00:01:40.160Welcome to For the Wild. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we're talking with Adrienne Marie Brown,
00:01:49.200author of Loving Corrections. Oh, Adrienne, it has been a minute. Thanks for coming back on
00:01:56.140For the Wild for so many years now. Well, thank you, sweetie. It's wonderful. I love the
00:02:00.960conversations we get to have here. Me too. They have definitely shaped me and tumbled me over
00:02:07.880the years and just trying to make sense of this I want to say crazy world but that almost it just
00:02:14.460seems a little silly to say I don't know it's yeah it's an intense place to be I think if it
00:02:22.400is like an unfurling world or an unraveling world like there's a lot of systems that have been woven
00:02:28.320really really tightly around our imaginations and our hearts that are now crumbling and unraveling
00:02:35.660and we're having to figure out who we are again yeah the unfurling world I'm gonna
00:02:45.380note that one well I am so grateful and excited for your new book Loving Corrections and
00:02:56.860I found it really profoundly relevant to so much of what I've been thinking through and
00:03:05.200to what I feel like the world really needs right now or for those of us who are in this
00:03:12.900quandary consciously. Maybe unlike other interviews we've done, I really want to go
00:03:19.100slowly and deeply into the text if you're open to doing that with me today. Of course I am.
00:03:26.080Okay, cool. Great. So maybe as we start, I just want to give you some space to talk about
00:03:32.260how the book is sitting for you right now and what types of conversations you hope it prompts?
00:03:39.500Well, you know, I just, I don't know if you know this, but I just came off of a Southern
00:03:44.180regional driving book tour. So I've gotten to be in a lot of gorgeous conversations about the book.
00:03:52.360And what I'm finding is it's giving me room to talk about the things that matter to me right now
00:03:58.100and to talk about the things that, you know, have been breaking my heart.
00:04:03.020You know, I have a tender heart and a lot touches me and moves me.
00:04:07.600But I'm really excited about it because I think that what I've noticed is that people are really hungry
00:04:13.840to be having a different kind of conversation, but feel like they don't know how.
00:04:18.060And I'm like, these are not mysterious things.
00:04:20.700Like there's a long history of us having difficult conversations as humans,
00:04:25.740of having differences and divergent opinions and having to make community with each other.
00:04:31.220And in some ways, this is a course correction and a reminder, you know, like, let me just
00:04:37.320remind you that we actually don't have to go backwards.
00:04:41.620We know some things and we have worked hard to understand and build shared analysis and
00:04:48.860build shared practice around being with each other.
00:04:51.700And then we've been in an onslaught of cruelty, a cruel minded politics, small politics, you know, confrontational for no reason, you know, confrontational where we need collaborative, you know, that's been happening.
00:05:09.700And I think if we're not careful, we fall right into those conversational patterns and lose sense of our values.
00:05:17.020So it's been really beautiful to get to have these conversations with people like, oh, wait, that's not who we are.
00:05:23.700We actually care about this, you know, and we don't have to surrender our care of each other in this time.
00:05:31.240That's not I don't think going to help us get where we're trying to go.
00:05:35.140So I've been loving the conversations and I'm loving sitting with the book.
00:05:38.760it feels very practical and covers a lot more ground than I've necessarily gotten to cover in
00:05:44.340like one book before. So, um, yeah, I'm really enjoying it. Yeah. Thank you for that. I like
00:05:51.200the idea of collaborative rather than confrontational. And I notice in my own
00:06:00.380organizing work in rural Alaska for the last few years, there's actually so much that
00:06:07.920people, myself included in that we, and we is a hard word to use a lot, but I've noticed that
00:06:16.240there's actually so much more in common with those who I thought were the quote opposite of who I
00:06:22.120was. And when the space opens up to move out of the confrontation and into the collaborative,
00:06:30.040the love is there. The sparkling eyes are there looking back at you, excited about the thing that
00:06:37.780you love. And so I've really been noticing that in my own life. And I'm just thinking about the
00:06:43.980language of your book, and I'm really intrigued by, quote, loving corrections. And I just want
00:06:51.340to dive more into a quote you write in the introduction to the book where you say,
00:06:55.600ideas that are oppositional to my survival, ideas I have come to overtly disagree with
00:07:01.280as I have developed my own politic have still shaped me and are rooted into me. Only loving
00:07:08.080corrections have helped me become intentional about who and how I want to be and grow, end quote.
