The Internal Drive to Improve the World – Erin Brown | Episode 4

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of the quest for new inspiration. My Name Is KT Masher, and this week I have the pleasure of chatting with Erin Brown. She has written five books and speaks on the topics of body politics, intersectional, feminism and emotional responsibility. Not only does she share great content on her platforms, she shares real and honest content that is hard to find in the world of social media. I hope she inspires you just like she inspires me. Well, I’m erin Brown, I’m from Lawrence Kansas. I went to school for social work and was a social worker for about a decade before I kind of wit, rogue. I was frustrated with the systems and how they work, and I don’t know just the whole. The whole setup of social work is problematic and not great, and I found that when I was actually being useful to clients was when I was doing things that weren’t really that were frowned upon right at were really by the book, and so I just needed to move on. I had also started a personal training business, which was pretty random. I became a personal trader because I started working out after I had my daughter and was trying to figure out how to improve my relationship with my body so that I wouldn’t pass on all of the negative things that I was saying to myself to her find anyone to work with to teach me to lift, and so I became a trainer just so that I could learn to do it myself. I have some pretty horrifying stories of my interactions with trainers in that time and it wasn’t really about like a passion for fitness, but more about embodiment and changing people’s relationships with their bodies, and so I started doing that on face book and face book is actually where I grew to be rather large, but I’m not. The Algorithm doesn’t favor me anymore, so I have like a hundred and twenty thousand followers there or something, and it just is sitting there. It’s also a much more combative platform. So instar is where I like to be- and I talked a lot about body politics feminism. I still feel like I’m doing social work, but in a very different way, and I’ve been writing books and traveling and speaking about Bodio body politics, intersectional, feminism and emotional responsibility for the last ten years or so wow. That is incredible. I I’ve followed you for a little bit now and I just had no idea of all of that. That’s awesome! So what it’s interesting to me, because I ended up in this like sort of random niche fitness arena, started to follow me to begin with, and I had the moniker fit mama training and like a little, do you know bomb shell that isn’t there any more the pin up studio that used to be in North Lorance Yeah? He teamed up with them and I did like my head shots with them and had this whole like sort of gros process, when I was doing that, but that was so much easier because people were like, I like fitness and Moms, and they argued with me and didn’t- want to talk about sexual assaults and you know whatever, but it was really easy to gain a following and and build something when I switched everything to my name, which is just, I am Aran Brown. It was really offensive to a lot of people which I thought was interesting like it’s always been my name. Ye always be talking and it’s a lot harder to grow or like people are just significantly less interested in a woman going by her own name, talking about things that matter to her, but mom’s and fitness really killed my beginning. We, where do you get that, like what gives you that motivation to just talk so positively and like have that aspect and like share it with everybody, cos constantly. It feels like not an option, and I started doing this before there was the term influencer. I can’t imagine that I ever would have started with like what is now sort of influence or influencer influence or culture, the name, the whole idea behind that. The way that it is commodified such that the people who do the best are sort of the most base right, like R, saying really nothing and are just like Hash Tag. Good bibes and here’s a hot photo of me that I had the money to have professionally taken. That’s like what does well, and so it’s kind of a tricky landscape to be in, and not one that I would have chosen. But I was sort of in the first wave of people to do that before there was a name for it, and I like at least once a week sometimes every day I have at least one moment where I just don’t want to any more. I see something online, or even something of my own that I just want to roll my eyes at the problems of the world feel so big and the captions feel so small and insignificant. Sometimes I just like: Don’t want to do it, but I feel like there are ways in which I’ve learned to communicate about things. I’ve also been an activist for over twenty three years, and so I feel like that doesn’t mean that I know everything and never will know everything. Social Justice stuff is always moving and involving and changing so you have to keep up, but I do feel like I have significantly decreased my Figilabo it. I have a lot of resilience and they know how to move and move quick, and I also am pretty good about communicating about things in a way that people understand, and so it’s more that I feel like. I have a responsibility to do it because, like this