The Big Lie of White Exceptionalism

That comes on the heels of many Democratic governors deciding that guess what, COVID's over and so much in the same way that news broke about Coachella and stagecoach not using any COVID nineteen precautions, basically saying that you're going to come and party with us at Coachella at your own risk. Democratic governors are now doing the very same thing where they are getting rid of their mask mandates

because people are quote unquote tired. I don't know how many times that we have to go through and repeat the same behaviors over and over again expecting a different result. That is, in fact the definition of insanity. And that's the way that our politicians, whether they be Republican or Democrat,

have been operating over the last couple of months. You had the omicron variant that yes, was it less deadly for those that were vaccinated and boosted, of course, but did it give us some insight into how this virus has been mutating, which is that each iteration becomes more and more contagious, and that the thing that protects us all is wearing masks. Right, Social distancing for a while now has not been a thing, but masks and particularly those that are not cloth, but our K ninety five

or ninety five masks, have been keeping people safe. So why is it that now once people again have adapted to these rules, have adapted to this reality, have become accustomed to it, whether it be on public transportation federally regulated public transportation like airlines, why we would decide now, at a time when the omicron surge in many parts of the country is now on the decline, that we would turn around and start the same behavior that we had before, let our guards down, and then in a

couple of months when news breaks that there is some other new variant that is incredibly deadly, that is all of the things, then trying to get those same people to go back to doing what it was that they've been doing for the past two years is going to be damn near impossible. But you know who cares because midterms are in a couple of months, and that's apparently

the only thing that politicians care about. I am so aggravated with this entire situation and scenario, just people believing that they can have what mind over matter like the virus gives a fuck. But you know what I think at this stage in the pandemic two years in that what we have learned is that no one is going to protect you. No one other than yourself is going to have your best interests and your public health and

safety in mind. Everyone else is out to make a dollar or get a vote, right, And so basically, politicians, businesses, all of them are just gambling right on your well being. So if at this point you are still looking for guidance right, whether it be from the president, your governor, your school board, or what have you, then you are looking in the wrong place. You're looking outward when you need to be looking inward. I no longer trust any of these outlets. I'm going to be honest with you.

I'm not trying to spread misinformation, but I'm going to be real. I don't know what is provoking the decisions that are being made, because I don't think that it's public health. I don't think that people are following the science. Do I think that, yeah, there are ways that we can adapt to this new normal, Yes, absolutely, But to pretend that COVID no longer exists, to just throw up your hands, you know, democratic governors and fucking concert venues

and just be like, oh, we're just over it. Watch and wait, is all I will say on that Watch and wait. You know, I was reading Political Playbook like I do most mornings, and you know, another alarming piece of news has come to my attention. But you know, it's a same old, same old story of how terrible Democrats are at messaging. And the question that Political was posing was whether or not Democrats were going to come up with a response to the culture wars that Republicans

are waging. That's number one, and number two, whether or not Republicans we're going to give up the ghost, give up Donald Trump, and figure out who else is going to be the leader of this party. I think that

those are the wrong questions to be asking. One. I think that if anybody with eyes ears riot have been paying attention to what Republicans have been up to over the past five plus years, and if you want to include the Obama years, which is when we got our first inkling into the direction that this party was headed.

The fact that Politico is still flinked framing the Republican Party as an actual party and not a cult that is hell bent not on culture wars, but on creating a civil war two point zero, on using their misinformation, using their racism, using their misogyny, and weaponizing the pandemic.

The fact that still in fucking twenty two, now that years after living through the Trump administration, after living through the insurrection, that we're still not calling out what Republicans are doing as dangerous to our democracy and still framing a narrative that makes it seem as if there are two equal sides to the preservation of our republic is bullshit and it is just bad journalism. How about that?

How about it just as bad journalism to continue to frame it as if we have two cohesive, normal political parties where one isn't about the entirety of our democracy just being destroyed, blown up with your voter suppression, your racism, your celebration of anti semitism, islamophobia, all of these things. The fact that you have outlets that are now by the way Politico has been bought right by the Murdochs.

