Music. This is Belonging, a podcast that explores being alive in the age of loneliness. I'm your host, Becca Piestrelli, a writer, mother, and community tender currently living on the ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok people in present-day Marin County, California. In this show, we explore topics like rites of passage, cultivating meaningful community, seasonal and cyclical living, and what it means to be a good ancestor in these times.
I have thought-provoking conversations with friends, teachers, elders, and ancestral medicine keepers to help support you in bringing more meaning and connection to your life. I also pop in here and there to share updates and learnings from my own story, because we were meant to do this together, cosmically holding hands as we walk the spiral of life. You can expect to be challenged by new or old ideas. Face your beliefs and what systems informed them.
Get curious and brave to tell the truth about the deeper, harder things. And feel comforted in the knowing that you don't have to. Music.
Welcome back to Belonging the podcast. It's Becca Piestrelli here. I'm sharing with you a very special conversation with a human I really adore and have learned so much from, and that is Bear Abair, a feminist and anti-capitalist business coach who helps small business people and other beloved weirdos figure out how to build the world yet to come inside the world.
That currently is. So this is not a business podcast episode, although that is the context in which I worked with Bear was to look at the ways I'm working, which I share in the episode very candidly. The ways I'm working, it's my 10th year working for myself. The North Star of my business is to create a better, more liberated, more regenerative world through these conversations around belonging, around feeling a deeper connection to all that we come from and to each
other and also it's a business inside of a system known as capitalism. What do you think when I say that word capitalism? What comes to mind? Is it money? Is it shopping? Is it World War II? Is it a system of oppression? What do you feel? Confusion? Wanting to put your fingers in your ears and go la la la because it's so confusing and what does it mean about you if you like making
money or shopping and you're not alone if you feel that way. I, as someone who talks about and educates and facilitates groups with this anti-capitalist mindset, with a more matriarchal. Communal, connected, liberatory way of looking at the world, also do it under the system of of capitalism and I often feel confused. And there's a reason why I feel confused. So I asked Bear to come on and chat with me, because I do want to build a world yet to come inside the world that currently is.
I love that they say that. And in this conversation, we discuss making space for grieving our own and others' participation in capitalism, the ways we internalize it and exploit ourselves in our own businesses. This was a big one for me. And how white supremacy's penchant for perfectionism plays a big role in it all.
For me realizing like these qualities of perfectionism and urgency were all built into the system that was made to keep me working, even when the seasons change, even as the moon wax and wanes, even as my body needs time of rest, that this system wants me to be perfect and quick. That has been such a deep realization for me. And I wanted to continue my healing and my thriving under this system while making money. And Bear A. Bear was really supportive in me with that.
And so I said, can you come on and talk to the people? Can you come on and help us more deeply understand what we're experiencing, what we're feeling, help us unpack what feels confusing. So that is what we're talking about today in this really informative and dare I say enjoyable conversation. So here's my chat about building the world yet to come with Bear A. Bear. Music. Bear A. Bear. Bear A. Bear. Welcome to belonging. Thank you for joining me for this conversation.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me here. Such a pleasure. Yeah, so I've known about you for a long time. People I love and admire kept name dropping you. Nicole Antoinette and Mara Glatzel and Toy Smith. And I was like, oh, who is this bear? And then Nicole really encouraged me to join your radical business incubator. So I worked with you. For a lot of last year, looking at the ways I do business from a anti-capitalist lens and from a place.
Of not doing harm or at least doing less harm and looking at the come from and looking at the system we live under. And I found it to be, I was actually really nervous to do that work because I felt immediately like I was doing everything wrong. It was just so helpful and so encouraging. And I just right off the bat wanna encourage anyone who's doing business to look into getting support from you. But the reason we're here is because I wanna talk more about capitalism.
Cause it's up and people are talking about it. And I also feel like people are confused. So before we do that, I'd love to just hear like, who are you? What do you do? sort of like that spiel or whatever comes through in this moment about who you are and what you do. Thanks so much for having me here. And thanks so much for being part of the Radical Business Incubator last year. It was such a pleasure to have you there. Yeah, so my name is Bear Aimer. My pronouns are they, them.
I am an anti-capitalist business coach and consultant. I also have done life coaching for a long time, although I do a lot less of that now. And my little email signature also says I'm a social justice educator. So I do anti-patriarchy and anti-racism work in a variety of contexts. So that's sort of my, just like the bullet points, the headlines of what I'm up to in my work life. I just love to orient to geographic locations. It makes me feel really secure. So you are from New Orleans.
Like many generations. I'm from Louisiana many generations. I lived in New Orleans for the last 17 years, though most of my family lives in the further west in Louisiana, in Cajun country. So, but I lived in New Orleans for 17 years until last summer when I moved to Brooklyn. So now that's where I am. Yeah, cool. And before we got on, we were like, we're both gonna be New Yorkers who aren't from New York.