is going to be trite, but nobody wants to be like a white lady on the Internet talking about anti racism right like I don’t even want to know her. That’s not it’s not like fun. That’s not something you’re going to be awesome, you know, and so it just feels like something that I have to do, that I feel obligated to do that. I just get up and do every day in spite of the fact that, like nothing about it, feels like it’s a really great idea, including like there’s, not really a business to put behind it, because the more I’m talking about impressions that I don’t experience, the less I feel like I should be able to be paid for that. So it’s a lot of work and it mostly just comes from and an internal drive and what feels like responsibility to do it yeah? No, I it’s seriously just I have total respect for you just like sharing all that and just your realness, especially I was constantly following you around the time of the election, not just because just the information you were sharing was just so raw and real, but like it was trying to be so open and just really just like if you’re having these feelings like it’s, okay and I was like wow, this is really impressive. So is there like a certain place that you go to like find inspiration and just to keep doing this or just that you feel like you have to mostly that I feel like. I have to the thing that has driven me primarily for the past. Twelve years is as having a kid starting out talking a lot about rape, culture and stuff, and knowing the statistics around sexual assault and girls and really just non SIS men. It’s. I can’t even like put her in those statistics together without just breaking right, and so it’s been this like race to try to like fix the world before she meets it, which is an impossibility same as like an impossibility of being a great white lady talking about is on the Internet right, like I’m, just driving for impossible things, but it doesn’t feel like an option to not try to change the way that people think and the way that people operate before. Maybe she meets them specifically, and so that’s what drives me and motivates me is trying to soften the world and do my part to improve it before she’s, at least out there on her own yeah. I love that. Do you have any other people that you like look to for inspiration other than your daughter yeah, a lot of lately. I’ve just been really focused on home because it feels so much less daunting to think about. What’s going on in your back yard than to think about the whole thing where like what’s going on nationally, what’s going on the White House what’s going on in Syria like that, all starts to feel overwhelming, and it doesn’t mean that I have to stick my head and sand about those things. But it does mean it’s much more manageable to tend to my yard, and so in terms of recently, I’ve really been looking at WHO’s. Doing a lot of work locally, and so Marelle is somebody that I follow and be happy to give you her handle that she was the person behind, and I don’t know if there’s a team with her but she’s the person, I’m aware of behind the sanctuary, cities, Alliance and Lawrence that got the city to become a sanctuary city, which means that we will not work with ice and we will let the community know if ice has been in contact. So that’s huge Mike Ann who was a waitress with me, a lady bird when lady bird was a thing. Was One of the instrumental people behind he want to be cautious about what I name her as doing for safety reasons that bind some very significant movements here locally? All of the local efforts behind occupied mass, and so I’ve just been really looking at like who is around me and what effects are they working on having locally because it just feels so much more manageable and it’s something a I can feel connected to is? Okay, do you have any other moments in your life other than having your daughter that have inspired you to like change something significant about your life or just like inspire you to try to change the world? It’s always her. You know before I had her like. I really struggled with depression, which I still do, but I feel like the way that depression works for me. I don’t want to name this for other people. Is that there’s, like generally like one like sort of tipping point where I have an option of trying to like get up and work through it or just lay down and sort of succumb to it and before her I was kind of a wreck, and when, when I would have those moments usually in the winter, I would like literally not come out of my room in my apartment, except for to go to the bathroom, and I would just like write bad poems and get high and just just sit in it, and I feel like since she’s been born. I’ve not really had that option again. This is all language I’m only using about how it affects me, so you know like she’s, actively experiencing a childhood. I can’t just lay down right, like this, can’t be the story of her childhood, so I always get up for her and whenever I’m thinking about what’s the right next move for me or what I need more or less of in my life, the barometer for me is always what would I want for her, because I know that she is paying a lot more attention to what I do than what I say, and so, if I’m you know staying in a job, that’s bad for my soul or whatever, whatever it is. When I’m trying to decide, is this