I live in a small suburban town outside of Seattle called Edgewood. I live a couple of feet away from where City Hall is, and where the chief of police is for the city. One day I decided that I would send him an email and say I want to meet to have a conversation. Nothing terrible, I just want to exchange some information. I didn’t think it was going to go anywhere. I thought I would get an automated email or his assistant would email me back. I was sure it would say something like, "We're not accepting any inquiries at this time,” and chalk my email up to a message from some angry black man who wants to come to protest. With all of that into consideration, I was very strategic in what I said. I don't remember it word for word, but I was careful. I wanted it to be empathetic, welcoming, and encouraging at the same time.

A couple of days later, the chief of police himself responded to the email. It threw me off. I thought, "Oh, my gosh, this worked." Long story short, we sat down, we ended up meeting, we ended up talking, I took a picture with him, and I posted it on my Facebook and my Instagram. I don't know what it feels like for anything to go viral. But man, like thousands of people, ended up seeing this picture. That moment went viral on a small scale, so much so that a radio station up in Seattle reached out to me and I ended up being in a guest interview about the conversation I had with the chief of police in my small town.

Today, he and I are really good friends. He's an older white gentleman, and because of our relationship and conversation, he has a different perspective as it relates to racism. I have a different perspective in terms of how I view police officers.

It was a transformative experience for both of us. All the while people were raging and protesting and being destructive, in distress, sorrow, and anger, not everyone, but we know some of that was going on. While people were arguing back and forth on social media, I'm like, "Man, if we can just sit down and have civil, loving conversations with one another, we really can figure this thing out." It was defining. I was able to have a conversation with another man who was just trying to make it through life just like me. And now there is a sense of safety in me that I didn’t have before, that I don't have to worry about police brutality, at least in my area, because of this unexpected relationship we established.

He cares for me, he had the opportunity to meet my kids, and that was a beautiful thing all within itself. He cares about me and people who look like me, not that he didn't before, but even more now. He heard and really took in a perspective that he's never experienced before firsthand, and it helped us both. I feel safe. I don't have to worry about police brutality based on racism, at least in my area, because I know there is someone who's watching over everyone. He understands that his duty is to everyone. Our relationship will be a staple in my life forever. A touchstone. A standard I hope to see everywhere someday.

I'm a proud Texas boy, but my family and I have been here in Seattle for three years. I'm in vocational ministry, which means I'm a faith leader. I lead a small Christian private school as the principal, which keeps me very busy. But also I'm a part of a church staff as well, so I serve one organization. I help with children's ministry in that space.

On top of that, I preach, I teach, and do a lot of work on my own related to diversity, equity, inclusion, just some of the stuff I do on the side. Nothing I get paid for. These are just things that I'm passionate about, so I may make some touchpoints in the community with a few folks at the church to work around racial reconciliation.

Pre-pandemic, things were smooth sailing. At least in the work that I do, particularly on the school side of things, we had plans, we had goals set, projected what the next year was going to look like, and did not have the slightest idea about COVID-19. And when the SIP order came, all our plans just went south and then went left. It was hard. My background isn't in education. A lot of my background is still ministry, and in logistics, supply chain, and things like that. It was my first year as a head-of-school, so by early 2020, I was just getting comfortable and confident. When COVID hit, I was like, "Man, I just got comfortable being a school administrator and built up some confidence and worked through my insecurities that I had stepped into that role. Now I have to deal with leading a school through a pandemic?" It was hard. That's the only word to name that time, hard.

But my team and I put our heads together. We had five days, not even a whole week, to pivot. The governor of Washington was like, "Yeah, you got X amount of days to do everything you need to do, and then everybody needs to go remote." Remember, just like with many places; we have never done any of this before. So with us being a smaller school, fewer resources, we had to conjure up some stuff and get creative. Again, it was hard.

I won't say post-pandemic, but while we're still in the middle of this thing, I'm thankful right now because we got through a lot of the hard stuff. And the hard stuff is what will prepare us for whatever may be next on the other side of this. It has made us stronger, and most definitely, it has made us wiser and smarter. Most definitely, it has given us the ability to be even more adaptable. I can say that I feel like I picked up some of those skills as well. I feel more equipped to handle adversity and to lead people through something unexpected and challenging. It's one thing to be in it, but it's another thing when you're the leader, and you're at the helm of the ship, and everybody's looking at you like, "What are we going to do about this?"

Now that I've worked through some of that, and honestly still working through it, because we're still in a pandemic, things have gotten a lot smoother - and I can say that with confidence, and I'm grateful for that.

Like many people, I think being in the pandemic is what triggered me to say, "I need to take better care of myself." I can't say that I was the best at taking care of myself before COVID. Shame on me for that. Not that I didn't have things in place, but elevating my routine to intentionally putting things in place and saying, "I need to take care of myself." My practices evolved during the pandemic, and most definitely coming into this year.

I began with looking at my body, soul, spirit, and took a holistic approach.

