Podcasts about m archive

Do we perhaps deserve the impossible? This is only one of the many beautiful questions Marquis Bey asks in this poem of an episode. Marquis is an exquisite thinker who joins me to speak about the incredible book Black Trans Feminism and share thoughts about why such a feminism is for everyone. Marquis speaks about how literature allows us to imagine new possibilities to exist in the world and see how everything is entangled with everything else. Join me to learn from Marquis, to think about abolition, coalition, fugitivity and traniflesh, and to imagine what the world could be beyond the realistic and the possible.  References:https://www.marquisbey.com/Marquis Bey's Black Trans Feminism (Duke UP, 2022)Marquis Bey's Cistem Failure (Duke UP, 2022)Marquis Bey's The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Gender (University of Minnesota Press, 2020)Marquis Bey's “RE: [No Subject]—On Nonbinary Gender.” Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences (2022)Saidiya HartmanAlexis Pauline Gumbs' M Archive and UndrownedLauryn HillDenise Ferreira da SilvaToni MorrisonN.K. JemisinOctavia ButlerRivers SolomonAndrew CutroneSarah Jane CervenakFred MotenRoxane GayStefano HarneyJack HalberstamTina CamptRalph EllisonTranifleshEmma HeaneyHortense Spillers' “Mama's baby, papa's maybe”K. Marshall GreenTreva EllisonTranifest Spillers, Hortense, et al. "" Whatcha gonna do?": Revisiting ‘Mama's baby, papa's maybe:' An American grammar book": A conversation with Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Shelly Eversley, & Jennifer L. Morgan." Women's Studies Quarterly 35.1/2 (2007): 299-309.Abraham Weil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua_Hm6weProCiara CreminTransgender Theory (Bloomsbury)https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/series/transgender-theory/A Nonbinary Life (forthcoming) Asterisk (Duke UP) https://www.dukeupress.edu/series/asterisk-gender-trans-and-all-that-comes-afterJian Neo ChenSusan StrykerEliza SteinbockC. Riley Snorton's Black On Both SidesJess Goldberg's Abolition TimeFrieren  Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:     What is Black Trans Feminism? Why is it for everyone?     How can identities provide comfort and safety and why is that not always useful?     What are the terms Marquis thinks about in relation to allyship?     How does Marquis define traniflesh?     Which thinkers inform Marquis' thinking about fugitivity and what is the central metaphor Marquis introduces here?     What might be challenging about thinking Black Trans Feminism in the way Marquis proposes it?     How do you feel about the impossible and the unrealistic?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs' Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde Book Reading Information: https://www.charisbooksandmore.com/event/survival-promise-eternal-life-audre-lorde-homecoming-celebration-alexis-pauline-gumbs-and   Book Reading Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/survival-is-a-promise-the-eternal-life-of-audre-lorde-tickets-938622193247?aff=oddtdtcreator   A queer black troublemaker, a black feminist love evangelist and a prayer poet priestess, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs was the first scholar to research the Audre Lorde Papers at Spelman College, the June Jordan Papers at Harvard University, and the Lucille Clifton Papers at Emory University during her dissertation research. We are eagerly awaiting her forthcoming biography, Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde on August 20, 2024. https://www.alexispauline.com/   Alexis's work as a media maker and her curricula for participatory digital education have been activated in 143 countries.  Her digital distribution initiative BrokenBeautiful Press, her work as co-founder of Quirky Black Girls and her loving participation in the Women of Color Bloggers Network in the early 2000's established her as one of the forerunners of the social media life of feminist critical and creative practice.   Alexis has been honored with many awards from her communities of practice including being lifted up on lists such as UTNE Readers 50 Visionaries Transforming the World, The Advocate's 40 under 40, Go Magazines 100 Women We Love, the Bitch 50 List, ColorLines 10 LGBTQ Leaders Transforming the South, Reproductive Justice Reality Check's Sheroes and more.  She is a proud recipient of the Too Sexy for 501C-3 trophy, a Black Women's Blueprint Visionary Award and the Barnard College Outstanding Young Alumna Award.   From 2017-2019, Alexis served as visiting Winton Chair at University of Minnesota where she collaborated with Black feminist artists in the legacy of Laurie Carlos to create collaborative performances based on her books Spill and M Archive.  During that time she served as dramaturg for the award winning world premiere of Sharon Bridgforth's Dat Black Mermaid Man Lady directed by Ebony Noelle Golden.   Alexis is a 2023 Windham-Campbell Prize Winner in Poetry. Alexis's most recent book Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals won the 2022 Whiting Award in Nonfiction.   Alexis was a 2020-2021 National Humanities Center Fellow, funded by the Founders Award, and is a 2022 National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellow.      Original Photography of Alexis Pauline Gumbs by: Sufia Ikbal-Doucet   Graphic Design of cover art image by: Angela Denise Davis

