From Justice to Joy: Anasa Troutman
We’re talking with writer, producer, and entrepreneur Anasa Troutman, who besides being a well-known cultural disruptor and love activist, is challenging us to go beyond justice and towards sustainable joy for all.
-Tune in to The BIG We Podcast
-Check out Anasa’s other offerings
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this one thing Anasa said in our conversation: “You can’t transform something that you don’t love.”
And as someone deeply committed to personal and collective transformation, it had me reflecting on how I love. Not, how I do more activism or be a better ally, but how do I love for real? That too is justice. Justice calls us not only to correct whatever is in the way of love, but it also invites us to live into that love.
And that inquiry starts with self-love. Because how we love ourselves IS how we love everyone else. But the truth is, we live in a culture that does not reinforce self-love. It says love yourself only when you are smarter, healthier, more productive, more perfect. We are taught that love is conditional and so it’s no wonder that we project conditional love to others and make choices that are not loving to the whole of humanity.
But when we can claim radical love for ourselves - the kind that is expressed through grace and compassion and forgiveness - then we can start to extend that kind of love outwards in relationship, in how we repair the breach and love across lines of difference and disagreement and in how we love through our choices, through our votes and especially through our money.
Anasa reminds us that love is not some idea or intention. Love is who we are and what we do. And when we embody that kind of love fully, then justice and joy will flow.
This conversation is a reminder and realignment with the very thing that is most important and essential to our work: LOVE. Check it out.
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+ Read Transcript
Anasa Troutman: Okay, I feel like I need better light or lighting. Is that better? No.
Kerri Kelly: Let's adjust our lighting. Hold on, I'm going to apply some lipstick too. I got myself all dolled up for you this morning, Anasa.
Anasa Troutman: You look amazing.
Kerri Kelly: Yeah?
Anasa Troutman: You do.
Kerri Kelly: I even put mascara on, which I don't normally do. Well, you always look so pretty.
Anasa Troutman: Whatever. I look a mess today. I'm just looking like a normal person today, nothing dramatic.
Kerri Kelly: Monday morning.
Anasa Troutman: For real.
Kerri Kelly: Welcome, y'all this is Monday Morning with Anasa Troutman and Kerri Kelly, our new podcast.
Anasa Troutman: That was so good.
Kerri Kelly: If you can only see us now.
Anasa Troutman: Oh my god, I would totally listen to that. Yes, Monday Morning.
Kerri Kelly: This is a V cast, a video cast, on Monday morning, complete with our throat coat coffee and whatever else is necessary on a Monday morning.
Anasa Troutman: Traditional medicinals.
Kerri Kelly: Traditional medicinals. But for real, y'all, I'm here with one of my favorite people on the planet, Anasa Troutman. What can I say about you, Anasa? You have been such a dear friend, and teacher, and inspiration, and cultural disruptor. Also, the kind of person that always helps me remember what's most important about the work.
Anasa Troutman: Oh, that's so nice. Thank you for saying that.
Kerri Kelly: Always, you always get me right back on track. It's like alignment.
Anasa Troutman: That's good.
Kerri Kelly: I'm freaking so excited you're here with us today.
Anasa Troutman: I'm excited, too. You know how much I adore you. This is going to be the best conversation ever in life. I can't wait.
Kerri Kelly: It also might be the longest because I have so many things I want to talk to you about. But I just want to say that maybe this is the first of many conversations that we can have.
Anasa Troutman: Yeah, totally. Mm-hmm (affirmative). That's if we want to have our own podcast and everything-
Kerri Kelly: Besides that, right? I was literally about to say that my favorite podcast is The BIG We.
Anasa Troutman: Is it?
Kerri Kelly: Yeah. I'm thinking like, The BIG We CTZN, The BIG CTZN We.
Anasa Troutman: Citizens of the BIG We.
Kerri Kelly: Citizens of the BIG We? Like, we could do-
Anasa Troutman: Our podcasts are so aligned, Kerri. We're both talking about the same thing. It's like, how do we see each other?
Kerri Kelly: Yeah. It is that, right? Isn't it?
Anasa Troutman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kerri Kelly: I heard you say something recently about, this work is really about finding our place in the world and being in right relationship to one another. I think that's what I meant by you remind me of what's most important, because I think it's easy to get caught up in the vernacular, or the cultural narrative of what's the most popular thing to be talking about in culture and justice? Then I talk to you, and I'm like, oh no, it's about relationship.
Anasa Troutman: Mm-hmm (affirmative), I think so. This is a bit of a leap for some people, but if you truly believe that we're all connected, which I assume that most of your listeners do, since you're always talking about wellness, and being connected and all that, then yeah. Then there's nothing more important than relationship because if the premise is we're all connected, then our work really is figuring out how to honor that connection, to me. That's for another day.
Kerri Kelly: Which is back to alignment, I think. Right?
Anasa Troutman: Yeah, because we're totally out of alignment. We're not even in right relationship with ourselves, much less people who seem foreign, or different or other. We're born into this context where most of the people are people who we other for one reason or another. It feels to me like our most important journey is getting from that context to, oh, actually, we are all the same. And I need to transform my own behavior and way of being based on that realization, which is why our podcast is called The BIG We, because it's really about how we do the work of becoming realigned with the truth that we're all connected, and how we inspire other people to do that through the conversations that we have and the cultural productions that we talk about on the show. We're very intentional about what we talk about on the show because we are having a particular conversation about connection.
Kerri Kelly: Yeah. It's funny, I love this word alignment because I do believe that most people who listen to our podcast and your podcast believe in interdependence, believe that we're all connected. And yet, culture is seeing something very different all the time. Culture is like, oh yeah, of course ... in wellness world, we say we are one all the time, then we behave like we are isolated and separate.
Anasa Troutman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kerri Kelly: Right? There's that paradox happening constantly.
Anasa Troutman: Yeah. Well, the other side of alignment is embodiment. That's really the hard part because you can't have realignment unless you have embodiment. Culturally, we feel like if we say the thing, and we look like the thing, and we buy the outfit for the thing and we go to the event for the thing, then we are the thing. But nothing replaces embodiment. It's also the hardest part of it. The embodying of the values and the embodiment of knowing that we're all connected is the work. Doing that part of it is the actual work. The other parts are easy.
Kerri Kelly: When they flow from that place.
Anasa Troutman: Yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kerri Kelly: You were saying we can't be in relationship with other folks, with one another, if we're not in right relationship with ourselves.
Anasa Troutman: Mm-mm (negative).
Kerri Kelly: Let's start there because embodiment is a part of that. I just would love to hear from you. I know all the ways in which I'm out of alignment with my integrity and my truth, and how that's a constant choice I'm making. What does that look like for us? Where do you feel like we're out of alignment with ourselves?
Anasa Troutman: Oh, lord.
Kerri Kelly: I just figured we'd start existentially. Good morning, Anasa.
