What if you risked failing spectacularly?
What would you let yourself say "yes" to?
I filled a dozen boxes and a couple of tote bags with 250 cardboard envelopes. Each one held my new book, Last Days, Gabrielle Civil’s new chapbook, ( ghost gestures ), and a poster by Jess X Snow. Patti stuffed the trunk full of the boxes and squeezed the rest into the backseat of our car. At the post office, we piled them up on the counter—miniature cardboard towers that Elena, the most good-natured postal worker I’ve ever met, dismantled one by one.
Three hours later, our books were finally making their way to activists, organizers, healers, and cultural workers across the country.
Almost exactly a year ago, Patti and I dreamed this project into being, sitting under a spinning ceiling fan in a vacation rental near the Atlantic Ocean. My heart pounded as we made a list of all the people we could ask to help support this dream of giving away my book to hundreds of organizers. The worried critic in my head wrung her hands and chided, This is too big, too ambitious, too much. Just who do you think you are to ask people to help you out? What if it doesn’t work out? What if you fail?
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On Prentis Hemphill’s excellent podcast, Finding Our Way, abolitionist and transformative justice organizer Mariame Kaba talks about how she isn’t afraid of failing. She embraces it as a way to learn, as a way to keep honing and improving her transformative justice practices. She points out that the corporate world encourages people to take big risks, and that big failures are celebrated. Google and Coke are just two of the (pretty awful) transnational corporations that award or celebrate spectacular failures.
But in the world of social justice (and elsewhere), people are terrified of failure. Much of the time, we don’t celebrate when we fail—no, we are ashamed or scared. We blame ourselves and each other. We call into question our worth as people, as organizers, as organizations.
This discussion made me wonder why risk-taking is encouraged for capitalist bros (because let’s be real, it’s mostly white men who are taking risks and failing in the service of ultimately enriching shareholders and/or becoming filthy rich), while the rest of us clamp down on our biggest dreams or wildest ideas.
The fear of failure makes it that much harder to take risks, to dream big, to keep challenging ourselves to do things differently, to keep learning, to keep getting better at making transformative change. This is a real problem. How will we create a world that’s different from the one we live in now unless we try new things? And trying new things will most definitely lead to failures as well as successes.
I’m sure some of the fear of failure in the social justice space has to do with the scarcity mindset that the nonprofit funding model creates. Foundations and donors want to see progress and advancement. Until very recently, almost all funders wanted quarterly or yearly reports that showed how a fundee had successfully achieved their “deliverables.” If organizations couldn’t show progress or success, their funding was/is in jeopardy. No wonder organizations by and large are risk-averse.
But Kaba also makes the link between failure and being a “good” person. Outside of the corporate world, most of us have internalized the idea that if we fail, we are somehow “bad.” As I remembered my inner critic’s voice in the early stages of my book launch project, this concept resonated with me deeply. I was afraid if I failed, I would be seen as less worthy, as a bad poet and change-maker.
Kaba, in her clear and insightful way, questions the entire notion of labeling people as “good” or “bad.” She argues that we all have the potential to be good and to be bad, and striving to be a good person isn’t interesting to her:
Am I a good person? I really accurately reject that. I’m not interested in being good. I’m interested in being. I’m interested in being [with all my flaws], and that’s what actually allows me to connect with other people. Because the constant obsession with “being good” is a separating factor for me, from other people.
Am I taking actions that are doing good things in the world? Am I actualizing those values that I have that are deeply held values, that I’m constantly struggling to put into action and to inhabit? That’s much more interesting to me.
I find this profoundly radical and freeing. If I worry less about whether I need to prove that I am a good person by not failing, I can spend more time taking action toward the change I want to see. I can risk more; I can risk failure. I’d rather live this way than keep myself in a tiny box, doing things I’m pretty confident I will get right the first time. myself in a tiny box, doing things I’m pretty confident I will get right the first time.
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A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being a guest on Typewriter Tarot’s Cosmic Rescue show (which you can tune into next month when it’s available). I talked about how I felt my creative well was running dry, and Cecily Sayers gave me a Tarot reading.
