Tending Your Life

Most of the time, self-care isn’t about doing more. It’s actually about doing less—and that involves saying no. A lot. If you’re uncomfortable saying no, disappointing people, or drawing boundaries, this is the episode for you.

Inside this episode, I’ll offer concrete ways to make saying no easier, clearer, and less awkward. And once you practice? It'll become easier; you'll worry less what others think; and you'll claim the spaciousness that comes from saying no more often.

Plus, get my free workbook, 5 scripts to say no (without feeling like a jerkface)

• Episode: Bigger Container, Better Boundaries (Part 1)
• Episode: Bigger Container, Better Boundaries (Part 2)
• Hyde Yoga (use code christy10 to take 10% off)
• Jade Yoga Mats

Cross something non-essential off your to-do list. Turn down an invitation. Simply say no to that voice that tells you you're not doing enough. Find a way to scale down, in some area of your life, so that you might create more space.

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In this week’s episode, we’re talking about intuition. More specifically, we’re talking about the ways that intuition is gendered and delegitimized—and how we can (collectively, regardless of our gender) reclaim our intuition and fight the patriarchy at the same time. When intuition is dismissed, it’s another way that we’re taught not to trust ourselves. Trusting ourselves, our knowledge, and our intuition is a feminist issue—and stands to benefit people of all genders.

Get a free sample module from my course, Your Magical Intuition

• Course: Your Magical Intuition
• Get a free sample module from my course, Your Magical Intuition

Intuition: “The ability to gain wisdom or a direct perception of truth, independent of proof, and without understanding how this knowledge was obtained.” —Christy's definition

Next time you’re faced with a decision, write down what you already know to be true. What does your body say? What does your breath say? What knowing or pieces of information already live inside you?

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I rewrite my mission statement every year. It’s the one essential ingredient that keeps my business, my life, my activism, and my role in my family pointed in the right direction.

You don’t need to be a business or an advocacy group to need a mission statement. In fact, you don't need to represent anyone other than yourself. A mission statement can help you clarify your values, vision, and strategy no matter who you are.

In this episode, I’ll walk you through the importance of a mission statement; how mine keeps me on track; and the step-by-step process to create your own.

Download the free Mission Statement Maker!

• Course: The Art of Self-Advocacy
• Rising Tide North America
• Hyde Yoga (enter Christy10 at checkout for 10% off!)
• Download the free Mission Statement Maker!

Make your mission statement!

Download the free Mission Statement Maker to get started!

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What happens when your self-care practice stops working? What happens when self-care just isn’t enough anymore?

In this episode, I’m taking you behind the scenes of my early parenthood days and how I had to evolve my self-care into something bolder: self-advocacy. It’s easy to advocate for others; advocating for ourselves is the advanced work.

It's embarrassing for a self-care mentor to feel like she's failing at self-care. But what came out of this time in my life was an incredible lesson about the ways that we need to bring some of our fierce side into our tender moments. This is what makes self-advocacy such a powerful combination of compassion and courage.

Download the free Self-Advocacy Manifesto!

• Course: The Art of Self-Advocacy
• Episode: Fierce and Tender, together at last
• Download the free Self-Advocacy Manifesto!

Self-Advocacy: boldly declaring what we need and taking action on our own behalf that aligns with those needs so that we can feel whole, well, and authentically ourselves.

Ask someone for help. It could be small or large, but if you are craving support of some kind, tell someone. Even if it feels uncomfortable, say "Hey! I could use some support. Could we jump on the phone?" or state the kind of support you're looking for. Or maybe it's that project you've been putting off because you don't have the knowledge to get started.

No matter what it is: ask for help.

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I'm so excited to share with you my interview with my husband, Dan Tennery-Spalding. Dan and I met through mutual activist friends almost twelve years ago and have been basically inseparable ever since.

Dan is a legal worker activist, computer programmer, bicycle/coffee/book aficionado, and my baby daddy (among other distinctions). I was lucky to be an early reader of his awesome book, How to Teach Adults (now in its 2nd edition).

In this conversation, we talk about parenthood, activism, and some of Dan's best advice for teachers (or anyone who leads groups). I hope you love this episode.

Have more questions for us? Hit me up on Instagram and maybe we'll do a second episode!

• Book: How to Teach Adults
• Book: Facilitating Group Learning, George Lakey
• Book: How We Win, George Lakey
• Training for Change
• Learning and the comfort zone
• The Patreon Community

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This episode wasn't on my original list for Season One. But I couldn't help it.

Once I had the brain-flash of doing an episode just for new or aspiring activists, I couldn't get it out of my head until I had gotten it recorded. This is for you. If you're a new activist or part of a new group. If you've been away from activism for a while. If you're an old-timer who trains new activists or helps to skill up the movement.

This is really for all of us.