Anasa Troutman: Right, good morning. There's so many entry points to that question. It's interesting, Kerri, because here in America, in the United States of America where we were both born and raised, it's difficult to be in alignment. Because like you said, there's one thing that's living in your heart and your being, and there's a whole different thing living outside of you. When I talk about culture, I talk about soup. I make a correlation between regardless of what kind of noodle you are, the flavor of you depends on the broth that you're in. Even if you're like, "But I'm a whole wheat noodle," or, "I am a rice noodle that's gluten free," or, "I am a whatever," whatever noodle you say you are, if you're sitting in some chicken broth, you're going to taste like chicken.
It is very difficult to be born and raised, and have the DNA of one culture literally running through your body. Then fight to say, "Well, I have this feeling, this vision of connectivity in my heart, and I want to live it every day," because you're literally swimming in something else. Every time you take another lap across the bowl, you're literally ingesting chicken broth. What are you supposed to do? It's very, very, very difficult, which is why I do the work I do, because while I value, respect, honor, and I'm so grateful for the people who do frontline work every day when we're talking about social issues, that is not by itself going to get us to the vision that we talk about all the time. Because if we're not changing the broth out, then we're not going to ever not taste like chicken.
Kerri Kelly: Okay. What this reminds me of is, there's that famous saying that white supremacy is not the shark, it's the water.
Anasa Troutman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I've never heard of that before. Kerri Kelly: Which reminds me of it's not the noodle, it's the broth.
Anasa Troutman: That's right, that's right.
Kerri Kelly: But I hear two things that feel important and hard. One thing is, if we're steeped in the broth, one thing that says to me is that it's really hard to unlearn.
Anasa Troutman: Yeah, it is.
Kerri Kelly: It's really hard to unfuse the saturation of culture in our system and in our psyche. The other thing it says is that, I think, is that we're going to get this wrong all the time. We're going to be like, "Oh, shit, I'm in the broth again." I say that with humility. In some way, that makes me breathe a little more because I think ... part of the culture of othering is the good/bad binary of “you're either good at this, or you're bad at this.”
Anasa Troutman: That's right. Kerri Kelly: What I hear you saying is, it's both. And everybody is steeped in this.
Anasa Troutman: Yeah. I feel like if we spent as much time investigating our own privilege and our own participation in the culture that we're talking about, this culture of extraction and domination, and the lie of separation, however you say it. If we spend as much time examining how we participate in that as we do blaming other people for the way that they participate, that actually will be ... that's the transformation. Just like emotional health 101, you can't change people. That's in any relationship, in family, in a romantic relationship, at work. The basic therapy 101 is you cannot change someone else, you're responsible for you, and how you are and how you show up. We don't often do that work, even as people who have a vision for ... whatever you want to call it, world peace, or equity, or justice or whatever the language is, unfettered joy for all people, whatever your language is. That's not how we spend our time.
We often expect for other people to do the work that we're not willing to do because it looks a certain way over there. It's easy to look at this group of people and say, "You are a horrible person, you need to change and be better." Then we don't look at our own biases, our own participation in disconnection, our own inability, or unwillingness, actually, to love people more deeply, including the people that we think are doing terrible things. I think about love, I think about what it means to love myself, what it means to love someone who I will never meet. I always talk about this imaginary woman in Bangladesh. I'm like, there's a woman in Bangladesh I'm never going to meet. How do I love her? Then how do I love the person who I feel like has harmed me? Whether it's politically, socially, spiritually or personally.
Those are the three people that I think about because loving ... loving you, Kerri, is so easy because you're my friend. When I look at you, I'm like, she is so wonderful, we believe in the same things. She's been so supportive, we've had such fun in our lives together. Loving you is not a conversation. But it is way harder to, one, love myself, which is a whole mind trip in itself, two, to love someone I'll never meet, and three, to love somebody who I feel like has screwed me over, or is perpetuating systemic racism, or who looks at me and doesn't see me because I'm a black woman, or whatever those things are. Loving those people is my own personal pathway to world peace because until and unless we can look at those people and not other them, then ... I don't know how we're supposed to get there.
Kerri Kelly: It's funny. I feel like you're also naming one of the things I'm really struggling with right now, which is, even for the people I love most in my life, how to love them without control and without attachment. You said that right when you started, and I was like, oh shit, she's saying the thing I'm supposed to be doing right now. But that's hard because sometimes, I think love looks like I'm going to help you or I'm going to fix you.
Anasa Troutman: That's right.
Kerri Kelly: I think that has to do with the way that I love myself, which is I love myself conditionally. I love myself to the point of being right, to the point of being perfect, or to the point of being acceptable or politically correct. Beyond that, I can't love myself, so that's how I treat everybody else in my life. Love is not control.
Anasa Troutman: That's right, which is why I think that global transformation starts with love of the self, because how you love yourself is how you love everybody else. Whether you're a Christian or not, the passage in the Bible that says, "Jesus, there are all these rules. Which ones of the rules are really important? Do we have to do all of this stuff?" And Jesus says, "Well, all you really have to do is love God and love your neighbor as you love yourself." Whether you're a Christian or not, people know that. It makes sense. It's the whole do unto others as you ... all of that. But the problem there is that we are not taught in this society to love ourselves, so we have no basis for which we can then go out and love our neighbor. If we're not able to do the work of loving our neighbor in an authentic way, because it's based on this rubric of how we love ourselves, then we're screwed, honestly.
But it's not cultural for us to say to children, "Here, you are valuable, you are beautiful, you are wonderful. And here is how you love and honor yourself. Here is how you give yourself grace and forgiveness. Here's how you give yourself space to grow, and imagine and explore." We don't do that for children. If you don't have that for yourself, there's absolutely no way you can give it to somebody. I used to date this really terrible guy, but the one thing that I remember that he used to say was, "You only have what you give and you can only give what you have." If you don't have grace, forgiveness, joy, peace, love for yourself, there's actually no way for you to be a participant in the liberation of humans all over the globe. There's literally no way that you can do that fully.
Kerri Kelly: This is refreshing for me because I feel like in some ways, I'm fighting a battle on another front, which is I'm steeped, talk about culture, in a wellness culture that actually says love yourself, take care of yourself, drink green juice, make yourself into a bendy skinny thing, and don't worry about everyone else. Just worry about yourself. I've been fighting this battle of mutuality in collective care. But what I hear you saying that feels important, and I feel like this is really relevant in my life right now is that, it's also not enough to just care for others or to just be focused on the collective and bypass our own responsibility. The same way that it's not healthy and complete to be just focused on the self without considering the interconnectivity of our collective health.
Anasa Troutman: The quote is, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself," not love yourself. It didn't say love God and love yourself. The imperative was love your neighbor. As yourself was the rubric and the context, but the imperative is to love God and to love other people. So, no, it's not enough. Yes. One of the things that is so harmful about the wellness movement is that it lets people off the hook. It lets people feel like, oh, I am engaging in self care, I am doing yoga, I am drinking green juice. It allows people to say that they're participating in the creation of peace across the world just by doing those things when it's just not true. Well, let me go back. It is true.
