Brave Sis was borne out of a call from the foremothers. Our founder is a Woman of Color, a published writer and nonprofit professional who has worked, celebrated, loved, and shared with women across communities, seeking to build more authentic relationships and wellbeing.
At the cusp of a new decade, I was finding the "planner" market pretty dispiriting. All the samples on the market were for someone else. Some were cheerfully intended for white moms in the suburbs, and I am an internationally minded, urban empty-nester.
On the other hand, the “black girl” products were working too hard — or worse, felt like someone had taken the most basic book and stuck some "you go, girls" onto it as a selling tool. Puh-lease! Others were terse; were their users even human? The new-agey ones seemed to require course study to even operate. The “success” planners had a disappointing testosterone-drive to them — no thanks. And how about the book I saw at the big box store: so blank and morose and cheap, I got both angry and sad at the same time.
You know what they say; if you can’t find it, build it.
This "planner without the pressure" is a conjuring and celebration of brave and inspiring Women of Color through history. It's a place to discover, explore, and expand our shared magnificence. It's a way to be a little more of your own best friend.
It's a way to Write and Love Yourself into History. And scribble, and tape stuff into, and cross stuff out of, and color and draw, and dawdle and dream.
I know, everyone (including me) uses apps on their phone and computer to manage daily meetings and appointments, the "outside world" stuff. But apps can't do everything; the physicality of writing and drawing, the value of looking both back and forward over time, the joy of bringing color into your life, the playful creativity of doodling, the fun of sticky-noting and coloring, and above all, the practice of making yourself your priority for even five or ten minutes a day is something we all deserve.
Two decades into extreme digitality, there is something ritually significant and pleasurable in the act of analog correspondence. It's healing and fun to Journey and Journal.
Important: this book centers Women of Color but is accessible to all.
There are so many wonderful women who are not Women of olor, but who truly, sincerely, authentically care. Theirs is not a tokenistic, objectifying curiosity. They are as outraged and frightened by our legacy of institutional racism and discrimination as we Women of Color are harmed by these.
As they have come to "get" intersectionality, awareness has grown that sometimes their role, as white women, is to listen.
Brave Sis is for them as well, for in entering into this space, they can take in a history likely to be new to them, yet explore and ponder topics that are of relative universality. Plus, the histories are so cool, they will be honored to stand in unity with their sisters of Color.
And we Women of Color will learn important stories about other WoC in different cultures.
So much winning!
