About a week before Christmas, I came across a list of  feminist books for young girls that dismantle the patriarchy. I was intrigued, and ended up buying a number of them as Christmas presents for my three-year old daughter. Her current favorite of the lot is  A is for Activism by Innosanto Nagara; she requests it every night before bedtime (followed by  Ada Twist Scientist, which is Mama's current favorite). The other night we finished the last page, and she asked me, “Mom, are you an activist?”. I paused and rolled that question around in my head. I had certainly never thought of myself in that way before. 

 

Growing up, my parents were socially liberal in a lot of ways, encouraging me to be colorblind, and to be accepting - even celebrating - of different sexual orientations and gender identifications. And they also raised me to believe that politics were private, and not to be talked about except within the family. But the time we live in is different now. I am different now. When I moved to Oakland almost a decade ago, I realized I wasn’t colorblind at all; to my shock, I discovered I had a tremendous amount of bias and fear, very deep in my nervous system. I talked to my husband about it, acknowledging the undeniable racism I was feeling in myself, and the seeds for my current work were planted. 

 

I’ve spent the better part of my adult life in a deep and earnest search for my authentic self, and for feeling a connection to my Spirit, myself, and my community. I take radical action all the time internally through my Pilates, yoga, and self-relection practices, and I’ve been steadily and courageously eradicating the dullness, resignation, patriarchy and racism that bored its way into my cell tissue as a young person. I orient towards the most local of politics - the politics of my personhood, my body, my spirituality, my femininity, my sense of freedom. I do this work for myself  and so that I can be the best wife, mother, friend, teacher, community-builder and leader possible. More recently, I’ve felt called to organize and systematize an initiative of anti-racist strategies inside the administration and company culture of Innerstellar. We have been putting this plan into action over the past year, and are now going deeper. 

 

Today, we announce to you a small but vital part of that initiative, our  Stellarflow Yoga Teacher Training Scholarship for People of Color. This has been in gestation for over two years, and I’m extremely proud and excited to see what comes of it. It’s thrilling to me to be able to make meaningful change right here inside the walls of our beloved studio.

 

Today, I am getting packed to make the drive from my parents’ house in New Jersey to D.C., where I’ll march with many thousands of other women this Saturday to protest the Trump presidency and all that it signifies to me -- corporate greed, sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia and violence towards the Earth and its people. I am marching for a good many things I care passionately about, but most of all, I am marching for my daughter. That she may learn how to take action, internally and externally, and discover how to use her privilege to do extraordinary things to heal herself and the planet and its people. 

 

She asked me if I was an activist, and I said, “Yes, I am. Are you?"