However, what we've decided self care looks like in the wellness context is not actually a full 360 view of self care because if you drink green juice and do yoga every day, but you're a jerk, or you're a racist, or you don't check your implicit bias, or you are classist or any of those things. If you are engaging in the patriarchy in a way that's not healthy, then you're actually not loving yourself because our wellness is not just physical. It's also a social, emotional, spiritual and all those ways. If you are engaging in the oppression of other people, your soul is not well. Your mind and your heart are not well, even if you are drunk off the green juice of life. If you are engaging in the oppression of other people, you're not well. You're not, which means for me that none of us are well because we are all engaging in the oppression of someone, because that is what our culture is.
Our culture is about ... spiritual, emotional colonialism. As Americans, that's in the DNA of our nation. You can't get away from it. It's healthier and easier for those of us who acknowledge that, and work with it, and work through it. But for those of us who can't even imagine that that's the truth, no. No, the wellness is so far away. It's completely out of reach. You can't even say, wow, our economy is built on a slave economy, and we all are participating in that, and we're all affected. We're all acting outside of our nature because we are living in a slave economy. I don't care how much money you make or what your color is. We're all doing that because that's the economic foundation for our nation is a slave economy, so we're all participating. You can't even hear me say that and not cringe and turn your head away, then wellness is very, very, very much out of your reach.
Kerri Kelly: And has become really a weapon of colonialism in many ways. It's become the manifestation of the very thing that you name. The commercialism, the appropriation of the culture that it comes from. And certainly the whiteness of wellness, the productivity orientation of wellness all stems from those ideologies that are making us fucking really sick.
Anasa Troutman: Well, because it's in our DNA. You can't get away from it. I don't care what you call it or what your intention is, it's in there. If you're not actively rooting it out and replacing it with something that is more authentic, then you're going to participate.
Kerri Kelly: The deeper, deeper. I'm thinking about our wellness, wellness that's interconnected and interdependent. And how it's not one more juice fast. It's not tactical politics either, right?
Anasa Troutman: No, it's not. Please, god, no.
Kerri Kelly: There's an analogy of that surface way in which we respond and continue to bypass the deeper work. What does the deeper work look like, Anasa, that can help us ... I don't want to say help us get well because that feels idealistic, but helps us move towards real, embodied wellness? The kind that you're speaking about?
Anasa Troutman: You know what I'm thinking about right now, and this is very woo-woo, I'm just going to say that right now.
Kerri Kelly: Welcome to the podcast.
Anasa Troutman: Do you know Abraham Hicks, Kerri?
Kerri Kelly: Yeah.
Anasa Troutman: Yeah. Abraham says in a moment where you're in total despair, if you're like, "I want to be completely joyful," you actually can't get there. They say, "You can't get there from here." The goal in a moment of total despair cannot be absolute blissful joy because it's actually not attainable. What you need in that moment is relief. Then every stage of relief gets you closer and closer to actually being in reach of unfettered joy. What I would say about, how do we do that in this moment, is that complete and total unfettered joy for all humans, and feeling of liberation and full choices is really not attainable from where we are right now. It's just not.
What I am working for in my life, and for the people around me and the people I have influence over, or with or whatever, is awareness, honestly. Because if we're talking about culture, and if we believe that our culture is the number one barrier between where we are and where we want to go, then that is where our work is. It's about how we understand what culture is, understand how culture works, understand what drives culture. Then go to the heart of that and work to transform those things in ourselves. I believe that culture is dictated by our core values. There's this value of hyper-capitalism, myopic individualism, and the things that make us choose money over people all the time. That to me is what the DNA of our culture is.
It's some folks who came here and were like, "Oh, this land is so nice, we need it." Well, there's some people here. "Well, we don't care. We choose this land and this resource over these people." Then they're like, "Oh. Well, now we need to figure out how to get the land cultivated and worked and make it profit. Well, let's go find some people who can work it." Well, they're actual humans. "Well, no, we don't care about that. We care about getting free labor, so we're going to choose the possibility of profiting resources over these people again." Our entire culture, our economy, our way of being, the way we relate, our conversation about racial construct, gender, all that stuff is built on the DNA of, "We don't care about these humans, we care about this money."
If we want to change our culture, the simple way to say it is, can we just reverse that? Can we say, "Actually, people are more important than resources, or money or economic growth." And can we make choices that put people first? Can we start there? That's the most basic thing, in your day to day-
Kerri Kelly: Like a reorientation?
Anasa Troutman: Basic 101, super easy to get to reorientation is, can we start with saying people are more important than money no matter what? In any circumstance, no matter what, people are more important than money, profits, however you contextualize it for yourself. Starting there is fantastic. Can we get so deep with that conversation that it turns into a conversation about love as a core value, as opposed to individualism extraction?
Can we actually get to, what does love look like in community, in family, and policy, in economics, in all those things? And translate love in a practice way where we actually ... the practical application of that is putting people first, but that it's actually coming from a knowing that we're all connected, a knowing that we're learning how to honor that connection, a knowing that we have to embody that connection in our own lives first before we expect other people to embody that connection. Then go from there. Then we can get to bliss, and unfettered joy and choices for all humans. But until we can even have that conversation, because we actually, all of us choose money over people literally every day. Every day, we do it.
Kerri Kelly: All of us.
Anasa Troutman: Every single one of us. The easiest thing I can say is, if you think about, go in your closet and think about who made the clothes in your closet, how much they were paid, and how much you paid for it, and compare it to the labor that was put into it. If you cannot go in your closet and say, "All of my clothes were made sustainably and justly, thinking about the person who made it, and the planet, and the resources that it required to make that," then ... I don't know anybody who can say that. I don't know anybody who can say that.
Kerri Kelly: I think that's important because I think some people feel ... I've heard, especially in wellness, where there's a purity culture feel above. Like, "I'm in a healthier version of capitalism." Anasa Troutman: That's right.
Kerri Kelly: Even like the conversation I feel like around purpose driven-
Anasa Troutman: Girl, do not get me started on that.
Kerri Kelly: Right? There's a lot of shades of conscious capitalism. But that isn't going to the root, of the root, of the root I feel like that you're naming, which is under no circumstances will we put profits over people. I don't hear anybody saying that. I feel like until we hear that-
Anasa Troutman: Nobody does say that.
Kerri Kelly: Yeah.
Anasa Troutman: I actually spent the last few months ... because I moved to Memphis a couple years ago and have gone through this incredible journey in Memphis. The thing that Memphis has taught me was that healing is not possible if you don't have control over your own resources. I've been in this conversation about new economy, and impact investing, and all of these economically based conversations because I'm curious about the connection between economics, resources, and in personal and community liberation. Some of the conversations have been amazing. I don't want to throw any whole industry under any kind of bus. But what I will say is that it's been very disappointing to discover that a lot of people who are engaging in impact investing are doing this healthier version of capitalism are embodying the same values of traditional business. It's still this much of a return, this much of a profit, this much of a whatever no matter what-
Kerri Kelly: At all costs.
