Natalie Thoreson: When we go into our conversations believing that it's our job to teach someone or to bring them to our way or to show them the light, we are being deeply conceited and we are out of spaces of interdependent community. When we enter with love, we're really trying to understand someone and that's what brings us closer.

Sam Fuqua: That's Natalie Thoreson and this is Well, That Went Sideways! A podcast that serves as a resource to help people have healthy, respectful communication. We present a diversity of ideas, tools, and techniques to help you transform conflict in relationships of all kinds. In this episode, we talk with Natalie Thoreson about centering love in the work of social justice and conflict resolution. They're a consultant and facilitator who works with individuals and organizations to bring about positive social change through love, compassion, and community. We spoke with Natalie Thoreson at the 2023 White Privilege Conference.

I'm Sam Fuqua co-host of the program with Alexis Miles. Hi, Alexis.

Alexis Miles: Hi, Sam.

Sam Fuqua: Natalie Thoreson, welcome to Well, That Went Sideways!

Natalie Thoreson: Yeah.

Sam Fuqua: We're here at the White Privilege Conference. Alexis and I heard you speak earlier today, and I just want to start by asking you what happened in your journey that made you center love in revolution?

Natalie Thoreson: What a wonderful question. I mean, some of that is about the love that I received from my mother. And that unconditional love and care she, she was able to provide for me as a person who's gone through what I would name as large amounts of trauma, pain, et cetera, and she just, she loves. She is love. Um, and secondary to that, I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah from the time I was three until I left for graduate school, and during that time being mixed race, um, being masculine of center, not being affiliated with the Mormon religion, I didn't have a lot of connection or community or people. And what I learned was, sounds so weird, but like, I couldn't be picky about who I connected with unless I wanted to be alone. Like I learned that lesson really, really early. And so, that shift and that change, it gave me so much more capacity to be able to perceive beyond people's challenges, beyond, you know, whatever thing that might be slightly abrasive because ultimately, like, I am an incredibly extroverted person, and I, I, I didn't want to be isolated. And that's what was happening, right? Because of these various identities I had, people were told they couldn't hang out with me. Or, I'm also neurodivergent, I have ADHD, and sometimes I say and do things that feel off to people, right? I was kind of the weird kid, and it made me alone, and I didn't want to be alone. And so, just making room for like every person, every child, every being, regardless of whatever was going on with them.

Sam Fuqua: Apply that to organizing for change where, uh, sometimes anger is what motivates us. Often, anger is an energy that can motivate us to work for change, but I think if I heard your talk correctly, at a certain point, anger doesn't get us where we need to be.

Natalie Thoreson: A couple of things. First thing, you name organizing for change, and I think this is so fundamental. Trying to think about how to really frame this. I believe, one of my foundational things is, if we can actually connect in love, we find a space of interdependence, right, I get to know all of your 

weaknesses, you get to know mine, we get to bolster each other up, and it changes something where I don't think we need to organize for revolution. Because when we do work from a place of love, it happens organically, right? And, and when I say organize, I'm not saying that we don't need to plan, whatever, like, obviously those things may need to happen. But when I hear like, organize for, I'm thinking like, we need an, an organization. We need to, like, get the people together, and make sure we do all of these larger pieces. But in reality, if we can center love, it's just going to happen. Like I love you, I get to know you, you have a challenge, you need a support, right? Maybe it's around accessibility and I show up and I'm like, oh, I know you enough to know that you need a quieter space because of some neurodivergence or you need something around physical accessibility and I just do it because we're connected and because I love you.

Sam Fuqua: When I hear that, I think, at an individual level, a small group level, I get that and I think we can get there. But in terms of societal changes, I still can't quite get there. So how do I?

Natalie Thoreson: Yeah, no, that's a great question, right? And maybe it's just a hope. There is this piece of me that has a deep foundational belief, so part of it's like one-on-one. But when we start to get together in community with folks, um, and when I say community, I don't mean our networks. Networks are for getting things done. It's a whole other thing. I mean community where we are actually interdependent and supporting and loving each other. That energy of a number of people, and when I say community, I also don't think it can be a thousand people, but maybe three hundred people who really deeply care. I believe, and I could just be really dreaming of things. But there's nothing that stops me from believing that multiple communities that are caring about their community like that also then couldn't begin to understand that other communities are part of that larger network of being.