Commiserating on being people with, who like to hug and talk about feelings living in New York. It's really some culture shock, but I love New York. I love being here. And I'm sure there are people, man, if anybody's listening who lives in Brooklyn and wants to talk about their feelings and hug sometimes, like hit me up on Instagram. Hit us both up. Seriously, I am actively soliciting local friends. So.
Oh yeah, it's so real. I would love to get started with defining what capitalism is. The reason I'm asking this is because I think we humans live under systems that create a little bit of an amnesia and a confusion. And that's purposeful. And so I find that these words can be used like in the zeitgeist and the memes, like in the Instagram feed or whatever it is. And sometimes we're nodding our heads, But in our minds, we're like, wait, what are we talking about?
And with capitalism, it's actually like designed to be that complex. And so what I love is the way you just break it down and help us understand because I also find sometimes with like, I'm just gonna like reference my family, some family members I've talked about critically of capitalism, and they truly think I'm talking about shopping. And how, like the thing I'm talking about, consumerism and commerce, and then it goes to like, well, would you rather live in China or whatever it is?
And it gets really confusing. And that's what, you know, the political conversation around economic systems. So I'd love for you to share what feels helpful in that context. What is capitalism? It's funny when you say that, I was like, what is it that, what is capitalism again? I also feel this every time someone is like, can you explain this to me? And I'm like, okay, well.
But I think that the way that I understand capitalism is that it's an economic system where basically we are making money from money or making money from capital, right? And capital can be money that we already have. It can be land or other property, resources, natural resources, and that money is made exponentially from the exploitation of already held capital. So I think of that as a system that really,
requires continual exponential growth, right? That is like one of the facets of capitalism, that one of the characteristics of capitalism that we can point to is that it requires, I think of it as toxic growth, but if we wanna leave it really neutral, we can just say continual exponential growth. It requires scarcity. Often that scarcity has to be manufactured in order to make it function. And it requires exploitation.
So, it requires either exploiting land or people in order for it to function the way that it does. Capitalism is really different than commerce because commerce is just the buying and selling of goods. Commerce has existed for much longer than capitalism has existed and hopefully will exist much beyond capitalism's inevitable downfall. And commerce is just, you know, people exchanging goods and services with or without currency as part
of that exchange. And I think for me, capitalism is morally thumbs down. And commerce is like morally neutral. And I think that that's one of the other kind of pieces that feels really important to name is just like, yeah, capitalism in and of itself, like by its nature is harmful and commerce in and of itself by its nature is just neutral. It can be used in ways that
are harmful. We could talk about materialism or consumerism or whatever else we want to talk about, but in and of itself the buying and selling of goods is just ethically neutral. And I think when hearing this, I'm making a sort of assumption about what folks, including myself might feel next, which is a feeling of being trapped, or that sort of like turning the shame or frustration onto self, because we live in and under capitalism.
Like it's really, I mean, maybe some people can go off grid and fully escape it, but most of us can't. And so I find that this can be like a record scratch for people, particularly who are in relational spaces. I'm talking about threaded comments on social media where it's like, well, then can you criticize it or call it morally thumbs down, but also participate in it. Right, so I guess what I would say to that is just that I'm not interested in moral purity. Yeah.
I'm really interested in liberation and like, liberation holds space for so much nuance and so much mess and so much duality and so much non-duality and so much complexity that, moral purity and seeking out moral purity does not make space for. And so, yeah, I also feel trapped inside of capitalism and it sucks. And it can bring up all kinds of feelings of, you know, fear and anger and frustration and grief.
And I feel like I can get right-sized about the way that I'm looking at my own engagement with capitalism where I can sort of say, what about this do I not have any agency over?
Where actually might I have some agency? You know, I'm not going to opt out and go totally off the grid and never engage with money or capitalism in any kind of way again in the future, but I want to minimize the ways that I am reliant on capitalism even as I'm participating in commerce, minimize the ways that I'm replicating the norms that capitalism relies on even as I'm I'm making enough money to survive inside of it.
Yeah, I've seen it likened to the zero waste culture of like, yeah, we can strive for and uphold this belief, that we can maybe someday be not creating waste in this world, but like sometimes that means like we have to buy the spinach in the plastic coffin. That's me very frustrated with that fricking spinach in the plastic coffin. But like, if buying that spinach in the plastic coffin makes us like we have failed. Then what does that, how do we move from that?
You know, like how do we move the culture and our family systems and our community systems towards like liberation from waste or plastic, whatever it is? And where is that possible in each of our abilities to do that? And I feel like that has been a helpful frame to then bring it sort of like micro to macro. It feels like then within capitalism, I sort of feel like capitalism wins if we turn on ourselves in that way, and just sort of like surrender to the impossibility of it.