Anasa Troutman: At all costs. And it's still, in a lot of cases, a room full of white men who are looking for other white men who are doing the same conscious capitalism, with air quotes around it. While I appreciate the direction, it's actually, in my mind, no better.
Kerri Kelly: Well, it also wreaks of the American dream, right?
Anasa Troutman: Oh, god.
Kerri Kelly: We have a history in this country of repackaging ourselves to look better, to be shinier, and happier and more culturally acceptable. But we're simply moving the line.
Anasa Troutman: Yes.
Kerri Kelly: We're not really transforming anything.
Anasa Troutman: No.
Kerri Kelly: And I see that. There's a great book called Winner Takes All by Anand Giridharadas that talks about this. He calls it the elite charade of changing the world, about all these change makers coming out of Silicon Valley, and even philanthropy, who are capitalist massed-
Anasa Troutman: Especially [crosstalk 00:30:58].
Kerri Kelly: Yeah, and trying to save the world. It's white saviorism all over again. I just say that as a person who's in this work, as a white person who's in this is work, and constantly reckoning with that. You and I have talked about this before. I don't know what to make of our business model, right?
Anasa Troutman: Yes, yes.
Kerri Kelly: Because every way in which I build one, there is complicit-ness and a participation in ... I'm so appreciate of the work that Taj is doing in cooperative economics and transitional economics. But I really struggle with how to stand in this really in between place, like what you were saying before of we're not there yet. So we have to stand in this shit.
Anasa Troutman: Yup, we do. We do. And we have to get comfortable with that because that thing, you're this puritanical, like, "We are good." That thing, get in your way every time. It will get in your way every time because we are good, but we're all good and we're all bad. I have my new personal growth thing right now is, I had a friend tell me a couple weeks ago I need to embrace my dark side, which totally freaked me out because if you know me, you know that I am committed to goodness, and joy, and love, and good hugs and all that. The thought of what it meant to embrace my dark side was very scary for me, but I also know that it is absolutely the right thing to do.
Because we are all whole people, we are all living in a very complex set of rules in our lives. You have to be able to look at your whole self and say, here is where I'm great, and I'm very excited I want to grow it, and here's where I'm not doing it. And I need to look at that, and love it and transform it because you can't transform something that you don't love. You can't. You have to embrace it and be able to look it in the face and be like, "Oh my gosh, look at you. You're so cute. We need to push you over this. We have to put you over here." We have to be able to know that we're ... we're in it. We're all in it.
I want to be intentional about saying acknowledging that we're all in it doesn't excuse those of us who appear more egregious than the other. I don't want to say we're all damaging the planet, so don't be mad at Exxon or whoever, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying we shouldn't hold those people accountable. I think that those things are important. But I'm saying to do that and not do that for ourselves is actually out of integrity of the work that we say we're doing out in the world.
Kerri Kelly: Well, I think that's just part of the practice of discernment, right?
Anasa Troutman: Yes.
Kerri Kelly: We may be all steeped in this broth, but we're all located in different places. We all have different privileges and proximity. It goes back to what you were saying before. Then, right, if you layer in collective institutions, and government and corp, all that too has a different place and role, but we have to reckon with that. I think part of I think the challenge and the need in truth telling is to be able to hold that complexity. Yes, we're all complicit, and no, we're not all complicit in the same way.
Anasa Troutman: That's right. I think that foundations are a great example of this conversation. To take it back to just the economic conversation, because if you are ... on the outside, foundations are like, this is amazing, we give millions. I saw something yesterday that there was 237 billion dollars given away last year, something like that, between foundations and individual giving. If you just think about the foundations, and on the outside it's like these foundations are giving away billions of dollars a year in the name of love, justice, humanity, animal health, planetary, all those things. Then you say, "Yes, that is absolutely true." As folks who have been in the nonprofit industry in one way or another for many years, we have all benefited from the foundation world and the money that comes out of that context. It's also important to know that foundations were not set up to do good. They were set up to protect the wealth of the top 1%, or whatever it was at the time. And-
Kerri Kelly: And continue to do that.
Anasa Troutman: The law is set up so that whatever is in your endowment ... if I hit it rich and I'm like, "I put 100 million dollars in this endowment," the law says that I only have to give away 5% of that endowment. Amazing, I've given away 5% of my hundred million, so I gave away five million dollars. On the outside, I can be like, "I gave away five million dollars. I am so wonderful and I've done so much good." But on the other side, I have 95 million dollars sitting in an investment account with Merrill Lynch or someone else, and they're investing 95 million dollars in oil, in private prisons, in big ag, in all kind of stuff that literally undermines every penny of that five million dollars that I've put in for justice work or whatever the thing is.
It's a really complicated ... it's a complicated set of smoke and mirror stuff. We have to be more courageous because the people who are running the foundations are not thinking, I am so excited to spend 95% of my money undermining the 5% I spent in the community. They're thinking, our job is to make as much money as we can for our endowment, and here's how we're going to do that.
Kerri Kelly: Back to that core belief.
Anasa Troutman: That's right, it's back to that core thing. It's actually hyper-capitalist, this idea that we need to make as much money as possible in spite of the damage that it does to the people, the planets and the animals, is alive and well, even in the most impactful social justice spaces.
Kerri Kelly: Right.
Anasa Troutman: We have to start to be more courageous, more adventurous, more imaginative, for God's sake, about the way that we are locating ourselves in the landscape. And also, acknowledging totally that this is the most complex issue that humanity has ever had. I'm not expecting for there to be simple or fast solutions, but like I said, we can't get to solutions from here. But what we can do is be like, holy crap, I'm responsible for 100 million dollars, 95% of which I've just invested in oil companies.
Kerri Kelly: It feels like this too is about wholeness, right?
Anasa Troutman: Absolutely.
Kerri Kelly: One of the things I've heard you say is, "Don't talk to me about diversity and inclusion, talk to me about the truth."
Anasa Troutman: That's right.
Kerri Kelly: I feel like that's what you're naming is, don't look at 5% of the truth and say that that's everything. Look at 100%. I think it's similar to what's happening in our country. We're saying, let's look at the 100% truth of, the whole truth of who we are and how we got here, if we want to actually move forward and transform things.
Anasa Troutman: Yeah. To bring that down even to the granular level, because sometimes, thinking about the 100 million dollars is too much for us. But even if you're a regular every day person who, in their mind, believes in justice, or ... you go to yoga class twice a week, you drink all the green juice, you do all the things. You even volunteer, or go to rallies, or do the letter writing campaign, or whatever it is that you do. And you have a 9:00 to 5:00 and your retirement account is invested in those same private prisons and oil companies. So you are undermining your own ability to impact change in the world because you spend your days doing the work of justice, and you are committed to having the biggest retirement portfolio that you can. So you allow people to invest your retirement money in things that are actually undermining the work that you do during the day.
That is just the reality of our society. Unless you are super, super, super intentional, you are doing harm. You're doing harm. We have to start to be able to have the courage to be able to look at that. Because if all the people who believed in justice divested their 401Ks from private prisons and oil companies-
Kerri Kelly: That would hurt.
