Building A New Way Forward and You’re Welcome Here

What you’re about to read is the first blog I’ve posted in 5 years. I became a mom during this time away, plus quite a lot more, some of which we’ll talk about more soon (I hope) & I’m sure you can imagine for now… be gentle with me, won’t you? Your kind-hearted criticism is always more than welcome – please, take me to school and help me get better.

My intentions are to self-reflect on/digest current affairs, to share my heart with you (my beliefs, my values, my vision, etc), to share some of the ways I approach being a building block in a new world, and to highlight some of the causes that are important to me along the way. I am not a paid affiliate of anyone I’ve linked (except obviously where I talk about working with me, wayyyy down at the bottom). AI has not touched this, believe it or not. Enjoy & I hope to see you again real soon…

Ten years ago, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I decided to pursue entrepreneurship full-time. 

Fueled by a dream of making holistic preventative wellness more widely accessible, I was taking big steps with no idea what was ahead of me… An overly confident and incredibly stubborn 26-year-old with a huge heart and little to no business knowledge about how to make it happen. Buzzing with excitement and fear about what lay ahead.  

What a 10 years it’s been.

At the start, I lovingly referred to my vision as “my Martin Luther King goal”… mainly because I care very much about creating the world he dreamed of: a world where everyone is physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and creatively free, where everyone has their most fundamental needs met. A world where we collectively move from a fair & level playing field, liberate the people who’ve historically been oppressed, and benefit from the fullest, most healthy expression of all humans. A world where we’re honoring each other in community.

“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself…”

from Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

Although I’ve moved away from calling my vision “my Martin Luther King goal” for a variety of reasons, as I reflect, there’s still a strong resonance there. Connecting with my goals in light of Dr. King’s work always revitalizes me.

At my core, I’ve always been drawn to stories of resilience, especially in the face of oppression, and the pursuit of freedom for all. I’ve always had a disposition of love, peace, and acceptance towards others. I’m sure these are reasons idolizing Dr. King came naturally.

What I haven’t always fully grasped is how Dr. King’s words are not merely a time capsule from the past; his strength, wisdom, encouragement, and guidance towards freedom are all still so necessary today.

While I wish conversations around pursuing equality and freedom for all weren’t necessary, I’m oddly comforted by digesting more of his words and philosophies recently. The timelessness of his ideas reminds me that we are simply humans doing human things, running in our human circles. We have survived many oppressive and unjust times, and we will survive this together, too.

I do see progress being made at the end of the day, even though there’s so much more ahead of us. We can change these loops together.

When I reflect on the past 10 years…

I think about my side quest from a business & copywriting retreat in Cincinnati to visit the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and how it felt to learn that human trafficking/modern-day slavery is still among the largest industries in the world. 

I remember learning about the Me Too movement, and remember how defensive I initially felt in my reaction to that outpouring of disclosure… how much work I still had to do on witnessing, loving, and liberating myself, how much work I still had to do on de-centering men & patriarchy from all the ways I operate in life. (That work continues.)

I’m actively learning that being objectified, underpaid, and overpowered as a woman is only one of many possibilities for “business as usual”… not the only option, not necessarily “just the way things are”.

These ideas are still alive present day with the release of the Epstein files, as I witness how much cognitive & political dissonance this is creating in our society. I pray we can collectively meet this moment with the fire for change it deserves, to interrupt these collective patterns and establish a new baseline of safety and respect for women and children.

I remember when George Floyd died… really diving in and learning about all the lives lost to state violence and present-day racism, listening to black people about their perspectives and their lived experiences… letting understanding genuinely sink in on a deeper level than I’d ever been open to before. (This led me to focus on supporting black businesses.)

Then, becoming a mom broke my heart wide open in every way, expanding my love for everyone…

I’ve felt so deeply for the families losing their loved ones in Gaza that I eventually *had* to cut myself off from the real-time footage unless I was actually planning to fly over there myself. 

I’ve been inspired by the unshakeable love and faith that’s carried Palestinians through generations of displacement and oppression, and the strength that it’s taken to survive through these atrocities to rebuild over and over again. (A couple of my favorite places to donate have been BaitulMaal and Doctors Without Borders). Also, for my readers in the room, check out the author Susan Abulhawa, I adore Against the Loveless World.

Learning about the Palestinian experience then led me to recognize the extent of genocidal and exploitative violence that’s happening every day worldwide…

At this point, I’ve seen countless videos of families being separated, of extreme violence, of Veterans pleading with our country for justice. What’s your algorithm showing you?

With the rise of AI and the forever existence of bias in media, I’ve questioned literally everything, down to my own self. I know there is so much more to every story than a 1-minute sound byte could ever show.

While on a personal level, experiencing a lot of struggle over the last 10 years, and witnessing hardship impacting others, too… seeing factory work & labor-oriented jobs more clearly, watching people I love work incredibly hard yet somehow still barely making ends meet.

It can all be so overwhelming, can’t it?

It has really clicked for me how far we still have to go in pursuit of freedom for all.

Growing up, I thought this pursuit was what America was all about, that the pursuit of freedom for all humans was a common value that binds us, something we’re all working towards together.