That's where that takes me. Yeah, I think the despair factor of living inside of capitalism is very real. It's very real to feel just totally at a loss for how to escape this hellish system. That all of us may find ourselves in. And I think you're right, like when we despair, capitalism wins. And so I think for me, a big piece of that has really been like being willing to really feel my feelings about it so that then I can move back into a place of like empowered
agency. And I don't mean that in a sort of like fluffy way. I really mean like I have, I have grieved and will continue to deeply grieve the reality of the world that we live in. Right? How many minutes are we in? I'm like, okay, great. We're like 10 minutes in talking about deep grief.
Okay. So, you know, but to like really give myself permission to say like, yeah, it is shitty. It is, is grief-inducing to look around at the world and, you know, and me from an incredibly privileged position relative to the global population, and yet still I suffer inside of capitalism.
We are all suffering inside of capitalism. And to really make space for my own grief, my grief at my own suffering and my grief at the suffering of everybody else, including all the non-human beings and to really sort of allow for that and to not run away from it and to not be like, I just actually can't touch that. It's like, okay, I can't touch it all the time. I can't touch it in like, giant, unrelenting doses.
But like, when I feel a feeling of like, god, I can't believe this is the way things are, to like, really let myself sit with that for a second and feel it fully, cry about it, pillows about it, you know, go run around the block about it, whatever your tools are, so that then I can be like, okay, I hate it that this is this way. And also.
And also, right? Like, the and is so crucial, like, and also, I believe that I have agency and I believe that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice as Martin Luther King says, you know? It's like, I believe it, that we're headed in the direction of liberation even when it feels really impossible. And that feels like, anyway, now we're just like really in the deep end. I'm like, the commitment to the belief that we are headed in the direction of liberation feels
like spiritual practice to me. And that feels like the way out of capitalist despair. Or at least a way, a way that has worked for me to get out of the despair of living inside, as bell hooks says, the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Yeah, that's where we got to kick it off, really, is grief work. In so many ways, that just seems to
be the way through. And that is something I often take like a long view, many hundreds, if not thousands generational, animist, earth aligned, witchy view at these things of like, how have we done life, you know, amidst all that's happened, we as human beings. And feeling the grief seems to be an important part of that. And actually taking that frame to all of it, I love that you broke down capitalism into these three areas. So like exponential growth, exploitation, and scarcity.
And when I find myself feeling confused, or like, I don't know, befuddled with grief, shame, judgment, funny feelings, to remind myself that exponential growth, exploitation and scarcity are not like innate qualities of this fricking miracle planet we are living on and breathing on and heart beating on and loving on and crying on and dying on and being born on. Exponential growth on a finite planet makes no sense. Scarcity is not modeled innately. Exploitation is pain and does not lead
to more life. And there's ways you can make that super meta and there's ways you can just look at at an ant colony or like look at like an ecosystem, of which human beings are as well. And I think I find that helpful. Yeah, it definitely brings in the despair. I remember I saw this meme years ago. It was like, I think Rachel Rice shared it of like a gorilla or a monkey ape like creature like creature walking up to a human being and saying, I can't believe you have to pay to live here.
And it was like a commentary on like human beings and how you to pay rent or a mortgage. And it like, boom, hit me like, like I was on mushrooms. Like I was like, what? Oh my gosh. Right. Yeah. What are we doing? What are we doing this for? Alright, so one of the things that you...
Personally helped me personally with was, I think, in my own awakening to unlearning of diving deep into like grief work, being with around capitalism, is understanding that I have also, many of us have also then put capitalism upon ourselves, internalized it and exploited ourselves, expect exponential growth of ourselves, treated ourselves as like a resource to mine and exploit.
And like, I'd heard it, but there's a way in which, I remember our first session, you guided me through this process where I was in tears by the end because I had a deep recognition of like, not just myself, but like my partner, my parents, my ancestors, the way we have participated in capitalism upon our bodies. And I would love to hear anything you have to share about that, because I think that is also a gateway for folks who are like, wait, but if I say it's bad, what does that mean?
And it's a way to partner with ourselves on it. Yeah, thanks so much for sharing that. feel like that that angle of it of how have I ingested these norms and these ideologies of capitalism and taken them on as my own governing principles in conscious and unconscious ways is like such a useful question. Like how have I taken this in and made it the way that I'm making my choices and living my life is really potentially really radical for people.
And I really want to like frame this conversation about the internalized stuff up with the caveat that I don't think that personal liberation is the end goal, right? So like we're gonna talk about it as an internalized thing, like what's it mean for me, how's it showing up in me and myself and my life, but like
if we stop there we've missed the point. So just framing that up in that way and I know that's not what you're doing, but just for the folks who are listening, that like, getting free in our own bodies and in our own lives is like, it's a seed and it's the beginning and it's the, you know, this sort of like, infinity loop of the personal back to the collective and
the collective back to the personal and always trying to move both of them forward. So yeah, I mean, for years I've worked for myself and at some point early on in my self-employment process, I realized that I was treating myself worse than I would have let any boss ever treat me. And so for years and years I had a little pink post-it note on the wall next to my desk that that said, I refuse to be my own bad boss.
