Relational Privilege with Akilah Riley-Richardson Part 1
In this episode, Libby talks with couples therapist and trauma specialist Akilah Riley-Richardson about relational privilege and how essential it is to create safety in order to find intimacy. (Part 1 of 2)
SHOW LINKS
Akilah's website
Relational Privilege and Sytemic Trauma Course
Resmaa Menekem: My Grandmother's Hands
Southwest Love Fest (use code "goslow" for 10% off!)
Transcript
Libby:
I am so excited to share this episode. Well, really two episodes with you today, because I get to introduce all of you to my friend and colleague and teacher Akilah Riley Richardson. Akilah and I have known each other since 2018, back when we were both, training to become certified in relational life therapy, which we both now are. And she is just incredible. She's a published researcher.
Libby:
She's a couple's therapist and certified clinical trauma professional. She's been in clinical practice for 15 years and has experience working with couples and persons practicing consensual non-monogamy, both in the Caribbean and internationally. Akilah also specializes in working with sexual minorities and racial minorities, and she's also an incredible educator and facilitator. And I feel really lucky to not just be her friend, but also to learn from her. And she's just amazing and I can't wait to share this conversation with you. And so here we go. This is part one of two parts of Akilah and I talking about relational privilege and minority stress. I hope you enjoy.
Libby:
I am so glad to have you here today.
Akilah:
I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to be with you.
Libby:
I am, I'm excited to share with my listeners all of the wonderful, things in your brain and, because I've been so lucky to, be a student of yours and to be a colleague of yours and be your friend. And we've just had so many good, juicy conversations over the last several, years, really. But you know and so I'm really excited to share some of that with our listeners today. And I guess I'm wondering before we dive in, you know, I've introduced you at the beginning of the show and talked about, you know, all your bonafides in the wait. You know, but you, as you put it in the white colonialist, Western world. That's how you prove that people should listen to you. But I wanna know, why do you listen to you?
Akilah:
That is a real good question. Sorry. The way you framed it. Why I need to write that out. Why do you listen to you? I listen to me because I'm a life form and my walk is important, and I feel this way about everybody's walk, not just my walk. And so that's the first thing. I listen to me because I'm a life form and I deserve to be listened to just like everybody else. Yes. Number two, I listen to me because listening to me is emancipatory. Listening to me is political. Listening to me is liberatory. And I need to listen to me. I'm black. I am a dark-skinned black woman with very, with African features, with natural hair, with thick lips. I am not a size three or whatever is the size. I also have this accent. I am from Trinidad and Tobago, a space that is in the global south, a space that is impacted highly by post-colonialism, neocolonialism and neo imperialism.
Libby:
Yeah.
Akilah:
And all of these things, those having to deal with colonialism and imperialism means that the world doesn't always think it should listen to me. The world likes to share what it knows with us.
Akilah:
Yeah.
Libby:
Yeah, yeah.
Akilah:
North loves to share all this insights with us in global, north loves to export and we love to import too.
Libby:
Right,
Akilah:
Right. Import and adapt and then take or take it wholesale and apply it here. And so the relationship is very one way. Is it? I, Yeah. And so I need to listen to me, because when that happens, my psyche, it's the cortical regions of my brain every day I'm internalizing a certain thing about who I am in the world. Yeah, and whether I'm thinking about it or not, my brain registers, Hey, I'm a consumer, not a producer. Yeah.
Libby:
You're an object, not a subject.
Akilah:
I'm an object, not a subject. I'm the one who's supposed to take and then apply. And so in order to undo that, in order to daily, I have to give myself as, we doing in memory consolidation, disconfirming experience, I have to give myself that. Cause don't give myself that. My support regions of my brain will continue to tell me that this is who I am in the world. And I'll begin to, to live from that place. I will love from that place, I will parent from that place. I will do all of that from that place. And I don't want to do that. And I have two young Trinidadian black children, and I think that if I live my life like that, they are going to live their lives like that. They're going to imitate, be an object. They're going to imitate not being, not having agency in the world.