The fact that you are having these outlets, still have casual conversation like this is a normal midterm season that

we're in is so frustrating and it's just fucking false. Right, And then Democrats still twirling their thumbs, right, twiddling their thumbs as if we don't have a sense of urgency, as if you haven't recognized that Republicans are using the same playbook they've been using for the last four fucking decades, right, except now they've utilized technology so that their misinformation and

their hate can spread faster. Why is it right that following the very eye opening campaign of Glenn Yuncan in Virginia and his win after the Obama coalition successfully had courted the state of Virginia into the blue column, how you don't pay attention to the misgivings there and think that running old candidates is not a fucking thing, It doesn't excite the base. How about paying attention to your base in the same way that Republicans pay attention to

and are scared shitless of their base. How about doing that? How about not just pretending right that you can shrug off their attempts at quote unquote parental control and not likening that to the way that white parents were riled up in the nineteen fifties about school integration. How is it that Democrats are still sitting around wondering what to do or thinking that ignoring the claims and the lies that Republicans are throwing out is somehow a winning strategy.

It isn't. And you know what I saw this week as well. I follow Congresswoman Corey Bush, who has been a guest on the show, follow her on Instagram, and she posted a tweet that she had tweeted earlier in the week, which that saying basically that Democrats who are trying to out republic look in Republicans is not a strategy that is going to win, right, And I'm just like, no, it's not. And how is it that everyone else sees that?

And yet there's no pivot, there's no stop pivot and reflect right on how we need to utilize our heavy hitters like Corey Bush, like aoc to teleb, like all of these people like il Han, right, these people who are savvy, who are smart, who know how to communicate, who have large followings How is it that they are not in charge of democratic messaging right so that everyone

else can then follow suit. I don't get it. I don't get it, but you know I do because it is the old guard, right, the Octanagarians who are still in charge of the gavel and who are still have the bully pulpit, but they're not using it in the right way to compete with the tactics of the twenty first century. They just are not. And it is evident that Schumer doesn't do it, Pelosi doesn't do it, Biden

isn't doing it. No one is painting the Republicans as who they are, a threat to our democracy, a racist right reimagining of America that is going to be worse

than the first round of Jim Crowe. How is it that the same administration, the same candidate that said I'm in it for the battle of the soul of this nation does not get what it is that Republicans are doing, Which brings me to my guest coming up today, Really excited for you all to hear this conversation with a podcaster, Julie Koehler, who is the co host of the podcast White Picket Fence and White picket Fence Right seeks to really uncover right the lies that white people have been told,

to really unpack it. In their first season, it was busting the myth around white women being progressive and voting Democrat, where Julie will tell us that hasn't happened in forty years now. Anybody paying attention to politics inside the Beltway understands that fact. So then the question is, if those are the data points, then why does the Democratic Party still try and court Karen as if Karen is trying to go to the dance with you, she ain't and

she hasn't in forty years. Right. The second season of White picket Fence was an examination into how families right have shifted during the time of the global health pandemic, Schooling kids at home, the realization that we don't really care about kids in this country outside of the womb, because if we did, right, if we actually believed the mantra that children are our future, then maybe we wouldn't have had fights over the child tax credit or you know,

having parent to leave. As one of the only industrial nations that does not have that guaranteed right, there are countries that offer a year six months in America six weeks and we're telling you to stuff your baby in somebody else's care, right, and for you to make just enough money to be able to cover that, but nothing else. And we've accepted that, we've accepted that reality as the norm,

and it shouldn't be. And so that is the second season of White Picket Fence, And Julie and I on today's show, we'll get into a conversation about white privilege, about white guilt, about how we hold up a mirror to white America and say, look at yourself. You are both responsible for some good and some devastating violence. How is it that white people cannot see themselves as fully

dimensional humans? Right? Earlier this week, you know, I was sent a bunch of clips of the young black boy, and I believe it was in New Jersey at a mall who got into an altercation with a white boy. Cops were called and guests who ended up in handcuffs for thirty minutes. Right, guess who was ushered and spoken to and probably a very respectful manner. What did that black boy do to you? And I'm sure that that wasn't the language that was used. Right. Why is it

that in policing. It is so common for you to have white police officers refer to white boys as son right, to look at them as a reflection of themselves, and to see black people, regardless of the situation that they walk up into, as the aggressor the one that needs to be put down. And you want to tell me that policing doesn't need reform in this country. How many fucking times do we need to see these videos? How many fucking black people need to lose their lives? Right?

