Tamu McPherson:

One of the things that I admire so much about you is how you prioritize being kind to yourself and honoring your energy, honoring your space, honoring the boundaries you choose to use to make the life that you love, that you want to lead. And I know that you have been working for a very long time on discovering yourself and growing into who you are. Can you just tell us how that journey has been in defining this aspect of who you are?

Rachel Cargle:

I've always been incredibly insightful to myself. I've always been very curious about what I was feeling and why I was feeling it, and how my feelings were in relation to the rest of my world. And I can remember even being 12 and wondering ‘what are things that 12-year olds like me need to be considering, like how we're showing up in school or how we are building friendships?’ 

I can remember a school project where we got to do a poster of our 25-year old self, what we thought it would look like and feel like. And that was the most interesting, exciting project to me, because it was exactly where my mind always was making considerations of who I was at the moment, and who I wanted to be and what it took to get between those two things. 

I'm not sure what instilled that type of curiosity in me, but it ended up serving me very well as an adult because I'm fairly intentional about what I build around my world. And I think that these boundaries I've been able to set and this framework for how I wanna move through the world have been solely built on me. Being interested and curious about what are the ways I can show up in the world, what are the ways I can try new things and do new things. And I, I really do feel like I've been able to build a life that feels very, very true to me.

Tamu McPherson:

We've spoken about your mom in the past, and I was an immediate fan when you described her. And I wanted to ask you: was there something in your experience with her, with your family and maybe through your ancestors that also inform your natural intuition to guide you to live the way you want to live within the world? 

Rachel Cargle:

You know, my mom has a disability. She has polio, she's had it since she was 5 and she's walked on crutches my whole life. And being the youngest, and having siblings who kind of were out of the house, by the time I was in my adolescence I really was born into a bit of a caregiver role in the ways that I was engaging with my mother. So I had to take a lot more responsibility than a child would normally have if they had parents without disabilities. 

My mom actually turned this situation into a bit of a game for me, a bit of a challenge. And I loved it. I loved the challenge of seeing what I was capable of. So even small things - if we were going somewhere and there was traffic or we were rushing, and my mom just couldn't get out of the car quickly enough to get something done - she would send me into the bank or send me into the store and I would have to follow her directions, figure out what was happening and how it was happening. And so having a childhood filled with opportunities to see what I was capable of really poured into my adulthood, where I was comfortable being in a relationship with challenges that pushed me to see, okay, what can you do? How can you do it? How can you be most creative? How can you be most efficient in this thing that needs to be done? Even if it doesn't seem possible at the time? 

So many of the things that my mother was asking me to do or needing me to do as a child, felt terrifying, felt unfamiliar. And they were both of those things. Sometimes they were terrifying and unfamiliar. It wasn't just a feeling that I was having. And it, you know, I'm really grateful for the ways that my mom insisted that I try, or insisted that I see what I was capable of. Not only because it needed to be done, cuz if I didn't do it, she wasn't necessarily able to, but it instilled in me this trust that I can get things done. And that if I can't, I can figure it out.

Tamu McPherson:

I mean, and this is like a huge F-you to society,  because your mom, notwithstanding her particular disability, was able to instill courage in you. And that basically says to society, look how I have set my child up. Because when I hear you talk about your mom, I hear pride and I hear such joy in you confronting these challenges, really just in doing the thing. You were really achieving so much for yourself and for her. And I feel like we definitely need to hear more stories like yours so that we can challenge people's perceptions towards disability and what that means in our society.

Rachel Cargle:

And the flip side of that coin is that my mother was constantly needing help and it really taught me that it was okay to need help. And that was okay to ask for help. I think that has been a huge part of my personal self and how I've moved through my career, because I remember times when we were at the grocery store and we had a cart full of things and my mom couldn't lift them all into the car, and I was too small to lift them all into the car. And there would be a random person walking by. My mom would be like, excuse me, can you put these in the car for me? And my mom had full expectation that people would help. And so I grew up believing that people naturally wanted to help me - and naturally, that I deserved to be helped.