Akilah:
And I'm and so it's very, so that's the second reason I listen to me. And the third reason I listen to me is because I'm trying, I'm on this quest. Right. And it's uphill to uphill. I don't wanna use the word battle. I'll say uphill quest. I'm on this quest to help. Well, and I would, for those who are interested, I would really like them to listen to themselves, especially if you exist in a marginalized body. And I think that if I am not doing it, that I'm not a teacher. I'm a performer, and I don't wanna be a performer. And so when I do my trainings now and my teachings now, it's the content is one part. Like I'm happy that I'm able to share this content. But then the other major part for me is modeling, you know, showing that, Hey, look, this is a black woman from the global south standing up and generating and creating and sharing this with the group.
Akilah:
And if she's doing it, then we need to we can do it too. You know, and I'm not saying people need my permission. I'm saying that sometimes because of how we are seen in the world, we need to see somebody else do it to believe that we can do it as well, because it's some, it, other people have influenced me. you know. Yeah, other people's work, other people's presence. Like when I think about Adrienne Maree Brown, you know, Adrienne, she's amazing. She's amazing. Yeah. I'm standing up, like, I remember the first time she talked about embracing her fatness, you know, and the beauty of that. Like, she used the word like, I'm embracing my fatness. And I loved hearing that. And that helps me as well to live in my truth, you know? as being a black woman, you know if all of us have to embrace identities that may not be accepted by the world, so Adrienne Maree Brown, Resmaa Menakem, you know, Lizzo like, I look at their truths.
Libby:
Yeah. Well, and actually that brings me into something that I would love for us to transition to you talking about, which is relational privilege. You know, and you talk about relational privilege in your work. And you know, what comes up for me as you're talking now is like, one of the values for you in listening to yourself is standing in your truth. Yes. And I'm remembering that's one of the things on the relational privilege wheel.
Akilah:
Yeah. So just, it's a relational privilege. You know, I define it as these conditions, both internal and external, that permit a person to be able to feel safe, to connect Right. And to be intimate. And I call it a privilege because structural oppression systemic discrimination, all of these things eradicate or at least limit some of those conditions for marginalized people. And for me,
Libby:
And you were just talking about that. Like, you were just bringing that out and saying like, and I just wanna highlight this, when you were saying like, I listened to me because the world tells me not to listen to me. The world tells me to consume it. And change, and let it change me, rather than, you know, being, again, the subject, having agency. And I think the, what I would tie into what you just said there is when you, when those are the messages you're getting from the world. And you don't have a groundedness of your own sense of your own self and your own, you're the hero of your own story.
Akilah:
Yes.
Libby:
And then you're showing up into a relationship.
Akilah:
Yes.
Libby:
How do you be intimate if you don't even have a, you there?
Akilah:
Yes. That's how do I be intimate if I can't, you know, live in my own truth, which is one of the, you talked about, you mentioned the relational privilege. We In that way, we have the ability to live in your own truth, the ability to feel safe, so, you know, psychologically and physically be the ability to accept yourself and the ability to be accepted by other people. And if I, like, if I'm living in your own truth, I can't, it's so difficult to me, for me to connect with another person if I don't even know who's doing the connection. You know, so who's the one, you know? And you know, all healthy relationships, you know, have urban flow and all healthy relationships, you know, you need sometimes need to have, like my friend Juliane Taylor Shore, is doing some amazing working boundaries.
Akilah:
You need to have healthy boundaries, even in relationships. But if I don't know who I am, I can't have healthy boundaries, which means I can't do healthy intimacy if my brain does not feel safe. If I'm walking around my world and I'm feeling unsafe in my body. Yeah. The researchers showing us, the researchers out there showing us that, people of, in particular, I think it's black people, right? interpret their relationships in the context of, against the backdrop of institutional racism, right? Yeah.. And if my brain is not safe out there in the world, I can't just switch it on and make it safe at home all of the time. Right? Yeah. And so feeling safe outside, you know, sets up a context for me to feel safe in my home as well. Yeah. I mean, being able to be accepted other people and accept myself, all of these things help me to feel connected.
