Happy Tuesday (my favorite day of the week) to everyone! I'm sliding in with a special bit of news just ahead of today's kickoff of Week 2 of the REPLENISH Summer Life Coaching Program for Weary Changemakers: You can now join The Identity & Belonging Lab for a monthly rate of $39 USD! Your membership includes immediate access to the currently running program, which is async compatible. All Week 1 replays are already posted. Founding100 Members that join at the $365 USD annual rate (22% off the monthly rate) receive additional group coaching calls and discounts on 1:1 offers, plus preview cohorts of beta training materials for the upcoming launch of our next community. There IS a payment plan available for the annual option, so please DM me if you'd like to secure your spot in the Founding100. Now, for some full transparency: In additional to taking this step to be coached, mentored and supported through the grueling times we are all enduring individually and collectively, your membership supports Hola Magnolia's Debt Free Fund as we end a series of long-running projects to prepare for what's to come—which includes making Magnolia House a reality. An added benefit to this boost monthly recurring revenue? Your support helps make the Identity & Belonging Lab eligible for super-cool awards and recognition by Skool itself through their quarterly initiative called Skool Games! Winning Skool games brings additional visibility, organic leads that bring the right people into our spaces, and a chance to win a trip out to LA for a day of mentorship, networking and learning how to make our communities an incredible place to be as this platform continues to grow! My mentor Arlan Hamilton won Skool Games in her first month on Skool—and I'd love to join her in bringing added representation of Black woman running polycultural communities devoted to equity and mentorship of underserved communities.

Today, I am grieving the version of me that innocently and innocuously celebrated the 4th of July for the first 25 years of my life. That attended fireworks displays, staring up at the sky with wonder and awe at the explosive spectacle of light, sound and color. The United States of America was always painted to us as the pinnacle of freedom and democracy. A picture of progress and the embodiment of limitless opportunity. I grieve the little girl that thought slavery was a moment in time. A complicated history that was corrected and as such, justice was served. It was not corrected. It was covered. Buried. Hidden. Attempted to be rewritten. But there can be no reconciliation without repair. So as memories of rose-colored flag glasses, Old Navy t-shirts and firecrackers on the front porch fade into the distance of my memory, I come into consciousness. We are living in a world where suffering is so normalized, where partisan politics are so weaponized and white supremacy is so violent that dozens of white men can now, in broad daylight, unhooded and undeterred, vote against basic human dignity in at least seven different variatiants including but not limited to revoking healthcare, ending SNAP benefits, and violently detaining citizens and parents of citizens on the basis of race. And because we have normalized it, we can no longer control it. So if today you need to just let the tears fall, do that. If you need to write and write and scream and write until your fingers fall off, do that. If you need to cancel everything and sit in a dark room, do that. But if you feel the need to take up space today, do that too. You can start here. Write how you’re feeling below. Tell me what comes up for you. You don’t have to have a solution. You don’t have to find a bright side. It’s okay if it feels like there isn’t one. This is your community, and it is protected to the best of my ability so that you can say whatever is on your mind. Please use it if you need it.