In terms of my body, I was like, "Man, I need to start exercising." So I went to the chiropractor, and I let them make some adjustments. He said, "You're a young man, you need to exercise more." So I committed, you know what, I'm going to exercise more. Now I do that about once or twice a week. I go to the gym, which I don't like to do, but I do it, and I put the work in.

In terms of soul, which entails my emotions, my heart, mind, all those I integrated into my reading list. I was already a big reader, but I found that it is very therapeutic for me to sit down with a book in a quiet space, well, not always quiet because I've got three kids, but it's quiet as it can be, and just read. I also sit down and I read my Bible more. Not that I didn't read a lot before COVID, but lately, I've been reading it a lot more because that helps sustain my faith. It keeps my mind off all the troubles and helps me work through the traumas and things like that.

At one point, I sat down, and I wrote myself a series of questions. The first question was, what makes me feel good? And if I'm not doing something that's making me feel good, or if I'm involved in something that's making me feel bad all the time, which can have a direct impact on my mental health, I reconsider if it should be involved in my routine or free time.

My next question was, what makes me feel good aesthetically? From that answer, I changed all my skincare and things like that. I changed a lot of that stuff because I'm African American, so I had to use different products, which made me feel good because those particular products work with my skin’s chemistry.

And then I asked, what feeds my soul? What am I watching? What am I listening to? What am I using as educational resources? Do I need to be listening to this person right now? Maybe, maybe not. What deepens my spirituality was another question I asked myself. And what's best for my family? Then, what aligns with my values and my goals? Before COVID, I never sat down and wrote myself a series of questions to ask myself. These questions weren’t for anybody else. These questions are for me and how I'm taking care of myself.

And now that's the filter that I run everything through. So as I came into this year, I run my choices through those filters. And from there, I discover that there are things I can let go to let in other things more aligned. It doesn't mean what I’m letting go of is bad. Maybe it’s just taking up too much of my time and keeping me stressed out, distracted, or drained. That leads to when I'm coming home from work, and I don't want to play with my kids. Or this particular thing is triggering me in a certain way and on and on.

Deep in this pandemic, I was forced to have courage. I feel it’s called upon just going to the grocery store. My wife and I have to have courage to maintain a sense of peace, knowing that our children are at school masked or not. We have to have the courage to say we still have to work, so we have to send my seven-month-old daughter to childcare where babies can't wear masks. The pandemic itself has activated more courage in me just because basic life has become riskier.

I am inspired by everyone doing the same, knowing that we are caring for each other by caring for ourselves; that takes courage. Acts of caring, even on the smallest scale, can take courage. I see the intention there, and it’s comforting. This time has not been easy, I’ve had to have a lot of hard conversations, and we’ve all been through so much, but I look to the kids at our school and my own and how they’ve been so brave and adapted more gracefully than a lot of adults, and I know how to keep going and growing and doing more.

I had to let go of some pretty perfectionist tendencies over the last fifteen months. But trusting the wind during COVID has allowed me to move with the uncertainty in ways I couldn't before. It helped me to harness the courage I would need to navigate some of the toughest personal and professional challenges I've faced yet.

I joined EO a little under two years ago now, and I've worn many different hats at the company, but my current role is managing our Everyone for Every Body brand. Professionally, amazing things happen when you get to work with great people. And one of the things that I love most about working at EO Products and particularly working on Everyone is that the type of people who are drawn to working for a company that does things the way we do them, that says things that we say and will say in the future, is a specific type of person. And whether or not you agree on everything, there's an appetite for being different that's innate to those folks. So in the moments where we have a big idea, or we want to say something that might be a little controversial for a brand to say, finding support through amazing colleagues is...well, there's no greater gift.

You can make great products. You can make terrible products. You can have a business that is thriving. You can have a business that is faltering. But what matters the most is the people that you're with which you are navigating that terrain.

I find a tremendous amount of support in our Sparkle Squad, which is our LGBTQ employee resource group that we started in the middle of COVID. EO had done a lot of different one-off initiatives to facilitate a culture of diversity and inclusion, and belonging over its 26 years. But this was the first time that an employee resource group, or an ERG as we call them, formally came together and said, "We are going to exist. And we are going to program. And we are going to influence the business." And one exciting way that has materialized is with the Pride-themed sanitizer that we developed in partnership with The Trevor Project, the nation's leading suicide prevention network for LGBTQ individuals and particularly teens.

That community, the Sparklers as we call ourselves, is home for me at EO. And it's a place where I can come out of a tough meeting with finance or a tough meeting with ops, or a meeting where the marketing minds are not quite meeting as much as we want. And I can always go back to the Sparkle Squad and find that energy and that recharge and that safe space. And it's so crucial that companies do all they can to support and facilitate the creation of those spaces.

As an openly gay leader at the company, I can think of the companies where I've worked where those communities have existed. And I can also think of the ones where they haven't. Nevertheless, the mere fact that those communities existed at certain companies gave me a passive sense of permission to show up as my most authentic self at work. It's a signal that you are wanted here, and you are welcome here, and you belong here. So I'm proud of that community at EO and proud to be a member of our ever-growing group.

We're twenty engaged members in a company of eighty employees. So whether we're primarily full of allies or people who identify as LGBTQ, it's an extraordinary community.

