A story of self-trust & confronting Joe Manchin

You already know what to do.

What if I told you that regardless of what you’re grappling with, YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT TO DO?

Would you believe me?

My job as a coach is to connect high-integrity people like you with the wisdom that we each carry within ourselves.

Call it Spirit, Source, intuition — it doesn’t matter. We’ve all got it, and I guarantee that you’re not the exception.

The problem is that you live in a culture that teaches you — especially if you have marginalized identities — not to TRUST your wisdom.

Here’s an example from my life (this is a long one…no judgment if you skim):

You may have seen in my IG stories a few years back a recap I shared about a tense encounter with my former boss, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin. (Yes, that Joe Manchin. And yes, I’m very ashamed that I ever worked for him.)

It was the day of the Senate’s procedural vote to move the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination forward. I’d been emailing the senator on his private account for weeks, telling him my stories of sexual assault and begging him to believe Dr. Ford, do the right thing, and vote “no.”

Despite my persistence, Manchin hadn’t agreed to meet with me. But I took an overnight bus down from New York anyway and planned instead to join the protests however I could.

That morning, though, one of the organizers in the Hart atrium encouraged me to wait by the senator’s office and try to catch him on his way back from the Capitol. By some miracle, I remembered that the office’s back door was on a different floor, so I went straight there and waited.

A few minutes later, Senator Manchin sprinted out of the elevator, trying to avoid the reporters nearby. He was flanked by his chief of staff, a former supervisor I’d once thought well of, and his press guy who happens to be best friends with the former fling who’d cyber-stalked me a few years before.

Though the senator tried to shake my hand and keep walking into his office, I followed him to the door and wouldn’t leave. I stood in the doorway and pushed him on why he had just voted yes to proceed with the nomination of a man with several credible allegations of sexual assault against him.

In response to his inane explanation that he believed “something terrible had happened to Dr. Ford,” but not that Kavanaugh had done it, I did my best to educate him on trauma and memory. I spoke in a steady voice about my own history.

But the conversation ended abruptly when Manchin backed away from me, like a child who knew they’d messed up.

“Shame on you!” was the last thing I shouted as the glass door closed.

Afterward, I was furious, but I was in tears.

And in that moment, I realized that I was angry not with Manchin, not with the men he hid behind, not with Kavanaugh, but with myself.

The logical part of me knew that I was right to confront my old boss. But a loud voice in my head was certain that I’d fucked up.

After all, I’d been taught by our culture not to question authority, not to make powerful men uncomfortable.

I’d been taught that anyone who’s not a cis man who dares speak out is only doing it for attention, power, and money.

But after I let the fury, grief, and confusion move through my body, I remembered something I learned a long time ago:

Even though speaking up can be messy and painful, it feels a whole lot worse to stay small and silent.

So, back to the original issue about why our culture teaches us not to trust that wisdom within.

When you start to trust yourself:

• Your actions and values start to line up.
• You become a mirror for others’ internalized bullshit.
• You stop being a cog in the capitalist machine and start creating a just, resilient, and beautiful future.
• You become dangerous to the systems that are set up to keep most of us small, silent, and sick while a few at the top get more and more powerful.

This is not easy work. It can be scary at times.

But the key is to ground yourself firmly in CARE and COMMUNITY.

That’s why I’m bringing folks together for the new Take Up Space Mentorship, a 6-week program for high-integrity people who are ready to own their power, speak their truth, and take up space.

[EDIT: TAKE UP SPACE is now a self-paced online course + community. Learn more here.]

I’m opening enrollment this Sunday (new moon bbs!), and it’s gonna be very low-key since this is a ~beta test version~ of the program at an extra affordable rate.

I can’t wait to share more with you in a few days!

Until then, if you know someone who needs to remember who the fuck they are, would you do me a favor and forward this article to them?

I’ll be back soon, my friends.