and share it and channel it into what you're doing
• 54:16
  and share it with others. So yes, I fear being cancelled and it may happen. You know what I mean?
• 54:20
  Again, it's already happened. It may happen again and it may happen again and again and again.
• 54:25
  But it's if without that fear would be a there would be no sensitivity to the notion of that
• 54:32
  precarity, which I'm now able to give voice to, which is powerful, which may speak to at least one
• 54:36
  person. So it's all power babes. It's all energy and we don't have to let the fear stop us.
• 54:42
  And sometimes it does because we're human beings and that's okay. And so then that is what it is.
• 54:46
  You know what I mean? And so I just want to say to you like listen, like maybe one day they'll
• 54:51
  be a group for cancelled people like there's always something generative that can occur. You know
• 54:55
  as more and more of us are sharing ourselves in the internet, there's going to be a social
• 54:59
  infrastructure that will form where they'd be online or offline to support that need that's
• 55:04
  becoming more and more prevalent. And because so many of us face this fear, so many of us face the
• 55:09
  fear of social annihilation, of judgment, of embarrassment, of cringe worthiness, and of just
• 55:14
  being dragged. So so many of us are going to band together and find community with each other and
• 55:19
  find resonance and find our people through our fear. So our fear can connect us to one another.
• 55:24
  Like oh I fear that too. Let's talk about it. You know what I mean? So yes. So here I am. This is
• 55:30
  what I'm doing. I'm facing my fear. I hope that you learned something in today's conversational.
• 55:34
  It was like an hour, which is wild. I love you so much. You can be afraid and create
• 55:39
  anyways. Okay, I promise you. But this is really about my experience. I hope that it resonated with
• 55:44
  you in some way or the other because I'm sending you all the love and I'm sending you all the vibes.
• 55:49
  You are enough and your fear does not have to stop you. It can because that is the self-meeting
• 55:54
  that need that you can choose to meet consciously. But I promise you you're not disposable.
• 55:59
  There is nothing you could do that could make you worthy of being thrown away. And so I just
• 56:03
  want to say we are worthy. We are composed. I'm sending you lots of love, lots of light,
• 56:09
  lots of happiness, lots of joy, lots of peace, lots of tranquillity. Okay. I hope that you find
• 56:15
  love in the world in the universe and I hope that it finds you in the coming weeks, months,
• 56:20
  years of your life. There's forms of love that you will experience that you don't even know
• 56:24
  are possible at the moment. I manifest that for you. I hope some paradigms have been shifted for
• 56:29
  you in today's conversation. As always, if you can, please leave a five star rating on Apple
• 56:34
  and Spotify. Like, comment, subscribe. I love you so, so much. Okay. I love you. Join me on my
• 56:40
  sub-slag. Links in the comment section. Go there. Okay. Love you so much. Love you. Bye.