I refuse to be my own bad boss because before I was self-employed, I worked in the service industry. I waited tables for 12 years. I've never had an office job, so that's not been my realm. But I had a lot of bad bosses waiting tables, right? The restaurant industry is full of, bad bosses. I had a few good ones too, but mostly they were pretty bad in terms of, yeah.
Just expecting you to sort of sacrifice everything for the work, for the job, to be able to show up at the drop of a hat, work long hours unannounced, like, just, you know, not get paid on time, like, all these kinds of things. And I started working for myself and realized that I was treating myself the same way or worse than these bad bosses had treated me. And at some point, I had to just kind of stop and be like, what am I doing here? Like, who is making me do things in
this way? Who is making me extract from myself in this way? Who is making me exploit myself in this way. And it's tricky when you're self-employed because you're both the boss and the employee. Right? And in a boss-employee relationship inside of capitalism, especially inside of capitalism where like union power has been, you know, so greatly diminished, though it is getting stronger
again. But like where unions are not, you know, able to sort of fight back against the bosses, the dynamic is really about the boss trying to extract as much work as possible for as little money as possible from the employee, and the employee trying to get away with doing as little as possible for as much money as possible from the boss. And like, what a dysfunctional dynamic
to set yourself up inside of in your own business. And I think that people, even if you are not self-employed, like, we can still have internalized this logic and this governing principle in the way that we are with our partners, with our families, with our kids, with our friends, with, you know. All the things that we show up to where it's like, oh, trying to get away from the work, oh, trying to get more work out of ourselves, and like, this kind of back and forth dynamic that
really serves no one. It doesn't, like, it doesn't serve the work, it doesn't serve our bodies, it doesn't serve the world, but we can really get trapped in that. So there's lots more I can say about that. But like, that's sort of the first place that I started just about like, how do we stop exploiting ourselves and get out of that kind of crappy, trying to pull one over on each other.
Dynamic inside ourselves? Yeah, I refuse to be my own bad boss. I refuse to say mine. I refuse to to be my own bad mom. I think I'm saying that because I see it coming up. I definitely see it in my work, and I see it in the way I lovingly parent my child. With like deep intention, I call upon all the capacity and resourcing I can muster.
I have a toddler, there are big feelings happening. I have just done, I have enough knowledge in this time to be like, okay, we're going to be here for your feelings. We're going to create a space of wonder, like all these things that are important to me. And then I'm like, I'm having big feelings. I'm having a sick day. Like, granted, like, you know, no one's scooping me up and changing my diaper and rocking me to sleep. Although I gotta tell you, that sounds great.
There's so many times I'm like parenting my child and I'm like, I really wish someone would do that for me. And then this is where reparenting work comes in. But I just notice how I respond to myself and my feelings and my needs very differently than how I respond to my child's. And it's just so interesting. Like it's the same body, heart, mind, spirit, soul, responding to two situations, the similar situations in two different ways. And yeah, I guess I am just so curious how we learn that.
Where we learn that. And I think I feel such a desperation for my child, Atlas, to never learn that. And here's the despair. Is that possible? I love that framing. I refuse to be my own bad mom. I also refuse to be my own bad mom. And the reparenting work is big in my own life and also in my business, but certainly in my real day-to-day life. That's what I'm working on, too. Yeah, and I'm not a parent of an actual child. But I am really trying to be a good parent to my inner child.
Yeah, what a good question. How do we keep a kid, how do we keep all the new beings on this planet from internalizing that? And man, it really makes me think about fractals and all the things that Adrienne Marie Brown says about fractals, about where something at the smallest level is then repeated up and up and up into the largest level. I mean, you
said that already, the sort of micro to the macro. But it makes me think about like, what What are the ways that you can create, this isn't parenting advice, but what are the ways that you in your life with your kid or me in my life with no kids and just in the world that I'm trying to create? What are the ways that any of us?
Can create on the tiniest levels, experiences where we get to embody relating to each other without exploitation, relating to ourselves without exploitation, relating to ourselves without the expectation of continual perpetual growth, relating to ourselves and each other without the sort of baseline fear of scarcity.
And how do we create like such a secure base of those types of experiences where things are growing in a sustainable way and abundant in all kinds of ways and, related to reciprocity rather than exploitation and create such a firm foundation of that inside, ourselves and our relationships and our relationships with our kids and inside our,
you know, your kid themselves. So that then, when they experience, when they encounter the norms of capitalism when they encounter toxic growth and scarcity and urgency and exploitation that they recognize it as the aberration that it is, you know, where they recognize it as something is wrong here because they're so steeped in and accustomed to a more liberated way. That's a nice response. Thank you. That feels good to hear.