good enough for me? Am I going to stay here? Keep moving. Do I quit here whatever it is? I think what would I want for her and then I make a decision based on that which has been the most significant shift that I’ve ever made. Now? That’s really! That’s really poignant valuable. I love that okay, so I really only have two more questions, one kind of a fun question so w? U Do you have any kind of your favorite, inspirational movies or songs or anything kind of like that? Just some sort of fun positive kind of thing, and I listen to beance formation and sorry pretty much anything from the lemonade album actually got to see her on that Tor with life highlight. I am Joe. We drove in a tiny car, a fiesta I think to Chicago with like five of us and it poured rain pretty much the whole time and it was just worth, but I rely worth it so great, so yeah I do. I do like a walking meditation where I go out usually to the dog park here, which is so beautiful people don’t understand. I think how beautiful our dog park is when I say I’m at the dog park they’re like that’s, not a job park, and I like it is I like ground myself and turn on whatever beyons song feels like the right one and that moment, and then just like walk with my roots intact is the way I think about it, and that’s really powerful for me, so be once you said: Movies Yeah. I don’t know that I have like a most inspiring movie because even the ones that are like, based on real events that I like I feel such a cynic is you’re missing. So much of it and the new ones- and you know whatever, but the movie that I turned to most frequently as a tool is- I am Sam a lot of times, especially in doing social justice work. I find it difficult to make space for my own feelings in particular, because I talk so much about things publicly and again, when they’re, not things that directly impact me me just crying about someone else’s experience is not super useful, and so there is some. You know positionally and nuance there, but then privately, I sometimes struggle to make space for my own feelings about it, and so, when I just need to cry, I just need to like let it out. Then I watch im salmon just fall the whole time and it’s a pretty inspiring movie, but I just it’s the crier okay and my last question is just: Do you have any last piece of kind of advice, Lash motivation to share? I think that the piece that gets missing a lot when people are doing plugging into liberation work social justice work. Is that like when you look out for the people who have the most dire outcomes or in the most crisis that impacts everyone? It’s like the opposite of the idea of trickle down economics right like if we’re looking out for the liberation of Black Transmet, who have the highest murder rate of any sum set of people in the US. That’s going to be good for white. Is Women and their office places in their relationships and everywhere they go right and it’s frustrating and can feel relateddefeating to always not know like to have really great intentions and then still mess up still mess up a word or still mess up a sentiment or really be off face when you’re trying so hard, and so what I hope people shift to in that is that, like all of the ways in which you learn to be more respectful of other people, stop to people to be more mindful of their needs of the appropriate language. Toes of what’s your lane, and what’s not all of those ways that you learn to quote not screw up, also helps you refine, who you are not just in the way that you appear outwardly, but in the ways in which you begin to dismantle all of the ways you’ve been taught to be that are not useful to you all of the ways that you’re still striving to be perfect and whatever that means and have the perfect time line, and whatever that means like the more you strip away the negative thoughts and ideas and behaviors around other folks, the gentler you become with yourself and the weirder and more interesting you get as you. Let go of the rules that you’ve appalled to you, to which I think is great. I I give me all the weird people who actually know who they are that is inspiring to me and like the best. Yes, I love that so much well. Thank you so much for giving me even a little bit of your day and taking the time to sit down with me, I’m so appreciative and seriously. I love watching your instar and it gives me so much motivation and just positivity to be like more real in my everyday life. Thank you. I needed that today. Today was today, I woke up and was like why a l one doing a pedicure for like a nail polished brand. I follow and I’m like, how do you have that job? Can I just do pedicures done with it like I just get online, show a pedicure and then check I’ve helped the world. That would be great well. Thank you again. All right have a great one. You do all right. Well, that is it for this week and I would love to have you tell a friend about this podcast and you can help me share these inspirational stories by rating and reviewing the quest for new inspiration on apple podcast or your favorite podcast platform. If you have a question or an inspirational story, you’d like to share you can send them my way, you can send me a message on Instar, a plus for new inspiration or enone at new inspiration, podcast at g Malcom, thanks again for listening and be sure to join me next time.