My mom never shied away from making demands of people to support her in moving through the world. And not even in an entitled way, but in a humanity way. Like, you see me, you see that I need support and you have the capabilities, and people usually responded to her very warmly. And so I've really been considering, just recently, how my mother's ability to ask for help and her belief that, I mean, for us to be getting into the car, to go to the store, she knew that she was going to have to ask for help at some point. 

And so my whole life, we were moving through the world with a trust in my capability and in trust that people will help in ways that I didn't have the capability.

Tamu McPherson:

She really leaned into her dignity in such a graceful, empowering way, and I feel that everything that she was teaching you was so intelligent. She had clarity.

Rachel Cargle:

I think my mom was really intentional and I think that she knew the limitations that she had with her disability, and she decided to expand them in the ways that she could with me, whether it was our financial situation, where there was only so much that we would be able to do. 

I remember my mom and I went to like a week of golf camp, which is so not anything I would've volunteered to do, but I was curious and interested and I'd be like, mom, why did you want me to go here? And she said, well, in some business worlds, golf is the way that people socialize and network. And I want you to at least be able to say, yes, I have golfed before. Even if I can't send you to classes all the time, I'm gonna send you to this weekend summer camp. So you can have a little bit of familiarity, so that you can move through the world a little bit easier than I did. So I think my mother was very intentional.

Tamu McPherson:

I remember you telling me that and there were, there were a ton of other things that she signed you up for that were equally intentional. She had that clarity. So you come from a space of empathy and compassion and a deep, deep concern for your fellow human. And you know, when I think about the piece that you wrote in Harper's Bazaar in August of 2018 titled When Feminism is White Supremacy in Heels. 

You come from a space where caregiving and empathy was really deep in your spirit. You knew it well. You grew up having that intention and perspective on the world. So, you know, it's no surprise to me that you would dedicate yourself to advocating for your fellow human, for your fellow women. A lot of people will remember and recognize your piece, because it was catalyzing piece, and it put a lot of people on notice, and woke up a lot of thinking, and explained a lot of the things that occur currently when it comes to feminism and, and white women.

We've had a brief look at your childhood - you've always been an entrepreneur and you've always been community building. You have always thought of the community, you have thought of how you can enhance the community. What did you do before you had 1.7 million followers on Instagram learning - because your feed is an educational feed - and starting The Loveland Foundation. What was that part of the journey like?

Rachel Cargle:

You know, I was a nanny mostly. That's how I moved through the world. That's how I made my living when I moved to New York City. Actually, when I left Ohio, when I was in D.C. and then New York City as well, nannying was the way that I was able to survive in the city. Those years were filled with learning, trying to figure out what are my politics, who are my people, what do I need to understand? What do I want to understand? And a lot of that looked like the conversations I was having with the parents. 

I was going to different events around the city and getting a feel for what really matters both here in New York, but also in the world. And how did I fit into that? Growing up in the Midwest in Ohio, I didn't meet a lot of different people.  It was all very, very black and white. Everyone was speaking with the same accent. So moving out of Ohio really just blew me away with how much of the world there was that I hadn't had any conversation with or any understanding of. So that curiosity that my mom had instilled in me really just took off, because there was so much to discover and explore, and I was able to travel for the first time. And I was able to read things I hadn't had access to. And it ended up being kind of an on ramp to the way that my career has panned out to this point where I really just teach. 

As I learn, I just go through the world in the ways that feel natural to me. And as I learn and discover new things, I find ways to bring that to my community on my platform and in my real world, the people who I'm engaging with and learning with and from.

So that particular article came out of me having a deep learning experience about feminism, about the ways that my Blackness intersected with my experience of being a woman and being a feminist. As I was going through this deep learning, I thought to myself, I have to share this. I have to share this more. And that is where I kind of found a voice - within feminism and within activism as a whole - to be positioned as someone who learns out loud, someone who is constantly being curious and intentional in finding ways to bring others into that experience.

Tamu McPherson:

We're in a time where, since our thoughts and the experience are moving, it's important to really emphasize and share with people that as we get more pieces of the puzzle, we can further the conversation. And we can look at different interpretations. I think learning out loud is more agile and  more flexible, but then maybe a more structured experience because you can say, this is what's come to me through conversation, through the conversation we're having.