Alexis Pauline Gumbs joins Windham-Campbell Prizes director Michael Kelleher to talk about the beauty of Audre Lorde's poetry and why more people should know her as a poet as well as an essayist. READING LIST: The Black Unicorn by Audre Lorde Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir Broadside Press "A Supermarket in California!" by Allen Ginsberg For a full episode transcript, click here. Born in Summit, New Jersey in 1982, Alexis Pauline Gumbs is an activist, critic, poet, scholar, and educator. A self-described “Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist,” Gumbs uses hybrid forms to re-envision old narratives and engage with the history of Black intellectual-imaginative work. Her four books of prose-poetry include Dub: Finding Ceremony (2020), Undrowned (2020), M Archive (2018), and Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity (2016). Dub, M Archive, and Spill form a kind of triptych, each engaging with the work of a Black woman theorist: Sylvia Wynter in Dub; M. Jacqui Alexander in M Archive; and Hortense Spillers in Spill. In all her work, Gumbs raises the stakes of literature within and beyond the page. She is a people's poet, awake to the form's capacity to imagine alternative worlds, across and through time. Her worldview is capacious and paradigm-shifting, speaking to urgent realities with exuberant love, and inviting activists, artists, and readers alike to join in her participatory presentations. A graduate of Barnard College and Duke University, Gumbs is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (2022), a Whiting Award (2022), and a National Humanities Center Fellowship (2020). She lives in Durham, North Carolina, and is currently at work on a biography of Audre Lorde. The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast is a program of The Windham-Campbell Prizes, which are administered by Yale University Library's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs (NHC Fellow, 2020–21), Independent Scholar, Writer, and Activist The second book in an experimental triptych, “M Archive ”is a series of poetic artifacts that speculatively documents the persistence of Black life following the worldwide cataclysm we are living through now. Engaging with the work of the foundational Black feminist theorist M. Jacqui Alexander, and following the trajectory of Alexis Pauline Gumbs's acclaimed visionary fiction short story “Evidence,” “M Archive” is told from the perspective of a future researcher who uncovers evidence of the conditions of late capitalism, anti-Blackness, and environmental crisis while examining possibilities of being that exceed the human. By exploring how Black feminist theory is already after the end of the world, Gumbs reinscribes the possibilities and potentials of scholarship while demonstrating the impossibility of demarcating the lines between art, science, spirit, scholarship, and politics. Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JNf8XMg2a7Q https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/virtual-book-club-m-archive-after-the-end-of-the-world/

