Hi friends,

Amelia, here. Before I launch into today's topic, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who filled out my newsletter survey! I'm so grateful for your enthusiastic feedback. I'm taking what you wrote to heart as I plan what I want to share for the rest of the year. 

If you haven't had a chance to offer your feedback and you'd like to, here's a link to the survey. It's only 3 questions, it's totally anonymous, and it'll be open for one more week.

In today's newsletter I want to talk about quitting. I'm calling this a beginners guide to quitting, because, quite frankly, I have so little experience with quitting that I'm not sure I even qualify as a beginner. 

But! Last week, I gave my two weeks notice at a job that I thought I'd be in for a long time. I did it! I quit! And the grueling experience I had deciding to do so made me reflect a lot on our cultural connotations around quitting and my personal resistance to it.

You see, as long as I can remember, I've always had trouble quitting things—jobs, relationships, books, hobbies. If I started it, you could be damn sure I'd finish it. In fact, I prided myself on being the person who toughed it out. I ran half-marathons even though I hated running. I wrote a dissertation even though I could care less about academia. I developed a real skill for perseverance, and a strong reputation as a hard-worker and someone who achieved things.

But I also stuck it out through a lot of things that were not worth achieving. Like, “achieving” being in a two-year relationship that sucked after month two. Or “achieving” watching an entire season of The Bachelor that I hated just because I started it.

For a long time, I just accepted this to be a fact about myself. I was someone who didn't quit. Sometimes that was great for me, and other times it sucked. But no matter what, I didn't quit. That was the important thing.

Over the past few years, however, I noticed that not quitting was really getting in the way of the feminist values I was trying to instill in my life. Being the person who always stuck it out was limiting my access to pleasure, ease, abundance, and freedom.

As I worked to untangle why I was so resistant to quitting, I began to realize that this wasn't just a personality trait of mine. It was a result of my social conditioning in our white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal society. How? Well at a young age, I'd internalized the lesson that because I was a woman, because I was a worker, because I was always somehow lesser-than someone else, the only way to ensure I'd succeed was to work hard and never give up.

Never give up. Never give up. Never give up. Those words echoed in the back of my mind for decades, and over time they became my definition of success. 

As long I never quit, then I couldn't fail. As long as I didn't fail, I could keep on working. As long as I just kept working, I could prove my worth. See that work = worth equation hidden in there, babes? Oof. Capitalist ideology really did a number on me.

From the subject of the email, you may be expecting that I have guidance to offer you on how to quit. So I feel obliged to tell you that … I don't. I did do a quick search for how to quit before writing this, but even the list of suggested searches made me very quickly abandon that idea.

Rather than advice on how to quit, I'm going to share some reflections on quitting from one of my favorite feminist philosophers Sarah Ahmed. In 2016, she resigned her tenured professorship to protest the lack of university accountability around sexual harassment and misconduct. After her resignation, she wrote:

By saying resignation is a feminist issue I am not saying to resign is an inherently feminist act even when you resign in protest because of the failure to deal with the problem of sexual harassment. I am saying: to be a feminist at work means holding in suspense the question of where to do our work. The work you do must be what you question. Sometimes, leaving can be staying, with feminism. Sometimes. And not for all feminists: other feminists in the same situation might stay because they cannot afford to leave, or because they have not lost the will to keep chipping away at those walls.

I know that some people have no problem quitting, even when staying would benefit them and others. And I know that others cannot quit, even when staying causes them or others harm. Like Ahmed says, with feminism, sometimes leaving can be staying. To that, I'd like to add:

Quit for pleasure! Quit for joy! 

Quit for rest! Quit for fun!

Or don't quit, never quit!

Cherishing your right to quit means I cherish your right to quit quitting.

Cherishing your right to quit means I cherish your right to quit reading this.

Cherishing your right to quit means I cherish you. No matter what.

All of this is to say that lately I'm learning how to quit. I'm kicking my inner Capitalist conditioning to the curb (aka evicting my inner-Monopoly-tycoon aka doing a lot of work around money). I'm looking around my life and deciding what no longer serves me. I'm wrapping up projects. I'm tying lots of tidy bows. I'm creating some Wide Open Spaces (yes, another The Chicks reference) for new things to enter my life.

As most of you know, one thing I quit earlier this year was Instagram. That was a great experiment in quitting, and I'm really loving being off social media. But even though I don't miss Instagram, I do miss your shining faces. So if you want to hang out in the upcoming days/weeks, I have a few events coming up that I'd love to see you at:

👉 This weekend is my monthly virtual book club hosted by tiny space to breathe. The last Sunday of each month tiny space founder Alma Omeralovic and I meditate together and chat about a book that speaks to the spirit. No reading is required. This month we're discussing My Body, My Home: A Radical Guide to Resilience and Belonging. RSVP to join us Sunday 5/31 at 5pm CT.

👉 I've been learning a lot about astrology over the past two years, and next month I'll be hosting a Saturn Return Support Group to help folks look up their natal charts and navigate the hugely transformative experience of our Saturn Return. This is a gentle gathering for astrology novices & pros alike. If your birthday is between 1991 & 1994, it'll likely be especially poignant for you. Learn more and join me at Rec Center on Saturday 6/26.

Lately I've been ending these messages with reminders that you are sacred. What do I mean by that? I think something like: I cherish you and everything that makes you gloriously human and gloriously connected to all other beings in the universe. I'm still workshopping that definition, so we'll see what I come up with next time.

In the mean time, I hope you have a wonderful week, babes. I'll be back in your inbox with more musings soon. Until then, I quit! 😘

xoxo, Amelia

P.S. I've got space for two more podcast clients this summer. If you want support starting or producing a podcast, I'd love to hear from you. I particularly love working with women & gender non-conforming folks who run their own businesses or creative projects. Sliding scale rates are available for BIPOC & LGBTQIA+ babes. Reply to this email for more info. xo