Rachel Cargle:

And it stops me from believing that whatever I know now is true, because as I learn things and I say them out loud, I'm not waiting to be the expert in something I'm saying, this is what I understand, and it allows me to get real-time feedback. I'm able to really engage with the community instead of feeling like I have to be an authority. I'm just someone who's learning and inviting other people to learn with me. 

And as I learn, I develop things that support others in their learning. For me, it's the truest form of growth, because to be within academia or to be behind a desk somewhere with my head down is just feeling like: I'm getting the information, and then one day I will be able to spread it out. I'd rather it be an ongoing relationship between myself and the world, myself and people who are learning from, and with me and the people who are teaching me.

We know that life is cyclical and there is rhythm and there is growth and there is change. And I wanna be a part of that without feeling like I have to be steeped inside of an archaic cannon or a white male hetero truth. It’s way more dynamic than that. So I'd rather not just sit with my head down, studying. I want to study out loud. I want to learn out loud. I want to be in community and conversation in a way that will push us to whatever the truth is now and what we understand now and what we can do now. Not just what we've always understood to be true.

Tamu McPherson:

You have many literary projects underway, because you have The Great Unlearn and then you also have your bookstore. I obsessed in our earlier conversation about how you are learning and how learning for you is a luxury. And it's related to what you just said about how you're approaching your personal education.  Can you share more about TGU?

Rachel Cargle:

The Great Unlearn came out of an experience that I had. I was attending Columbia University. I was just a semester in, and there were a lot of racist incidents going on and it just didn't feel like it was worth the time and the money of being at that institution when it really wasn't giving me what I needed as a human, as a Black woman on campus. And as I said, I was really coming into the truth that learning is community and not having to climb to these standards of academia, that didn't even really fit into my value system. And I decided to seek out ways to build my own curriculum, to build my own approach to academia, to learning, to discovery.

And it really was rooted in: who do I wanna be learning from and how do I want my learning to look and feel? And when I left Columbia, I ended up exploring other ways to learn in the world. There's smaller institutions that are doing free community classes, or even paid community classes with actual experts in the field and people who have lived and experienced these things, getting firsthand opportunities to learn. There are websites that offer syllabi that you could look into and maybe read through the things yourself and look at the questions that the professor is asking. I have friends who are professors, who I could say, I'm really interested in this topic. You're learning. You know, is there a way that I can learn from you directly as opposed to having to give these resources to a campus, I'd rather just pay you to work with me in a way that might be meaningful for the both of us.

So I set out with this intention to learn from different people and to build out a curriculum that felt true to me, to my approach, to life, to my values and to my community and what that ended up looking like was that I started kind of just digging through the internet through local libraries through conversations with friends to see what are the spaces that we naturally learn from outside of the structure of an institution that has failed us in so many ways. That's where The Great Unlearn came from. People were asking me, okay, Rachel, we see you left. We see that you're still approaching scholarship. How are you doing this? And so I wanted to learn out loud and share what I was doing as I was going along with it. And so The Great Unlearn ended up being a space where people could join me in this intention of being autodidactic with a bit of meat and bones to it, of being really clear about who we wanna be learning from.

The Great Unlearn is essentially a monthly syllabus. We bring in an expert; usually a person of color, usually a queer person, usually someone who works in the grassroots of the actual topic that they're teaching us. And we work with them to create a syllabi of things, to read things, to listen, to things, to watch. Then we come together virtually to learn from them during what we call ‘office hours’. Oftentimes we'll get together and kind of have an opportunity to read current news articles that apply to the topic. 

It's also donation-based and self-paced, so you can join the live sessions, but they're also available after. So, you know, parents who are up in the middle of the night, cuz they're breastfeeding anyways, they can just hop on and maybe watch what our office hours look like. Then later in the week, they can maybe dig into the readings that they wanna really dig into. What I love about The Great Unlearn is that it gives people empowerment in their own learning to say, you know, the only way I learned about the history of America is in a classroom with a white male who was telling me all the things that boosted his ego about what white America meant to him. But when you're learning about America before colonization even happened from an indigenous person who has a long lineage of being in relationship with the land, that is a very different knowledge collection than what we see in textbooks today.

