season 4, episode 7 - protecting our magic with zoe frost
our guest for episode 7 is zoe frost! zoe runs junebug and darlin, a portland-based cross stitch kit and craft company known for their subversive patterns that use words and phrases to convey progressive and inclusive messaging. they sell cross stitch kits that are 100% handmade and provide all of the supplies needed for people to create a finished cross stitch from first stitch to frame. you can find zoe online at junebuganddarlin.com and on instagram @junebuganddarlin.
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transcript
snort & cackle - season 4, episode 7 - zoe frost
ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast where every day magic, work and ritual intersect. I'm your host, Ash Alberg, a queer fibre witch and hedge witch. Each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #SnortAndCackleBookClub with a book review by me and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. Our book this season is Babaylan Sing Back: Philippine Shamans and Voice, Gender and Place by Grace Nono.
Whether you're an aspiring boss witch looking to start your knitwear design business, a plant witch looking to play more with your local naturally dyed color palette or a knit witch wondering just what the hell is a natural yarn and how do you use it in your favorite patterns, we've got the solution for you.
Take the free fiber witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz and find out which self-paced online program will help you take your dreams into reality. Visit ashalberg.com/quiz [upbeat music fades out] and then join fellow fiber witches in the Creative Coven Community at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community for 24/7 access to Ash’s favorite resources, monthly zoom knit nights, and more. [End of intro.]
I am here today with Zoe Frost. Zoe is from Junebug and Darlin, which is a Portland-based cross-stitch kit and craft company known for their subversive patterns that use words and phrases to convey progressive and inclusive messaging. They sell cross-stitch kits that are 100% handmade and provide all of the supplies needed for people to create a finished cross-stitch from first stitch to frame.
They are so much fun. I have used multiple kits myself. Hi Zoe. I’m going to warn people in advance that at the time of recording this, Zoe has just moved and I am in active burnout so it's going to be really not ... I completely lost words. I was going to say tangential as though that was a word. So basically that’s ...
zoe frost: I think it’s just going to be super giggly. [Giggles.] ash alberg: It’s going to be good.
zoe frost: Yeah.
ash alberg: This is great. So tell us a bit about you and what you do in the
world and how has how's post-move life?
zoe frost: Post-move life is still feeling like mid-move life. But it's, my partner and I just moved a mile down the road from our old place, which has been really nice to not be too far away and also means that we just keep going back to the old house to keep collecting things. So it just is the never-ending move, but it's good.
Yeah. Settling in, I just started unpacking my office yesterday, so I am excited to create a new space and also very nervous to drill new holes and decide where things are going to permanently go. So I'm trying to give myself some permission to chill out and just sit in this space a little bit longer. Yeah.
ash alberg: Yeah. That's a hard one. Just like allowing a space and like also knowing that over time it's going to shift anyway, but that like first, like committing to this as the way it'll look for the first little bit is that is hard.
zoe frost: Yeah. And especially because I only labeled half of the boxes that I moved, so I ... [Giggles.]
ash alberg: I do that too. You start off with such good intentions and then as you keep going ... [Snorts.]
zoe frost: Yeah. Every week as it got closer to the move, less than less boxes got labelled. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Oh noooo!
zoe frost: So it's great. It’s fine. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Yeah. And of course all those things that are like the last things to get packed up are also like the most important things ‘cause they're the things you're still using.
zoe frost: Yes, exactly. So I like found my rulers yesterday in a box, but I was like, oh, that's an interesting choice. [Ash laughs.] Alright. [Laughs.] At least I found them.
But mostly settling in, but it's been nice to take a little bit of time off of work to actually do the move. And then this weekend I have my first spring fair in three ... two years, three years, since 2019. I guess it'll be almost three years.
And the spot we moved into, we inherited some chickens. So I'm learning how to take care of chickens, which has been really cute. And so I just watched them from every window in the house with their little butts waggling around. [Giggles.]
ash alberg: Oh my god, chickens are so ... they're such little dinosaurs. If you don't actually hang out with chickens for a chunk of time, then you're just like, oh yeah, they're just birds. And then you watch them do their shit. And you're like, no, they're tiny little raptors running around. [Laughs.]
zoe frost: Totally. And the first afternoon I was here alone, the one of them was laying in the middle of the day. And I was like, what is this?! It was so amazing to witness, the different sounds that happen and all of that. It was really cute.
