What does life coaching have to do with abolition?
So glad you asked.
“Abolition” isn’t limited to a policy or political affiliation—it’s a practice for exiting automated or institution-backed systems that create harm through inequity (especially in regards to carceral, imperialist, state-controlled ways of existing in the world). As Ruth Wilson Gilmore puts it, “[the] goal is to change how we interact with each other and the planet by putting people before profits, welfare before warfare, and life over death.”
Abolition is the dismantling any force that creates violent limits on how humans are allowed to exist and thrive in this world.
Abolition says fuck the gender binary. Fuck racism. Definitely fuck white supremacy. Fuck ableism and necropolitics. Fuck the state’s monopoly on violence.
Abolition tells us to seek out harm reduction and solidarity above all else. Abolition says land back. Abolition imagines Palestinian futures. Abolition redistributes wealth and resources. Abolition teaches that mutual care, compassion, and accountability are the most powerful tools for change.
Are you, like, an expert on abolition?
More accurate to say that I’m a practicing student of abolition and abolition-oriented coach. That means that I integrate abolition in how we work together and, critically, in how you take care of yourself as you move toward your goals.
Mainstream “self-care” teachings don’t distinguish between:
(a) self-care that’s linked to collective liberation versus
(b) making life easier for yourself while externalizing the toll of capitalist exploitation.
The latter might have you hiring a VA in another country for $5 an hour and telling you you should feel better because now you’re working less and you don’t have to stress about the expense. While it might feel like relief in the short-term, it hasn’t challenged the status quo or materially disengaged you from capitalism (really, you’ve just shifted ranks within a toxic hierarchy).
Abolition-minded self-care means we figure out how to change your relationship to work and productivity. In this lens, you might still hire a VA, but at a livable freelance wage or even as a W2 employee. Doing it this way, we’ve expanded your beliefs in what you can afford and linked your success to the success and well-being of the people you work with.
We grow in ways that are sustainable and fulfilling when we honor the fact that our individual liberation (well-being, peace, quality of life) is inextricably connected to everyone else’s.
How much is this the focus of any given coaching session?
That’s really up to you. We can talk directly about how you want to integrate abolition teachings into every corner of your life—or you can just do your thing in the knowledge that I’ll be guiding you in these values every step of the way. Meaning:
Paying attention to how your individual liberation is both a product of and step toward collective liberation.
We stay mindful of the context racist, imperialist, exploitative, carceral society we live in and its impact on us and the people around us.
Healing from participation in white supremacy (by implication, its transphobia, misogyny, fatphobia, ableism). This is a crucial step in disarming our defensiveness, ego-center guilt, and making ourselves available to accountability, integration, and change.
Disentangling your life from capitalist exploitation without externalizing the costs to another person.
Prioritizing solidarity (and mutual aid) over charity.
What’s an Abolition Practitioner? Don’t you have any training?
Abolition practitioner is a relatively new concept in the tradition of a rich history of harm reduction. While each person’s practice is individual, in general it means avoiding a claim to institution-backed expertise because of its links to state-violence and disempowerment.
Basically: I don't participate in licensing or "expert" standing as a way of removing my practice from the idea of hierarchical care. Expertise is too often used to strong arm unilateral decision making and override concerns or doubt. "This person is an expert, so I'm turning my brain off." "This person is an expert so I'm going to ignore the harm I feel and give them more of my time/money/energy, because they know better than I do."
I come to you with lots of thoughtful training and tools and experience, but my practice and what I’ve done is never given value over your personal experience. You are the person best equipped to make decisions for yourself. All my expertise is meant to give you support about knowing what paths are available to you, NOT to tell which one is the best fit.
Can you say more on that?
Consider anarchist concepts of illegitimate authority and legitimate authority: Illegitimate authority is authority claimed on the basis of because-I-said-so-ology. States are an example of this—they have authority because they say so and enough of us agree to it. So it goes.
Legitimate authority is based on skill or expertise. If you know how to make bread and I don’t, when it comes to teaching breadmaking, we don’t have equal authority. In that case, you’re the legitimate authority on that subject.
Licensing and certifications are meant to straddle both authorities: There’s a training and implied experience in a license or certification. But the guarantor (licensor) is an institution that merely purports (illegitimate) authority on declaring who has legitimate authority.
This conflation of legitimacies creates a hotbed of potential harm. Often when we're battered and burned out by trauma, illness, or just the violent racist ableist capitalist patriarchal society that surrounds us, our self-trust is the first thing to go. "How am I supposed to trust myself when I have no idea what the fuck is even happening in this world??"
From this thinking, we often turn to "experts" to guide us and give us answers we no longer know how to find within ourselves—further displacing and dissolving our self-trust by saying it isn't needed. "Just listen to the expert, they’ll tell you if you need to worry about X or consider Y."
How is this different from the oppression that dissolved our self-trust/inner knowing in the first place? It isn't. This is just vertical integration of imperialist soul-sucking: Society fucks us up and then sells us the "solution" which delivers the final blow to our autonomy.
This is not to say there aren't great licensed people out there! Lots of tremendously thoughtful and talented doctors, lawyers, teachers, psychiatrists, etc., are doing work that supports and uplifts their clients/students/patients. But these folks are helpful precisely because they don't see their expertise being threatened or at odds with your lived experience or self-trust.
* Sidebar: In chronically ill communities there's a parable that reading "Don't confuse your internet search with my medical degree" in or around a doctor's desk is a sign to run in the opposite direction. Doctors who are secure in their knowledge and emotionally available to listen to your experience do not mess with such fuckeries.
An abolition practice centers YOU as the expert of your experience and your self-trust as the key to unlocking how you want to be in the world.
As far as I’m concerned THIS IS THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF COACHING: To increase your connection your internal safety and confidence as you move around this world.
The choice to rebuke licensing is one way I show I’m invested in prioritizing your sense of safety and discernment on what serves you best.
You are the boss; the one with the best fit answer. Here ::gestures widely:: take a look at my zero licenses and certifications that prove I have no authority over your experience.