00:07:15.480So I just love to hear more about this concept of disagreement and maybe about how we come to know
00:07:23.580about ourselves through interaction with the other. Yeah, I mean, I think that
00:07:31.200like many people, I sometimes when I come across something that I'm like, oh, that's ridiculous.
00:07:37.900My instinct is to completely dismiss it. My instinct is to say, that's ignorant. That's dumb.
00:07:43.360So much so that I'll be like, no one could even possibly believe that. And so I won't engage it
00:07:47.540seriously as something to wrap my mind around. And instead of engaging and staying in relationship,
00:07:54.980I just let myself drift away from it. What I think is happening right now is we're living
00:07:59.200in the country that a lot of people have drifted away from each other or pushed each other away,
00:08:04.020built fences, built walls between each other. So these ideas like white supremacy, like patriarchy,
00:08:10.000things that I was like, I was politicized by people who cared about me to understand that
00:08:14.280those ideas didn't go with my survival, didn't go with my sense of self. But those ideas have taken
00:08:21.040hold again of like a new generation of people. And we haven't been contending, I don't think,
00:08:28.660in the way we need to, we're not contending as if we want to be in relationship with each other and
00:08:33.100have a future together. Again, it's satisfying, you know, just be like, what's wrong with you
00:08:37.160for still being a white supremacist? You know, what's wrong with you for that? Instead of saying,
00:08:41.660what's wrong with the world? What systems are in place? What desperation is in place that has
00:08:48.440allowed this to become such a loud, central way that people are trying to build community with
00:08:55.420each other. Because underneath it all, that's still what's happening is people are looking for
00:09:00.060belonging and looking for someone who will say, the way you are is okay. In my own world, I notice
00:09:07.400where do power dynamics show up? Where is my patriarchy? Where is my power over? Where is my
00:09:15.620capitalism? For me, it shows up as this sense of needing to be in comparison or competition with
00:09:22.460others. And I'm like, that's not my true nature. And that's not how I truly feel about most of the
00:09:27.340people I'm in relationship with, but it can still show up. And I think one of the things that
00:09:33.060happens under pressure is that those ideas, they kind of hook onto behaviors. And one of the
00:09:41.580behaviors is moving towards antagonism and division and attack at the moment we most need
00:09:47.360to like reach out and grab each other's hands and deepen the relationship and deepen understanding.