A piece of it, and so much of where I am at right now in my thinking, comes from this understanding of indigeneity, and how many Indigenous folks all around the world operated like that right before we were colonized into these giant states and countries and whatever. And it worked. And going backward, I don't know if that's ever going to happen. But I think a lot of the indigenous wisdom and ways of being can shift where we're at. So, like you get enough groups of community in a state, or let's go even smaller, in a city, and you're still within that system of settler colonization but those groups, ideally, because they're recognizing what's going on, then maybe they all together begin voting differently, right? And then you think, bring that out larger to maybe a whole state. And it can move across like that, but it involves a deep level of change. It also involves people understanding that we are being treated like a disposable resource.

Alexis Miles: As I was listening to you today, I kept thinking about Martin Luther King, when he said you have to have a tough mind and a tender heart. Because when you talk about love, I think you're talking about that kind of robust love, not the wimpy kind of love, "Oh, I love you!" Can you just talk more about what it is you mean when you talk about love and love as an action, not just a feeling?

Natalie Thoreson: I love this idea of like wimpy love and what I'm going to pair wimpy love with is colonized love, right? Because, as I mentioned in my talk, like when we come into the world, we are fully equipped to love. And we love without regard to someone's race, their gender, their sexual orientation, their disability, their social class, right? You come into the world with a complete and full ability to love. But the thing is, if you allow someone to grow up with all that love, they're going to quickly recognize inequalities and things that aren't fair, and they're going to get together with all the people that they love and they love each other, right, and we're going to make change. So, racism and sexism and classism are largely based in this settler colonialist construct on making it so that we don't love one another. Or so that 

love is commodified, right? Which then it's not love anymore. Then it is, you know, a sexualized love or even a romantic love, but not just that, that baby love, right?

And anyone who's ever had a chance to be with an infant or even a small child, like, you know, love, like if you're having a real bad day and you can be with a two-year-old, they're going to make you feel differently because they're just going to love you. It doesn't matter why you're having a bad day, you could have been a horrible person that day and had a bad day, and that two-year-old is still just going to love you, if you let them. We train it out of people and, and now here we are, however many years from your infancy, trying to get back to that love. And we buy it through, you know, shopping online. We buy it through engaging in, in overconsumption. We buy it through oversexualization. And you notice I keep saying buy, buy, buy, that's the structure of settler colonialism because when we all stop buying, and I'm not going to pretend for a moment like I'm out of that system, but when we all stop buying and buying into that system, then how are people going to make money on us? I live in the Bay Area, and um, there are a lot of unhoused folks there, and it really upsets the nation. Because if you allow people to live on the land for free, then what do people have to work for? It challenges the entire construction of capitalism, which is the result of settler colonialism. Like, they're synonymous, in my thinking.

Sam Fuqua: Coming back to this idea of loving everyone or loving individuals, it came up in the talk, like, can you love Donald Trump or something to that effect? And I, um, I can't. I'm not there yet. But if I could, what difference would it make?

Natalie Thoreson: Mm. Mm hmm. Well, this is the thing which I wish I had said in my talk because it's come up a few times now. I'm trying to, and I'm dreaming about, and I'm, I'm hoping to move toward a liberatory society, and that society, we don't have power over. So, imagine a world where, and Donald Trump is obviously in this conversation, just a figurehead for this. And I'm not going to assume that he's the worst person, right? And there, there may even be listeners who support Donald Trump. But whoever it is, that you just can't get on board with. So revolution happens, the love revolution. What are you going to do with all those people? You going to genocide them? Are you going to imprison them? 'Cause now we've created this beautiful, liberated society, but guess what? It's not liberated. We've just reproduced the society of oppression that we're trying to get out of. So, if you can't love all of the people, like we literally cannot all get free. I can't get free until every one of us gets free. It's not possible. You're always going to have to overpower someone. And I know that, that the things I'm naming are sort of idealistic, and there's always going to be challenges and things going on. But I think that foundational framework explains why all of the revolutions that happen tend to fail because we're trying to get away from someone and instead of loving them and connecting with them, we get away from them and when we have enough power we suppress them.

Sam Fuqua: It's not a perfect analogy but in, in my life, the thing that I think comes closest on a large scale is, um, is when Nelson Mandela came into power in South Africa. And, rather than oppress his oppressors, he, he had the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, and I don't know that love was at the heart of that, but there was something there akin to what you're saying. Do you get me?

Natalie Thoreson: Oh yeah, and I think love was at the heart of that. I almost used Nelson Mandela quotes in my stuff today, but I decided really specifically to use folks within a US context, which is why Mandela wasn't there, because he definitely has named love.

Alexis Miles: During the talk, you said, I have never met an actual bad person. Can you say more about that?