Akilah:
So, you know, it's so important for us to us to talk about relational privilege, I think. And the reason rather pushing for it so much is because, you know, when I was doing all my training in couples therapy, I would learn about what intimacy means and what we need to teach clients to do, and all these different. Guidelines being given and they were useful and not and they are useful. I don't even, I don't wanna discredit, I don't wanna discard, I want to expand. And I need, and what I need to say is, yeah, they're useful, they're help, they're great, but the body that is the body that is, that has created some of the body, sorry that have created some of these, methodologies or ways of working with couples, a bodies that often don't experience certain kinds of institutional trauma.
Libby:
Oh, well, no. Can we, can we name that together? These who these bodies are, I mean, they're white, right? Most of them are white,
Akilah:
White cis head bodies often. Yeah. You know, and
Akilah:
Well, and a lot of times white, cis head, middle class western.
Akilah:
Yeah. Yes, you're right. White cis middle class global north
Libby:
Or upper class, you know, but like, yeah. Yep. Global north. Yeah.
Akilah:
And already there are all these layers that would inform how you would explain intimacy. And here's the thing, sometimes Yes, I get it. We do research and we do research, and as we research, we would do work with on different kinds of people, different bodies. But you know, we have to admit, and that's why in the work of in qualitative research, especially, we talk a lot about positionality. Your positionality does impact how you interpret the data. It does. Even what, you want to research it impacts and
Libby:
What data you consider valid data,
Akilah:
What data you can write. And it impacts it because you're a human being, not because you're racist or you're this or, so I'm not even making any accusations about people's character. It just is what it is. Like I've said to you, white cis has it's own epistemology. Yes. so does heterosexuality, you know, but it's the same thing also for being black. Yeah. Like, there's absolutely no way that the modality that I am creating here would apply for everybody and land safely into everybody's knowing of the world. And that is okay for me.
Libby:
Yeah Well, and I wanna just like name, because when we're talking about privilege, you know, and I love that you bring up like relational privilege, like the ability to, to find yourself in relationship and then open yourself to these practices that all the couples, therapists and, and like the big names out there are telling people to do. And what I'm hearing you say is that to just do that is a privilege. Yes. Like, to even be able to do that is a privilege. And there's and if you're able to show up and just do that work, you may not have the layers that you're talking about covering up the you. To show up there. And as with all other privileges, privilege, that privilege is invisible to you. If you have it, you don't see it. Yes. You don't see it
Akilah:
Fish swimming in water. Yeah. You don't know. Sorry. As water fish. And you don't even know. Yeah.
Libby:
Well, and I think what I'm hearing from you too is that maybe people who show up to get help, who are marginalized and, you know, maybe they don't even, they might not even see themselves as marginalized. They might see themselves as very empowered.
Libby:
And if we don't name, oh, these other layers might be happening for you, like when you're trying to do this thing that I'm telling you to do. Yeah. Maybe it's like, I want you to take a break and re-regulate. Right. That might be something I tell some, tell one of my clients to do, but I'm not naming for them the other layers that might be hitting their nervous system over and over and over again, then when they're struggling to do it, they might be beating themselves up. What's wrong with me? Why can't I do this?
Libby:
And we're doing our clients a disservice if we don't tell them, this might be going on for you.
Akilah:
I love that. Like when you said that, that landed for me, I letting them know this may be part of the struggle, because what happens often, and I, strangely enough, I had, I did that this week with a client of mine who is marginalized, but in a different way and I, you know, I wonder if it's this, you know, and my client literally had this aha moment, like, yeah, you know, maybe it is this, maybe this is what's happening with me, you know, and I've had to do it with clients who are BIPOC, I've had to do with clients who are LGBTQIA clients, who are differently able, like, I've had to do it. And it's important to name it because I think it helps liberate and free the client. And I think, you know, I wanna say this, reveering off slightly, but I think our clients, especially our clients who, have a history of things like, like slavery and colonialism or the Holocaust or any kind of, this really, really, really disastrous atrocities that have happened to their ancestors.