And I'm just you know, I'm just tired, right, Like I'm literally exhausted, as I know so many black people are by the bullshit, Like we can't get anywhere because we have to still convince white people of their own moral monster behavior, right, as James Baldwin said, moral monsters, fucking gaslighting the people that you are abusing, as to tell us that we're just too sensitive and there's no

abuse happening. But we run video after video after video, victim after victim after victim of white supremacy, only to tell only to have them tell us, oh, we're kind of interested, and we'll march with you for a good too, and then we're going to go back to our lives because it's too inconvenient for us to really unpack the hard truths of this nation. I'm just tired of it. And I said yesterday, you know, I can't imagine the trauma that that young boy felt. I have no idea

what the cause of the fight was. I don't really fucking care. All I know is that if cops roll up to a fucking situation and there are a black kid and a white kid, right that are that are interlocked in violence, then both of them should be sat down, both of them, right, should be handled in the same way. Why is that so fucking difficult? Why racism? Right? But white people will look for every other excuse right as to tell you why black people should continue to be brutalized. Right,

they will look for every other reason. Oh he was big, Oh we thought he was older. Oh this it's bullshit, it's racism. Just look in the mirror, you know it. I got to tell you that with each advance that is made, with each you know, a couple of steps forward that we make in this country, it just seems

that we just boomerang right back to the beginning. And look, I know, and I talk to people who have been active in the civil rights movement, you know, for their entire lives for the last sixty plus years, right, because we in America love to believe that Jim Prow was so long ago. Meanwhile, most of us have you know, parents, grandparents who all grew up in that that are still fucking alive. Right. So America's racist history wasn't a hundreds of years ago. It was just the other day, and

we need to wake up to that reality, folks. I'm very excited to welcome to Okay f Daily for the first time, Julie Kohler, who is the host of the podcast White Picket Fence with Wonder Media, a podcast that really does an interesting job of looking into the issues that are affecting women, that are affecting our society, UM.

Talking about difficult conversations about race, white privilege, UM, and you know, and family, right and how our family in the latest season, how families were impacted during the last two plus years of living in a pandemic. Julie, welcome, Thank you so much. It's great to be with you. It is great to have you so talk to me about White Picket Fence. First of all, like I just said,

before the name Stellar. I can't I can't believe that that name was not taken UM like one hundred is it is so fantastic talk to us about um the ideas and the themes behind white picket Fence. Yeah, thank you so much. So, you know, I think the name sort of gives a hint at some of the ideologies that we really work to unpack in the podcast while

examining a few different topics. So the first season of our podcast really was a deep dive into the politics of white women and what we call the fractured and often frustrating politics in the way that those politics are manifest in our society. I think there is kind of a myth that white women are more progressive often than

white men. And while we do see some gender differences in how white women and white men vote, you know, the majority of white women for the last forty years have voted Republican, and we tend to kind of be a little bit surprised by that. And so we really did a deep dive into, you know, the ideologies that shape white women's politics and you know, kind of how that continues in today's society. And in the second season

of the podcast, which just aired this past winter. We take we take a look at a lot of the same ideologies that we examined in the first season about race, about gender, about families, about our economy, and white women, white womanhood, and we really look at how that has prevented public investment in the kind of family supports, the kind of what we now call care infrastructure, childcare, family leave, the child tax credit benefits that would make family life