Natalie Thoreson: What makes a bad person, right? Maybe that's the question. I have met people who have done bad things. To, to go back and think about the fact that, that when we are born, right, and I have a very strong tabula rasa belief, we come into the world as, as this open thing, but also we come into the world, they've done so many studies that show that when babies are born, they love. That empathetic response. You got a baby that starts crying over here and the other baby will cry, not for itself, but out of distress for this other baby, right, that connection. If all of us are that infant, how can any of us be bad? I didn't live Donald Trump's life, but if I had, maybe I'd be Donald Trump. I name this all the time. I am a strongly extroverted person. I think I have a bit of charisma. I happen to be born as a female identified person. I happen to be mixed race. I happen to have these different oppressions. If I had been born as a cisgender, heterosexual, white man with all of my personality traits, I think I might be kind of an a hole because of the socialization that comes behind those identities and then knowing myself and my personality. So, what's good and what's bad, it blends. When I recognize that I could be anything.

Alexis Miles: That's a very, I would say, introspective and open-minded perspective. How would you help people get, approach that kind of a perspective-taking?

Natalie Thoreson: I was having a conversation with some colleagues who were here earlier and I think a piece of it is working through our own guilt and shame, right? That's what stops us from being introspective. Because that's also a curious piece. I rely on the wisdom of infants a lot in my, my thinking and my existence, and they're, they're critically conscious. They're curious. They're interestingly introspective. And so, if we can get back to those places, what stops us frequently is feeling ashamed, feeling guilty, feeling like there's not enough space for it. And it's socialization. So, you know, as this person who's doing this work around love, I've been having people come up to me since that talk, be like, "I love you." "I love you." "So great." And I can feel my body shying away from that. Like it makes me feel something even to think about it because we've been taught that it's not okay to embrace that space and to really be showered with love. How do you get there? Like, I, I can't tell a person specifically, like, I don't have a checklist of tips. Opening, you know, in whatever way possible. And, and really challenging when you feel guilt come up, when you feel shame come up.

Um, even when I was on stage and I was like, ooh, I feel the, the not-love feelings come up. Like, you can feel it in your body. If you can begin to become attuned to those things, I think it makes a difference. And the other thing I would love to name there is that I'm a person, in my extroversion and in my neurodivergence, that just now, I'm 47, about to be 48, in the last while, is starting to really pay more attention to my body responses. But boy, it tells me so much, right? I was able to do it on stage today. Like I felt, like I was like, love, love, love with this huge open body and chest. And as I moved away from love, I felt my body close up. So, it's different things for different folks. There may be some people who need to read things and take the logical approach. There are some people that can feel it in their body. Try a few different things on and see what happens.

Sam Fuqua: I'm trying to, to think of, uh, applying that mindset or getting to that place just when I'm coming into a, you know, a one-on-one conflict with someone. And that's something we talk about on this podcast is try to help people talk to folks with whom they strongly disagree and empathy or going to a place of love with them in the moment. We retreat into anger or defensiveness or me personally, I would 

just shut down and like, okay, not going to go there. Going to end this conversation as quickly as I can. Because of the physiological response in some cases, you know, like this is just too stressful for me and I don't like what I'm feeling in my body so I'm going to exit. What do you do?

Natalie Thoreson: Mm hmm. I mean, I center love. And even the way that you began this question, right, having that engagement with someone with whom you strongly disagree, if we go into it with this idea that I disagree with you and now I'm trying to engage with you, how do we have any room to have an actual, empathetic and understanding conversation? Because all I'm going to center in that conversation is not only that I disagree, but that I'm right and you're wrong. That's what it means. When I disagree with you, in this social construct, and if folks are able to do this without going there, that's great. But in the construct I know, when I say I disagree with you, it's because I know that I'm right. We gotta take some humility in this. To humble ourselves, and to consider that that person, in their own socialization, in their own history and stories, right? It's not about having a conversation with someone you disagree with. It's about having a conversation with somebody that you have a different understanding than. And that opens space. And then you can actually have a conversation. As a facilitator, there are times when, you know, something may enter a space where somebody says or does something that, you know, fundamentally may hurt other people in the space. And what I might do there, like if I'm one-on-one, I give all the space and I can really work to understand. But if I'm facilitating a space, I ask people to tell me more a lot, right? And just, exactly those words, "Tell me more." Because it gives folks room to really express where they're at.

