Issue 18: Surrender

Do you know what I keep asking myself to do? 

Over and over again. 

To surrender. 

Have you ever tried it? 

It’s not great. 

You definitely have to give up control which is not easy for me. 

You absolutely have to give up power which is also not easy for me. 

You absolutely have to move in trust which is a skill that I still don't have. 

As I'm typing I hear my teacher Xochitl saying Diana, your words are magic, speak instead of how you want things to be, as if they already are.

Re-write. 

I am learning to give up control. 

I am working on giving up power. 

I am trying to move in trust. 

In June I participated in ceremony with Abuelita Teresa Chicahuaxcochitl and I will be in ceremony again with her in just a few days. Cause healing is for eva eva…

And you know what happened just over two months ago?

My hands turned into stone. No matter what I tried. No matter how much I wanted to, attempted to, tried to lift them. I could not. 

From ceremony, I learned that my hands are where I hold onto control. Ceremony was showing me the ways that I have survived. The weight that I have carried in my hands when I do not move in trust. I could cry just thinking about the burdens I carry, correction, I have carried. (No wonder getting my nails done is a specific type of torture and now thinking about it why I clench my fists whenever I am at the dentist…). 

So to surrender might free me. 

I guess I have to surrender to live.

You know what surrender is…My baby has not let me work all morning. At several points I have had to surrender and give him all of my attention. This baby that I longed for is such a lesson for a one person business, a recovering perfectionist oldest daughter, and productivity for survival, entrepreneur. 

I have also gone back and forth about releasing another issue, especially one centering Radical Money. 

So I texted Jamie a few minutes ago and asked if I should send a final reminder about my upcoming workshop (MAÑANA), and guess what she told me to do…

Girrrll surrender. 

Exact quote. 

I'm not even gonna pull a card cause I already know what it's gonna tell me. 

The last time I truly surrendered was in childbirth. 

A baby is coming into the world, whether it's the way we want it to or not. Whether it's the right timing or not. Whether it was what we expected or not. 

Those contractions keep on coming in incrementing waves, each one reminding you… to surrender. 

Radical Money is also childbirth. It is a dream that I created out of thin air (my sister said I did not, but it sounds right sometimes…like magic). 

I had a vision to create a workshop for the times and to offer it. 

Before Radical Money, I was in the process of creating a whole different workshop and then I put it to the side cause I was overthinking it. It just did not fit. It would not come together. It was forced. So I let that one go. I surrendered. 

And instead I got Radical Money. This creation story was clear, the pieces came together in a couple hours, as if it was determined to come into the world. It answered the call of my spirit and I believe the call of the collective.

Radical Money is important to me. It should be important to you. 

The money we pay into our government, with or without our consent, goes to bomb journalists, to kill babies, and to detonate mother earth. 

We could have peace, we could have abundance, we could take care of each other. 

Instead we fund capitalism. And capitalism funds Empire who then funds the military industrial complex that acts out genocide in Palestine, Congo and Sudan and then puts babies in cages in the US.  

Money is individual and it is always systemic. 

I hear my friend Wendy saying “I blame Reagan for all of it.” We’re both babies of revolutions against American Imperialism. (Nica and Salvi love). 

I am having a hard time sending “sales emails.” But I have been reminded, repeatedly, by multiple people that I am not selling.

I am offering an invitation to join me in a liberation practice. 

A practice of surrender in the tradition of Liberation Psychology; a praxis rooted in my homelands and in our revolutions.

Radical Money will explore the themes of Recognition, Responsibility, and Reciprocity. Indigenous values that have a lot to teach us about how to be in right relationship to money and with systems.

We will recognize the systemic story of money and how it is incompatible with life and with the future.

We will touch on our responsibility to do better for ourselves and for each other.

We will manifest reciprocity as a collective, holding ourselves accountable by centering gratitude.

We have resisted empire and we will again. 

In this way, we will never surrender. 

La lucha sigue, 

Diana

PS. Sign up here. https://www.esperanzapllc.com/radical-money

Nos vemos MAÑANA.