Tamu McPherson:

So speaking of books, tell us about your bookstore and how it relates to your love of knowledge.

Rachel Cargle:

My bookstore is called Elizabeth’s. It lives in my hometown of Akron, Ohio, and I moved to Akron, Ohio in 2019 because my mother had gotten a terminal cancer diagnosis and she luckily has been doing really well. They gave her three months and it's been two years now and she's still with us. And so it lends to the unexpectedness of life and how things can really shift and change at any moment. 

Moving back, I was still in the writing groove. I was still in my New York City energy space and I was ready to get to a bookstore and start writing because in New York City you can get to any bookstore and just be surrounded by interesting people, good energy, the books on the walls, and Akron just didn't have that. And they certainly didn't have any independent bookstores.

So I was like, I guess I gotta do it, because I need somewhere to write from that will keep me inspired. Just thinking of all the little Black girls who were like me, who loved going to bookstores and how they weren't getting to speak to that part of themselves, because there wasn't really anything available. So I created Elizabeth’s and it's been living there in Akron and we have no cis white men in our shelves. And I made that decision because I really wanted to push our customers and our community to find new lenses through which to view the world. 

We know what it sounds like when a love story is told from the perspective of a white heterosexual man. But what does a love story sound like in a book from a trans person who's experiencing love from - you know, one of my favorite books that is on our shelf as well is a, is about an older Nigerian American woman who's in her 70s who falls and she has to go to a nursing home. And it's a whole love story about a man that she met in a nursing home. That's the love story I want to read and hear about, about how her whole life has led to this moment about the type of love she's developed from being an immigrant and living in San Francisco. It was just an incredible opportunity to see life from that very specific lens that we just don't get to see, that isn't celebrated, that isn't honored with prizes and isn't assigned in classrooms for us to learn from. So the bookstore truly is an extension of that curiosity that I have, and that I want for everyone, including those people who are in my community.

Tamu McPherson:

And you allow that curiosity to really take you all across the world.  I know that you just moved to Jamaica and well, and you are spending time in Jamaica as a queer person in a truly homophobic space. I'm Jamaican. I am fully aware of how homophobic our society is, how behind our society is, but you - in your being there and in loving being there - you're completely challenging the system in your existence, in the way you choose to love there, in the way that you choose to be curious about our culture and to take the principles that you have set down in learning there.  Because now you're exploring learning from academics there. Can you share that experience and what it's meant to you so far?

Rachel Cargle:

Jamaica is full of so much love and so much joy and so much just culture and creativity, it's the lifeblood. It's not just something that is the cherry on top of Jamaica. Like it's part of what the island is. And my time there with my partner, who is a woman, has been, again, another learning experience to recognize who I am as a queer person in the world, who I am as an American outside of America, who I, as a Black person in relation to other parts of the diaspora that aren't African American and what that means. So Jamaica has expanded me. It has required me to expand my understanding of myself, of the Caribbean, of colonial history of arts, of music, of so many aspects of life that I only had a concrete understanding of here in America. And while I've traveled around the world, I haven't really spent time in a place like I've spent in Jamaica now for almost a year. 

There's so much pride in being queer for me and for my partner, and for the queer community that we have in Jamaica, because there is a bit of a bit of deep joy in knowing ourselves and knowing that we can find the love that we want and the love that we need, even if the people around us don't understand it. When community comes into it, where we're having get togethers with couples who normally aren't able to express their love when they're out having dinner together. But when they're in the home with us and we all love, respect and support each other, to see that one couple finally hold hands and kiss in a way that they aren't able to in any other place… 

You know, my partner, Stacy Ann, and I also live in Brooklyn. So we can kind of have this space to not be as lovey dovey at the bank when we're in Jamaica, because we know we have this space in other ways, but a lot of people don't. I think that part of my time in Jamaica - the community I'm building and what Stacey Ann and I have cultivated that she's cultivated her life long, but now I get to be a part of it - is continuing to cultivate these safe spaces for queer people in Jamaica to just be free and be happy and be proud of themselves and each other. And the love that exists between us.