Akilah:
They need to know, because we inherit certain predispositions, you know? Right. We can inherit certain profiles and certain responses. And so we find ourselves being able, struggling with certain things, and we need to know, okay, maybe this, we have talk epigenetics, we have to talk about Yeah. The way that, you know the affect genetic expression. And that really and truly what you may be part enacting right now, maybe an ancestral adaptation to trauma
Libby:
That probably saved your life, that probably that is why you're here, is because your ancestors did that to survive.
Akilah:
I'm so glad you said that. I'm so glad you said that because I think sometimes I, like I'm beginning to struggle now with things like I with words like unhealthy and you know, in terms, when I'm thinking about behaviors and relationships, like I'm struggling. I don't wanna discard, I just wanna expand. So the struggle won't lead me to discard, but it will lead me to think about, you know what, sometimes we might seize behaviors that we are enact that may be part of our act, that may be part of ancestral adaptations, and we wanna label it as unhealthy, but guess what? It probably saved their lives. And that's why you're here today. Right. So like, and if this we're talking about like aggression.You know, like big thing now is, you know, don't be aggressive and da da da da duh, et cetera.
Akilah:
And I get it, but guess what I am, like I, the other day I was saying to a friend of mine, and I'm gonna give this story, but it's related. Like, I'm dealing with a particular situation right now that felt racist to me. And I'm finding that there's a win in which I'm struggling and I'm feeling a fight emerging. And, you know, when I look back, my I was sent a friend of mine, I feel that there is a woman. What I feel, I know I'm sensing my body, that there is a woman in my history Right. Who was fighting. Yeah, had to fight to be okay. And I feel that, I feel her adaptation in my body. Right. And I believe it because I also see my daughter, I have a five year old and she has fight.
Akilah:
Yeah. She has protest. Yeah you know, I also, I mean, I am black, however, in my ancestral line, there is a mixed race person in my ancestral line, which is Right. Which is evidence. I mean this is hard to talk about, but it's evidence of rape, yeah. Right? and all of these things, when I think about the fact that there is a woman in my ancestral line who was raped, you know, and what that may have meant, and passing and all that energy passing from one generation to the next. I get it now. So when people may say to me, you know, this particular incident, you're handling this, you should handle it with more tenderness. I'm like, yeah, great. But I think there's somebody in my ancestral I am who is being summoned right now through my body, through the genetic adaptation saying. Little awakening here. And I'm not going to bring it back to what you talked about, Libby. I'm not going to, I'm not going to write it. Sorry to see it. But, no, you
Libby:
Please say it
Akilah:
Not healthy and the sisters, and this is that. And No, no, no, no, no. I think,
Libby:
Well that's, well, and that's not just, I mean I recognize the way you're saying white it, but I wanna just like also say, that's just judging yourself, right? Yeah. It's just beating up on yourself that's turning contempt towards yourself. Yeah. Something that, what I'm hearing you say is, was probably an adaptation that served your ancestors. And also maybe, like you said, is being summoned forth for a reason and for you to just go, I'm horrible for having that fight in me. I shouldn't be this way. Like you're saying, there's a reason she's here, there's a reason why. That is there. And I need to listen to that part.
Akilah:
You need to listen
Libby:
Part of me. And we've had conversations about that too. Where you know I've heard that part of you rising up and I've gone, are you sure?
Akilah:
But, you know, I wanna go back to when I said I don't wanna white it. Yeah. There's a reason I say that deliberately as because the body in which I live, right? Yeah. Whenever black folks get necessarily aggressive, there is a way in which sometimes, many times I'm sitting with this because I’m finding the words and I have hurt around this.