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings. Her work in this lifetime is to facilitate infinite, unstoppable ancestral love in practice. Her poetic work in response to the needs of her cherished communities has held space for multitudes in mourning and movement. Alexis's co-edited volume Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (PM Press, 2016) has shifted the conversation on mothering, parenting and queer transformation. Alexis has transformed the scope of intellectual, creative and oracular writing with her triptych of experimental works published by Duke University Press (Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity in 2016, M Archive: After the End of the World in 2018 and Dub: Finding Ceremony, 2020.) Unlike most academic texts, Alexis's work has inspired artists across form to create dance works, installation work, paintings, processionals, divination practices, operas, quilts and more.Alexis is the founder of Brilliance Remastered, an online network and series of retreats and online intensives serving community accountable intellectuals and artists in the legacies of Audre Lorde's profound statement in “The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House” that the preceding statement is “only threatening to those…who still think of the master's house as their only source of support.” Through retreats on ancestor accountable intellectual practice, and online courses on topics from anger as a resource to transnational intellectual solidarity Alexis and her Brilliance Remastered collaborators have nurtured a community of thinkers and artists grounded in the resources that normative institutions ignore. All of Alexis's work is grounded in a community building ethic and would not be possible without her communities of accountability in Durham, NC the broader US Southeast and the global south. As a co-founder member of UBUNTU A Women of Color Survivor-Led Coalition to End Gendered Violence, Warrior Healers Organizing Trust and Earthseed Land Collective in Durham, NC, a member of the first visioning council of Kindred Southern Healing Justice Network and a participant in Southerners on New Ground, Allied Media Projects, Black Women's Blueprint and the International Black Youth Summit for more than a decade she brings a passion for the issues that impact oppressed communities and an intimate knowledge of the resilience of movements led by Black, indigenous, working class women and queer people of color. Her writings in key movement periodicals such as Make/Shift, Left Turn, The Abolitionist, Ms. Magazine, and the collections Abolition Now, The Revolution Starts at Home, Dear Sister and the Transformative Justice Reader have offered clarity and inspiration to generations of activists.Alexis work with her primary collaborator Sangodare has shown the world a Queer Black Feminist Love Ethic in practice. Over the past 11 years they have nurtured the Mobile Homecoming Project, an experiential archive amplifying generations of Black LGBTQ Brilliance which has consisted of listening tour of the United States (in a 1988 Winnebago!) 7 intergenerational retreats and pilgrimages in the Southeast US, a media and audio archive of many Black Feminist LGBTQ elders and is now in the land stewardship phase of building a living library and archive that serves as an all ages independent and assisted living community of intergenerational learning and love. Sangodare and Alexis are also the co-founders of Black Feminist Film School, an initiative to screen, study and produce films with a Black feminist ethic. Sangodare and Alexis have also collaborated on the exhibition Breathing Back at the Carrack Gallery in Durham, NC and more than 50 visits to campuses, organizations and conferences in the United States. Alexis was honored by the Anguilla Literary Festival as “The Pride of Anguilla,” a small country where her grandparents Jeremiah and Lydia Gumbs played key roles in the 1967 revolution. She identifies proudly as a queer Caribbean author and scholar in the tradition of Audre Lorde, June Jordan, M. Jacqui Alexander, Dionne Brand and many more. She was the first scholar to research in the papers of Audre Lorde at Spelman College, June Jordan, M. Jacqui Alexander, Dionne Brand and many more. She was the first scholar to research in the papers of Audre Lorde at Spelman College, June Jordan at Harvard University and Lucille Clifton at Emory University during her research for her PhD in English, African and African American Studies and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University. She is published in dozens of edited collections and academic journals on topics ranging from black coding practices to queer caribbean poetics, to mothering in hip hop culture. She speaks as a Black feminist expert in a number of films including Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth by Pratibha Parmar.Alexis's poetry and fiction appears in many creative journals and has been honored with inclusion in Best American Experimental Writing, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and honors from the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize and the Firefly Ridge Women of Color Award. She has been poet-in-residence at Make/Shift Magazine and is currently Creative Writing Editor at Feminist Studies. Alexis's work as a media maker and her curricula for participatory digital education have been activated in 143 countries. Her digital distribution initiative BrokenBeautiful Press, her work as co-founder of Quirky Black Girls and her loving participation in the Women of Color Bloggers Network in the early 2000's established her as one of the forerunners of the social media life of feminist critical and creative practice. Alexis has been honored with many awards from her communities of practice including being lifted up on lists such as UTNE Readers 50 Visionaries Transforming the World, The Advocate's 40 under 40, Go Magazines 100 Women We Love, the Bitch 50 List, ColorLines 10 LGBTQ Leaders Transforming the South, Reproductive Justice Reality Check's Sheroes and more. She is a proud recipient of the Too Sexy for 501C-3 trophy, a Black Women's Blueprint Visionary Award and the Barnard College Outstanding Young Alumna Award. From 2017-2019, Alexis served as visiting Winton Chair at University of Minnesota where she collaborated with Black feminist artists in the legacy of Laurie Carlos to create collaborative performances based on her books Spill and M Archive. During that time she served as dramaturg for the award winning world premiere of Sharon Bridgforth's Dat Black Mermaid Man Lady directed by Ebony Noelle Golden. Alexis is currently in residence as a National Humanities Center Fellow, funded by the Founders Award. During her residency she is writing The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde: Biography as Ceremony (forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux).Her book Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals is a series of from Marine Mammals is a series of meditations based on the increasingly relevant lessons of marine mammals in a world with a rising ocean levels and part of adrienne maree brown's Emergent Strategy Series at AK Press.In this interview we discuss:Collective CareLoveInterconnectednessAudre LordeMarine MammalsThe BreathLessons we are Learning about LoveDistance and LoveIntergenerational MedicineLove and Care Across DistanceAncestorsMiracles RitualPracticeDevotionReverenceConnect with Alexis Pauline Gumbs on her website or on Instagram @alexispaulinePodcast music by Charles Kurtz+ Read transcript