I’ve opened my eyes wider to witness the struggles of so many people across the globe, internalizing how we as Americans are responsible for so much of the oppression being inflicted globally. Our tax dollars and our consumer culture are padding the pockets of nefarious players at the expense of real humans & the Earth itself.

I didn’t realize growing up how many people here were living under a boot, and how we’re all wearing the boots, too… or maybe even licking them, depending on who’s talking.

Freedom is marketed to us as the ability to better ourselves and our circumstances through honest work… fancy packaging for the hidden reality that our hard work sustains the systems serving the greedy while serving us breadcrumbs to keep it all rolling along.

I don’t want to be another cog in that wheel.

We need new systems to support our thriving.

Many of my most beloved people are originally from other countries or otherwise non-white people, who have at times been generous enough to explain world affairs to me, point out problems in the system, or even call me out on things when they thought I was being racist or otherwise problematic. I didn’t always hear what they were saying.

For a long time, I think I was too ingrained in the system to really, meaningfully see it. Relying on my paycheck, striving towards advancement, wanting to be good at these games we play… Entrepreneurship gave me the freedom I needed to take space & reflect in all those ways I mentioned before, which at this point has tossed a lot of my enmeshment I felt with our systems in the fire for me. The more I extricate myself from the system, the more I see it.

I never understood before why my non-white friends from the city wouldn’t want to come visit me in my high-school hometown out here in rural NY. Now I can completely see where they were coming from.

I witness so much cruelty and angry ignorance rampant in the discourse here, in the way we talk about others, in expecting people to comply with a system that is straight up brutalizing people in every possible way…. physically, financially, mentally, spiritually, emotionally. I often wonder what my grandpa would say about current world affairs and what our conversations might be like if he were still alive today…

I don’t want my friends subjected to that cruelty, let alone the danger of the reality in this country right now.

I pray for my friends who weren’t born here that every evening they’ve made it safely through their day. I pray for my big-hearted brothers and sisters putting their lives on the line in pursuit of our collective safety and freedom. I pray for the eyes and hearts that somehow still haven’t seen and felt how WRONG this all is.

It makes me want to scream. 

I literally primal screamed in the shower the other day. I apologized to my dog afterwards. 10/10 recommend. 

Citizens (VETERANS, NO LESS! And CHILDREN!) are having their rights violated left and right in all of this, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg… a humongous iceberg where our economic and government systems have been doing this to people since inception.

Every system… healthcare, welfare, financial, food, judiciary, government… functions to platform the people who benefit at the expense of the others, the consumers and workers, the everyday people feeding the money machine.

There are so many people suffering under the weight of this iceberg. Squeezing every one of us for every last drop. Grinding us down to dust.

Families ripped apart. Children abused and traumatized… at scale.

So what will we do?

I understand the sentiment I’ve seen floating around that this is not normal.

What’s happening in my country, what people are doing to each other all over the world, infused into every nook and cranny of our systems doesn’t seem right. In every ounce of my mind, body, and soul, I feel it’s not right.

That said, I think our problem is that it’s completely normal – run of the mill, standard fare for how we’ve always treated each other as humans. So, how are we gonna play out this round? Are we going to graduate from this craziness and uplevel as a collective, or descend into the experience of a George Orwell novel? 

What actions are you called to take? 

What skills do you have to contribute? What resources are available to you (time, money, and otherwise)? What do you really care about more than anything? How can you light your fire a little more for those things today?

Over time, I’ve come to focus my own impact in a few ways:

My internal experience. Practicing Conscious Wholeness. Minimizing the amount of violence I’ll inflict on myself (negative self-talk, self-sabotaging behaviors, etc), and maximizing the amount of love and peace I’m personally contributing to the world. Holding space for things unfolding in the highest and best interest of all people, both those closest to me and collectively, and ritual work to support all that. Doing my best every day to live my life as a person who trusts the inevitability of a world that will benefit us all.

My private, face-to-face conversations. I care about making people feel understood, loved, and accepted, and I care about having a positive influence on the people around me. I do my best to address -isms when they happen right in front of me, in ways that allow for heartfelt connection and conversation to unfold. Sometimes this requires a little brashness, or maybe some sharp humor, but I do my best to speak up and come from a place of love. More and more every day, I try to be a more relational person… a good villager for my most cherished people, in the spirit of mutual aid and just getting all the good juice from this human experience. WE – our connections with each other – can be the best part.
This is harder for me than I’d like to admit, as I’ve always felt more valuable and safe striving for complete independence, and I’ve experienced interpersonal trauma, but I know the world I’m building thrives on people coming together and learning how to take care of each other. (Maybe let’s focus on talking to each other first.)

My dollars. First of all, let me just declare that I STILL LOVE MONEY! I love how it allows us to trade with each other and build up things that we care about, I love using my dollars to expand my love for the world. I do my best to buy from small businesses that share my values. I try to minimize the dollars I’m spending at businesses with long histories of underpaying and exploiting people. Spoiler alert – it’s really hard to clean up 100% of our spending this way these days… for instance, I’ve always paid my taxes, though our tax dollars are literally oppressing and killing swaths of people across the globe. So much of our power is in the way we spend. Where are you spending your resources? Are they building up things that you care about? (General boycott, general strike, anyone?)