Being a Brand Manager for a brand called Everyone for Every Body, we have a moral obligation with a name like ours to do more than just put that name on a label. Being a brand called Everyone for Every Body means standing up for, standing with, and amplifying the voices of the people who either have the smallest or no seat at the table at all.

That is a position that many brands are afraid to take for a variety of reasons. One of which is that they don't want to lose customers. Every day we are choosing to have the courage to say, "We want to go deeper with the people whom we know see themselves in what our brand stands for." And in that choice, know that it will be controversial, know that as we go further in that direction, there will be people who won't want to go on that journey with us. And that is okay.

And that's where we find our courage as Everyone for Every Body to do what we think is the right thing.

We've had a lot of courage as a business to do things a certain way for a long time. As one of the EO Products brands that makes Everyone for Every Body, we're one of the first natural personal care companies in the country, if not the world. We've been doing things a certain way for 26 years now. And that means being a zero-waste company, that means doing our part for the environment, treating our employees the right way, being a B Corp. Frankly, expensive things are not things that big companies that are strictly focused on the bottom line will commit to doing and stick with over so many years.

One of the things that I think is so exciting about EO products and Everyone for Every Body is that we aren't one of those big companies. So we can make those types of choices. It might be bold, and it might be different. It might be scary in some ways, but we can make those choices because they feel right, not because they have to be justified to a board of directors or shareholders. We do them because it's who we are. And in acting authentically, we find our courage.

And I would say there are similarities to where I find my community outside of the workplace, for example, where I teach fitness classes. Every year they let me do a Pride Ride. And that is my favorite ride of the year to lead. It's a space where regardless of how the folks showing up identify, they're there out of solidarity and out of what Pride means, both in its celebratory sense and how much work there is left to do. And seeing allies, friends, community members, strangers showing up to participate in that creates safety for people, again, to be authentic and to live their best, most authentic lives.

I feel very fortunate. I have incredible communities in lots of different parts of my life. And it takes courage for them to show up and be a part of those communities too. And that's something that I don't take for granted.

With my perfectionism in check and allowing values, trust, and humility to guide me, I find alignment in the critical areas of my life.

And every day, I am learning that I can trust the wind to do the rest.

So I'm grateful for my health. Why? Because it allows me to be with my kids. I'm grateful to still have a healthy business. Why? Because it offers me opportunity.

Expo West is like the Superbowl for the natural foods industry - everybody from around the country looks forward to congregating there. It happens the first week of March and we started hearing news of the pandemic in late February. That event sets the tone for the rest of the year and there was a lot of debate about whether people were going to go to ExpoWest or not.

We decided to not send our people to the Expo. And then we decided to pull everyone from the field. That was a defining moment for us as a broker team. I didn't know how our clients were going to react or even our retailers, but thankfully all of our clients said, "We understand. We support you." Every single one.

We felt totally supported from all different parts of our community.

Our job is to be out in the field - not frontline like the grocery workers themselves, but we're in the stores a lot. We didn't know a lot about the virus, but we get paid to be in stores. We have to increase sales, and one way we do that is to be in stores to merchandise and to talk to the store buyers. When the frontline workers were still unsure of what was going on, they were like, "Why are you even in the store? You should be at home. Don't come into my store." It was for their safety, but also for our own safety.

Our retailers put in very specific protocols: six feet apart, only 25% of the store being filled, hand sanitizers everywhere, wiping down the carts. Once they put in those protocols, it allowed us as brokers to go back into the stores and feel safer than we ever did.

We didn't know how retail buyers were going to handle business. But after a chaotic first month, the fact that they were willing to adapt and let us carry on business through Zoom calls was a big step in helping us stay in business.

Our team members felt grateful that they could stay at home and have the privilege of riding it out, because a lot of people didn't have that privilege or opportunity. At the same time, I was getting feedback from the team saying that they wanted to take this time in the unknown to volunteer to help the food banks. But if we're going to say no to going into stores until we know more about this virus, as much as volunteering felt like the right thing to do, we had to say no and encourage them to stay home in order to keep ourselves and everyone else safe. I was proud of our team and thought they reacted wonderfully. They were grateful to stay at home, while also wanting to go out and help others. That sticks in my mind a lot.

When the Black Lives Matter Movement happened in June, it was easy for people to put up a black screen on social media - and doing something is better than doing nothing at all. But as a B Corp with the values we say we're built on, we felt we had to do more. Bianca, one of the shepherds of the B Corp movement in our company - we call them Beekeepers - she said, "We really have to put our stake in the ground. We can't just put up a screen, we have to stand for this.” We thought we were woke, but it wasn't until that moment where we firmly stated what we stood for and what we're going to support. I think that courage I got from the team and the Beekeepers really set a new definition of who we were.

We went on LinkedIn and Instagram to say these are the things that we believe in, and this is how we're going to take action. Things started getting pretty heated, and we heard things like, "LinkedIn isn't a place for politics.” And it's like, no, it's a platform for brands to say what they stand for. I didn't know how some of our brands were going to react, maybe they had different opinions, but in the end it was the right thing to do.