Libby:
Yeah.
Akilah:
White people with power, judges as just being angry. Right. Being volatile, being aggressive, being barbaric. And I want you, and I wanted to say that the and a lot of the history, when you think about how whites, how white people have defined indigenous people, how white have defined black people. Yeah. A lot of it, and I'm talking here about in we're talking about sixteen hundredths, seventeen hundredths and even it's coming through even today, a lot of it is about aggression and a lot of it is about lawlessness and morality and for a woman, hypersexual woman, sorry, hypersexuality. So there's a lot of moralizing, you know, there's a judgment and evaluation of our adaptations. To this world. So I make no apologies for saying, when I say to my body, I can't wipe this.
Akilah:
Yeah. Because I need to, I'm speaking to a system that judges adaptations. But it's also the same thing I've noticed in the ways in which heterosexual people sometimes judge L G B T Q I A people at adaptation, you know, like as I and I know I'm talking a lot, but as I.
Libby:
No, you're, you're perfect.
New Speaker:
I remember working, I when I start, cause I’m cis het right, but I’m on the ace spectrum, right. Which in Norway come a lot. I mean, I don't, I cannot play oppression Olympics. I would never, because being on the ace spectrum does not carry the same degree of like structural challenges as somebody who would be identifiers as lesbian as or bisexual, et cetera. Right. But I just wanna kinda name my positionality, my sociality.
Akilah:
Remember when working, when I started my early days of working with the LGBTQIA community, I worked with a friend of mine and we had started to talk about resistance work. Right. And we will talk, because when we were both trained in social work and the language used to be about from risk to resilience, and he was like, no, it's from risk to resistance about, yeah. I was talking about the fact that for many queer people in Trinidad and Tobago, where I am from the aggression and resistance and the loudness and all of those things, which are critical features of many people being in Trinidad and Tobago is part of an adaptation to a heteronormative, homophobic place. Right? Yeah. And what heterosexual people would judge as being too sexually explicit or too aggressive or too flamboyant or too whatever. It's protection. So white isn't just about color. I think white, it is about when, we have to challenge the, the lexicon or challenge the epistemology of any dominant group, whether you are heterosexual, whether you're cis, whether you are white, whether you're global north, people who exist on the margins deserve to say like, you know what, I'm, I'm going to on, I'm not going to hetero heterosexual it, I'm not going to white. I'm not gonna assist it. I'm not gonna
Libby:
I love that. And, you know, that brings into me what a thing that I'm thinking about as you're saying that is, you know, I'm not gonna judge myself on these standards that, don't honor my lived experience in the body that I inhabit. And at the same time, a thing you talk about is how that can lead to something you call negative dietetic coping.
Akilah:
Yeah.
Libby:
I Wonder if you'd be willing to talk more about that.
Akilah:
Yeah. It's a negative diet coping, so I don't wanna claim it as mine that I, it's not something that I created something that I researched, forgive me, I can't remember exactly where I read at first, but it's about just the ways in which, so diet coping first the ways in which couples or partnerships deal with systemic stress, right? and it can be positive or it could be negative. And the negative that coping refers to the ways in which we harm each other Yeah. In trying to, while trying to adapt the systemic trauma. And the different ways that we can harm each other. If I am being overly aggressive with my partner, if I'm being abusive toward my partner, if I am withdrawing from my partner
Libby:
Or being dishonest hiding yourself.
Akilah:
My partner, if I have too many boundaries or too little boundaries. Things in the ways in which I can probably harm my partner Yeah. Their adaptation to the system. But there's a way in which what I've done in the work now, I've found different ways for people to be able to track it. So there's this thing, and I'm gonna teach about this next week or the Theater of oppression, and I ask people, you know, because I have, I asked people to think about oppression and systemic discrimination as being like a theater and you're cast in a rule. Yeah. What role have you been cast in and what are the behaviors you've had to employ to survive in that rule? And how have you enacted those rules in your relationships? Or how have you, enacted adaptation to the rules in those in your relationship?
