7 March 2024
Publishing my first blog post on Circular Patterns is a moment I have imagined for months! A week ago I published this website which shares quite a few stories, and its creation provided me new insight. For example, I marvel at the communication chasm between my wine industry community and my new life, I’m defining as the beginning of a Natural World Revolution. My wine community includes value aligned regenerative farmers, winemakers, customers, vendors, distributors, retailers, sommeliers, influencers, press and more. The outreach since sharing my website warms my heart. And a few went as far to ask if I’ve succumbed to a cult, listing my new vocabulary as indication. 🙂 Admittedly, I often wrap my new words in dogmatic adjectives and adverbs, for exuberant emphasis, which likely helps explain the comments. My point is my wine community is full of Natural World lovers and activists, which share vast common ground with my new community, yet there is a sizable gap in communication, as far as I can see.
Indeed, my new website is many things. It combines various aspects of my life to share narrative stories, that I hope illuminate why it is crucial we evolve to welcome our whole selves, in all arenas. Several friends expressed concern at my sharing personal details, in the same forum where I share ideas to help drive my new career. I argue my stories of raising children, growing a small winery business and building community are interwoven, and cannot be reduced into work vs personal categories. One of the questions I like to pose when seeking common ground is,
Shouldn’t spawning salmon have value before becoming our next meal?
Both of my communities can relate to this example. Currently we have no entry on the balance sheet for depleting salmon from the Pacific Ocean. The entry begins with the first transaction between the person fishing and the market buying the fish (or for sticklers, the COGS are assigned once this transaction occurs). Profit is based on costs to catch the salmon, but does not account for the value of the salmon’s life, and the ocean life in relationship with the salmon. Therein lies the crux of the problem faced by the Natural World.
I believe in holism and feel none of us should have to reduce our essence into reductionist categories like work, family, community, caregiving, self care, etc. To meet each other, we need to bring our whole self. For 20 years I’ve stood on my proverbial soap box, speaking from my winemaking agency about these very topics. Today I remain passionate and irreverent, and due to currently lacking agency, I’m manifesting a new soapbox, with my website and blog, to share my passionate ideas around ensuring the natural world can support all life, for at least seven generations forward.
As 2023 closed, I had hoped to hire talent to assist me bringing my complex and messy lived experience to life, as a narrative multi-media story, with layers and fables and more. Timing for solving both my situation and addressing the polycrisis, left me feeling publishing a website was best for meeting this moment of dire consequence. My estranged husband has trashed my reputation and continues his threatening behavior every day. While I appreciate those are messy details that feel scratchy, I argue that humanity needs to reach deep, feel scratchy and renew our connections to each other, standing up for what is right. We are born celebrating the natural world with love in our heart, and imaginations that run wild with possibility. Our human built economy is designed to warp our senses, isolate and desensitize us, and drive us with plastic promises never realized. Let’s change that!
So as is often the case in our world, I had to pivot once I realized no talent could be hired at this time. After a few days gardening, feeling a myriad of emotions with my hands in the dirt, I realized I could build my website, albeit scaled back and not what I initially envisioned. On the upside I learned, reskilled and processed more emotion while my plan came together in my mind and my hands were busy and dirty.
My architecture was a snap, due to my wanting to illustrate the power of my proposed frameworks. My new website is built upon three sections, to mirror the Story Sharing & Community Building proposed framework:
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This Moment
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Our Stories
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Our Future
In my Pitch Deck, my proposed framework begins on slide 23 and is introduced by a novel superorganism I call The Institute for Liberating Life.
I feel passionately that we need a novel, unified & decentralized effort to reach humans that are not in financial positions to pay for courses, classes, retreats, fellowships, etc. and just need help finding ways to lean in AND support their foundational financial needs. With my website I illustrate, what I believe could provide the rudder, for transitioning away from imbalanced focus on these:
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Climate Change – while critical, it is one of nine boundaries
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The “WHY” – Non-targeted, repetitive, passionate messages about WHY we need to listen, care, change, act or give
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The “WHAT” – Non-targeted, repetitive, passionate messages about WHAT actions are needed by the elites running the world, as perceived by those struggling to stay housed or barely making it with piles of middle class, short term debt.
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Communication barriers – Targeted messaging from a specialized vocabulary perspective, yet little segmentation to customize language to meet broad, non-specialized audiences
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Preaching to believers – Repetitive energy spent preaching to our choir in the echo chamber
Instead, I argue we need to shine a spotlight on what I believe to be more crucial, at this moment, when humanity, is watching humanity, crumble on TikTok:
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Finding common ground around our biology and relationships
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Proudly Identifying the humans and entities supporting the Natural World Surviving (I like the word Revolution in place of Surviving)
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Meeting (not matching) audiences, to engage millions around the globe
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Facilitating new relationships and transcontextual mutual learning opportunities
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Linking positive emotion to the Natural World, with hope and clear calls to action
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Linking negative emotion to the destruction of the Built World with clear Calls to Action
My journey to breaking my silence, with the many stories shared on my website, and publishing my first blog post, was lengthy, and at least as arduous as reading all of it! My website provides foundational color about this moment for my family, as well as some of our backstories. However, I’m just getting started! I hope to share nuggets from my journey that might prove insightful or useful for others as we build a new human economy in harmony with nature. As the days ahead prove more challenging, humans will increasingly need to find inner strength and motivation to keep plodding forward. I might have a few tips to share!
I do want to acknowledge the many notes received and express my deep gratitude, and while it may take me some time, I will reply to each and every one of you! In the days ahead, I will also address the many questions received about how it is possible for me to arrive at This Moment. The answer requires more depth than I can provide today.
The Natural World suffers due to the systems we built to operate the human economy. In California, a single mom can arrive at this moment after founding a business as an LLC partnership 20 years ago with her estranged spouse, in a no-fault divorce state where assets are sold, and proceeds divided, unless other arrangements agreed. I am guilty of assuming good will and initially failing to pursue liquidating our assets. To me they were not just assets on a balance sheet. One was the business I considered to be my 3rd child. The other was the asset my daughters and I call home. But three years later, after the tortuous journey, I opted to remove the festering conflict hurting my children and let him take my 3rd child called Donkey & Goat Winery. My lived experience demands I deal with both my ambulatory need to stabilize while relentless destructive actions continue, and simultaneously imagine a new way of living. Much like the natural world.
So back to dirt and feelings. I have found if I put my hands in the dirt, and let my imagination wander, and feel emotions, I am happier, healthier and more resilient. I believe we can literally save humanity by finding novel ways to start digging and feeling and communing again. Back to my pitch deck, slide 21 highlights ideas for offering front yard edible garden programs and services, combined with land trust accounts, to transition neighborhoods into urban ecovillages, with agriculture skill building and edible outcomes for the local community. If enough hands dig into the dirt, connecting with life in the soil and life in their community, the possibilities are unimaginable!
✌🏽&💙,
Tracey Rogers Brandt