We have an anti-racist statement in our handbook. So every new employee that comes on, they know what being an anti-racist means. And of course that means more than just being not racist - it's a call to action.

The reality of certain situations was brought to light more for me, and I like to hope I'm more empathetic. We have a couple of team members who, not only were they raising a child and working, but now they have to homeschool and they’re wondering, how am I going to take care of my child's education while still working and still attending to my retailer needs, who's wanting to be on a Zoom call and I only have a one bedroom?

My dad's going to be 85 this year and he actually had a stroke in late March, was in ICU for the month of April, and this is during the pandemic. I felt that same hopelessness as people in similar situations, where they have a parent or relative in a nursing home or hospital where they can’t go. I think that just brought me closer to understanding that sometimes people have a lot of stuff going on and you just don't know.

These days, I feel like I'm more courageous. I think we should make a stand and we should all stand for something and not be afraid of what other people think. Once you lay it out there with some risks, you actually feel a lot better about yourself and about what your company stands for. You imagine all these repercussions that some decisions might make, but they never materialize.

That's the biggest thing: don't be fearful - be more fearless.

Getting to be a human and express myself takes me where I want to go in life, and it led me to that camp in July. It was the 4th of July and I was thinking about how they do these fireworks in the dark of night. I was on my scooter going around and seeing all the fireworks, and it was fun, but then I was like, “What are we celebrating, exactly?” Even though there was so much brightness in the dark sky, it was just like, okay I don’t want to be a party pooper, but this isn’t good enough. That’s when we decided: we’re going to serve food.

The courage has been there, but it's shifted because now it's about me supporting other people that need help. I think I just went deeper into my truth about wanting things to change.

My partner who's from El Salvador makes delicious pupusas. I used to be a cook as well, so this pandemic has given us space to move into our truth in that way, come back to food. It's a pop-up that we do at this trailer park community that was sanctioned by the city of Oakland, and it's a bunch of trailers for seniors who might be more susceptible to COVID.

We're surrounded in that camp by nothing but fast food. We showed up first with pupusas and a lot of people were like, “What's that?” Then we started making grilled cheese sandwiches. It's whatever makes them happy and what they want, and so we're happy to do that for them. Our thing is the vegetables, we definitely want to give them those. We believe in vegetables.

When we got in there it just felt right. I feel like if I'm going to start anywhere, I'm going to start there. I feel like I'm really tackling everything: we've got systemic racism going on, we've got classism going on, we got the money thing going on, we got food, we got equity. Of course we're not feeding everyone in the world, but we're doing our little part. If everybody did a little bit, we can really get there.

The ask isn't for everybody to just stop everything. It's to just make a little space in their life pie to give back. At the end of the day you're going to feel better; you're gonna feel really good. It's not like I'm this savior coming in to do something - it's mutual. It's a 50/50 relationship.

Some of the camp residents have my paintings and things in their trailers, and I love giving it to them because this isn't about selling something. It's about the beauty and the sacredness of expression, and that moment when there's nothing left to do but have a hot meal, share stories, and talk about art.

The standout thing is the vibe. Here's somebody who is unhoused right now and they're just like, "It's a beautiful day and we're gonna keep the vibe positive." To me, that's beautiful, and it sticks with me all the time.

I really think we're in a big mental health crisis in the United States right now, if not the whole world, where we've lost touch with what it means to be a human. We're not connected anymore. So much support has come for this project and that really is what has sustained us and is allowing us to continue to do what we do. Because it doesn't work without community.

The camp recently offered us our own shipping container so we can leave our equipment on site and cook for the guests in what would essentially be our own restaurant. By having our restaurant more permanently on site, we can talk to them and hear from them what they like to eat and get to know who they are. When there are so many people in need, yes - serve them the food, but then take it one step further and actually have the restaurant in the camp just for them. We don’t have overhead, rent, or staff to pay for; we are free agents. Once there is more equality and we are past the injustice - praying in our lifetime - I can think of opening a place.

Love is what it's about. Love, and just standing up for what's right. I wish everyone to have a beautiful day, and spend a little time thinking about the ways that we are engaging with each other, and how we can help others who are in need.

Pre-pandemic, I felt like all of my programs and activities I was doing, the emphasis was education. And they still are education, but at the core of it, it's about connection through what they're learning and their interests.

The main class I'm leading right now is essentially a virtual marine science club for high school-age students. It meets every week, and we're teaching them ocean conservation principles. We offer ways one can act on ocean conservation and protect our ocean in a way that is a collective action. Frequently, the emphasis is put on the individual, and we're trying to help youth understand that this isn't on you as an individual. This responsibility is on you as a collective. How can you rally the troops and work with others to get these protective actions to happen? It's a weekly meeting on Zoom where we discuss those topics, and they do some pre-learning beforehand. And then also leading virtual field trips that we have going on.

