This started as an Instagram story. I’m reading it out loud because it felt wrong to keep it fragmented.

It’s coming from years of noticing how much of what we buy, wear, believe, and repeat is shaped by systems we’re rarely invited to question. The clothes. The food. The stories we’re told are educational or authoritative. Even what we’re allowed to hear often shows up already approved by the same structures that benefit from it staying that way.

I talk about why I’m done waiting for permission. Why I don’t want to speak on stages funded by corporations that were never built for me in the first place. Why the outdoor industry doesn’t represent me, doesn’t speak for me, and doesn’t share my values.

I name something I keep running into, which is how inclusion almost always comes with conditions. How difference is welcomed only when it’s softened or translated or reshaped to fit a dominant framework. How assimilation gets mistaken for progress. How surviving inside someone else’s culture gets confused with belonging.

This isn’t about asking for more space within the same industry. It’s about questioning why the industry looks the way it does, who it actually makes room for, and who it keeps asking to leave parts of themselves at the door.

Nothing here is edited for comfort. I’m just reading the words as they were written and letting them stand.

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