And they're older and they don't have names, and so I just wake up every morning and I just say, “Good morning, ladies,” and we just have a nice little conversation of like me and the ladies. [Giggles.]
ash alberg: I love this. So you don't have a rooster then? zoe frost: No, we do not have a rooster.
ash alberg: Okay, good. [Laughs.]
zoe frost: No.
ash alberg: Roosters are chaos. Pure chaos and loud fuckers. Oh, man. That's so exciting. How are the dogs doing with the chickens?
zoe frost: They seem to be settling in fine. ash alberg: Nobody's trying to eat each other?
zoe frost: Even our week has been like, everything's fine. It's just fine. [Laughs.] [Ash laugh-snorts.] It’s just slowly coming together.
So yeah, we have two dogs. We have a big one and a little one. And the first day, our little one Izzy started running after the chickens and had a very intense like, I'm going to eat these chickens. And so for the next few days, I just had her on a leash because I was like, what I don't need right now is a thousand dollar emergency vet bill because the chicken poked her eye out.
ash alberg: Yeah. A hundred percent, like chickens are not that chill. Like maybe the big dogs would be able to handle it, but like even still.
zoe frost: Yeah, it was a little bit too much of a battle, but then everyone was roaming around. And the big dog is fine with the chickens. He just doesn’t care ...
ash alberg: Yeah, of course.
zoe frost: ... at all. He just like wanders around. And so we're now settling in a little bit more, but it seems like all the dogs and the chickens are getting along, so we're going to make our little farm happen.
ash alberg: Oh my god. zoe frost: It’s pretty cute.
ash alberg: That's so much fun. Oh my god. What a dream. The queer like PNW chickens in the backyard dream. [Giggles.]
zoe frost: Yeah, it's pretty great. We definitely manifested a lot of what happened in this situation and now are living on half an acre with a really cute studio in the back that our friend's going to move into that it's just like, we are doing it, we're living the queer commune beginnings. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: This is so delightful. I'm so excited for you. I'm also really jealous about having a half-acre. It’s funny, I like, I've been like ... my manifesting seems to be like much longer term. My parents were like, oh yeah, look at this. This would be really nice. I'm like, they're showing like nice properties, and to be fair a) I don't want to be buying in this market right now, but b) I've still got five years left on my mortgage.
I don't actually need to be looking at moving, but my parents were like, oh yeah, this would be really nice for you. And I'm like, that's like a fraction of what I'm looking for. That's ... I'm looking at ... that's like the homestead portion of it. And then I want all of the other land.
zoe frost: Yeah. Are your manifesting dreams to grow all of your own herbs and dyes and then everything to make your own ...
ash alberg: Literally all of it. I'd like multiple spaces for like different greenhouses, depending on like the dyes and the medicines. And then the outside studio space that is basically the size of my current house. And then the house that's all like long bungalow, but like all of the spaces and space for like children and dogs to play without running into each other, even though they will anyway. [Laugh-snorts.]
zoe frost: Yeah.
ash alberg: Yeah. But right now I'm currently living in the middle of the city. Like I love my house, but also it's been fucking snowing since November and it hasn't stopped and I'm over it.
zoe frost: Yeah.
ash alberg: Speaking of manifesting, it's a nice little segue to, how does magic
and ritual and witchiness play a role in your personal life?
zoe frost: Yeah. Oh, the personal life? I thought we were going to go into the business.
ash alberg: We can do that too. We can jump right over there.
zoe frost: Just like, diving right into the personal, Ash. [Ash laughs.] I am definitely not the most witchy-woo ritualistic of you were to like, take a consensus of Portlanders. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Fair point. Everything is relative. [Laughs.]
zoe frost: That’s my little caveat of like, oh, Zoe’s from Portland, she must be like super witchy-woo and like all of these things but I'm not. But I have my moments, I will say.