so much easier for the vast majority of us. Why has that been so challenging? And obviously the pandemic brought this to a head. So many of us have been suffering so deeply during the pandemic, And we really take a critical lens at you know, why here we are, fifty years later after the national childcare was first proposed and passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress. Why we're still coming up short, and why this is still a fight fifty years later. You know, Julia want to I want

to dig into your first season. And I say that because, um, you know, I am no and anybody that has listened to woke f or democracy ish I go after white women a lot um and I think for the for the main reason that you stated at the at the opening that there is this belief, um, and I don't know where it came from, So hopefully you can provide some insight, um, this belief that white women are more progressive than they are right when we have said for decades,

those people that are embedded in politics have known that, particularly married, straight white women vote alongside their husbands. Right. I wrote a piece following the twenty sixteen election, which I think again was this startling, eye opening, you know moment, not just for you know, for for our country obviously, but for the world, for our country and the fact that oh my god, we had a white woman on the ballot. You could see a reflection of yourself, right, yeah,

finally to become madam president. And over fifty percent of white women voted for Donald Trump, an outward celebrated misogynist. So you know, Julie, what what came up for you in your first season kind of research and investigation about the why here? And is it is? And do you feel like we need to unpack the why to kind of let go of the myth so that we can

so that we can move on. That's absolutely right. I think we have to first have a very cleared eyed analysis of what is happening if we want to effect change.

And so I wanted to put the twenty sixteen election, which was I think, you know, once again sort of a surprise to many of the kind of you know, political chattering class, although not too many, sort of deeply entrenched in in movement politics, that yes, a majority of white women voted for Donald Trump, despite or perhaps because of, his positions that white women, and I wanted to put it in a context of of, you know, white women have long been complicit and not only just complicit with

structural racism and white supremacy in this country, but active perpetrators of And I also thought it was important to sort of take this out of the context of we're just having a conversation about those conservative white women and actually look at how this is a story about all of us, about all of the ways that you know, white womanhood is structured in such a way that allows us, even those of us who may identify as progressive, to sort of selectively engage on issues of race, and you know,

the issue of kind of who has the privilege of being awakened because we did see the twenty sixteen election as kind of this galvanizing moment right with the Women's March and all of these kind of previously a political or not terribly politically active white women suddenly got very engaged and said, oh my gosh, this is a crisis. I need to fight for my country. But why were you asleep? Why were we asleep? Why have we not

been awakened at every point in our history? And what is it going to take to continue that engagement and to really build what the writer Heather McGee talks about in her brilliant book to some of us as the solidarity dividend, Like, what is it going to take in this country for us to all be invested in the idea that if we work across racial lines to build something, to build a public good, that we will all do better.

And So that is what I really wanted to example and kind of the historical underpinions of the ways that even in progressive movements, so we take a critical look at suffrage and the second way of feminism and the way that our you know, white feminist ancestors often turned their back on our black feminist sisters once they secured critical rights for themselves, And what is it really going to take to build a different, intersectional, sustainable, progressive feminist

movement that can really deliver both racial and gender justice in this country. Julie, why do you think that, like what? Why do you think that white women prefer to stay in slumber? What is it? And is it just the if I don't pay attention, if I don't tap in, then my rights, as you said, we'll continue to be secured. If I make too much noise, right, if I put too much skin in the game, then I'm risking my own liberty and how and I don't want to risk

my own liberty in order to secure someone over there? Yeah? What is it? Well? I think on one level, we have been thoroughly indoctrinated in this country with the myth of the zero sum game that I can only have what's mine if it comes at the expense of someone else and someone else gaining some degree of you know, whatever it is, wealth, comforts, security, dignity will come at my expense. And so I think we really need to

be pushing back against that. And I think what is one of the really difficult things about trying to create this investment in the solidarity dividend at large is that we are trying to create a society that we have ever had. So we have you know, we have never

seen what it would look like. On the other side, what an anti racist society, the benefits it would deliver for all, and so it really sort of takes this leap of faith, right that I have to believe that it will be beneficial to me, my children, my family, my community, even though I don't I haven't experienced it. I don't know what that looks like. And we're you know, in a media environment and a political environment that is constantly throwing racist fear mongering. Yep, you know our way