00:09:54.060On a large scale, it's like not just rejecting the ideas. That's part of why I wanted to show
00:09:58.440like models of what it looks like in relationship in the book, because it's not just having like
00:10:03.260idea supremacy. It's actually saying like the ideas are tied to practices and tied to culture
00:10:10.660that we're all swimming in and all embedded in. And if we want to contend with these ideas,
00:10:15.240we have to not just point our fingers at people who are living them most loudly but we have to
00:10:20.320also eradicate them as practices we're engaging in yeah I've really seen myself in the other
00:10:29.540in the last few years and it's been a challenging process I think I won't go too far into this
00:10:38.880story but for those of you know listeners who know I've been an anti old growth logging activist for
00:10:46.740years and have been fighting the good fight and anti-mining activists on salmon habitat anyway so
00:10:55.260I'm getting to know this logger and he's in my house and you know I'm kind of feeling all sorts
00:11:04.540of feelings about this interaction and he's pointing out the old growth beams that hold up
00:11:11.320my little cabin and I am wanting to feel defensive and well it wasn't me who cut those trees and it
00:11:20.800wasn't me who built the cabin and you know every way I could to not be with him in that truth and
00:11:29.180that has worked me like a river stone for a long time. And, and so seeing myself in the other in
00:11:37.540all sorts of ways, even the the most disgusting is too strong of a word, maybe but like, even like,
00:11:43.600no, I'm definitely not that. Yes, that's right. You know, just like, no, no, no. And then when
00:11:50.240I came to the Yes, I am in my own ways. And can I still love myself and forgive myself and move
00:11:58.220through that and come to some other form not to say I can escape it because I can't escape
00:12:04.760the world this one reality that we're inhabiting but I can change maybe not you know the big
00:12:15.060the big sea change of but I don't know maybe we'll get into the big sea change
00:12:19.940well yeah I really hear that and I yeah there's another quote before you jump to another quote
00:12:26.820There's something I want to say about that experience you just shared with your blogger
00:12:30.380companion, which is, you know, one of the things about these ideas to me is that they're the water
00:12:36.480that we're swimming in. And so one of the things that people try to do, and they're like, how can
00:12:41.760you say something like you're also complicit, you're also participating in the same system.
00:12:45.720And it's like, exactly, it's the water we're swimming in. Part of why I stay in relationship
00:12:50.640with people that I might otherwise not want to be in relationship with, is because I can't get
00:12:55.280away from these ideas simply by moving away from those people because they're all around me it's
00:13:01.200the structure that we're in so my liberation is then tied up with those who i would identify as
00:13:07.500other because those are the ones who are gonna it's like we all have to get free together
00:13:11.840we all have to get as many of us to tip the scale away from causing that harm as possible
00:13:18.380because it's the water we're swimming in right and so if someone looks at me and says you're
00:13:25.040wet. I'm like, yeah, I'm also in the same water. And that's part of why it matters to me. That's
00:13:31.300part of why it's urgent. These things are urgent to me because I'm like, I can't get out of the
00:13:37.280world of white supremacy by myself. I have to get out of it because all of us, or as many of us as
00:13:42.940possible, decide we're all going to set down these practices of supremacy and pick up something else.
00:14:25.040So this quote that I want to read now, it continues on this flow. So quote, what does it mean to intentionally decide to stay in relationship with humanity, to not count anyone out based on identity? What if I didn't take it all personally? What if I saw the patterns that most offended me as instigation for my own growth?
00:14:48.720What if these patterns helped me to set better boundaries and increase my own self-adoration?
00:14:54.060What if I wanted to maximize my potential to be in right relationship with everyone I meet?
00:15:00.660I want to hear more about this focus on relationality and how we can turn to love when confronted with opposition as a practice.
00:15:11.180Mm-hmm. I went through a long period of study of semantics and something included in that is
00:15:18.300Aikido. Aikido is one of the fundamental practices inside of the lineage that I learned. And part of
00:15:24.940it is always figuring out how do I harness the energy that's coming at me so I can let it be
00:15:31.040even more powerful as a part of me rather than moving up against it. And that's part of what's
00:15:38.020happening for me in these moments where I'm like, oh, something is coming up that I feel opposition
00:15:42.720to, or that is identifying itself as being in opposition to me. How could I harness this energy
00:15:49.340to be a part of my liberation? Because I know moving against it, in most of the situations
00:15:55.580I've been in, in my adult life, in most of the struggles I've been in, in my adult life,
00:16:00.320we are in movement. We have less resources. We have material resources, which means we have
00:16:07.900less time, which means we have less people often. We can't afford to just buy a ton of books who
00:16:14.580are going to show up and do this work. So that means I have to be really strategic about my own
00:16:20.920energy and the energy of the people that I'm working with. And that harnessing, it becomes
00:16:26.320liberatory. It's like, oh, I can harness this for my own work. This sense of like, I don't want the
00:16:34.180world to have white supremacy? Great. How do I eradicate that in myself? How do I learn and
00:16:39.260unlearn? What do I need to learn and unlearn? So I think that's maybe the first piece of it.