On the question: “Where can I find my inspiration?” I pulled the Ten of Swords. I laughed, not only because Ten of Swords isn’t really the card I’m looking for in any reading, but also because it was the third time in three weeks I had pulled it. Cecily and I discussed ways to find inspiration in a card that isn’t the most inspiring of the deck, including how to counter the internalized oppression that I think this card represents. And now, as I write this post, I’m realizing that perhaps the Ten of Swords is also about giving myself permission to fail.
In the Collective Tarot, this card depicts an Icarus-like figure falling out of the sky—failing in their attempt to fly. But they flew!—if only for a moment. And in their fall, they are learning that wings made of wax cannot take them too close to the sun. I’m thinking about how this card gives me permission to hit rock bottom. To feel the extent of the failure, to feel pinned to the ground by all the things that didn’t work (to borrow from the imagery of the traditional Smith-Rider-Waite deck). And then to get up again, wiser for the fall, better ready to try again, to fail again, perhaps even more spectacularly. This feels tremendously freeing—and inspiring.
What is possible when I can let myself take chances, when I allow myself to risk failing? I get to start a project that gets my book and Gabrielle’s book in the hands of hundreds of organizers around the country. I get to say yes to projects that feel daunting and challenging, and that give me the opportunity to grow as a person, a poet, a change-maker. I get to celebrate myself in the process of becoming.
What is possible for you if you allow yourself to dream big, take risks, and fail? What do you get to say yes to?
For those of you following along on my creative journey, I’m happy to report that I feel my well slowly re-filling. I even wrote a poem! I haven’t been as single-minded in learning on the theories, practices, and frameworks of abolition as I hoped, but it continues to be a focus of my reading and listening, as you can see here. Many thanks to everyone who sent notes of resonance and encouragement last month. <3
I am going to take much of August off for vacation/fallow time (more on this at the end of this email), and trust that will also help nourish my creative spark.
Prompting
Below are journaling prompts and a tarot spread. You might want to do just one or the other, or both in any order.
Journal prompts:
What project would you embark on or what change would you make in your life if you were guaranteed that failing wasn’t a possibility?
Now write in present tense, as if you are already doing this: What steps are you taking to make this happen? Who are you asking for help? What are you clearing out of the way to make space to do what you want to do?
What does it feel like to imagine yourself starting this project or change?
As a tarot spread:
What project or change are you ready to embark on?
Who or what is available to help?
What can you clear away to make space for this project/change?
Who or what is ready to catch you if/when you fall?
Engaging
I’m listening to a lot of podcasts lately. I recommend:
Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama on For the Wild on colonization and accountability, language and poetry, creating connection across vast differences, and so much more.
Throughline’s series about capitalism. I’m two episodes in, and finding a great primer on capitalism and neoliberalism.
The AM Archives—a well-crafted science fiction series about people with supernatural abilities. I was hooked on the The Bright Sessions a few years back, and am enjoying this follow-up series by the same creators.
Community/Announcements
I was interviewed by Jennifer Louden for her podcast Creating OutLoud. We talked about the subversive nature of play as well as the benefits of structure, and Last Days—the book and the launch.
My review of Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings is now available at the Georgia Review. I was really interested in the ways she explored the intersection of capitalism and anti-Asian racism.
Boston area folks: first-live-reading-since-the-pandemic alert! I’ll be reading with other fabulous queer Boston-based writers at Foglifter’s Queer Home CookOUT.
And I’m super excited to announce here that the final piece of the Last Days launch, a “catalyst event,” is taking form. It will take place October 6, 7-8:30 pm ET on zoom. Part of my larger vision to bring community together, this event will invite artists, writers, readers, and organizers to collectively learn from each other and inspire each other to action. We’ll be joined by The New York Times bestselling author and poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Gabrielle Civil, dancers from Urban Bush Women, organizers from Tsuru for Solidarity, and more.
That’s it for this month! I’m taking some time off in August and the first part of September. So you’ll get an abbreviated newsletter on the next full moon on August 22, and no newsletters in September. I’ll be making space, being fallow, absorbing lots of goodness from the sun, and spending time with the wildness of the ocean. I hope that you, too, are able to make time to nourish your soul this summer—whether that’s an hour in the sun or a month away.
As always, thank you for reading, sharing, subscribing, and being amazing.
Once again your voice inspires.