So within my household of the two people and the two dogs, I am definitely the witchiest of them all. [Laughs.] And in the greater scheme of the world, I am definitely just like your average femme.
ash alberg: Oh my god, the overlap of like witches and femme specifically, like those of us who identify specifically as femmes, it's like full overlap.
zoe frost: Yeah. [Both laugh.] I think the past few weeks in general of oh, I did use the word manifest, so I'll own the fact that I definitely had that experience where the past few weeks of finding this house that we bought from our neighbors and moving and like getting all of that done within the past, like pretty much three and a half weeks, has just been madness.
ash alberg: Wait, so you just bought the house as well? Oh, wowww. zoe frost: It's this house ... so this is what I mean by manifesting. ash alberg: Yeah, a hundred percent. [Laughs.]
zoe frost: We walk from our old house to the dog park every single day. And we have walked past this house almost every single day for the six years we've been living in this neighborhood, and every time I walk by, I'm like, man, that house is so cute.
And my partner, like back in November, I was like, I think that we should start looking at moving because he really wanted to just a little bit something else. And I was like, okay, we'll consider it. And so we started looking at some houses, nothing was working out. Everything is ridiculously expensive.
So grateful to have my own privilege to be able to own my own home and move when I need to and it was also just wow, we don't have that much money to make this happen. And so we were walking past this house that we just moved into and I was like would you stay in this neighborhood if that house went for sale? And he was like, yeah, I'd probably consider it. It's a great house.
And then a week later, we're walking past and there was a post in the ground. And I was like, oh my god, she's going to put it for sale. And I came home and I internet stalked her. [Ash cackles and snorts.] And all this information about who owned the house and what the deal with it was. Contacted our friend who was looking at, who is our real estate agent. And she contacted the owner of the house for us and was like, would you sell your neighbors the house?
And she said yes. And so that's how it all ... it's been so weird. And then I like kept, and it was like, so it was about a month ago when all this started that I, it was like all of a sudden, all of these really beautiful days started happening and
COVID was a little bit lighter and so it was like meeting up with all these friends.
And I was like out in the world and every person I ran into and I was like, so there's this weird situation, we might try and buy our neighbor's house. And they're like, sure, whatever, like good luck with that. And then all of a sudden, like four weeks later, here we are. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: This is wild, but it's also, I feel like it also very clearly points out that manifesting like often, like the like, woo-woo, like version of manifesting is oh, I'll just wish a thing and it'll happen. And it's cool, all of your privilege is what made it happen.
But like actual manifestation involves like luck and magic and the universe, and also a shit ton of work. Like you saw it, put all the things together and then went home and immediately was like, I need to figure this shit out so that I can get in time and get the ball rolling. It wasn't just like, seeing the house go for sale and being like, I hope the universe makes this work for me.
zoe frost: Yeah. I was very proactive in all of this and somehow it just happened and it's been so bizarre and yeah. So that's part of the magic that has been playing out in my world over the past few weeks. And of course, like you said, there's social media version of all of this.
And it is all privileged place, and it's obviously all of my being able to have ownership over this is also a lot of privilege-based. And I like have fucking been working my ass off for the past five years ...
ash alberg: Also that.
zoe frost: ... to save up the money, to be able to like, make something like this
happen when it needs to happen.
And granted, a lot of that comes from generational wealth of being able to like, have not been in debt for my entire life. And it's just been like a huge conglomeration of all of the things that needed to happen in the way that it happened. And now I'm ... have a garden view with my new little upstairs studio that is very, making me very happy.
ash alberg: This is so delightful. I'm so excited for you. Also like, I think what's also important is that acknowledging yes, the privilege involved, same thing like
when I bought my house, the reason I was able to enter the market as a millennial was like, I chose to stay in a city where that was feasible at that time.
Like even now with COVID pricing, you can still enter the market way easier than you can in basically everywhere else, and also your mortgage rates are ones where if you can enter the market, it's cheaper to have a mortgage than it actually is to be renting in this city. So there's that, but like also the reason I was able to enter the market was because my Papi died and there was an inheritance.
So there was like, actually the money for the down payment became available. So like for sure, there's like generational wealth, like right there. And all of the privilege and all of the fucked up ways that happens. And also, being able to access that stability, particularly at this point in time is important for fucking everybody.
Like everybody should be able to access it. And the fact that you guys also like, you guys moving into your space is creating new stability for you guys at this stage in where you're at life-wise and also your friend is moving into the fucking backyard. That's also creating a new stability for them.
