Hi friends! I had so many ideas of what to write about this week. So much has happened personally since my last newsletter. I attended FIYAHCON, which filled my cup to the brim and all my spell slots had been restored. I finally finished building myself an author website and within a few days, someone used it to find me and email me a sweet message about something I had written that he read. I signed a writer’s agreement to write a thing and get paid real writer’s money for it (more on that another time).

Alas, I’m not going to write about fun things.

This week there has been a conversation I have had with at least five separate people (as well as its prominence in the book I’m reading) and it’s still at the forefront of my mind so that’s what I’m going to write about today. That thing I’ve been talking about is this idea of comfort, specifically around DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion) work. There is a phenomenon of certain people (white, cisgender, heterosexual, non-disabled, etc.) acting like being uncomfortable is the worst thing that has ever happened to them. So much so, that sometimes, they conflate “being uncomfortable” with “being unsafe.” Michelle Mijung Kim talks about this in The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change.