and constantly you know, reinforcing this. If this happens, you're gonna you know, it's going to be at your expense. Yeah, I think, you know, it's it's just some powerful work that we have to do to overcome, you know. It's What's what's so interesting, um, that you're saying, is that I started my career thinking that I was going to

be in the women's movement. It was my desire when I went to college, and you know, I majored in political science, but my goal, you know, what my passion was at that time was to be a part of the women's movement. So I interned at the National Organization for Women, which later became my first job out of college, and it would also be the first job that I quit because I had never felt so invisibilized as a black woman, as a queer woman, my experience as an

intern versus the actual like infrastructure of the organization. Things that I had heard right being said about women of color, this idea that somehow everyone else needs to leave every other part of themselves behind in pursuit of the quote unquote greater good, which hearkens back to, you know, suffragious time. Oh you know, why are you giving rights to these black men before you are your own wives? And then you know we're going to turn them into our enemy

in the pursuit of our greater good. Black women want

to work in coalition. Indigenous women want to work in coalition because community understanding is the fundamentals of the societies that we come from, right, But it isn't the same, And so I wonder, too, how much is it our lie that we tell ourselves around Americans, White Americans individualism that doesn't then allow allow white women to be a part of the greater collective, which is how the rest of us from marginalized and underrepresented communities have always had

to navigate through life through those safety nets of family, whether biological or not, because of the way in which we've been treated in society. So you have to build your own safety net. So how much is it in the way that we have been socialized right that doesn't allow for white women to see themselves as part of the larger community of women and people. Yeah, I think

that is. I think that those kind of individualistic mindsets are so pervasive and have indeed infused, you know, all of these movements for social justice, including the women's movement. So yes, I think that's a big piece. And I think the other piece is just the blinders that privilege puts on one and this kind of ability to opt out of seeing race when it's convenient not to do so.

And you know, I really tried to ground the first season of the podcast and some of my own sort of reflections on the narrative I've told about myself, because I think a lot of this is like unpacking the stories we have ourselves and the way we view ourselves. And you know, I grew up in this progressive, largely white, liberal community, suburban community in Minnesota at a time when there was like, you know, kind of it was a

state of sort of public investment. We believed in the common good, We believed in all these kind of public benefits, and believing this kind of myth about this progressive utopian not utopian, but you know, like kind of very good meaning you know, good community and then really having that

I mean shattered. You know, obviously I questioned that you know, had a more political, politically nuanced understanding of that as I aged, but particularly when Minneapolis has become ground zero for violent policing and these horrific murders of black men at the hands of police officers, you know, and some of the largest racial discrepancies on almost any measure of well being, and sort of how this progressive myth kind of um prevented clear sightedness about the inequity that was

you know, hiding in plain sight my whole life. And so I think that it really is incumbent upon all of us to do that critical analysis of the stories we tell about ourselves and sort of this belief we want to have in our own goodness and really look at the ways that by not attending to race or selectively attending to race, we are maintaining, we are actively

perpetrating and maintaining a deeply racist stated status quo. And you know your own inequity, right because because the reality is, you know, the at that none of us are free until we're all free, right, And it is it is, it is that sentiment and that reality that unless we're going to and as I say on wok af often, unless you're going to do the hard work of interrogating your own feelings, and I will go so far as to say interrogating your own history, because there is this

desire I think that you know, the original big lie wasn't one about election fraud. It was one about white American exceptionalism and the belief that you know, the desire right now is to erase the our violent origin story in this country, to preserve the big lie that white people came here to you know, spread goodwill and do all the right things in America. And you're just like, oh, but if you actually listen to the stories of those that were oppressed, then you don't look like this great

savior right there, the home of the brave. You don't look like the myths that you've been putting up. The myths don't hold up over time once other people have the microphone in their own hands and are able to narrate their own stories outside of what they've been fed.