Anasa Troutman: That would transform our country, that alone. We don't need anybody across the isle, or anyone of a different skin color, or class, or gender, or anything to do anything, if all of those of us who committed their selves to love, peace, and justice, and we believe in love, and we believe that we are all equal. If it was just us, did that, did the work of looking at our money, and where our money goes, and how we support the things that we don't believe in in public, that alone would do the work that we are trying to get other people to do for us. That alone.
Kerri Kelly: Yeah. I feel like you're going back to where we started this conversation, which is that personal reckoning, that personal interrogation of what am I doing? Let's start here. What am I doing to contribute, and to continue to uphold these systems?
Anasa Troutman: But it's scary to do that, Kerri, because if you think about the way ... if you think about the commentary, the tape that is rolling at all times about money, and what money means, what money gives you access to, what it means to not have access to resources in terms of your health. Your actual, physical health depends on-
Kerri Kelly: Shelter.
Anasa Troutman: Your access to resources, your shelter, your ability to enjoy life, your ability to be seen as respected and loved by people outside. Considering all that, all that it means to have access to wealth, to ask people to put that down, we're not just asking people to make less money. We're asking them to have less respect, to be less safe, to have less access to healthcare, to education, to all of those things. I don't take this conversation lightly. It's a big thing in a society where money is everything, where literally, we are choosing money over people. It is literally everything, culturally. We're asking people to release their access to that. That is a very, very, very tall order. It's a very, very, very big ask to ask someone in a society where money means life to turn away from that.
That is why we are still where we are. That is why we're here because we have not figured out a way to have access to life more abundantly without having access to wealth. Of course we're doing everything we can to get as much money as we can because it literally is a life and death conversation. Even if it's not one in real life, psycho-spiritually, it is. We're wired to believe that the more money you have, the better your life is, and the better you are, the more worth you actually have. The conversation all everybody wants is to be acknowledged and loved, we have taught our children every generation after generation that your actual ability to have love and value in the world is commiserate to your ability to acquire wealth. We're asking people to not be loved. We're like, "Put down capitalism." You're actually saying, "Be sad and lonely in a basement,"-
Kerri Kelly: And dignity.
Anasa Troutman: "With the water dripping on your head, and with no dignity, no access to life and no community," is what we're asking people to do, which not true, of course. We all know that community, and love-
Kerri Kelly: Right. Psychologically, that's what we see.
Anasa Troutman: That's right. But psychologically, that's what we're asking people to do.
Kerri Kelly: I can just, by the way, wallow in that for a while. So intense, because I'm just thinking about even in the little choices that we make, I think, sometimes to move in the direction of, I'm thinking about what you were talking about before around embodiment, it can feel intolerable. It can feel like enormous anxiety to sit in a place of financial uncertainty when you make choices like that. But I also hear you saying that it is also a part of the cultural narrative that you have to give this big thing up, you have to give it all up, when in fact we're also hearing really powerful stories about the reorganization, the redistribution of resources and money that feels ... I'm just thinking about how repair and reparations play into that.
Because that's rarely a part of this story that we're telling. I think you're right. When people are like, they cling to, I will not let go of what I have for fear of losing myself, then we're never going to get out of this. But if we tell a new story of what it looks like to reorganize ourselves, to reorganize our money, to reorganize our culture in such a way that it takes care of more people, is that not a better story?
Anasa Troutman: Yup. This conversation about reparations and repair has been really interesting for me because, again, we're in this conversation where the dominant narrative about our culture says that it's about money. In a capitalist society, you think about repair, then of course you're going to go directly to money. I'm not saying that money is not owed because I'm clear that it is. If all you think about is the unpaid wages of how many hundreds of years of labor, and the unpaid value of land that was stolen, even if that's all you think about-
Kerri Kelly: And the profit from it.
Anasa Troutman: And the profit from it that lingers today, then ...
Kerri Kelly: Then it's about money.
Anasa Troutman: Then it's about money. It is about money, but it's not only about money.
Kerri Kelly: Right.
Anasa Troutman: Right? Because the impact of that land being taken, and these people who were abused, and be clear, it was beyond ... it wasn't just, "Hey, come here and work for free." It was, "Come here and work for free. And I'm going to do all the things that I need to do to bring terror upon you so that you feel like that's what you have to do." And what it means for me now to drink my own Kool-Aid and think that you actually deserve that, you're deserving of that, and that's all you're worthy of because I was taught that. And all that that means now. We're actually still living in that legacy.
It is the money, but it's also the legacy of poor health. And the generational impact of not having access to all the things that are healthy, like food, peace of mind, ability to roam, and be free, and to make choices for you and your children, and think about what that does. There's research that shows that that trauma lives in the body and it's passed on through DNA. If you can imagine, let's just keep it simple and think about 10 generations. If you think about a woman or a man who was captured somewhere off the west coast of Africa, brought to this country ... one of my friends just got her PhD last week, and we were in her dissertation defense. Her work is about the use of biomythography and speculative fiction for black women's healing. There was a big conversation about that. One of the things that the chair of her dissertation committee said was that, I'm not going to get this right, but it was something like, "Slavery was the first alien encounter."
It was like, if you think about somebody who was just living in their home, doing their thing, and all of a sudden, they're captured by someone who's not recognizable physically. They're taken on a vessel across water, and are poked, and prodded, and abused, and subjugated, and made to work. I was like, crap, yes, this is like an alien abduction. You think about what it would mean for a man or a woman to be captured, removed from their family, removed from their language, their cultures, their spirituality, their practices, all of that stuff. Brought to a new place, abused, terrorized, being made to feel like if they didn't do what they were told, they would be killed, beaten, their children ripped from them.
If you think about the trauma of that one person's life, then you think about the DNA of that being passed and compounded over 10 generations, and what that would do to a person. It's not just like, oh, I'm going to write you a check and you're going to feel better. That's just not real. It's not real. And if you think-
Kerri Kelly: Or it's not complete.
Anasa Troutman: It's incomplete. If you think about the person who captured that human, and subjugated them, and terrorized them, and raped them and all the things that were done. Then you take the trauma of that, because what does that do to you as a human to do that to another person? What is the traumatic experience of the colonizer, acknowledged or not? What does it mean for that person to take that DNA through 10 generations compounded? You can't just be like, I'm going to write you a check and I'm going to be better.
Kerri Kelly: Right, because there's so much internalized supremacy.
Anasa Troutman: Because there's so much internalized supremacy.
Kerri Kelly: Everything, yeah.
Anasa Troutman: And all the things. I'm not saying don't write the check, and I'm not saying don't redistribute wealth, because that is absolutely the number one first step that we have to make. Because like I said earlier, healing is not possible if you don't have control over your resources. I'm not asking you to write me a grant or let me live in your home, I'm asking you to, these resources are actually mine unjustly. These actually should belong to you. These resources are going to go over there, and you will control them. You will figure out what needs to happen with them to be able to heal yourself and your community. That's step one, but it's not the only step.