Because I think particularly in parenting culture, there is a urgent imperative to get it right. Which I can understand like a perfectionism that comes in, which is its whole, it's all of that conversation, you know, around like imperfect parenting, and but also like doing better and all that stuff, trying not to repeat trauma. And I like, I'm just remembering what you said earlier, which is like, I'm not interested in like the purity of it. I'm interested in like,
just moving towards a more liberated way. Because I do realize I feel a lot of pressure to like. Parent in a liberated way. As I'm unlearning, as I'm doing my stuff. Yeah. And there's that's just That's just a lot of pressure.
I can't quote the study, but in some reading that I was doing in my own personal healing from my own crappy childhood, I read a statistic that says that kids need attuned responses from their parents only 30% of the time in order for them to have an experience of quote, unquote good enough parenting. I feel like that should just be such a balm to the parents who are listening, because you only have to get it right 30% of the time.
70% of the time, you can get it kind of off the mark and trust that you're not totally royally screwing up your kids. You can, you know, I'm not saying don't try, but like, you can lower the perfectionist bar, perhaps. Yeah, we had, um, I interviewed a woman named Waverly Davis a couple episodes ago who said the same thing. So this, this stat is making the rounds and I appreciate, and I would love to
know the original study too. Maybe we can find that and put it in the show notes because that, That is so helpful to hear. So many ways. Yeah, for secure attachment and all of that. Yeah, right. I also know that perfectionism is not innate and inherent in like, the living world we are a part of, you know, you just have to garden or make it through one season of, you, know, a spin around the sun to be like, oh, yeah, right. Looks different every time.
– Yeah, yeah. And I think for me some of the like perfectionism work really got easier when I first read that the Tema Okun piece about white supremacy culture, I think it's Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun and we can put that in the show notes too, but about white supremacy culture where they frame
up perfectionism as a trait of living inside a white supremacist culture. And so then for me it was like, again, going back to that sort of like infinity loop of like personal work and collective work, the personal liberation work and the collective liberation work that framing up, getting out of my own perfectionist tendencies as work that I was doing for collective liberation
made it easier for me to be committed to it. Because I was like, right, like, when I get perfectionistic, I am actually perpetuating this cultural thing that I'm really trying to stop doing. And so learning how to do this differently inside myself also impacts what's happening culturally around me. And having that as a motivation and as a framing, yeah, really has helped me to be less hard on myself and less hard on other people, you know?
Yeah, the less hard on other people thing resonates. I remember my own experience with that learning. I was taking Rain Crows, the Burning Times Never Ended course, which is really taking you through Caliban and the Witch. This book we will also link in the show notes and we will link that course, Reign is out. The jam. Oh yeah. Also, do you know the book on fire podcast about Caliban and the witch? No. There's a podcast that takes it chapter by chapter. It's some herbalists in North Carolina
whose work is really top notch. Yeah. So folks, I mean, yeah. If people are looking for many ways to engage with Caliban and the witch. It's a tough read on your own. It's really dense. Yeah. I had to read it in my master's program and I had a wonderful professor who had a sit in a circle like we were around the fire and just basically orally worked through it for a whole year because we were like, we can't read this. Anyway.
Yeah. Well, and for folks who don't know, it's a book that's about the sort of intersecting of the rise of capitalism and the rise of patriarchy in Europe and the way that that happened alongside the witch burnings and all of that. All of it. Yeah, Sylvia Federici is the author. And the other one more thing I'll say about ways to access Caliban and the Witch, because that has been such a profound text for me too. Is that she wrote like a Cliff's Notes version of it.
Where? It's called Women, Witches, and Witch-Burning, I think is the name of the book. I might be getting that wrong. We'll find it. But it's a very small little tome and it has an essay length version of the sort of headlines of Caliban and the Witch. So if you're like, I would like to have this knowledge, but I can't commit to 250 pages of like the kind of depth and intensity that she gets into. It's a good place to start
anyway. Thank you. That is like the hot tip of the year. Frankly, I wish I had access to that when I was taking graduate level coursework on it. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, she's still a living scholar. And I think people were just like, yo, Sylvia, like, this book is awesome. But also, like, I need something I can read. I need something I can, like, have my undergraduate students read or whatever. And, and so she wrote a, you know, a bridged version.
Amazing. Thank you, Sylvia. Yeah, so when we were going through that text with Rain Crow and the burning times never ended. Something landed for me with Rain's facilitation and Silvia Federici's work around perfectionism for me as well, which was to really frame it, as someone who grew up in a family culture around perfectionism or doing it right versus doing it wrong. This whole concept that to be perfect or to do it right meant you won. And if you win, that means someone else loses.
