Liberation Education Newsletter

Yesterday I went into the store to buy some sweet treats and wound up spending a $110… Listen. 😂 ADHD and impulse spending are a chaotic combination, and because I know this about myself, I have developed a completely scientific economic policy wherein if (more like when) I spend money impulsively, I try to offset it by scoring something for free. Do not ask an economist about this.

I posed a question on my Facebook page before sitting down to write this: Goooood morning ☀️ During this Black August I’ve been sitting with an underlying premise: Mutual aid is not charity. So I want to ask… What does mutual aid mean to YOU? There are no wrong answers. How do YOU define mutual aid? Where did you learn what mutual aid looks like, and was it even called “mutual aid” when you learned it?

Do AI detectors identify authorship—or punish humans for sounding like the machines trained to imitate us? I have been writing poetry since before generative AI existed. Prose was my first love language. My first introduction to writing. I grew up with Irish and Black poets at my disposal, books all over the house, and a mother who would spend hours with me at the library. Later, she introduced me to anthology contests. I submitted poems. Sometimes I won. I have been writing for decades.

Last year I had a thread go viral because I suggested staggered school start times as one possible way to make schools more accessible for neurodivergent children and families. And people LOST IT. One of the responses I kept seeing was some version of: “Teachers already work 40 hours a week! You want us to work MORE?!” Except… I had never said that. I wasn’t suggesting anybody extend their workday. I was talking about staggered schedules. Shift work.

Black August did not begin as an aesthetic, a social-media theme, or a generalized celebration of Blackness. Its early practices centered remembrance, political education, fasting, physical discipline, collective responsibility, and resistance. (New York Amsterdam News) It gets cleaned up, sanitized, rebranded, repackaged, and sold back to the originators. The radical parts become inspirational quotes.

What if some of what we call work ethic, responsibility, professionalism, ambition, and resilience are actually compensation patterns developed inside systems that taught us our safety depended on our usefulness? Sit with that question as long as you need to. Notice what happens in your body when I say: You do not have to be useful right now. Not productive. Not helpful. Not impressive. Not making money. Just here. Did something soften? Or did something immediately begin negotiating?

This week, my kids went back to school. Well... kind of. Half days. New routines. Everybody needing something at the same time. School supplies. Permission slips. Paperwork out the wazoo. The grocery bill doing whatever the hell it is doing. Trying to remember who has to be where and what time while also trying to keep everybody fed, rested, and mostly regulated. Trying to sort out when I can get to the gym, and when I can work. And let’s not even talk about gas with the back and forth and car lines.

We are entering back-to-school season and, let me tell you, I am already tired. Orientation and walk-throughs begin Wednesday. Friday is a half day. I have three children going to three different schools, which means three sets of expectations, three schedules, three drop-offs, three places sending me emails as though their email is the only email in my inbox.

Sometimes the problem is not that you cannot keep up. Sometimes keeping up is the problem. You may not need more discipline, a better planner, or another morning routine. You may need to tell the truth about what your life is costing you. There is a particular kind of exhaustion that sleep does not fix. You can take the nap. Cancel the meeting. Drink the water. Buy the planner. Delete the app and download a different app that promises to organize your life in softer colors.

Not simply where I belong. But what I have been taught belonging requires of me. How much must I offer? How agreeable must I become? How many needs must I minimize? How much discomfort must I quietly absorb? How useful must I remain before I am allowed to rest? Because many of us learned belonging through negotiation. We learned which parts of ourselves made the room uncomfortable. Which emotions were inconvenient. Which boundaries threatened connection. Which truths might cost us access.