And, I was doing a workshop recently with somebody who would, I would say had a completely polar opposite perspective to me. And when I showed up, littlest thing, I did a mini lecture on pronouns, and then had folks doing a pair share, and I asked them to share pronouns, and this person just folded their arms and sat back, like they were not going to have that conversation. And I left room for it, and I didn't push, and I didn't shut down, and as we moved through the engagement, in my ability to just continue putting out love, right, and moving away from judgment and understanding that this person had whatever life experience that took them there, by the end of the workshop and actually after the workshop, this person was engaged in a beautiful dialogue with me about where that came from for them. I could have, when this person like folded their arms and sat back, I could have been like, well, what's your problem? Or why won't you participate? Or I need to tell you why this is a thing. But I just made room. And I think that we miss that so much in our social justice spaces. Like, social justice warrior has taken on this, this term because folks are literally trying to battle social justice into other folks. And that's not how we get there. We, at least for me, let me, let me speak for myself, I think that we have to love folks enough. And understand folks enough, so the empathy piece that was brought up earlier, in order to get there.

Sam Fuqua: Any other stories you would share from your life that can make some of these ideas real for the listeners?

Natalie Thoreson: I have this great story. Um, I was on my way to this very conference when it was happening in Philly. It was the second time I was attending. So in 2015, I was heading to White Privilege Conference and get on an airplane. We start flying across the country, um, as a person who grew up working class and poor, I'm excited to be able to afford the flight. I was able to order a beverage on the flight and some snacks. As my stuff got delivered, the woman next to me, who happened to be a white woman, starts chatting me up. She says, "Oh, where are you headed?" Right? We're going to Philly, but she's just trying to have larger conversation. And I said, "Oh, well, I'm headed to this amazing conference called the White Privilege Conference, where we work to deconstruct racism and white supremacy. I'm a 

facilitator there. And I do a lot of different workshops and stuff about facilitating this work." And she responded to me by saying, "You know, I think the problem with black people is..." right, and I see both of your eyebrow, all four of your eyebrows just rose in that moment. It creates a feeling. She's not even done with her sentence. But it creates this feeling where we're like what is going to follow? Why aren't you understanding me? I was filled with so many different feelings. I'm like having a nice time. I'm like, I'm going to the conference. And uh, the rest of her statement, she said, "I think the problem with white," excuse me, "I think the problem with black folks is that they don't care about education for their children." So, it didn't get better. It only got worse.

And I happened to be on my way to WPC to facilitate a workshop on engaging difficult conversations, and I had just laid out this multi-part process, right, and how to do that. And the very first thing was checking in on my own feelings, doing what I needed to do to calm my responses, and the next piece was to ask this woman to tell me more. And she did. And honestly, she was much, much more concerned. She never said black folks again. She talked about education providing access to resources. And then I was able to talk about how I grew up in this working class family, sometimes poor. If I didn't have my degree, I wouldn't be on the airplane. I wouldn't be on my way to the conference. And we talked back and forth. She's the first person I ever met that was planning on voting for Donald Trump. And we had such a fascinating conversation about why she was making that decision, about what her politics were, and I'm going to tell you, she said something that was racist. And I don't know that she would own that necessarily. And that's not, I'm not trying to be like, you must say that you did racism.

But through our conversation, I truly believe not only that she understood the perspective that, that I was sharing or the impact, because I was like, when you said that, it, it made me feel hurt because the people I know try extra hard because they know about that access. But it was a two way thing because I also learned so much and developed so much more empathy and understanding around why somebody might vote for a person that I didn't agree with. When we go into our conversations believing that it's our job to teach someone, or to bring them to our way, or to show them the light, we are being deeply conceited, and we are out of spaces of interdependent community. When we enter with love, we're really trying to understand someone, and that's what brings us closer.

Sam Fuqua: Well, thank you for spending time with us, and sharing that with our listeners, too. We appreciate you.

Natalie Thoreson: Thank you all for having me.

Sam Fuqua: Natalie Thoreson is a consultant, facilitator, and workshop leader. We spoke with them at the 2023 White Privilege Conference in Mesa, Arizona.

Thanks for listening to Well, That Went Sideways! We produce new episodes twice a month. You can find them wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, sidewayspod.org. We also have information on our guests, interview transcripts, and links to more conflict resolution resources. That's sidewayspod.org. Our production team is Mary Zinn, Jes Rau, Norma Johnson, Alexis Miles, Alia Thobani, and me, Sam Fuqua. Our theme music is by Mike Stewart. We produce these programs in Colorado, on the traditional lands of the Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Ute Nations. To learn more about the importance of land acknowledgement, visit our website, sidewayspod.org. And this podcast is a partnership with The Conflict Center, a Denver-based nonprofit that provides practical skills and training for addressing everyday conflicts. Find out more at conflictcenter.org.