This conversation about repair. When we talk about repair, the question that comes up for me is, repairing what? It goes back to that conversation about relationship. It's healing the relationship between those of us who think they're white, and those of us who think that we're black, and all those other people who got caught up in between. And those of us who think that we are indigenous, and those of us who think that we are white. Because those two original, humongous crimes against humanity that happened on this soil that we call the United States of America, they must be atoned for. They must be addressed. They must be looked at in the face. They have to be healed, or else we're going to be sitting right here in another 400 years. We cannot have the country that we are talking about unless those two things are addressed and atoned for-
Kerri Kelly: The wounds.
Anasa Troutman: It's just not going to happen. I don't give a damn how many laws we pass. It doesn't matter because underneath, there's going to be this rip in our human fabric that needs to be addressed and healed. It has to be.
Kerri Kelly: I think it's hard for people to ... you were saying before we need imagination. I think we have a crisis of imagination because-
Anasa Troutman: Absolutely.
Kerri Kelly: Because we've never lived into integrity in this country in the way in which you're describing, so we don't know what it looks like.
Anasa Troutman: We don't know.
Kerri Kelly: I feel like in many ways-
Anasa Troutman: Most of us don't even think it's possible, I think.
Kerri Kelly: It feels hard, I'll be honest. This is where I feel like your work around story is really powerful because we need to live into the new truth, because we haven't ever experienced it before. I love the ways in which you're weaving story into a lot of your reparation work. There's two things I wanted to lift up because I think you talking about it and telling the story of these two projects is going to help us all see a new vision of what reparations could look like, and healing. One is the restoration of the Memphis-
Anasa Troutman: Historic Clayborn Temple.
Kerri Kelly: Clayborn Temple.
Anasa Troutman: Yes.
Kerri Kelly: The other is the Troutman Institute of Wellness Equity. Speaking to the, if not money ... I agree with you, money is a part of it. There's land, there's the restoration and reclaiming of land. I'm thinking 40 acres and a mule was a part of that sever. Then there's the psychic and spiritual restoration that's about our health and our wellness. I'd love for you to tell the story of what reparations looks like in those two projects for us.
Anasa Troutman: I will. I'm happy to. I want to first give a disclaimer and say that there's a lot about this conversation about land that I'm still navigating because it feels disingenuous for me to have a conversation about the reclamation of land and not think about ... this is way out there, just a heads up. Well, how do we talk about land, and land ownership and land as an opportunity for communities to build wealth collectively, and not think about our indigenous family? And what it means that we're actually talking about reclamation and restoration of land that is not ours either as African Americans. Even if every white person in all of America was like, "This is not our land. Let's give it to all the black people," that doesn't actually solve the problem.
Kerri Kelly: Idea of property as owned is another part of that. Anasa Troutman: Which is what I was about to say. That's another example to me of, how do we get there from here? Because ownership is not even a conversation in the indigenous context. We're talking about real repair and real restoration. It's the restoration of the idea that land is a collectively held resource that we honor and we respect, and we take care of, and we steward, not own. Right?
Kerri Kelly: Yes.
Anasa Troutman: But I can't go ... maybe I can. I don't yet know how to say, "Hey, let's have this land be owned by itself. Let's be stewards. Let's live on it, and with it, and love it, and let it love us back. And negotiate who lives on it and who doesn't based on the seasons and," whatever the thing is. That's what I really want to do, to be completely honest, but I don't have a clue how to get there.
Kerri Kelly: Yeah. You're holding the question though, which feels important.
Anasa Troutman: I am holding the question, though. I'm looking for people to hold that question with me because I don't know how to do that. I want to say that first and foremost. I don't think that the work I'm doing right now around land in Memphis is getting there. Even if I'm 100% successful, I'm still going to feel like, yup, this isn't it. This is a good place to stop on the journey for now, but that's not it. There's that.
In Memphis, there is this building, it's called Historic Clayborn Temple. Let me back up to say this because this will help give context, because I have a cultural strategy firm. It's called Culture Shift Creative. The work that we do is about identifying, removing and replacing barriers to what we call cultural wellness. How do we have a culture that is well, that gives rise to policies, practices, communities, ways of being that are also well? Knowing that our policies, practices and ways of being right now that are out of whack comes from a culture that's out of whack. We are wholly focused on cultural transformation so that the ways that we live and exist with each other are based in a place of health, and love, and all that place. That's important to know.
If you don't know what cultural strategy is, it's really about how to leverage stories for social impact. It's how to tell a story that embodies a core value, then allow people the opportunity to engage in that story, engage with each other about that story, then have a place to practice how to live that story in their every day life. That's what we do at Culture Shift Creative. We both do the storytelling work, and the engagement work, and the work of embodiment. We do all those things. We do a wholistic approach to creating new opportunities, and having people be able to reimagine the way that they live with each other. We say it's, we go from imagination to impact.
I was invited to Memphis two years ago to actually produce a musical about the sanitation worker strike of 1968. If you don't know about that strike, that is the strike, if you've ever seen the iconic I Am a Man signs, those were produced out of that march. The longer story is that the sanitation worker strike campaign was Martin Luther King's last campaign before he was assassinated. He was in Memphis for that march when we was assassinated. The reason why he invested his time and energy in that march was because for a year before he died, he had been talking about expanding their work from racial justice to the work of race, economy and militarism. Because we was like, this race thing is not it, it's not all of it. It's a very important part of the conversation, but we're not talking about class and we're not talking about militarism. We're actually missing the bow. We're only having a small part of the conversation of what's required for us to actually be free as a country.
In that year, which was the most difficult and ... there's a lot of evidence that it was the most depressed year of his life, that he was sad a lot, because he was losing friends, losing financial supporters, and people saying to him, "Stop talking about class. Let's focus on race. This thing is working. It's going to be great. You're making us look crazy." He's like, no, I'm clear that this is the work. We have to move forward. He came to Memphis because it was the place in the country that was having a conversation about the juxtaposition of race and class. He thought, well, if I go to Memphis and I can help them make that work, then I have an exemplar that I can use, and take it around the country, and build this poor people's campaign that he wanted to build.
There's a great, great, great, great documentary called King in the Wilderness. That movie is everything. It gives you a whole new perspective on King and his work in the last years of his life. And it'll talk a little bit about-
Kerri Kelly: Nice.
Anasa Troutman: Clayborn Temple. I highly recommend that movie. This building, Historic Clayborn Temple, was an organizing headquarters for that strike that brought Martin Luther King to Memphis to be able to bring the conversation about race and class to America. I was invited there because there are some folks who bought it who didn't know the history of the building when they first bought it. They were looking to find a place for their church. They didn't know what to do because they got a lot of pushback from the community here in Memphis saying you can't ... that's not important. They were going to do stuff with the building that was not honoring of its past. They got a lot of pushback and, to their credit, were like, okay, okay, we don't do that, but we don't know what to do.