March of 2020 in the United States is like no other March I've ever experienced!News of the Coronavirus and all the ensuing restrictions occurred within days. The lives of Americans radically shifted with the closing of schools, horrendously long lines at the grocery store to buy toilet paper, having to practice social distancing, and hundreds of thousands of people facing layoffs. The list goes on and on.While the news provides updated information, it can increase fear, even panic. Throw in some sensationalized news that's fake, and it might feel like the world is ending. Negative thoughts creep in and begin to take root. Instead of believing things will get better, one might begin to be convinced life will never be the same when the Coronavirus is gone. Once those thoughts take root, it's hard to pull them out.Negative thinking isn't limited to living as cautiously as possible during the Coronavirus. It can creep in when a happily married couple finds themselves arguing nightly. An unexpected health crisis with the doctor giving a grim prognosis ushers in negative thinking. Failed job after failed job leads to negative thoughts like, "I'm just not good enough."My guests, Cathie and Addlia, join me for a discussion on the importance of keeping a positive attitude, especially when life is tough. These two have faced years of tough times, yet each fight (and fight hard) to focus on the positive things happening in their lives. Through their journeys of overcoming, both ladies have gained wisdom that will convince you positive attitudes add years to your life. Join us for a laughter-filled discussion to learn why we believe positive attitudes are life-giving.

HELLO AGAIN POWER CRYSTALS! In this cute conversation we go deep on divination! How do you divine? What do you do when you need the guidance of wisdom outside of you? In this episode, we get to do our first interview with the incredible Katie Robinson! (she/them). Katie is a poet, educator, writer, diviner, and we are so lucky to have them on the podcast! In this rich conversation you will hear about:  Katie Robinson IG- @softbutchdiaries  The book M Archive and the work of sage Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs Marcella Kroll's Nature Nurture Deck The Divine Guidance Deck by Cheryl Lee Harnish And so so much more.    Please stay in touch with us and follow us at @wearepowercrystals on IG Leah is @crystalsofaltamira Jaison is @bluerosebotanics   Thank you Power Crystals! We love you!

**Long episode with minor audio distortions during the topic segment** Nikeeta and Money fangirl out as they interview the High Priestess of QueerWOC, Alexis Pauline Gumbs! She joins us for our topic segment to talk archival research, love, and Black feminist miracles. Nikeeta gives us Black lesbian filmmaker history. Money wants us to channel Audre Lorde in order to heal. Community Contributors is poppin again!! Thanks yall! Finally, Money gets some numbers!!! Contribute to QueerWOC: https://www.paypal.me/QueerWOC Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/queerwocpod Use the hashtag #QueerWOC to talk all things the podcast Send us an email or submit your Curved Chronicles: QueerWOCpod@gmail.com 00:07:47 QueerWOC of the Week Sharice Davids, democrat elected to congress in Kansas Watch her campaign video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGa5qQsYY-g Read about her victory here: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/sharice-davids-lesbian-native-american-makes-political-history-kansas-n933211 00:13:35 Community Contributors Thanks Gabby, Emerald, Amethyst, Rawley Chyla upped their pledge Jeffrey - donation for ethical t-shirts Natalia (x2!!) - “Cant thank you both enough for the amazing content and dedication to community.” Brandon - It’s not much, but a sign of gratitude for what you all do. Our struggles are tied. Systems of oppression function as one. So it’s only fitting that the community mantra is basically WE ALL WE GOT! Much Peace & Big Love! 00:18:03 Mental Moment with Money Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself: posted by @Xicanisma_ created by Divya Victor, adapted by me to help us heal, create, and motivate What are the words you do not have yet? (Or, for what do you not have words What do you need to say? [write/say as many things as necessary] What are the cruelties you swallow day by day, that attempt to make you their own, until you sicken and die from them - still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language, ask yourself “what is the worst thing that could happen to me if I tell my truth?” 00:25:36 Word - “Sisters in the Life” Nikeeta tells us all about the history of Black lesbians in cinema by breaking down the anthology Sisters in the Life: A History of Out African American Lesbian Media-Making edited by Yvonne Welbon, Alexandra Juhasz https://books.google.com/books/about/Sisters_in_the_Life.html?id=RUNRDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false 00:39:40 Topic - Conversation with The High Priestess of QueerWOC, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs [@alexisPauline] Based in Durham, NC APG is a queer black troublemaker, a black feminist love evangelist and a prayer poet priestess, Alexis has a PhD in English, African and African-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University. She is a daughter, a doula, and an afro-futurist time traveler through archival research. She is the author of M- Archive, Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity, coeditor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines; and the founder and director of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind, an educational program based in Durham, North Carolina The Shape of My Impact: https://www.thefeministwire.com/2012/10/the-shape-of-my-impact/ Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=746 01:57:23 Curved Chronicles Money finally got some numbers at NWSA! Is your dating life more exciting than ours? Email us your dating adventures at QueerWOCpod@gmail.com Follow Money| IG/Twitter @MelanatedMoney Follow Nikeeta| IG/Twitter @AfroBlazingGuns