Each week, as the program material deepens, we organize information that helps them identify with a specific role within this movement of caring for the ocean. You can be an engineer, or you can be an educator, or you can be a lobbyist, and that there are so many different paths you can take. We teach them that you don't have to be it all, that you can find what resonates with you, and you can be that person and stick with that. That's something I feel like I've had to learn, too. I can't be everything to everyone, but I can do where I feel like my talents and skills are most needed, and I can dedicate time towards that.

If I were still going into my office, I would have an hour commute each way. When I began working from home, I started to realize the privilege I had in no longer having that commute and having two hours of my day freed up. I wanted to see what I could do with that time. At first, it was me taking care of myself and my needs. I struggled with chronic physical pain when going into the office, and I struggled with anxiety and depression. I spent the first six months of the pandemic taking care of myself. Then I started to dive into creating more and focusing on arts and crafts and things like that. It got to the point where friends were suggesting I start an Etsy business, so I created one. I make all kinds of decorative curiosities, and I can barely keep up with the orders sometimes!

I've always been very aware of my privilege globally and the privilege to still have a full-time job throughout the pandemic is not lost on me. I felt almost guilty starting a small business and keeping all of that money. So I decided to donate 30% of the proceeds to the organization Prevent Child Abuse America.

Starting my Spark Joy Studio on Etsy has just opened up the door. Before, I felt like I was holding myself back from sharing some of my talents with the world because I was super afraid of failure. Now that that door has opened, I am incentivizing myself to continue creating to donate money. I have so many ideas and so many ways to support people through the products that I make.

I’ve got so many dreams for this one little business, but I'm seeing them materialize through friends and family. I lead a weekly group of about 20, 25 of us, where we have a circle chat and learn about finances together. I send them some pre-meeting materials, teaching investment, retirement, things like that. Stuff that, unfortunately, we don't know about in school and causes a lot of stress for people later on in life because they don't understand it. I want to help people feel empowered and informed through that process. Spark Joy Finances supports people in finding financial clarity and understanding finances not to be so overwhelming. While also incorporating mindfulness with practices I can impart from being a yoga instructor as well.

As someone who has struggled with anxiety before the pandemic, I leaned away and resisted activities that required courage. There were times when I had to, like giving a tour at work or something like that, when I couldn't say no. So I had to lean into that. Now I find myself gravitating towards things that require me to have the courage to do it. I'm seeing that I can grow so much more when I'm getting out of my comfort zone. And having courage isn't necessarily the ability to speak in front of a crowd or start a business. Still, courage can be taking a step back and deciding, "All day on Saturday, I'm just going to spend time with friends, and I'm not going to think about anything else." Having the courage to know that we won't know when this time goes back to normal and just accept that.

I feel like having the courage to not only care for yourself, but the courage to care for others is what's going to get us through this period. I feel like frequently, the fear of failure can hold us back from doing really rewarding things. Still, the way that I am just trying to explore my courage is to try new programs and product ideas that support others and their needs while also setting boundaries for myself, taking time to care for myself.

I have had my hands in many different areas, but one of the things that I learned throughout this time was specifically to help nurses. I had never sewn a button before, but nurses were struggling with masks hurting their ears. My partner's mom rallied seven women together, and we all started to sew buttons on headbands. I think we did at least over a thousand collectively and got those together. I've never been good with sewing, and I poked myself a lot, but it felt good at the end. It took me way longer than it would have taken people who are good at sewing.

Something else that I did for myself was to start collecting resources that helped people understand anti-racism. At first, there were so many resources being shared in June post-George Floyd. I felt like I wanted to capture all this for myself. Still, then after a little bit, I started to realize, "Maybe this is helpful for other people," and built up the courage to share it with my local community here, with the community I grew up in down in Los Angeles, and got a positive response from sharing that.

When it came to the anti-racism resources, creating a resource document that was mainly highlighting the resources shared around the Black Lives Matter movement. I'm not someone who is black. A part of me felt nervous and like maybe I wasn't the right person to be doing that and to be putting together those resources, but in the end, I felt like I was just trying to help and collect this together. I wasn't by any means explaining things or putting my input. It was just compiling for the sake of other people. I didn't force anything but simply said, "If you want these, this is here for you, and please use it and share it with whoever you'd like." And my work ended up sharing it out with our volunteers and our community as well.

I think for me, when it comes to courage, courage is the ability to push past the little voice inside of you that's telling you that you're not good enough, that you're not talented enough, that there are already too many people doing what you're doing. You should try something else. Courage is the ability to push past those ideas ingrained in us from such a young age, especially as a woman, and to move past that and reach for what you want and not be afraid of not succeeding.

And if you don't succeed, you'll keep working and trying again.

(that's it!)

We were dreaming, developing, and deep-diving into what’s now known as Evolve at the end of 2019. On March 6th of 2020, we had our soft-rebrand launch. Kevin Hart came to celebrate and visit other Black and Brown owned businesses in the area. A week later, we temporarily closed our doors in how we do business to what would stretch into a seemingly indefinite period. It took courage to reinvent, remake, restore, and any other word that starts with a “re.” I call it grit, grind, and hustling, but the socially-acceptable term seems to be resilience. It wasn’t the time to give up; it was the time to dig up. Dig up the bones of the pandemic to plant new seeds of growth and opportunity. As a black man, you have to be brave enough to go through the fire without a fire suit.

