To wrap up season 2 of the Own It All podcast, I’m sharing my conversation with the incredibly gifted, socially-conscious, driven, wise, and widely published Charlene Carruthers. She’s a Black queer feminist community organizer and writer with 15+ years of experience in racial justice, feminist and youth leadership development movement work. She’s also the author of the bestselling book Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements, and when we spoke, she had just begun serving as a board member for the Women’s March.

In discussing what it means to own your power in all aspects of your life, our conversation was both wide and deep. We covered everything from intersectional activism, to staying in integrity while maintaining your boundaries, to reframing the way we look at collective work for liberation.

“We shouldn’t see every single thing at every moment as the most urgent thing. Moving only in a spirit of urgency will lead us to only focus on one thing and picking away at ‘the wall’ in one area. But if we say, ‘Over my lifespan, there are so many different contributions that I can make,’ I believe that’s a much more fruitful pathway in doing this work. … There are so many different ways to contribute. It isn’t just about where you can physically put your body. What kind of a community you’re a part of, what are you reading, what are you teaching other people? All of those things go into transforming the world that we live in.”

Charlene also shared powerful insights into the importance of authentic relationships with people who are different from you, and how that ties into some of the work that white women need to do. For that, and for everything else she shared, I am so grateful to Charlene taking the time to come onto the show. We only just scratched the surface, so if you’d like to learn more about Charlene’s work and philosophies, check out her website to get started.

Thanks for tuning in for season 2 of Own It All! I’m so pleased that I could share these conversations with you over the past two months, and I’m so grateful to my guests, and all of you joined us.