That's exactly right. And I think, you know, even though I would have been someone, I think probably my whole life would have been raised with a political awareness about, you know, the fact that American exceptionalism was someone of

a myth. I think I still believed, and I talk about this in the first season of the podcast, in this myth of sort of our own my own specialness as kind of a enlightened progressive white person, and you have to also combat that, right, Yeah, that is also a myth, and that there is nothing special about ourselves and our communities and you know, and that we are all have a responsibility to be doing more, better, different And I really believe that, you know, the way that

this anti supposed critical race theory issue has taken off is at its core a protection of that belief in our own goodness, right, and a and a very visceral desire to not engage in anything that could challenge that. Like this is a story about you know, this is a fight over the narratives we tell ourselves and we get codified as truth. And if we don't address that and change that, like that and the possibility that that

could change is so deeply threatening to folks. So how do you feel, Julie, how do we go about the collective unpacking? How do we go about you know what I what I often say, putting the mirror to the face of white America and saying that you know, as James Baldwin said so many many years ago, you can't change things that you don't face. And the desire right now, right through the pushback with critical race theory, which I continue to remind people, is not taught in K through

twelve schools. It is taught in law school as an elective, and in some law schools not all right that if the force behind the pushback is to hold on to this make believe of white American exceptionalism, then how do we go about forcing people to look in the mirror, forcing white people to look in the mirror and say, like you have the ability to be both monster right and innovator right, Like you have like you are also a complex human right that isn't just about being Glenda

the good Witch, right, like, there is all of these other levels. So how do you think that we continue down this road when now there's just so much pushback their actual laws and policies going on the book to make sure that, as Ron de Santis said, don't feel uncomfortable, so that they don't feel any discomfort, can go along

just for the get along. Yeah, No, I think that mean we should call all these laws like the codifying of white fragility laws, right, that's what they are, right, like the protection of white fragility, to make sure that that is not challenged. And you know, I think it taps into sort of the way the unique ways that white women's racism has always been manifest in this country.

There's a wonderful book called Mothers of Mass Resistance by Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, and she was a guest of mine on the first season of the podcast where she talks about how these battles of her education have long been sort of where it's been socially sanctioned for white women to kind of activate their racism, right like from the anti from the anti integration, anti school busing campaigns of the nineteen sixties and seventies to now what we see

around you know, both the sort of anti public education in terms of like the uproar over you know, school closures and mask wearing and public health measures to the anti so called critical race theory debates. But I mean, it really is this way of protecting my comfort as a white person in the masked in this I am work, I am giving myself to my child's best interests. Right this, this white womanhood has been constructed and that I am a you know this this my you know again, my goodness,

my my caretaking, my my mothering. So what is it going to take to change it? I mean, one, it's why I wanted to, like, you know, have some of these public conversations, yeah, that both examine sort of the big picture and the personal and hopefully start to prompt

more people to have these conversations. But then, you know, kind of moving into the second season in the podcast where we look at the care caregiving crisis in this country, I also think it's going to take policies that put us, that provide benefits to us and build that solidarity dividend that that show us concretely that there are better ways of orienting society in ways that we all benefit. And I think if we could get some of these, you know, if we can change some of our policies, I also

think that helps us change our narratives. So I don't think that like they're they're interconnected, right. I think narrative, narrative and the stories we tell need can lead to different kind of policies, and different kind of policies can also lead to different narratives. I think it's a really

iterative process. But I do think that if we can have some investment, some greater investment in the common good that allows us to build bridges and to see one another's dignity and to really show kind of the common humanity that we need to be all invested in building and forging. Julie, what is coming up next with a white picket fence force for season three? What will folks

be looking forward to? Yeah, well, we're early in our in our thinking right now, but I really would like to sort of knit together our first two seasons because I think the issues that we unpacked in both of

those are coming to a head politically. You know. I've really been interested in the in the first two seasons, in these moments of political disruption, Donald Trump's election, the Black Lives Matter movement, and particularly the mass demonstrations that arose in the wake of George Floyd's murder, and what we saw sort of at least a momentary building of interracial solidarity in the wake of that, and then this public health crisis that caused massive shared pain, particularly for parents,

and again particularly for mothers who were affected most dramatically by lack of childcare and lack of public accessible schools, and all of these I think disruptions could have been a moment of tremendous political transformation where we really those solidarity dividends. And what we've seen in the wake of all of these is a tremendous rise of racist backlash.