My daily self-care routine became even more non-negotiable. Over the course of every day, I invest three or more hours into meditating, mindfulness movement, reading three different types of writing (business, personal development, and something just for fun), walking, spending time in prayer, and now I make even more time to reach out to loved ones. Last year, I also introduced weekly therapy into my practice. I believe that one must see the benefit of a routine to maintain it—my self-care—is part of my way of life. I’ve also learned to listen to my body so that I can know what I have to offer, or conversely, what I don’t have to offer a situation at any given moment.

I knew I had to be honest with myself and my team as we faced 2020. Each month was defined by something else: COVID becoming a pandemic, the murder of Ahmaud Aubery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. The latter shook me to my core. I grew up deep in Oakland and had seen homicides, like binge-watching a favorite show, but watching George Floyd’s last breath leave his body changed me. It reopened the wound of deep-seated racism and inequity in this country, and I knew that I needed to lift my voice. I needed to lift my voice in the face of injustice, for the hopeless, hurting, and helpless. I also learned to listen with acute discernment. To really hear what someone is saying to me - sometimes it’s about identifying what they aren’t saying. It can be as simple as recognizing someone saying they are “fine” but hearing that they are not. I’ve learned to be quick to listen and slow to speak so that what I say comes from a place of wholeness, readiness, and empathy.

Several months ago, I stood alone in our empty Evolve space that used to be filled with hundreds of people on a daily basis. My eyes were filled with tears. A stack of bills stared at me, and my heart was heavy; I had some difficult conversations with employees ahead of me. And then I remembered that two decades ago, where I stood was an empty car dealership, just one building amidst a whole corridor of other abandoned buildings. A woman named Konda Mason, a social entrepreneur, and advocate for racial equity who helped to initiate the redevelopment of Oakland’s downtown as a place for new Black and Brown businesses to thrive brought the building where I stood back to life. And then, all of a sudden, I wasn’t in an empty building; I was standing in the executed version of someone’s dream. I thought, if I can figure out how to get to the next step, someone else will stand here one day and find their next step.

So I keep taking steps alongside those dreams every day.

Having the courage to care feels automatic, just like taking a breath. I feel like so many people spend their days caring for others in some form all day long. It is the most ordinary thing and so it is the most essential and important thing. Like breathing. Caring for others allows me to care for myself. This year, going to be with my patients has been a refuge for me. Also doing the dishes - that’s where I am able to restore a little order.

But honestly, it was two weeks. Two weeks full of immense disappointment.

I know when things are hard; you either let it take over everything or just take one step at a time and figure it out. And so slowly but surely, the silver linings did shine more. Many things canceled, but then so many other things started coming to the forefront, like the quietness and the stillness of time. And then this uproar, this reckoning that needed to happen in our country too. The social justice movement got even louder, and then the loudness got amplified. While everybody was so still and quiet, we were able to tune into injustice and let it take center stage.

I came to this country from the Philippines when I was nine years old. Art is central and always a part of healing and a part of joy for me in my life. I noticed that when Quinn, my eight-year-old, and her cousin Gabe in Virginia would FaceTime, they would ask me questions about art. And so I ended up showing them how to do specific techniques. One night, I thought, oh, my gosh, I'm going to ask my sister, who is a teacher, to host a class with me. She could monitor the chat and then Zoom, and I'll lead it. She was in, and we were both ready for it.

Families paying for the lessons wasn't even a question. I didn't want to charge for it; that wasn't even a thing I had to consider. I think the most challenging part was believing that I could teach kids. I've never really led a full class or kids, and I wondered how to connect with them through virtual learning? All these kids had only had a taste of online learning at this point, it was over the summer, and I knew so many families were at home - camps were canceled, vacations postponed - but once I saw how much fun my daughter and her cousin were having the idea just popped in and grew. I didn’t think twice.

I don't feel I have ownership of it. That's the thing; I don't feel like these classes were mine to give; I feel like they were something that I learned from. My teachers gave me so much; they are a crucial part of why I am here now and why I’m an artist, and I guess I just wanted to give it forward. I’m only part of this beautiful cycle of learning, growing, giving, and creating.

The skin tone class was because of Quinn. Her eyes lit up when she could put her skin tone on the page. Lots of people would say, “it's just crayons, right?” No, it's not just crayons; it’s a tool to create art that has way more layers than you realize. In the self-portrait class, it was essential to create a safe and supportive place for representation. Cross-hatching is a layering technique with different colors to create a unique dimension for a specific skin tone. Seeing all the other kids react to that and find themselves there was incredible. It’s just so awesome, not to mention that this is something that people learn in Intro to Art in college.

My sister and I were hosting over 50 kids from all over the country, and all of them felt this connection with each other, knowing that they were using the same colors and creating and seeing each other's skin tones; it was something special. I think it didn't get me until after the first class that I realized that there was a deeper connection. We were doing this together but apart across the entire country. My sister Kay is in Virginia, and I'm here in California, and we told the kids it's like we're hugging them from each coast with the whole country between us. We had kids from New York, Jersey, Florida, Georgia. Some days I had to turn my screen away from me for a minute; I would get so emotional.

