NGC 7293

Kerry James Marshall

in order of priority, i'm $218 short on rent due in a few days. i found a mh practitioner who could work w me sliding scale for $50 minimum per session so hoping for $300 to hold out and stay alive thru isolation til my neuropsych referrals go through. for replenishing the meds i ran out of i need $238. for upcoming tcm appts to manage my pain and symptoms while i'm waiting for western diagnosis and treatment i need $306. please help me get out of this cycle.

paypal.me/disabledoracle

hey all. i've been pursuing neurological and neuropsychiatric care amidst my own brain decline to no avail since the start of this year with my extremely limited energy. seven referrals have been rejected or bounced between specialisations since this started, the treating doctor whose treatment gave me meningitis that led to my decline has been cancelling my appointments and never followed through on promised imaging and intervention, and my symptoms are fucking unbearable. i'm keen to access medical cbd thru a telehealth clinic to attempt to get some degree of relief and the appointment would be this thursday - i'd need $100 for the appt and would have to update with the cbd prescription cost. any help greatly appreciated ~

paypal.me/disabledoracle

Did you know that names hold power? They root us in our pasts, shape our presents, and guide us toward our futures. So when it came time to rebuild my nonprofit organization, to start anew, the name had to mean something. Admittedly, Embodied Futures Collective (EFC) came to me in a dream! But when I looked closer, I realized it was always meant to be ours!

Embodied: Because the futures we seek are not distant, abstract things. We hold them within us. We are the future!

Futures: Because there is no singular path to liberation. There are many ways forward, many possibilities, many truths that can and must coexist. The shift from singular (Future) to plural (Futures) was intentional—a rejection of rigid blueprints, an embrace of multiplicity. And still, it calls back to our roots, to Better Future Program (BFP), reminding us that even as we evolve, we carry our history with us.

Collective: Because none of us walk this path alone. The only way we have survived is together, and the only way forward is through community. This is a recognition of the love, labor, and resilience that has held us up time and time again.

And maybe it’s just coincidence, or maybe it was meant to be—but EFC rhymes with BFP. A quiet echo of where we’ve been, carried into where we’re going.

The name matters. It holds all the lessons we’ve learned, all the hopes we still carry. It is a reminder that we are still here, still imagining, still building something real.

So, welcome to the Embodied Futures Collective (EFC)! We hope you stay a while.

When we set out to define the Embodied Futures Collective (EFC)’s mission, we knew one thing for sure: we couldn’t be everything.

BFP had tried—not out of aimless ambition, but out of what felt like necessity. As an organization run entirely by multiply marginalized youth, we lived with a daily urgency that those with privilege often only experience during heightened political crises. Everything felt necessary to tackle because everything was, in fact, tied to our survival.

But trying to do everything took its toll. Our old mission statement reflected this:

Our mission is to globally expand peer-led political education, support, and imagination for marginalized youth.

It was beautiful, ambitious. But it stretched us thin. It framed our Liberation Library—the resource hub we were most known for—as just one of many things we did. And that wasn’t sustainable.

So, the first step was to refocus. What was the one thing we wanted to build our organization around? The answer was clear: the Liberation Library, of course. Our 3,000+ free resources!

From there, we asked: what makes this library different?

We wanted to emphasize that it wasn’t just an archive of resources—it was a radical, living, breathing body of knowledge rooted in lived experience, history, and critical thought.

And so, after rounds of edits, word-swaps, and deep discussions, we landed on this:

Our mission is to intentionally cultivate an accessible, global library rooted in revolutionary, decolonial, and embodied wisdoms.

We loved it. It felt true. But then came the question of accessibility.

My father—who has guided me through every business interaction since BFP began—gave his assessment immediately: "These big words are going to turn people away."

And he wasn’t wrong. Decolonial. Embodied wisdoms. They are words that hold depth, but for those unfamiliar, they can also feel intimidating. But as one of our youth put it: "I like that mission statement—it’s vague enough to leave room for a lot of practices & intentions."

So, our Collective sat with two new tensions:

Accessibility vs. Intentionality. How do we make the statement easy to understand without watering it down?

Rigidity vs. Openness. How do we define our work clearly while still leaving space for growth?

For now, we have chosen to keep the words as they are. We want to test this version first—to challenge our youth to rise to it, rather than assume from the start that it is too difficult. But we are not leaving them to figure it out alone. Instead, we have committed to making these words lived. Everyone in EFC is prepared to explain what these words mean—to ensure that when people ask, we don’t just define them, we embody them.

If, as we grow, we find that the language truly becomes a barrier, we are open to evolving it while staying true to our core intentions. But for now, we are choosing depth with guidance over simplification.

Decolonial. Embodied. Wisdoms. These words are layered, intentional, and sometimes, intimidating. But they are also necessary.

Decolonial is what B.A. beautifully described as:

that which seeks to challenge and reject colonial ontologies and epistemologies; holding at its core the intention to restore and reshape knowledge, culture, interpersonal dynamics, and social structures of colonized people beyond the act of contrasting coloniality.

Embodied is what P.N. carefully called:

a state of wholeness, an integration of bodymind, spirit, and inherited relationships. I also consider it as what Robin Wall Kimmerer describes as naturalization.

Wisdoms is what P.H. poetically characterized as:

culminations of information and interpretation, belief and ignorance, hope and rationality and emotionality, circumstances and contexts and cultures.

It is knowledge shaped by experience and history, layered with complexity, and deeply felt. A term that acknowledges not just what we learn, but how we come to understand.

This is the mission we carry forward. A statement that is both rooted and expansive, precise yet full of possibility. It is a reflection of who we are and what we are building—a library of futures, embodied.

What do you think? How do you balance accessibility and depth in your work?

Our Return

Choosing Our New Name

Choosing Our New Color Palette

Writing Our Mission Statement

This series also exists on LinkedIn, if you’d like to support us there as well!

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