One of the people on the team, his name is Greg Thompson, said, "Well, if we're going to think about what to do with the future of the building, we need to really understand the past of the building." They asked me to come in and to produce a musical that told the story of the sanitation worker strike, told the history of the building, the history of King and all of that stuff.
Kerri Kelly: That was Union, right?
Anasa Troutman: That was called Union, unionthemusical.com. It actually was one of the most transformative experiences of my life. We did about two years worth of work in six months, which is why I moved here because I was like, I cannot do this work remotely, because I was living in Nashville at the time. And learned about not just the history of the building, but the history of the neighborhood, the history of Memphis, the history of Robert Church, who was the first African American millionaire. There's this whole ... we could have a two hour podcasts just about that history, and why it was so impactful for me.
By the time that we finished the process, two things were true. One, the folks who had brought me in to do the work said, "This is actually not our work. We think this is your work. Can you take leadership here over this entire project?" The other thing that I knew was that the work of the sanitation workers, and Reverend Lawson and Dr. King, and the power structure at the time. The mayor was this man named Mayor Loeb. The interaction that they were living out wasn't in a vacuum. It was an expression of a much longer legacy in Memphis around ownership, and economy, and race, and power and all that. And that we were also still living that same dynamic out in 20, at the time, 18 in Memphis. And that the conversation wasn't just about restoration of the building, it was about the restoration of that neighborhood, of the city, of prosperity for African Americans in Memphis. Memphis is a town that is 65% white with a 40% poverty rate. If you look at the history of Memphis, that is constructed. That was-
Kerri Kelly: On purpose.
Anasa Troutman: 100% deliberate on purpose. If you look at the history of the town and the anthropological evolution of race and class here in Memphis, it's textbook power conversation, textbook. It was an opportunity for me to commit to a place where I could bring everything that I have to bear into one space, with people who I love, and believe in, and who trusted me enough to invite me in. Not just those original people, but people all over the city, from the artist community to the business community, the people who I really spent a lot of time building relationships with. It gave me an education about the relationship between race and class, both historically and future facing, and what our work is in terms of being able to ...
Actually, I was at an event a couple weeks ago in LA. The mayor said something that I was so excited, because you know we've been having this conversation about diversity and inclusion, and I don't like that language because it still puts somebody in a power seat. He said something about belonging. He was like, "This is not a conversation about inclusion. It's about creating a space where everybody knows that they belong." It's been such a beautiful education for me about what belonging looks like, and how to create belonging for everyone, where no one is the person in the center saying, "Well, you belong, and you belong, and you belong." The difference between that and the knowing that we belong regardless, right?
Kerri Kelly: Mm-hmm (affirmative), inherently.
Anasa Troutman: That's right. And being able to also understand that we can create a space of belonging that everybody is not ready to step into, because we are working to say everyone is welcome here. Everybody can have a sense of belonging, but there are rules of engagement. You don't get to come in here if you're not willing to check your privilege, if you're not willing to be held accountable, if you're not willing to be doing the work of looking at your own stuff and dismantling it, you're welcome, but you're not allowed. There's a bench outside the front door where you can sit and get ready to do your work. When you're ready to do that work, then you can come inside.
Kerri Kelly: That sounds like culture shift.
Anasa Troutman: Yeah.
Kerri Kelly: That sounds like ingredient of culture shift.
Anasa Troutman: Yes.
Kerri Kelly: What are we promising each other as we move into this work?
Anasa Troutman: That's right. Because if you don't have those agreements, you can't shift the culture.
Kerri Kelly: That's right.
Anasa Troutman: Because culture is a set of agreements. The expression of culture is a set of agreements, whether they're spoken or unspoken. If we're going to have a new culture, we have to have a set of agreements that are in alignment with the core value. For us, the core value is love. What does it look like to be in a loving relationship? Which, again, like you said earlier, it doesn't mean you're not going to be perfect, it doesn't mean you're not going to make mistakes, doesn't mean you're not going to blow it all up. But it's about intention, and it's about attention, and where you put your energy, and how you hold yourself accountable, and how you are willing to hold other people accountable when they're out of integrity. And hold them accountable with loving care. Not with blame, not with finger pointing, not with persecution, but how do you hold each other accountable with love? That requires relationship.
If you're not in a relationship with somebody, you will not hold them accountable lovingly. You will be angry. You will accuse, you will point, you will ... all those things. That's why creating a space of belonging has been so important in Memphis, because it allows us to be loving even in moments where accountability is required. For folks that are not willing to be held accountable, well, you can't come in here. It's not because you're not welcome, it's because you're making the choice to not be in relationship in the way that is required when love is present. It's hard. It's hard.
If I'm honest, this has been professionally, and spiritually and emotionally the two hardest years of my life. This year in particular, 2019, has been excruciating because that work is so hard. The work of holding yourself to account, then being able to hold other people to account in a loving way in this social, political, economic context that we're in right now, right now, it is hard. It is hard. It is hard.
Kerri Kelly: Someone said that one of the things that's been helping me around accountability, I forget who said this, but it was this idea that accountability ... my holding you accountable means that what you have to offer really matters.
Anasa Troutman: Yes.
Kerri Kelly: It almost implies dignity and worthiness-
Anasa Troutman: Yup, accountability is an act of love.
Kerri Kelly: It's an act of love because it means that-
Anasa Troutman: It is.
Kerri Kelly: Because you could just be like, fuck it, and dismiss people, and not hold them accountable, and not deem their contribution and their word worthy. But actually, accountability is, I think Adrienne Maree Brown said that accountability is how we come into community. It's not how we come out of community. It's actually how we call one another in with love.
Anasa Troutman: That's right. That is absolutely correct.
Kerri Kelly: That's helped me in also honoring my own worthiness, but in calling one another in and putting ourselves on the line. What I love about belonging, and it's helped me to reframe it this way too is, I struggle with belonging to something because, to your point, it's often almost always owned by the white man belonging to wellness owned by white men, or white women. But when we belong to each other, it gets back to the point that you made at the beginning of this conversation, which is it's about people. It's about our relationship with each other. We don't belong to anything but one another. If that's the most sacred relationship, then how do we not honor that?
Anasa Troutman: And that belonging is not rooted only in our human relationships. That belonging is rooted in our relationship with the divine.
Kerri Kelly: That's another podcast.
Anasa Troutman: The thing is, if you are a person who pushed down their relationship with the divine in order to be able to subjugate and terrorize other people, then it's very difficult for you to recall that and say, "Oh, I know that I now belong to the divine truly," which means I am connected to you, we belong to each other, and here is how we act accordingly.
Kerri Kelly: That's right.
Anasa Troutman: There, right there, that's our issue right there.
Kerri Kelly: That's what's been forgotten.
Anasa Troutman: In order to be a person to choose money over people, you have to push down the knowing-ness of your relationship with the divine. Our sense of belonging is not rooted in ourselves or in each other, it's rooted in God. It is. Whatever you call God, if you call it that at all, if you're ... whatever you call it, our relationship and belonging to each other is rooted in that. If your relationship with that is skewed, or incomplete, or whatever the thing, whatever you call it, then it makes justice, love, and joy, and divine creativity inaccessible, to say the least.