I think for kids to know that being proud of their skin tone is just letting it be normal. They were just letting it speak as is. It was so natural for them just to do it and just see and explore and then discover that all these colors go with their skin tone. It wasn’t only about one color being yours or someone else’s - it was about all of them being ours.

My art is a response and reflection of the things happening in our communities around the world. I believe that in response to Black Lives Matter, artists have been so powerful, and their work resonates a lot with people throughout this time because we create things that are, in some cases, more manageable than someone talking at you and telling you what's important. Instead, you're looking at it through your own eyes and interpreting and letting it move you differently.

I turned 40 last year. It feels really good. It's a good age. The past couple of years, I've had this introduction to the power of no, the power of my no, and the power of my yes. I have to feel it when I say no and when I say yes. What is my intention when I say those words? What is my intention when I do things? Intention is a huge thing that I think about a lot. What is that person's intention when they asked me to do certain things? I think it cuts through and filters out many things in my life and simplifies my choices. It takes practice; it took a lot of practice for me to do that.

Now, when I look at things, I can honestly say no, and yes to something, and I know that it's not because I have to make somebody happy. It's because I mean it. Not that I didn't before, I just wasn't aware of myself in the same way. Before I was trying to please and not wanting to hurt people by saying no. Instead, I realized that I wasn't paying attention to myself, and I wasn't taking care of myself. I have more joy when I show up to things because I know it comes from a good place. And I think that's part of being kinder and gentler to others and myself, too.

It has a lot to do with being a mother, honestly. I know other people realize it in different ways. Mine, personally, is being a mom. It's all the things, realizing when you're pregnant, how powerful our bodies are. I say this to people that I hope they find it sooner than I did. During my pregnancies, I was in a space of just healing as far as my body. Not only my pregnancies but then becoming a mom and maneuvering motherhood.

When I began exploring my art, it took bravery, but it was there waiting to be tapped. As Quinn grew and she and I started doing art projects together, and then when I started looking for ways to decorate her room, I was focused on wanting art that represented her. And that was hard to find; it was kind of shocking. So I was like, "Wait a minute, I can probably do something about that." And so I started creating prints.

With Quinn and Rowan, my girls, I feel a sense of bravery that I didn't know I had. I have more conviction because of them. I started thinking about how someone had asked me, "Why do you paint? What drives it?" And my answer is always the same: it's the people who came before me, the ones who are walking beside me, and the girls who I'm raising. Every time I paint someone, it's usually someone I've met. And it's someone who has inspired me. I think about my Grandma. I think about my sister, Kay. I think about women in my life and how we lift one another. I look through my girls eyes, who they want to see and how they want to be seen. I want to normalize these things and not make it such a big deal. But, to women like me, it is a big deal.

I feel like courage doesn't have to be loud; courage doesn't have to be in your face or dramatic. Courage can be restrained; courage can be quiet; courage can be observant, and also courage can be a learning experience full of color.

Painstakingly going through the experiences of last year and what it revealed to me has changed my outlook on everything, including my self-care. So many of the things that we do to take care of ourselves also can become performances. Being mindful of that is a process that I can learn from. And learning to decipher between what you enjoy doing and what makes you feel good versus the things that you are being told are the things that should make you feel good. I’ve learned that's hard to figure out.

The last twelve months have been hugely humbling for me not only because they forced me to close my business but to stop everything that I was doing so intensely all the time. The experience of moving yourself to stop something central to what you do and who you think you are changes everything.

With some time and distance, I’ve been able to look through a little more of an objective lens and acknowledge how I lived that served me and the parts that didn't. In a day-to-day way, now I make more time to be available to people. I go on more long walks around Golden Gate Park with friends, just having one-on-one conversations, simple yet nourishing things that I would never have thought I had time to do in the past.

My basest layers of self-care are physical movement/exercise, reading books, taking time away from the phone, cooking, and talking to people. Over the summer, when things were a little more open, I went solo backpacking for the first time, and I had the chance to learn something about myself I hadn’t considered as much before. I learned about who I am when no one is watching and how my behavior is different. It felt a little odd to be an outsider looking in on myself. As somebody who probably worked 80 hour weeks since I graduated from college to suddenly have such a different relationship with time and place, and just being, it was powerful. I learned a lot. I took away a lot.

Courage can be such a big word when in fact, we’re all doing it by just keeping going. The fact that everybody, no matter what it is being gone through, gets up each morning and keeps going and gets through another day takes so much courage. For me, the thing that I continue to try to practice is the courage to have hard conversations.

In the spring of 2020, I stood up in front of our members, in front of our investors, in front of our partners and said, "We aren't going to be able to do this anymore." I was met with a lot of people's emotions, including my own. Some people were super supportive and lovely and wonderful. And some of them were not. And I knew going into it that that was going to come, and it still was harrowing when it did. It took courage to hear that from people and take it and say, "Okay, I hear that. And I accept that and understand that." And apologize when apologies are necessary, but continue to make those hard decisions.