Tamu McPherson:

And so, to turn back to The Loveland Foundation now, a part of your being is truly creating joy, creating peace of mind, calm, tranquility for your community and beyond. You started The Loveland Foundation, which is a foundation that provides mental health therapy for women of color, BIPOC women, who have not had access to therapy. It was a wish that turned into a reality. I know some of the numbers that you have helped, and I know about the therapists that you have found and how amazing and how available and how hard they've been working  within your community. Can you tell us about how your wish came about, and how you made Loveland into a reality?

Rachel Cargle:

The Loveland Foundation came out, again, of me having an experience and feeling like I want other people to get this chance if they wanted. And it was during the time that I was at Columbia, and it was the first time that I had access to free therapy as a student at the university. I was going to therapy every week, and I had had a particular session that really felt like a breakthrough to me. And when I left it, I was on my way to pick up the little girl I was nannying from her lessons. I just couldn't shake the feeling that if only all of my friends and all the people in my community just had a moment to sit and talk through what they were feeling and going through both the good and the bad and getting clarity on it and feeling more grounded, moving through the world that it could be, it could fortify us all so much. And it really was just a call I put out on social media and it was kind of like… I keep saying ‘a Black market therapy fund’ because there was no real structure around it. I didn't know what I was doing. I wasn't part of the world of philanthropy at the time. And so I set up a GoFundMe. 

This is the first time I'm thinking this, that this is how communities are built. It's the government and bureaucracy that makes us feel unofficial in helping each other, but helping each other is helping each other. Just because you haven't gotten the government stamp of approval doesn't mean that it's not meaningful work. And obviously there's centuries of communities who helped each other without the red tape of the government. 

So I was collecting this money. And I had assumed that I would just have Black women call me and tell me the name of their therapist and I'd call and pay all their bills for them. This is truly what I thought was going to be the way that this was gonna go.

But we ended up, I think I ended up raising like $10,000 overnight. People were contributing. I'm like, wait, this can't just sit in my account. I don't know how to do this. 

So very soon a wonderful woman named Charlene Kimmler came and said, let me help you. And so she's now the CEO of The Loveland Foundation, and she has really built it out into an incredible organization that has allowed us to give over 75,000 hours of free therapy to Black girls around the country. 

And you know, these women and girls who come to us are finding so much joy in the opportunity to explore themselves, to find healing, to recognize and heal through their traumas that we all have in one way or another, particularly as being a Black girl or woman.

I get asked often, why aren't you doing this for Black men? And while Black men absolutely should have this opportunity too, I had to be strategic and intentional in saying, how can I help the most people with this opportunity? Black women are the bedrock of all of our communities, the church community, the neighborhood, the family unit. So I knew that if I could help heal Black women, it would ripple out into the community as a whole. So this was my land and I'm really proud to be in it. And I'm excited for the ways that the foundation is continuing to not just support our participants, who are coming in and getting therapy, but also to support the therapists who are doing such incredible work, pushing through what we're all going through in the day to day as Black people, but then they're showing up for our community. It's been really special. I always call the foundation like this delicious trifecta of being able to support Black women and girls, and being able to support the black therapists, and for me to be able to be out doing what feels like really meaningful work in the world.

Tamu McPherson:

How do you teach your team to their boundaries, to honor their space in the kind of organization that you've set up? I have the pleasure of talking to your team a lot, and often they're taking these days for wellness, they're offline in this period for wellness. Can you just talk about building an organization that respects the lives and the space and the time of the employees, and how building a space like that can impact other businesses in the future, because it is a space that other businesses can learn from.

Rachel Cargle:

Loveland exists in two parts. There's the foundation side, and then there's the group side. And the group is where the businesses, the grade and the bookstore are held. The foundation obviously is working with the therapy fund and other programs that we're building out. So I have these two branches of really powerful teams that are moving through the world in ways that - particularly on the foundation side - can be incredibly exhausting. Being Black women fighting so hard for other Black women. The foundation team is all Black women on that team. And then for the group, we're also a team of really powerful queer - many of us are of color creatives and we are the people we're doing the work for in both spaces. You know, we are the exact people that were out here building these worlds for.