Akilah:
And it helps people, I think, to engage in what I call responsible externalizing. And there's a reason that I called responsible externalizing. So first of all, I say that the research has shown that if we help couples who are marginalized, if we help bipo couples, right. I think in particular research about African-American couples, if we help them to be able to externalize and to attribute, what they're experiencing to things external right. That they're able to survive and thrive better. Right. So that's one of the reasons I've started, you know, really pushing for externalizing, but I also wanted to be responsible because not every single thing you experience can be attributed to racism or heterosexism or anything like that. Right. So we want to encourage people to do that, but to do that from a place of caution and curiosity as well. But yeah. Negative diet, coping, you know, just those harmful behaviors that really may be as a result of just trying to cope with a crappy system.
Libby:
Yeah. And then you're basically, you're bringing them into your relational ecosystem. And I think the thing that, you know, what I'm hearing in there is that again, those are strategies that you're using to survive in a system that wasn't designed for you and that objectifies you. And but then when you're bringing it home, it's actually making your home or your family or your, or your, your partners, the your safe place. Right. Not, you know, it's bringing that energy and that, and those behaviors into your, intimate sphere. And it's disrupting the intimacy.
Akilah:
You're right. And here's what, in addition to it, disrupting the intimacy, I think it's not allowing you to create, you know, I Adrienne Maree Brown, like I'm with her book right now, image strategy. And she talks, it's a good book. And she talks about, and if I'm misquoting you, Adrienne, please don't kill me. I is exactly what I understand. I think it's beautiful. You know, Imagination is one of the spoils of colonization and talks about how trauma destroys imagination. And I think that when people have to be dealing with all of these different challenges and all of the, the systemic stuff, they lose the capacity to imagine and to create.
Libby:
I wanna pause you there cuz I don't wanna lose that. Just what you just said just there, what you said was trauma destroys the imagination. I know you're quoting Adrienne. But trauma destroys imagination. And I want you to tell me what why do you need imagination in relationships?
Akilah:
I think that, well, this is me. This is my why I what I think, right? I think couples, and I'm not saying this from you work I do with my, especially with black, with BIPOC couples or with mixed race couples, right?, you need to figure out unique ways to create a relationship that lands right for you and for your reality. You know, a lot of us, as Adrienne says, you're living in somebody else's imagination calling a truth. Right, we find ourselves feeling disruptive in our disrupted and disruptive because we're living in somebody else's imagination. And when I'm able to live in my own imagination and craft the relationship that I want from me, I'm able to have a healthier relationship. And I think also, you know, when I think about the disconsuming experiences, I need to constantly have experiences as a black person that brings me closer to my truth.
Libby:
Yeah.
Akilah:
It's a critical part of my liberation.
Libby:
Well, and what I'm hearing in that too is that gives you fuel for your imagination. Like, it can be so hard to imagine.
Akilah:
Yes.
Libby:
If you don't, if you've never seen it or never experienced or never felt it, it can be really hard to, I mean, I remember having so many conversations with people where I'd be like, well, what do you want? And it would be really hard to get my client or my friend in some cases, like to even say what they want cuz they don't know what they could possibly have.
Akilah:
Who is the person that has to have it? You don't even know who the person have to. And I think I must admit them. And I have to think about what do I want and who I am. Sometimes I find myself getting at first a bit shake up and depressed. Like, who the hell am I.
Akilah:
But as I was saying to my favorite uncle the other day, he knows who he is. I was saying that, you know, cuz he and I are very close and I said to him, all of my story, all of my past, all my traumas, every single thing has led me to you. And I'm using that now to talk about this whole thing of living in your truth and who you are. The reality is that this is painful to see what it kind of is what it is. I am an amalgam of survival and beauty and creativity and wonderful blackness and Caribbeanness as well as the trauma and the pain. You know, of that journey. I cannot pretend that slavery and colonialism, all these things are not integral parts of my self understanding and my self concepts and my identity.