Poet, and scholar Alexis Pauline Gumbs Ph.D. is a queer black troublemaker, a black feminist love evangelist, and a prayer poet priestess. She has a Ph.D. in English, African and African-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University. She is a widely published public intellectual and essayist whose work has appeared in publications like Make/Shift, Left Turn, The Crisis, Ms. Magazine, The Feminist Wire, and Obsidian. We'll be celebrating poetry and talking about her books "Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity" and "M Archive After the End of the World." She was the first scholar to research the Audre Lorde Papers at Spelman College, the June Jordan Papers at Harvard University, and the Lucille Clifton Papers at Emory University during her dissertation research. At the age of nineteen, she founded Broken Beautiful Press, a grassroots publishing initiative inspired by Kitchen Table Press and Redbone Press. She is a widely published public intellectual and essayist. Her work appears in publications like Make/Shift, Left Turn, The Crisis, Ms. Magazine, The Feminist Wire, Obsidian and she in many academic and activist books including The Revolution Starts at Home, The Black Imagination, Abolition Now!, Does Your Mama Know and Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions. Dr. Gumbs is also a visual mixed-media artist. Her current series is Black Feminist Breathing Collages. She recently completed successful western hemisphere tours with her interactive oracle project “The Lorde Concordance,”

Alexis Pauline Gumbs graces Weapon of Choice to tell us about her work, creative journey, challenging us to deeper reflections on darkness and light and everything in between, heritage and humanity, as well as her new book, M Archive, which can be found here: https://www.dukeupress.edu/m-archive Support our show and become a member at this link: https://www.patreon.com/weaponofchoicepodcast Please rate and review Weapon of Choice Podcast on iTunes Follow us on social media here: Facebook: @weaponofchoicepodcast Instagram: @weaponofchoicepodcast Twitter: @weaponchoicepod Email: weaponofchoicefans@gmail.com

Chicago dominatrix Mistress Velvet did not intentionally build her practice around dominating white men. But she was living in a predominantly white part of North Carolina at the time, and most of the people who could afford to hire her, fit that demographic. "It just happened to be that a lot of my clients were white men," she says, "and they were just really awful." One client said he appreciated that she was so well educated. "I've had black mistresses in the past," he told her, "but they were often ghetto." At the same time, she said he seemed to be struggling with a lot of white guilt. She figured he needed some education himself -- and he happened to be paying her to tell him what to do. So she ordered him to read an essay by Patricia Hill Collins on the importance of black feminist theory. "It just gave me so much life," she says. "He was on his knees, at my feet, reading an essay to me, and I'm like snapping the whole time -- at least internally. You know, I have to keep up my persona of being very cold." She decided she wanted to be doing more of that kind of work, and now Mistress Velvet specializes in dominating white men and teaching them black feminist theory. Depending on the client, she says the assignments can be used as a treat or a punishment. Mistress Velvet joins us to talk about her work, mainstream perceptions of BDSM, and how race and racism plays into intimate power dynamics. We also have a conversation this week with poet, teacher, and self-described "queer black troublemaker" Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Her newest book, "M Archive," is told from the point of view of a future researcher, looking back on the antiblackness of late capitalism. The publisher describes it as "a series of poetic artifacts that speculatively documents the persistence of Black life following a worldwide cataclysm."