And so we had to be considerate in honoring the things that we demand also be honored for our communities. And that includes rest. That includes community within ourselves. That includes prioritizing the voices of the Black women in our company, and hearing the ways we can continue to grow that benefit them, because we know that that will benefit everyone else. And it's been an incredible experiment of sorts, to try to run a foundation and a company that is pretty countercultural to what we understand business and philanthropy to look like. This loops directly back to my mother, pushing me to see what's possible in so many areas of my life. I've found deep pleasure in pushing what's possible in the world of philanthropy and in the world of corporations to see what, what can be done to treat our employees with humanity.

What does it mean to take two weeks off during the winter season, in the summer season where we're not doing any business and people can just rest knowing that when they come back, we will have a soft and intentional on ramp back into the workflow. It’s been fun to challenge the world. It's been hard to get all of us out of the framework that we understand. We have people who Loveland is their first job, and they're kind of trying to figure out what this means. We have people who have worked in corporate America for a long time, and they're coming in and being like, wait, what does this mean? And how are we able to move through it? I didn't study business and I didn't come from the philanthropy world. So I'm bringing in my own lens and my own curiosity about how this could look and feel. I think that the ground of it is that I find it incredibly pleasurable to continue to see what's possible.

Tamu McPherson:

I know you love your pleasure. That's what I wanna talk about now. So you are my Rich Auntie Supreme and I am living for your exploration of the soft life. And so I know you're someone who finds so many rich niches to delve into, like pottery. You love travel. You love art. What drives your passion for living well?

Rachel Cargle:

I think it fits into the same conversation of what's possible for a life well-lived. Like what would it mean? 

The mantra that has come to me is - well, not come to me out of thin air, I believe I was reading through a book and I actually saw it pop up in a few different books that spoke about mindfulness - is to say to ourselves just for today, what if i just did that? 

Just yesterday I had a few gifts that I needed to give to some wonderful people who I was excited to gift. I love gifts. I buy really nice wrapping paper and like the string and like the accessories, and I just think it is so much fun. I think the wrapping of the gift is almost more fun than the gift giving. So I really indulge in the experience. 

Yesterday I kind of had a busy day and I was like, Rachel, what if, just for today, you let everything take as much time as it takes. And when you're done, you're done, but you will have gotten everything done. And I needed to get my hair braided. I need to get my nails done. I need to get these gifts wrapped and to UPS. There were all these things that I had to get done, and I was feeling pretty anxious about it, because time is my anxiety. I get really anxious about time. 

So then I took a breath and I said, what if for today you let things take as long as they take, and it will be what it is. So I called my partner and I said, I have decided that today will take as long as it takes. So I will see you when I see you this evening and I'll keep you posted throughout the day. And so I sat down at my desk in my little gift wrapping closet, pulling out all the strings and everything. 

The time it took to put it all together, wrap it and write the cards to put in, was about two and a half hours. It was like, I would've never naturally been like, okay, two hours to wrap the gift, but I just let it take the time that it took. And it was so good. I mean, I wrote the way that I wanted to write in those notes. I put the tape where I wanted it to go. I was able to fold the creases the way that I wanted to. It just felt truly luxurious to feel creative in the wrapping of the gift to lay out my feelings and these thank you notes that I was writing. And it's like those types of small moments - what I call the living - these moments of the living, where it's not the most exciting thing. it's not the most Instagram-able thing. It's not even something that might sound exciting when you actually say it out loud. But I was truly finding so much joy and that moment, sipping my water, really taking the time to not rush myself through the writing. And I think that that is such a perfect example of my commitment to finding joy in the living that I don't want to have to wait for my next trip or to wait for something exciting enough to announce to the world that I can find deep joy in wrapping up something before taking it to UPS or folding my laundry, which has been so enjoyable.

I feel deeply grateful to have the space in my mind to find joy in little things like that. And I want to continue to do that over and over in my life in small ways and in big ways.

Tamu McPherson:

Well, I'm one hundred percent sure that when the giftees receive these packages, it's going to touch their heart. And I know that they're going to receive your energy.

Rachel Cargle:

Energy's part of it, of it. That's absolutely part of it. People feel that energy - and we get sucked out of that flow of intention in life because we have so much to do or because we're just so distracted and I'm really committed to bringing myself back to that flow.

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