I have emailed my representatives from time to time, more and more as I grow, when I have something to say. I know I need to be more active in this way.

I used to be much more outspoken about political discourse on social media (you can find me @briannamcinerny on FB, IG, LinkedIn… or here on YouTube). I do still share news stuff from time to time, mostly on IG. I used to be in the comment sections more often, doing my best. More and more, I would take time to research, find unbiased sources, and respond with love when I perceived cruelty. I’ve had a few meaningful interactions this way, but more often than not, it has drained my ability to do something else more meaningful with that energy. Posting on social media, contributing to the loudness and the chaos there, also feeds the same machine that’s eating us.

You might also care to know that I actively minimize my use of AI, at this time. The environmental impact alone has my brakes on. We won’t be able to drink money when we’ve sucked the Earth dry.

What is your role in all of this?

How are you called to contribute to this world we’re building? What’s your part to play in the creation of our new collective way forward?

I pray for the day we learn to love ourselves so much that loving one another and loving the Earth flows naturally. 

These are some of the things I’ll stand all ten toes down for, in case you were wondering:

I believe that a society with a rising tide of respect for “the feminine” will lift all boats. To me, “respecting the feminine” includes respecting all humans equally, regardless of any potential differences like skin color, sexuality, gender expression, nationality, religion, etc… as well as understanding “darkness” and honoring the emotional nature of the human experience. I love the concept of a matriarchal society, where instead of orienting around powerful men, we orient around protecting the most vulnerable among us.

I believe in protecting the innocence of children.

I believe that diversity is something to cherish, that it makes us collectively better. I feel incredibly blessed any time I’m welcomed into someone’s culture that’s different from my own. I value the uniqueness that each person brings to our collective table.

I believe we can experience a society that doesn’t bankrupt people for getting sick. That supports our wellness, not ONLY through the miracles of medical science, but also through creating systems that actually honor and support and provide for what humans need to live healthy, happy lives.

I believe we can feed and house and water people… we have the resources and the human capacity to figure this out. I believe that people will always care about contributing to society, even when their basic needs are met, and in fact, over time, they’ll be better equipped to do so.

I believe in trusting people about their own life experience… whether they’re telling me about something traumatic they’ve experienced, something they’ve come to believe over time, they’re telling me about their gender identity, or whatever else their experience entails. If it’s not hurting you, the Earth, or other humans, it’s good with me, and if it *is* hurting you, let’s look at it fully through the clear eyes of acceptance so we can start to create an experience that works better for you.
(PS – even biological sex IS a spectrum. If you think the “male” and “female” binary is a biological fact, please look up what it means to be intersex, and understand it’s as common as having red hair. Don’t even get me started.)

Spiritually, I’m a non-denominational woman of faith, I’m most devotional to the God I can find inside myself. I’m open, intrigued, and supportive regarding whatever you believe.

I know that freedom is a state of mind we can all cultivate and hold strong, no matter what the circumstances may be, and doing so is required of us right now if we have any hope of creating something new.

I pray that we can have the conversations and find the common ground we need to get through this.

If you have any questions about where I stand, on anything, just ask me. You can find me in the DMs @briannamcinerny or email in**@*************ny.com

What beliefs, values, and priorities do you orient yourself around?

I believe that when we come together, meaningful shifts can happen. 

And I believe in you. I believe in your ability to have what you want. I care about your success – whatever that looks like for you.

Humans are all messy. We are completely dysfunctional in our own ways, with our own set of redeeming qualities. We all have the capacity to love and the capacity to be violent. We always have the ability to choose what we’re going to do next.

If you want your next step to be more deeply rooted in love and care – for yourself, for your family, for your community, for the Earth, and for our shared collective – there’s a place here in my heart for you.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus

Can we build a new way forward together? 

If you’re still reading this and want to keep the conversation going, there are a few ways I might be able to help: 

Private coaching/consulting. If you want to pursue your goals & navigate your projects in a way that’s ever-more deeply aligned with your desires and your values, I would love to support you in that. I’m passionate about supporting creatives through their process. This can include support with team coordination (personal or professional) and/or creative production support if that would be helpful for you. (We will iron out all the details to build a service plan together in your initial session).

Conscious Wholeness. This self-study online course provides an experiential framework for whole-self wellness. CW will guide you through exploring yourself in a way that leaves you feeling generally better, steadier, lighter, more peaceful, and more connected to yourself and others. Lifetime access currently on sale at a Founder’s rate through February 2026 (ish).  

I also love public speaking and group facilitation, whether that’s for a keynote, a personalized team-building workshop, or your next strategic planning effort. Get in touch with me and let’s discuss.

If you’re curious & could use support selecting the best next step for you, let’s talk about it and see what kind of trouble we can get into together. Book a call with me here. We’ll figure out what you need, even if I’m not the one who can provide that to you.

You can also **@*************ny.com“>email me and let me know what’s up/what you need. I’m here for you.

Stay safe, be strong, and know this world needs everything you have to offer.

I love you & hope to see you again real soon. 

Sincerely, Brianna