Doing the work by Collette Philip is a reader-supported publication - for anyone who is serious about doing the work of anti-racism, equity and anti-oppression.
Collette is an award-winning anti-racist brand strategist, facilitator, founder and coach.
If you like this post, why not become a paid subcriber?
Happy Friday folks!
This week, as you’ll see in the video, I received a letter that changed EVERYTHING. I had a very different post planned (reflecting on the week of Kendrick, Gulf of Mexico and the power of language to normalise oppression) however I got a lovely surprise in my inbox, that prompted me to take a totally different approach.
Last August I was reading “The Best 90 Days Ever” by Hannah Isted (a very good book that I just realised I never finished) and as one of the opening exercises, she invited readers to set some goals and then write a letter to “future me” celebrating what has been achieved at the end of a set period of time (I did 6 months apparently). I had totally forgotten that I had sent the email, so this morning it was a total shock when I received it.
Here’s the thing. I set a few vague goals and hadn’t looked at them but everything that I’d said in the letter to my future self had come true. And frankly, I hadn’t bothered to celebrate or even recognise that.
So I’m setting you a similar exercise - but tailored to this space, a space for those of us who are serious about doing the work of anti-racism, equity and anti-oppression.
I want to you to take some time to reflect on the following:
What does “Doing the Work” look like for you right now? How does it feel?
What impact do you want to have in the next 6 months?
What do you want to learn over the next 6 months?
How are you going to prioritise rest over the next 6 months?
How will you seek and build community over the next 6 months?
Anything else that you want to commit to over the next 6 months?
Then you are going to write an email to your future self, looking back on the past 6 months. You are going to acknowledge how you felt in this moment, and how far you’ve come. You are going to celebrate the impact you’re having and the things that you’ve both started and stopped doing to get there. And you are going to give yourselves some words of affirmation and encouragement to bring you joy and keep yourself going. Then you are going to schedule it, to arrive in your inbox in 6 months time. I used the website Future Me to send mine, but you can also simply schedule from your inbox, if you have that capability.
(If you want an offline option, you can give someone you trust a sealed letter addressed to yourself with a stamp and ask them to post it in a few months time).
I’m also going to do this. And in 6 months time, I’m going to check in with you all on how it felt to receive your letter.
(By the way, 6 months is an arbitrary number. You can do 3 months, a month or a week - whatever timeframe feels right to you to look ahead. Frankly if you are going to have a challenging day doing this work, write a letter and schedule it to arrive tomorrow or Monday!).
Because, as I said in the video, “Doing this Work” means holding ourselves to account. Not expecting perfection, but making sure that we are self-aware and reflecting on how we are showing up. And whilst “no shade, no judgement” is a workshop rule for any spaces that I facilitate, I rarely apply it to myself. It’s more like “all shade, all judgement, Collette”. So I really appreciated the motivation from “Future Me” to keep going - and the acknowledgement of the work that I am doing. Because, like all of you, I AM doing this work.
And as Ru Paul says,
“If you can’t love yourself, how the HELL are you going to love someone else?”
Can I get an Amen?
I would LOVE you to comment below and let me know how you found the exercise (so that I’m not just shouting into the void). Lots of you get this straight to your inboxes, so do click below to read this on the Substack platform so you can tell me what you think. I’d LOVE to hear from you!
P.S. In April, we’ll be launching our DISMANTLE anti-racist brand platform
(see my earlier post on this). If you want a FREE month’s access to our brilliant online training platform (worth at least £2k), then do upgrade to paid before March!
Share this post