And to lose is to not survive. Like that's what my body is taking not being perfect as. Like if you lose, what does that mean about your worthiness, about your ability to thrive?
That's because I struggled for years, particularly in high school and college, with a real needing to be at the top and needing to succeed and not struggling with so many things that now I can really understand around like neurodivergence and trauma and things I was going through that made it so that I wasn't at least in a school setting, like winning.
And then it sort of translating it to the way I looked at my body and the way I approached friendship and the way I approached relationship and the way I approached the world, the way I approached cooking food. like, and it created like a. A sort of dark passenger of my life that I really held on to. And I just had a real liberation moment in that experience of understanding the framing of perfectionism as being like a tool
for this system. And like, I don't want to play in a winner's losers game. Because like, I think, again, it is a miracle to be breathing and alive on this planet. Like it's a gift. And I don't want want to squander it by playing some game where there are winners and losers when what is truly beautiful is like us playing together. I love that. Yeah. Yes. Just yes. All the yes. Yeah. Okay. So can we talk about money? Yeah, let's talk about money.
But like, are we allowed to talk about money? What if we talk about the wrong way? How do we talk about money? Can you tell me how to talk about money? Is there a wrong way to talk about money? Am I offending people? I feel shame when I talk about money. I desire transparency about money, but am I hurting people? Is money inherently bad? These are the things that just went through my head in the last 20 seconds, and is just something I think so many people contend with.
Also, in the online coaching world, there's some money conversation, abundance conversation that I personally find confusing, slash problematic, slash harmful. And I, as someone who charges for things that are, for services, sometimes have to contend with my own feelings in relationship with money. So I know you potentially have a workshop coming up talking about how to talk about money. I've taken your Freely course that really helped me just look at it as numbers and math.
And I'd love to hear anything that feels true in this moment about how to talk about money. Yeah, great. Thank you for leading with all those questions because yeah, I feel them too. Yeah, I think the place I want to start here is also the place that we started around commerce versus capitalism and capitalism as being sort of morally bad and commerce as being morally neutral or at
least having the potential to be morally neutral. And I think that I am arriving at a place where I think the same thing is true about money, that a lot of us have that, well, let's just say, I don't know what anybody listening has, but inside the world in which I am operating, many people believe that, you know, money is the root of all evil, although I think that whole quote is the love of money is the root of all evil, but right, that like, money is bad. That.
Is a thing that many people believe. And then in other circles, some of the sort of abundance mindset coaching industry vaguely veiled MLM cult world folks think that money is morally good, right? And that having money is morally good. And that also is, you know, that also exists in like the evangelical Christian sort of like prosperity gospel kind of stuff. So, those two ideas show up
in a bunch of different ways, right? Where like, you know, in the sort of like punk activist artist communities that I was in and still am in, many people believe that like money is bad, money is the problem, money is the reason that the world is so fucked up. And I actually sort of think that it's somewhere in the middle and that money in and of itself could be morally neutral.
I don't know if I'll go so far as to say that it is in and of itself morally neutral because of the the weight of the forces that we live inside of. But I think that one of the things. That capitalism really does is says that we should not talk about money. And so I'm teaching this class how to talk about money because I really want us to talk about it. Because anytime capitalism says do this or don't do that, we can look at that, you know, we can look askance at that and
say is that really what I want to do? And so all the things that you just named, Becca, about like. You know, am I allowed to talk about it? Should I have guilt about it? Should I am I do I feel shame about this or what are other people gonna think if I talk about it, that all of that is programming, you know, from the culture, from the overculture, to use Dr. Estes' framing of, you know, subculture and overculture. The overculture says money is shameful. The
overculture says you should have it, but you shouldn't talk about it. You should wanna get more of it, but you shouldn't tell anybody that you wanna get more of it. You should just quietly do that in some, you know, way that doesn't look like much. And you definitely shouldn't talk about it. You shouldn't talk about needing it. You shouldn't talk about having it. And one way or another you should feel guilt or shame, right? If you don't have enough you should feel shame because that's a
personal failure. And if you have more than enough you should feel guilt because like also you should feel bad about that because look at all the people who don't have enough. Anyway, I don't know if I'm saying anything in a particularly linear way here, but I think that money in and of itself is sort of morally neutral and that talking about money is a moral good. So that's where I'll start, I guess, with that one.
I'm very activated by this conversation because I feel curious and it feels alive for me. So one thing that's coming to mind is this very commonly said phrase that money is energy. And that sort of feels similar to like money is neutral, right? And I also see it used in a way to sort of bypass – yeah, I guess I sort of see it in like the abundance sort of community. And then like in my own community is about money being energy where I can see like, yes, like if you have
it and you give it, it creates things, right? And it can create things for you and for other people. And it also can feel like it's bypassing like the system of capitalism, I guess is what I mean, where money can equal power over or can equal like lack of power. And I suppose I'm confusing myself even in this moment about the neutrality stance around money. Yeah, yeah. I think that, I mean, I think I also feel a little like.