And what's important to note is that this isn't definitive. Ask 100 seasoned activists and they'd come up with 100 different lists. Ask me in a year, and my list would be slightly different. This list of ten tips reflects the best of my knowledge in this moment. In this season.

And I hope that it serves you. Download the free guide, Top 10 Tips for New Activists!

• Book: Black Flags and Windmills
• Book: Active Hope
• Book: Teaching to Transgress
• Book: Beautiful Trouble
• Book: Trauma Stewardship
• Book: Tending Your Life
• Blog: Narrow and Deep
• Blog: Collective Care
• Consensus Decision-Making Guide
• Midnight Special Law Collective—archived site with a plethora of legal resources for activists
• Download the free guide, Top 10 Tips for New Activists!

Consensus Process: a creative and dynamic way of reaching agreement between all members of a group. Instead of simply voting for an item and having the majority of the group getting their way, a group using consensus is committed to finding solutions that everyone actively supports, or at least can live with.

Download the free guide, and even if you're an experienced activists, commit to applying one of these steps to your life and work. Then tell me about it over on Instagram!

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In this episode, I'm talking about the tough and sometimes uncomfortable work of evolving your legacy. There are lots of ways we can approach this.

In my own life, it's meant getting sober. And it's meant interrogating my whiteness and settler-colonial background. This is ongoing work, and each of our work is individual. Certainly, my son has been a catalyst for this work, in many ways.

But I'd like to think that I'd be on this path regardless. I'm personally curious about what it takes—even if you don't have children—to decide to know better and do better than past generations. And what it takes to fight for the future, especially when it means not just taking positive action moving forward, but undoing the harm of our ancestors.

How do we evolve our legacies in order to become the ancestors that future generations deserve?

• Practice You Deck
• Yung Pueblo
• Layla Saad 
• adrienne marie brown
• Rachel Cargle
• Aja Barber
• White Fragility

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This episode came from a question I received on Instagram, and is something I'm asked all the time:

When we do work that we care about, that has deep, personal meaning to us, it can be difficult to put separation between ourselves and our work. But this lack of separation means that our work can seep into every area of our lives. It can take over.

And when we don't know where we end and our work begins, it takes a toll.

In this episode, I'm offering practical advice on how to start creating healthy separation between us and the work that is such a huge part of our lives. (At it's heart, this advice is really about deciding that we ourselves are enough, as we are.)

• Episode: Better Boundaries
• Blog: Setting Intention
• Blog: How to Create Ritual
• East Bay Meditation Center
• Book: Self-Compassion
• The Patreon Community

Dedication of Merit: Many forms of Buddhist practice conclude with dedicating the benefit of our practice to relieving the suffering of sentient beings and helping them awaken.

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I strongly believe that compassion is really only as valuable as what we do with it: the action that we take from that compassionate place.

So, why do we cultivate compassion? We cultivate it—yes—for its own sake. In Buddhism, it is recognized as one of the four heavenly abodes, or a Divine quality that we as humans can both in body and benefit from. But we also cultivate it as a means of transformation and healing for ourselves and others.

The first is compassion for ourselves on the individual level and then there is compassion for the collective.  and. When we start to bring these two practices together compassion for ourselves, or what we now call Self compassion as well as compassion for others for the collective the universal.

This is how self-care and justice weave together.

There's a question of: what needs healing on the individual and the collective levels?  So what does cultivating this look like in terms of cultivating compassion on the individual level? It might look like self-compassion, self-healing, or self care.

On the collective level it's going to look a little bit different.On this level, it's about honoring and dignifying our shared humanity and applying compassion to that humanity. This helps to create the conditions for shared, collective well-being.

• Spirit Rock Meditation Center
• Book: Self-Compassion
• The Patreon Community

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In my experience there are three key ingredients that keep us from flaming out: gratitude, connection, and and dignity. The problem that we're up against is that we cannot always source these from within ourselves.

There's only so much personal development work, spiritual development, or individual evolution that's possible when we're experiencing systemic or institutional oppression. When were living under systems of oppression, or if we're trying to operate in our work in conditions that undermine our humanity, then we need to start changing those systems.

[FYI: if you're in a position of leadership, this is what you have to start changing in yourself and in your organizations in order to create sustainability in your organizations and in the people you lead.]

Today, we're going to focus on gratitude, but I promise we'll get back to the other two pieces in future episodes.

So why am I starting with gratitude? Personally, this is the one practice that is closest to my heart, since I had a gratitude practice before I had any other type of spiritual practice.

I started practicing gratitude as a teenager before I even had a meditation practice—long before I took my first yoga class. It really is this living thing within my life that I rely on every single day and for me it creates these moment by moment transformations. It reframes things in an instant in this way that I find very powerful.

I hope you love this week's episode!

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