In this episode, James is joined by AAP Fanon correspondent M. Shadee Malaklou as they welcome a new guest, Derrais Carter, assistant professor of Black Studies at Portland State University. The trio discuss Alexis Pauline Gumbs‘ forthcoming M Archive: After the End of the World (Duke UP, March 2018), the second book of her “planned experimental triptych.” M […]

What's been happening in the real estate market here in Houston? The key numbers for March are in, and I wanted to talk a little bit about our market's growth so far this year.Selling in the Houston area? Get a market analysis reportPurchasing in the Houston area? Get full MLS accessWhat's been happening the Houston market so far in March? I've got some key stats to share today.The market has shown considerable strength this year and since we haven't really had much of a winter, I think the buying season has been pushed up a bit.Each price segment in our market has shown an increase in February for the number of homes sold on a year over year basis. In fact, all segments above the $250,000 mark showed double-digit increases. Homes priced above $750,000 were up almost 28%.Each price segment in our market has grown in February. On average, prices climbed about 7% and days on market are up just a bit to about 64. Inventory, on the other hand, crept up a little bit to about 3.5 months worth of homes on the market, but we're still pretty low in some areas. Other areas have high levels of inventory. As you can see, due to Houston's size, we live like a group of smaller cities within an area, which is why you need to look at each area on an individual basis. If we can help you with any of your real estate needs this spring, don't hesitate to give us a call or send us an email soon. We'd love to help you out!

My guest on the podcast this week is Rachel Hollis. Rachel Hollis the brilliant founder of the Chic Site, head of the #chictribe and one of the most authentic women I've ever met.         I've followed her site for almost a year now and I can tell y'all that every single time I read a post or watched a #RachTalk I thought, 'This woman is practicing Shalom in such a profound and important way' so I knew eventually I'd invite her to come onto the show. Then last Christmas, I attended a holiday party with a purpose at the Chic Site's headquarters just minutes from my house and I KNEW I needed to have her come teach us how to #PartywithPurpose and how she practices shalom in her everyday life. It was an incredible conversation. We talk about everything from her upbringing as a PK  (pastor's kid) and how that inspired her to see the sacred in gathering people together.  She share with us the how the ChicShows Up Christmas Event came to be— which I have to say, y'all was a highlight of our first Christmas in L.A.   What I loved most about the event was that is was crazy festive, (I got my Mariah Carey "All I want for Christmas" sing on, for sure), but it was SHALOM IN ACTION.  All of us worked to create a Christmas care package for families transitioning from homeless into their new homes. CRAFTS for the babies.  Rachel thoughtfully planned these packages to love on every single person in the family.  What an amazing Shalom Sista!   I was working at the pumpkin pie mason jars station.  I smelled amazing at the end of the event!  Pier One partner with the Chic Site by providing cute aprons for the care packages.  Even Rachel's family showed up to party with a purpose.    Here's Rachel's Shalom Steps to help us ease into gathering and loving people with a purpose.  On the episode we talk about: How Interrupted by Jen Hatmaker that changed her life Her favorite coffee shop is Priscilla's in Burbank, which since we tape the show (back in March) I've visited at least once as week, y'all.  I have a problem :). She's involved in Door of Hope, a faith-based organization in Los Angeles whose mission is to equip homeless families and rebuild their lives.  and her book series, "The Girls" was a spark of joy and Jesus' way of saying, "I see you, Osheta.  You need to laugh right now" for me when my mother in law died last fall. She also mentions these homeless care packages that she keeps in her care.  I'm so moved by the needs of the homeless community and I'm always asking God how to practically care for them, especially in this season of mothering, these were genius. Go to her post on it for a video walk through how to do these packages with your kiddos...methinks there's a #SummerofShalom Instagram party op here... Finally, we're kicking off the #SummerofShalom Instagram Challenge next Monday so don't forget to download (or claim) your FREE SUMMER GIFT here. Follow me on Instagram @OshetaM to see how I practice Shalom this summer. https://www.instagram.com/oshetam/ Shalom in your earbuds Sistas,   Osheta