And so I think we're at this very precarious moment, and I just so I'd really like to look at why again, why are we seeing this racist backlash in this moment, Who's behind it, how are they messaging this, and what do we need to do to do something differently, Like, we have a choice in how we engage at this moment, and I'd like to offer people a different path forward. I love that Julian I can't wait. I can't wait

for it. I can't wait for the third season. And you know, I will say that I don't often, you know, have an opportunity to really delve into the psychology of white women, which is what you have done, and really, you know, create this historical arc that then brings us to this current space and place right because the questions that I think that a lot of us have is

why are we here? Right? And I would argue, because we don't have the courage, we don't have the courage right to look in the mirror, We don't have the courage to say that America isn't exceptional, right, that the belief of that exceptionalism is what has left us open for the vulnerability of our empire to collapse right without you know, without understanding who we are and how we got here, how do you chart a path forward? And

that's you know, that's just the reality. And so this has been a really wonderful conversation and I hope that you'll come back to Woke AFU sooner rather than later. I would love that. It's been wonderful to talk to you. Appreciate you, folks. The podcast is White Picket fence. Make sure to check out the first two seasons so that you will be prepared for season three. Now, folks, for

our transition into our woke moment of wellness. And I want to say, I really appreciate folks dropping notes and telling me that you are walking, telling me that you're caring for your plants, telling me that you are really being intentional about your wellness. And like I said at the top when talking about COVID, if we are not taking responsibility for our own health and well being, we cannot assume that other people are going to take responsibility.

And at a time when our health and our public safety are all just up in the air, it is important, it is more important than ever that we take care that we make those doctors appointments, that we work out, that we eat well, that we stay hydrated, that we stay grounded and connected, because, as I continue to say, things are going to get a lot worse before they

get better. So, you know, here's something that I want to share a lot of people tell me that you know, they've tried meditation and you know it doesn't work for them, or they fall asleep, or you know, they just they don't feel whatever. They think is going to be that dreamy state of of meditation and what I want to offer. And again, I use one app right now, but I

know again there are many and they are free. But inside Timer, not only do they have guided meditations, meaning that you can just listen to people talking and guiding you through meditation, but they also have really beautiful music.

And so even if you know quote unquote meditation, sitting and listening or breathing on your own for a certain time frame doesn't work for you, I would encourage you to check out just the beats and the melodies and the music that are on these different apps, whether it be three minutes, ten or twenty or more, as a way to help us level out our cortisol levels and just you know, get lost in the music. You can do that while walking, washing the dishes, you know, laying

down right before you go to sleep. But if meditation, if listening to a guided medic aation and doing that kind of breathwork isn't your cup of tea, that I encourage you to listen to some music and during that time just doing your own breathing in counts of four, right, So do you breathe in holding for four seconds and then exhaling out through your mouth. Try to do three rounds of that where you're counting in your head to four as you're inhaling, you hold for four and then

release for four. Try three rounds of that. Try it today, Try it right after the podcast. See if you find that your shoulders relax right, that your body loosens up, and that you can actually feel your breath change. So try and do those breathing exercises while you're just listening to that serene you know music, whether it is their

wonderful violinists, piano harps, like all of these things. It doesn't take a lot of time, but again it's that intentional time where we're looking to connect and align with our body, with our breath, with our emotions and really using right that time for ourselves and being intentional about it. So give that a whirl and let me know in the comments section what you think and how you're reacting to it, folks. Coming up next is my conversation with

Julie Koehler from White Picket Fence. Make sure to check out her podcast as well. I think you will enjoy it. That is it for me today, folks. Here on woke f daily as always. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.