00:16:45.520I think the second piece of it, which feels tender to me, is that often the opposition
00:16:51.620is holding up the mirror of something that is really true and deep in us. And part of why we
00:16:58.200go so hard against it is that we're like, I don't want to be a part of this deep wound.
00:17:03.060You know, I look at what we're living in right now, how we treat the earth, how we treat each other.
00:17:08.500I'm like, we're living on open wounds.
00:17:11.400The wound, you know, I live in the U.S.
00:17:12.960It's just like the way this country was created, the country, this country was founded is it's a terrible wound and it's never been healed.
00:17:23.600And we keep moving forward and keep moving forward and just building on top of it.
00:17:28.560So when I come up against this opposition, I'm like, okay, if I can't get the white supremacist in front of me to heal, how do I begin to heal that wound? Because I know the wound is still there and I know it's festering. I know it needs healing. And that takes a different kind of work.
00:17:44.380It's really different to point at someone else's behavior, their wounds, their shortcomings.
00:17:50.200It's very different to point than it is to receive, to receive feedback, to ask for feedback,
00:17:56.120to consider that these things, these wounds are also festering in us.
00:17:59.680But it also makes me hopeful because I'm like, I can't control what anyone else does.
00:18:05.440You know, I can absolutely change and transform what I do.
00:18:10.120And I think that's part of what we're here to do is to be agitating each other and helping each other grow, helping each other learn to love, helping each other learn to change.
00:18:22.280Yeah, I want to talk more about that idea of pointing the finger.
00:18:27.260Throughout the book, you make a key distinction between loving corrections and judgment.
00:18:34.660And for instance, in writing imagination, celebrating Ursula and her loving corrections, you write quote, I was thinking about this as an adjacent problem for social justice workers. We are so great at judgment. We are great at coming up with the detailed plans for how everyone else needs to change, what society needs to do, how everyone else is a mess, flawed, failing.
00:19:00.220We love to tell people about themselves, invite them to be told.
00:19:04.240And I am naming this tendency with love because in this political moment, even for optimists,
00:19:09.780it can seem that there's not a lot of good going on.
00:19:13.460Yet it's not enough to spend the time listing out how our opposition is horrible, deplorable.
00:19:20.920How do we instead start to take on the responsibility of calling things out in real time as they
00:19:26.180happen. Naming the society we want, flexing the muscle of imagination, and applying it to
00:19:32.320everything we practice, end quote. I just love that you bring this up because I really feel this,
00:19:39.440this crossroads that I think justice movements are at. And I want to really hear you flush out
00:19:47.900the difference between loving corrections and the type of judgment you're describing here a bit more.
00:19:53.260Yeah. So I think to go there, I want to go back a little bit and say part of where I started to be politicized, to learn by politicized, I mean just to learn about the world as it is, you know, like what is what is the history of the world?
00:20:11.140how did it come to be this way? As I was learning those things, one of the first places I landed was
00:20:17.260at something called the Harm Reduction Coalition in New York. And it was working with people who
00:20:22.160are active drug users, sometimes sex workers and other folks. But most of the learning that I was
00:20:27.560doing was around active drug users. And this idea that judging people and shaming people and
00:20:35.380humiliating people and thinking that you can control other people is not what actually helps
00:20:39.280people navigate their addiction, trusting them to find within themselves the life that they want to
00:20:46.940live, the quality of life that they want to have, and then supporting them to move towards it. That's
00:20:51.220what actually does it. And you have to honor the sovereignty in someone, but offer them options,
00:20:57.520you know, offer them safety, offer them possibilities for their own liberation. So
00:21:02.780that's what's flowing into my non-judgment practice. You know, I've been in it for a long
00:21:07.720time now, but I've seen it in my own life that I'm like, oh, what if I come at someone and my
00:21:13.260stance is I am so much better than you and I'm so much smarter than you and I have so much more to
00:21:20.380offer the world than you do. And in other ways, just, you know, downplaying their humanity and
00:21:26.580their miraculousness, it doesn't help them get any freer and it doesn't help me get any freer.