Kerri Kelly: This is spiritual work.
Anasa Troutman: It is spiritual work. I tell people all the time, I do this because of my spiritual practice, not in spite of it. I think that one of the things that we have done is seperated the conversation about love and justice from our spiritual selves, and the natural law of the actual universe. It's so silly. If you read Carl Sagan's book, Cosmos, which I have done, and you just ... go on NASA's website and just understand the context that we're actually living in. Like, yes, we're living-
Kerri Kelly: The big, big. The BIG We.
Anasa Troutman: The super big we.
Kerri Kelly: The meta we.
Anasa Troutman: Here we are, me and you, Kerri, you're in California, I'm in Memphis, and we love each other. That's awesome. But if we looked at our relationship in the context of the universe, there's literally more starts than there are grains of sand on the planet earth.
Kerri Kelly: It's amazing.
Anasa Troutman: Literally. If you think about each one of those stars being the center of a solar system, that's a whole bunch of planets, whole bunch of space, a whole lot of energy, a whole lot of everything. Unless we can get reconnected to the vastness of ... this is so far out. I'm just being so me right now. Unless we can get connected to the vastness of the truths of the actual universe, and what it means to be connected to all of that, then it's difficult to be able to say, "Oh, I should not choose money over people."
Kerri Kelly: I do think that's really important because I think we have a narcissistic tendency in our culture-
Anasa Troutman: We totally do. We think we're the center of the universe-
Kerri Kelly: To navel gaze and think we're the center of the universe.
Anasa Troutman: And we're totally not. We're so far from it.
Kerri Kelly: There's something joyful about, even hearing you describe it, and people can't see you, I can see you right now, and how much joy that you feel in knowing that we're specs. We're a part of something so much bigger than ourselves. There's something actually comforting about that for me.
Anasa Troutman: I agree. I totally agree. It's my favorite thing-
Kerri Kelly: And really fucking awesome. Also, all that we don't know. I know that you're really into sci-fi and fantasy, and all that we don't know about what's out there and what's possible.
Anasa Troutman: We don't know crap. The thing that it does for me, the first time-
Kerri Kelly: That's going to be my favorite quote from this.
Anasa Troutman: The thing that that knowing does for me is to say, in the grand scheme of the universe, the impact I have is small. The risk that I'm taking is not ... the risk that I'm taking to learn how to love, to learn how to transform, to know how to lean into what I know is true, and right and good, is such a small risk when you look at the scale of the universe.
Kerri Kelly: That's huge.
Anasa Troutman: What is the big deal? Your little ego problem, your little fear, your little unknowing, it doesn't mean anything. It literally means nothing, so let it go. Let it go. What will happen if you end up like, oh, I have less money and people think that I'm not as valuable. So what? How do you see yourself in the grand scheme? How do you see yourself in the universal flow? How do you see yourself in the divine creativity? That's what matters. That's what matters, not whether or not somebody thinks you're-
Kerri Kelly: I love that. Well, that's perspective.
Anasa Troutman: It is perspective. It is.
Kerri Kelly: That's true perspective. I think you're right, that's part of the reorganization of our minds and our spirit that we need, too.
Anasa Troutman: It's also an opportunity to transform the way we think about spirituality and spiritual practice. Because often, our organized spiritual practices are also very focused on this small myopic view of life. We have I think an obligation to expand what we think God's purview is because it's not just a little thing. It's the whole actual whole universe is what is being held in divine energetic space. It just relieves the pressure. Why not be good? Why not be right? Why not continue to try? Why not get better? And why not do those things? Because there's not a lot of pressure on the grand scheme. If our responsibility is just this one little speck, that's all we have to do is figure out earth, that's all we have to do is figure earth out, then let's do it.
Kerri Kelly: I love you so much. Well, this is one of the things I so appreciate about you is, you take us out of this blinders focused, can't see anything outside of ourselves perspective. You help us see the big, big, the big we, the big expanse, the big cosmos, the big perspective that I think is often beyond our imagination. I know that's part of your purpose. I know the other thing that you're really trying to expand is our idea of justice, and a kind of justice that includes joy. We're not going to talk about that here because you and I are doing a justice and joy emersion online in a couple weeks, which I'm super excited about-
Anasa Troutman: Yeah, I'm excited about that. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kerri Kelly: Because I think that too is a trade off that somewhere along the line we decided was necessary to achieve justice. I know that you're really trying to disrupt that. But I just want to reflect that back to you that you talked about embodiment at the beginning of this call. I know this about you, that you really embody the most expansive heart, and the most expansive mind, and the most expansive story about not just who we are, but who we can be. I'm really grateful that you're in the movement, and that you're pushing the movement in the way that you are.
Anasa Troutman: Thank you, Kerri. I'm grateful for you, too.
Kerri Kelly: I'm excited to have many more Monday morning calls with you.
Anasa Troutman: I know.
Kerri Kelly: This is the best way to wake up, y'all. I'm going to do this all the time.
Anasa Troutman: It totally is. I feel so inspired right now knowing everyone's going to be talking about space. I love it.
Kerri Kelly: Yeah. Right? Monday morning cosmos.
Anasa Troutman: Yes. Kerri Kelly: There's so much more to talk to you about, but I just want to thank you. Thank you for waking up with us, and thank you for-
Anasa Troutman: Thank you.
Kerri Kelly: Thank you for inspiring us in the way that you do. I'm excited for many more conversations.
Anasa Troutman: Me too.
Kerri Kelly: The BIG We. What did we call it? The BIG We CTZN Brigade? Something like that-
Anasa Troutman: The BIG CTZN We, yes.
Kerri Kelly: Yeah, something's happening. Let's keep going.
Anasa Troutman: Yeah. I love you so much, Kerri. I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing, too. Yeah, you are reaching for the good. I love that about you. You have been since the day before I met you. I don't know what you were doing the week before I met you, but I know that you are one of the fiercest reachers for good that I know. I have so much love and respect for you. You are one of the people who make me feel like it's going to be okay because you're so earnest and so committed. I love that about you. So, thank you-
Kerri Kelly: Thank you. I feel the same way.
Anasa Troutman: For being your gorgeous, wonderful, juicy self too.
Kerri Kelly: That should be one of our belonging agreements, like, you make me feel like it's going to be okay. I want that for everybody. I love you, Anasa.
Anasa Troutman: I love you, too.
Kerri Kelly: Have an amazing week.
Anasa Troutman: Thank you.
Kerri Kelly: I'll see you in a couple weeks for our joy and justice event-
Anasa Troutman: I cannot wait. It's going to be so good-
Kerri Kelly: It's going to be amazing. It's going to be fun.
Anasa Troutman: So good, so good.
Kerri Kelly: And it's going to be truth.
Anasa Troutman: Yes.
Kerri Kelly: All those things and more.
Anasa Troutman: Yes, yes, yes. All right.
Kerri Kelly: Take care.
Anasa Troutman: See you soon.