Desireé B Stephens, Counselor-Coach-Community Builder

Where are all the “No Kings” white folks when the roads lead South?
Not metaphorically.
Literally.

Because this is the tension many people still do not want to confront:
There is a difference between allyship and solidarity.
One can exist as performance.
The other requires transformation.

In this new piece, I unpack:
• why so much white “allyship” collapses under pressure
• the historical pattern of symbolic resistance followed by retreat
• how supremacy culture lives in the body
• why the South has always been America’s blueprint
• the somatic difference between appearing liberated and practicing liberation.

This is not a gentle article.
It is a relational one.
A historical, relational, and somatic reflection on why solidarity requires risk.
Read now on Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/desireebstephens/p/where-are-the-no-kings-white-folks?r=2v5h8f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true or www.desireebstephens.com

There’s a moment where you can see the pattern clearly…

and still do the same thing.

Still:

• say yes when you meant no
• over-explain instead of hold
• leave yourself to keep the peace

That’s conditioning, and that’s why you need practice.

Because what comes next requires you to move differently.

Not perfectly.

Differently.

I wrote about what that actually looks like in real life, not theory.

👇🏾

https://open.substack.com/pub/desireebstephens/p/you-stayed-now-you-have-to-live-from?r=2v5h8f&utm_medium=ios

You Are Still Mother

Let this land where it needs to.
You are still mother.
Not because of proximity.
Not because of a title someone else affirms.
Not because of a role that stayed intact.
But because mother is an energy.

It is a way of moving through this world.
A way of tending.
A way of witnessing.
A way of holding life with care, even when your own hands feel empty.

You are still mother
when you co-parent across distance, across tension, across new realities.

You are still mother
when your children are held by community and you are part of that web, even if you are not the center of it.

You are still mother
when your body has held the possibility of life, even if it never formed into a child you could touch.

You are still mother
when loss has lived in your womb, in your body, in your story.

You are still mother
when the language around you has shifted, when woman may not be your title, but care, creation, and holding are still your truth.

You are still mother
when you have become the one who tends to yourself, re-parents yourself, holds your own inner child through what was not given.

You are still mother
when you no longer have a mother of your own, and you must now carry both the longing and the lineage.

You are still mother
in step, in foster, in chosen family, in auntie, in elder, in guide.

You are still mother
in the quiet ways no one celebrates.
Because motherhood was never meant to be confined to biology or proximity.
It is an imprint.
An energy.
A relational way of being.
And nothing about your current reality
removes you from that truth.
If anything, it deepens it.

https://open.substack.com/pub/desireebstephens/p/mothers-day-in-the-in-between?r=2v5h8f&utm_medium=ios

Mother’s Day can be beautiful.
And it can also be… complicated.

Some of us are celebrating.
Some of us are grieving.
Some of us are estranged.
Some of us are holding all of it at once.
And most spaces don’t make room for that truth.
So I wrote something that does.

This piece is for:
— the mothers without proximity
— the daughters without mothers
— the ones navigating separation, estrangement, or loss
— the ones holding joy and grief in the same body.

It’s not about fixing the day.
It’s about staying with yourself through it.
✨ I’m offering this article freely as a gift today.
If this work supports you, I invite you to become a paid subscriber to sustain it and help keep scholarships available for others.
📖 Read here: https://open.substack.com/pub/desireebstephens/p/mothers-day-in-the-in-between?r=2v5h8f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
💌 Scholarships: [email protected]

Did you know that LadySpeech and I decided to turn our podcast into one… welcome to Feral Friday with Friends!

Feral Friday with Friends. A live with LadySpeech & Desireé B Stephens. A recording from The Gospel of LadySpeech and Desireé B Stephens's live video

✨ FIRST THURSDAYS = ASTROLOGY OF LIBERATION ✨

TODAY AT 12PM EST 🌒

If you’ve been feeling:
🌬️ emotionally stretched
🌬️ overstimulated
🌬️ uncertain what season you’re in
🌬️ ready to reconnect with yourself…

This circle is for you.

Join Leah Tioxon for a monthly embodied astrology gathering where we slow down long enough to actually listen.

Not astrology as entertainment.
Astrology as reflection.
As nervous system awareness.
As liberation practice.

📍Zoom at 12PM EST
Join Here
Https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83150236018?pwd=qNiQ9e389vMG4C90HymHq65KYEMjDL.1

Bring:
📝 A journal
🌟 Your lived experience
✨ Yourself exactly as you are

Donation-based because community care matters.

Support the work:
📕 Buy Leah’s Ebook: https://desireebstephens.bio/shop/93b4a3e0-50cb-4bf4-9aac-e961aa7b67e8
⭕️ Join The Healing Homestead Collective: https://desireebstephens.com/homestead
💰 Tax Deductible Donation via Zeffy: https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/support-selenite-and-sage-healing-homestead-co-this-giving-season
💴 Venmo:

You don’t need more growth.
You need to learn how to stay with what’s already changing...

There’s a moment most people rush past.
Not the beginning.
Not the breakthrough.

The in-between.

Where something in you has shifted…
but it’s not fully stable yet.

And everything in you wants to:
define it
use it
move it forward

But what if the work right now isn’t to move?
What if it’s to stay?

I wrote about this today...
what it actually means to stay with yourself
when something real starts to emerge.
Not as a concept.
As a practice.

If you’ve felt that quiet shift lately…
this is for you.
👇🏾
Read: Growth Is Not Always Loud…But It Is Always Relational
The Practice of Staying in the In-Between: https://open.substack.com/pub/desireebstephens/p/staying-in-relationship-with-what?r=2v5h8f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Conflict is not breaking your community.
Your inability to move through it is.

Zawn and I talked about:

• Why small disagreements turn into full fractures
• How supremacy culture trains us to punish instead of repair
• Why everything dosen't need to be challenged
and what it actually takes to stay in relationship when it gets hard

This is also a soft opening of something I’ve been building for over a decade:
The Liberation Method™
Not theory.
Practice.
If you’ve been craving real community—but keep experiencing rupture, burnout, or disconnection…
Start here.
👉🏾 https://open.substack.com/pub/desireebstephens/p/the-inconvenient-truth-about-community?r=2v5h8f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
And if you’re ready to move from understanding this work to living it...
The Healing Homestead Collective is open. https://desireebstephens.com/gather

A Gentle Reminder that we have our Sound Bath Gathering at the Healing Homestead
May 3 | 6:00–7:30 PM
Join us for an evening of rest and sound healing with Corrie Roberson.
Full details and future events:
https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=liberationeducationevents%40gmail.com&ctz=America%2FNew_York
Subscribe to stay updated:
https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/liberationeducationevents%40gmail.com/public/basic.ics

What has your body been trying to tell you that you keep pushing past?

The exhaustion.
The tension.
The hunger.
The no.

Most of us weren’t taught to listen to our bodies.
We were taught to override them.
Push through.
Be productive.
Stay agreeable.
Keep going.

That’s not discipline.
That’s conditioning.
And it starts early.

Shaped by race, gender, survival, and what your body had to do just to make it here.

I wrote about what it actually means to decolonize the body
to stop abandoning yourself and start returning.

If you’re ready to listen differently…
the full piece is live.

Decolonizing the Body in the Season of Becoming Reclaiming your body beyond proximity, performance, and survival