00:21:32.280It doesn't help us get any closer. It doesn't help us build better community.
00:21:36.840So, and, you know, I'm a pragmatic person. If something works, I will usually try to figure
00:21:42.200out a way to work with it. But judgment doesn't actually work as a tool for transformation.
00:21:47.680So if you set it down, then all of a sudden you have to find other options and you have to see
00:21:52.820what are the other possibilities. And so I look at myself. I love reading about Octavia. I love
00:21:58.200reading about Ursula. I love reading about Audre Lorde. I love reading about James Baldwin.
00:22:01.460And something that these writers that I look up to, these thinkers and visionaries that I look up to, something I have in common, is that they were willing to look back at themselves to consider where they might have been wrong, to consider where they wanted to change and what they wanted to ask other people to join them in changing.
00:22:52.120So it's a different thing to sit down with someone and say, there's something that is happening between us that's pulling us apart. It's keeping us from each other. One of the risks of this, or one of the maybe realities is just a better way to say it, is that you might lose people. And when we're judging people, we're losing them anyway, whether they act lost or not.
00:23:13.560because sometimes people will stay around those who are judging them, but they'll be withdrawn
00:23:18.760or withholding actual intimacy, withholding actual relationship. I think there's so many
00:23:23.420formations that I look at where there's a lot of lonely people in and around each other with no
00:23:28.180clue about how to talk with each other because they don't know how to discern and they don't
00:23:32.220know how to fight. You know, they don't know how to just have an argument, hold a political
00:23:36.780difference. Taking the judgment out of it allows for a cleaner fight. And it's also, again, I'll
00:23:45.300keep coming back to this piece around pointing to where the harm is actually coming from. When we
00:23:51.360act like the harm is coming from that person that they just woke up one day and it's like, I hate
00:23:55.720Black people, or I just woke up one day and I hate the earth, that buries so much of the truth of how
00:24:03.020we end up in these situations. And what we want to do is actually come into accountability with
00:24:08.480how we end up in the situation so we can actually change them. So once judgment's out of the way,
00:24:13.180I feel like I'm able to clear my mind and see what's actually happening.
00:24:17.040Yeah. I used to think that shame and judgment were good tools and maybe because of the way
00:24:26.620that I grew up. And so I would actually inflict it on myself before I was an activist, but
00:24:32.540I wanted to see the truth of the world and felt it before I started understanding it more intellectually, definitely in my earlier activist life. I remember even my, and sorry for those who came to these talks, but I was really, gosh, I just love to shame humanity and myself in that.
00:24:55.460There was a lot of hatred. And I think I felt very righteous in that shame and hatred. We, quote, deserved it. I deserved it. Look at how horrible we are. I am. How could we even think of doing this eco side? We are inflicting eco side. We're killing ourselves. We're killing each other. We're killing everything we love. How dare we look at us? Just like, really?
00:25:19.500I actually thought that was accountability. I thought if we could truly see how deplorable we were, we would have to change because we wouldn't be able to stand it. We'd feel so bad that we would even consider doing things that killed whales, that we would just say, I can't do this anymore. And we would get up and completely change.
00:25:38.040But obviously, realized over many years that it didn't change me or anyone. And it actually, I think, really halted change and created more wounds on the wounds on the wounds on the wounds that you were referring to earlier.
00:25:55.920And so, yeah, I just feel very connected to this thread because I also think of it in terms of addiction. And my own addictions are the addictions we have been fed through countless ways of being a modern human.
00:26:15.360And even with my own family and the addictions there and thinking, oh, I can, like, if I just shamed them, then they would change.
00:26:24.660And these people are close to me and I could really get to them, you know?