Akilah:
And trying to undo that by probably lead me to something that a business and kind of serious identity crisis. But here's what I do know. I can sit with all of those things and make decisions from that place about what leads me closer to who I want to be in the world, what settles me more, what feels resonant, minute by minute. I'm asking myself that question, what do I want? What I, and so it is so ironic cause yes, that's happened, this conversation with the clients of mine. You know, what do I want minute by minute, moment by moment? And just the question, what do I want? What the hell do I want is political. What do I want to wear? What do I want to eat? How do I want to look? What do I want to wear?
Akilah:
What do I want to be? And if you are, and you know, you know, I think, you know, when you are acting outside of what you want, because if you have to think about what the other will assume to get to as a compass and you know you're outside. Yeah. Well, and I think I it as a continuum, right? Cause we are shaped by outside, I think and There's nobody who I think who's completely hundred percent autonomous, right? We are by outside.
Libby:
So we're all in a context.
Akilah:
You are, always the Context.
Libby:
and I wanna name this because, you know, I don't wanna take anything away from how much this is about being black and how much this is about being, in the global south, how much this is about being a colonialized, body and all of that. And I wanna like, I wanna say that, and many people say this like racism. Our racist system oppresses everyone. Our patriarchal system oppresses everyone, it privileges men, but at a tremendous cost. Right. It privileges straight people at a tremendous cost. And, I would even go so far as to say, you know, gender normativity like, and the gender binary also oppresses cis people at a cost that they don't even know because there's the, because it's a, we're all put in this prison of conformity.
Libby:
And so even though I know that the people that you care the most about and that the who this is who your work is primarily for, are not people like me, people who live in this body necessarily. Although I guess I'm queer and I'm neurodivergent and I'm a woman. So there are places where, but I just wanna name that I'm not at the front of the line, but I wanna say for my listeners who are listening, I think you know what Akilah is saying. It really brings in like, you know, we're all in this theater of oppression. We've all been handed a role I think that we didn't pick and that we don't, you know,
Akilah:
Can we be with the magic of what she just said there?, I can interview you that Libby I wanna pause there. That's a big piece for me. I wanna take that in. We're all in a role that we didn't pick. Like Oh, sorry. That's like, I'm like, I've, you said that and my whole body went Yeah. And I even want people who have power in the world to understand that if you were, if you're in a white body, you know, you can fight against it all. You want, you have power.
Libby:
Wasn't this such a juicy conversation? I am sorry that I had to cut it off just right here. But, that is because we needed to make this a two-part episode. So stay tuned for part two coming out next week. I promise you will not wanna miss it. Part two of my conversation with Akilah Riley Richardson. Now, before I let you go, I'm excited to announce that I have been invited to teach a workshop along with my partner Kyrr Kark at the Southwest Love Fest Conference in Tucson Arizona. As of right now, this is the only conference that I'm teaching at this year. And I'm very, very excited. Kyrr and I are gonna be teaching an amazing workshop together and we are just two of a whole swath of amazing speakers at this conference. This is the fourth year that I will be attending Southwest Love Fest. It will be the third year that I have taught there. And, Sarah and Kate just put on an incredible event. I was so privileged to attend back in 2019 and I am so excited to, be presenting there in person. And so if you are thinking of coming, stop thinking about it and just, buy your ticket. But if you haven't bought your ticket yet and you want a discount, you can actually sign up on the website and use my code goslow and you get 10% off. So
Libby:
You know, get in there, get a discount and drop me a line if you're coming. Cuz I'd love to meet up. In fact, if I get enough people telling me that they're attending Southwest Love Fest and they are making polyamory work listeners, and maybe I'll set up a meetup or something. Would you guys like that? I'd love to see you there. Okay. That plug is over. And again, stay tuned next week for part two of my conversation with Akilah Riley Richardson. Thanks y'all.