About all of this. But I think some principles that feel helpful to me are, how can I look at this thing that feels very fraught in context? I think the places that it starts to get in the right amount of context, the places that it starts to get murky are like when my artist activist punk community says money is only bad, it's only looking at it in context. It's only looking at it from a cultural systemic lens and saying inside the system, through this lens.
Money is bad. And it's not looking at how might money actually be really helpful to people,
how might money, you know, be, is there a way that money might be good? And the opposite happens in in this sort of abundance mindset community world, whatever that, I don't live in that land, but wherever that is, that there is like a decontextualizing of money where it's looking only at it from the individual perspective and saying money is energy, money flows to me, money, whatever the things are people are saying about it there that frames it up as like a moral good.
And I think that when I arrive at the place of money is neutral, money could be neutral, It's because I'm trying to look at it from both the systemic lens and also from a personal lens, from an individual lens. And when I blend those things, when I contextualize money but also look at it in terms of me personally, I can see it as something that lives in the middle. Yeah, and I'm realizing.
Through my work with you, the neutralizing but not decontextualizing or vilifying of money has helped me particularly with charging for what I offer. So that's also led to me creating this like sort of transparency page on my website about financial justice and accessibility. It's even affected the way I price most of my offerings in like a tiered model. And it's, I like I've been in business for 10 years. And I would intuitively price or price by comparison, like what are other people doing?
And it was just loaded, emotional, I would price too low, I would price too high, it's depending who I ask, people would be offended by prices, that still happens. But what you got me to do is just see it as math. And that has been immensely helpful to me to even repeat to myself, because charging money for something to people, no matter what, can bring up stuff. Because of the system we're in, it makes so much sense that it's emotional.
It makes so much sense that it's challenging or triggering or brings up. Feelings of insecurity, feelings of hoarding, like, yeah, that's because of the system we live in. And for you to say to me and the people who are working alongside me, like, just do the math, just do the math. Like, look at what you need. Look at how much that costs. Look at, for me,
it was like, look how much I'm available. For me, it was like looking at everything I need to cover, including my time, because I never covered my time, which was the exploitation piece. This all helped me feel so grounded and rooted in charging the amount of money I charge for the thing I am offering. And I do the math for every single different thing I'm offering. It's different numbers because I think about everything that's involved. And so it feels very whole and grounded
when I present it. And I've brought that to budgeting for our household. I've brought that to the way we redistribute resources in our community. It's helped me immensely to just just think of it as math. Yep. And like what's available and what's needed and what's possible. It's made it so in other community conversations I have, whether they're business minded or community minded, I'm able to talk, literally have words come out of my mouth about it.
Whereas maybe in the past, not maybe, definitely in the past, I would just look like I couldn't find my words because what if I say the wrong thing? So I appreciate that. Yeah, I love that. The way I talk about it in Freely is that we try to set our prices based on facts, not feelings. And it's not that your feelings don't matter. It's just that they're not the main thing that you should be using to figure out how to decide how much to charge.
Or at least I think that they're not the main things that we should be using to figure out how to charge. And yeah, for me too, in my business, I used to have so much kind of like weirdness about like. You know, I had a lot of assumptions about what I thought other people could afford. I had a lot of assumptions about what I thought I could get by on. And when I actually did the math and sort of looked at how much money do I need to live my life in a way that like allows me to thrive,
not to hoard wealth. I'm not interested in hoarding wealth. I think that hoarding wealth is.
We'll go morally thumbs down again, right? But like, but to be able to like live a life where I have the things that I need that you know that that's that's just the facts and like I've been in you know a sort of personal process around that in the last six months because I just moved to New York City where it is much more expensive than where I lived before um and I'm like finally actually treating myself like a grown-up as in like I actually have like health insurance that
lets me see doctors now and not just in the event of a catastrophe like but it is expensive and so So my rates have gone up for things and it's like, oh yeah, I feel some part of me still is like, I don't know if this is okay to charge this much money for a thing. But when I actually look at the spreadsheet that says this is the number of dollars I I need to make every month. Therefore, I need to charge this amount of money for the work that I'm doing.
It creates so much energetic ease and spaciousness in the conversations that I have with potential clients because I can say, this is how much this costs. And I know that that's because I didn't make that number up. I'm not trying to pull one over on my clients. I'm just trying to get my own needs met. And so then it's just a conversation that's about consent and what works for each of us. Like, is this a number that works for you? Yes?