I think one of the hardest places to be emotionally is in the middle of a decision. Sitting in the middle of a tough decision can tear you apart. Psychologically, even physically, it was profoundly challenging and one of the most courageous things that I have ever done - just deciding something and doing it. Any decision takes that level of courage because it involves thinking about what you want, what is right, fair, making sense, and then really listening to yourself and taking action.

To get there meant taking a longer, bigger, wider look at my life and what I was doing and where I was at that given moment. That stuff is significant, and it's easy not to do it, but I think this experience of this past year has lit that fire and, I think, got a lot of people to be like, "What am I doing?" And I think it's courageous even to start to think about those big questions and conversations.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the timelines of our lives. Before 2020, I was wrapped up in my timeline - where I was supposed to be, by what time, and all that. If anything, this forced a different way of looking at time, and it taught me more about myself than I could have ever expected.

I've discovered that what I thought was my self-care is how I work to maintain balance. Over the last twelve months, I've learned that balance is multi-dimensional - it's not a straight line from A to B. I've only gotten acupuncture once in the 11 months that we've been on lockdown. Yet, I feel a lot more whole and joyful than I did when I was getting it regularly.

I apply small spaces in my day to restore balance, and I think that has cumulatively added up to more than I had before. In 2019, I never left dishes in the sink- if I saw a coffee cup on the counter, I washed it, and I might look up and notice the sun passing through the clouds and leaves and hitting the lemons and think it will be there tomorrow. Now, I pass the dishes and the coffee cup to be with the sunray.

Walking outside to sit in the sun instead of looking at it through the window is groundbreaking to me.

It is a choice that I make for myself every day that I didn't make before, and it has amplified my balance in unquantifiable ways. I love gardening and nature, yet I had no idea how much five minutes outside with my fingers in the dirt when I could do something else would matter to my overall wellness.

And the freedom to make that choice is not lost on me.

There have been so many shifts during this time. My relationships have deepened and also changed. My business has changed, too. In March of 2020, we took a business model designed to be 100% in-person and moved it 100% online. I was scared, but we all were. The fear couldn't stop me because too many people relied on what we were offering to help them move with the times' intensity and uncertainty.

When George Floyd was murdered, I trusted that the community we had created would amplify their voices around social justice. As a WOC owned business in Oakland, we didn't see another way to engage with the moment. And we did then, and we continue to now. We knew that to some amplifying our voices might be uncomfortable, but the discomfort of social injustice made our choice to get loud around our values and beliefs nonnegotiable.

Through it all, I guess I feel grounded knowing that the lemon tree will be there tomorrow, but instead of waiting for the spaciousness to feel like now is the right time to go outside, I just go outside and create the space inside of me.

At Sway, we're using seaweed to replace plastics. Seaweed is a super benevolent resource; it replenishes and restores ecosystems, grows really quickly, sequesters a ton of carbon - up to 20 times more carbon per acre than trees - and it can be turned into a replacement for plastics that's compostable and biodegradable.

Nature has provided many very obvious solutions to the planet’s biggest problems. All we have to do is magnify them. We need to work with nature, not against it. Seaweed is the ultimate example of that, but there are other benevolent materials like mycelium, scoby, and even repurposed agricultural waste.

There's a lot of doom and gloom out there, and that's why I love the idea of a benevolent materials revolution where we uplift communities, ecosystems, and businesses simultaneously. We need more stories of hope when it comes to the climate crisis, and I feel hopeful because I can see that there are going to be lots of solutions emerging in the next years that really work. They're not just going to help solve material problems, but also social problems, larger environmental problems, and political problems as well.

The future that we envision at Sway is one in which every business can integrate the principles of regenerative design up and down their value chain. We can go beyond just producing finished products that do good. From the origin of the material, all throughout production and manufacturing processes, there's lots of opportunity to care for each other and for the planet through regenerative design. There’s so much potential good that can be achieved through regeneration.

Empowering all kinds of people to make change is one of the most significant ways we're framing the work we're doing at Sway. No one should be excluded from conscious consumption. I can relate to that feeling because I'm a designer by trade. I'm not a materials engineer. There were, and still are, many, many learning curves in understanding the complexity of the plastic problem and the science behind the solutions. That's okay - and it's okay to admit that you don't know something, and then still pursue what you believe in.

I believe that courage could be defined as the willingness to do the next right thing. I can see this idea manifested in benevolent materials like seaweed. Seaweed is willing to continue growing even in the face of immense pollution. Seaweed is willing to restore ocean environments despite overfishing and ocean acidification. And seaweed can be used for all different sorts of decarbonizing climate solutions – from biofuel to livestock feed – not just the plastic problem! It's a metaphor for how humanity needs to act: we need to be willing to grow, restore, collaborate, and ultimately move toward the next right thing.

We know that there's no silver bullet for all the problems facing the climate. Spreading stories of hope, sharing what climate solutions really look like, illuminating the giving nature of a new wave of benevolent materials – that’s how we make progress! Even if policy is moving slow and the world is burning, positive change is happening right now in spite of it all.