Great, I am like so delighted to receive money freely given from people who can afford to give it to me. Like if I tell you this is how much this thing costs and you're like, cool, I wanna pay that, I'm like, awesome. Like, I no longer have weirdness about taking money from people who can't afford to give it to me. And if I say this is how much it costs and somebody says, ooh, and I say, you know, is that a number that's workable for you? And people are like, well, maybe not.
Then there's like a second conversation we can have that's like, is there a way for us to work together anyway? And some of that, again, most of that is just about the math, right? So it's like, I build in some sliding scale spots to everything I offer so that people can access it even if they can't afford the retail price. And then we just like to talk about like, what would feel doable for you? What would feel doable for me?
And, you know, I'm using the word feel in that sentence, but it's really like, in terms of the math, what is actually doable for this potential client? in terms of my math, what is actually doable for me to like, you know, reduce the rate? And then it's just like, are those two things compatible? And it makes it so much so that it's not about like me doing anybody favors, it's not about anybody needing to feel
guilty for, you know, anything. It just is like, do these are my facts, those are your facts, do they do they match up in a way that works for both of us? Yeah, same. And I've been, yeah, working that assumption in that. If like, this is why I love the tiered pricing, people pay on the higher end, like what a beautiful gift they're giving to people who then say like, oh, who can honestly have the conversation,
which is brave, right? To say like, I can't actually pay this. And then I can say, well, what can you and then I can be like, wow, I have saved some resources to support that. And then other people have saved resources to support that. How cool, like your yes, like, let's just do that. And for folks who are not business owners, I wanna say that I have started to introduce equity pricing into friend group situations, like dinners out and like Airbnbs for like weekends.
And it's been interesting, but all in all, very cool to bring up a different way of doing it instead of like, and for dinners out, I bring it up before we go out to dinner. And I say, how do we feel about this? Like we order a bunch of food and everyone just dines and feasts. But like people who can pay a little bit more pays a little bit more and people who can just like give what you can, give what you can, but we all feast.
And here's about the amount of an entree. And I sort of like do quick math. And I say, so just think ahead and we're just gonna have a great dinner. And I've done it twice and it's gone great. And then I just booked an Airbnb with some friends and we did an equity pricing where we said, it shakes out to this much per person and then what's doable for everyone. And I think we have like an intimacy with each other where some people say it's tight month, this is what I can give.
And other folks have said, I'm feeling good, I can pay 1.5 X or whatever it is. And we're only halfway through that conversation, so this is very timely, but it feels like, okay, this is a different way of doing things where it's just the facts and we're including everyone. So I feel like. Excited about it. Yeah, yeah. And again, I think it's not that the feelings aren't relevant. It's not that the feelings don't need to be felt at some point somewhere. But like, being able to like.
Tease those pieces out a little bit and say like, what actually is my financial reality? And not just how do I feel about my finances right now? Because again, going back to the very beginning at a conversation, the internalized scarcity logic is running, that script is running in all of us all the time, unless we are really trying hard to work against it. And so, the idea that it would
be better to pay less is something that most of us have internalized about most things. And so, being able to sort of feel the feelings about that, process through the feelings about that, but then actually approach these conversations with open-heartedness, because the feelings are
not the driving force of the conversation. Yeah, it's a very layered thing. And I, again, we're working towards a vision of liberation imperfectly and, Yeah, I think it's okay to stumble our way through a way of doing it differently, instead of like choosing potentially like a veneer of like ease and comfort and safety. When actually, what is like its actual impact? You know, that's always my curiosity for myself. Like, who is this hurting? Really?
Well, Bear, our time flew by and we've got to close. I so appreciate everything you've shared the way you hold it all, the compassion you have, the way you offer critique in education and tools galore. At belongingpodcast.com, we're going to have some good-ass show notes, so head on over there. I really try to cite my sources. I really try not to let people leave anything that I'm doing thinking that these are my original thoughts. Everything I know is from the depth of scholarship
of other people. So anyway, good show notes. Yeah. Yeah. Totally right. The labor and research of all those who came before us that contribute to our lineage of work, absolutely. And it's really helpful for us and the editors to, furiously look for show notes when you say the name. So I appreciate that. So that'll all be in the show notes including your class, how to talk about money, your class freely, and your website.
And I also highly recommend Bear's course, Marketing for Weirdos, whenever you do that again. In the fall, yep, that'll be fall 2023. I remember we had a Halloween live call and you dressed as an alien. And I loved it. Talking about marketing. It was great. You know, why be in business for yourself if you can't be weird? 100%. Thank you so much for joining me. Music.
In a time when our attention is being pulled in so many different directions, it means a lot that you took time out of your day to spend it with me and in these important conversations. For show notes and links and more information about my guests, you can head to belongingpodcast.com. And if you'd like to hear more from me and get access to my free newsletter called Slow and seasonal, you can head to beckapiestrelli.com slash subscribe.