It's just, it's that like, each of us, like things are not pies. It's not like one person getting access means that nobody else has access unless you're like fucking Jeff Bezos or something, but like for the majority of us, like one person getting stability is able to create a ripple effect of stability within the rest of the community and that's an important thing.
zoe frost: Yeah. I would hope so. I'm ... with all of the space that we have, I would really love, because there's so many flowers that are already growing and I feel like there's a really awesome opportunity to be able to set some of the space aside for certain people I know who do a lot of like natural dyeing and herbalism and things like that, that I'd really love to be able to like, share some of the land, to have it be like self-harvesting of resources and things like that.
And obviously like, we moved in four days ago [Ash cackles]. And I need to just figure out what the hell is growing down there. [Both laugh.] I would really love to have some of those spaces set aside. And like I started doing that a little bit at our last place. I was like growing a lot of marigolds and so I was harvesting all the marigolds and putting them in the freezer and doing all of that. And then it just it never quite happened in the way that I had thought it was going to just because I had so much else going on, that it just, it was a dream.
It was one of my long-term dreams. [Laughs.] And then we moved. So now I haven't, I'm going to transfer that long-term dream over to this spot and see how that happens and stop living in the fantasy of oh, I’ll grow this, I’ll harvest it, I’ll keep it all, use it, I’ll sell it. I'll do it. All of this like me mentality that I was having of like all of my resources.
And now I’m just like, I don't, it's not going to happen for me. I'm not going to start naturally dyeing eight o'clock. Who is? My friend who lives a few miles down the road and who already naturally dyeing. So I'm going to grow those flowers. We're going to pass them off to her. She's going to make that happen and like, we're going to have an awesome collaboration and conversation around like what all of our resources together can do, as opposed to trying to figure out like what we can all do individually.
I'm just, I'm a little bit [audio cut out] to that.
ash alberg: Yes. Oh my god. I remember at the beginning of COVID, especially when the supply chains were so fucked up and it just became this ... this was also, I've always been like, I will have land at some point, but then COVID made it like really clear. I was like, I need land.
And to just be able to be like self-sufficient, but also like to have the space where that self-sufficiency can also support a community being ... like sharing space together. And I have a really fucking hard time growing vegetables and when COVID hit and all of a sudden it was like, okay, we need to like, grow our own things. And I was like, fuck me.
Like I can fish. I would be fine with trapping. Like I can do all of those things, but like growing vegetables is not my forte and I need somebody else to grow the shit for me. [Both giggle.] Like it actually doesn't need to be me. I think I managed to get like ... and my parents are really good at growing vegetables.
So like I would go back to their place. They've got all these beautiful vegetables growing and meanwhile, I come home and like the plants that have a really easy time are the weeds, like mugwort and comfrey, they're just like, yeeeaah. But it's ‘cause I don't have, they don't need me.
And meanwhile, my tomatoes were like, hello. We would like a little bit more care. [Zoe giggles.] I was like, fuck. I got like four tomatoes out of an entire season of growing. Oh yeah. Trying to do it all yourself is not the most efficient way, but capitalism makes you think that it's what you're supposed to do.
zoe frost: Yeah. Yeah. And thinking that we should all be more just productive people in all of the senses of like production of our own goods, production of our own wealth, production of our own time. Like where are we all getting, the energy for all of this?
Obviously we're not because like you and I are like so burnt out. [Both laugh.]
ash alberg: Exactly. [Laughs.] But it's also this like thing of, I think, growing things and it's also a really clear analogy of what true abundance and true scarcity is, right? Where it's you have too many tomatoes for you and your family to eat, even when you preserve whatever amount you need. And so then you give the rest away to others or you share or you swap.
And same thing, if you're, if there's scarcity, if you only got four tomatoes out of the season, then being like, okay, what do we either replace it with, or can we swap with somebody else or support somebody else by trading them money or whatever other currency we are currently using? But it's funny because I think as small biz owners and especially like queers, bless us, but like the eat the rich mentality is not fucking helpful.
And so as queers running, especially like creative businesses in this stage of capitalism, it's like figuring out how do you like navigate all of the shitty messaging around capitalism and pull it apart to be like, okay, what's actually useful here because the system is super fucked up, but it's also not entirely useless and replacing it with any other system will also have its own fault.
So like, how do we make ... what was the healthy version of this when it started and how do we like bring that back into the way that we're doing our own work?
zoe frost: Mhmm. I think there's also the nuance of like, when you're a small, conscious business, and conscious meaning environmentally conscious, socially conscious, sustainably conscious, like social justice conscious, just so many different types of like consciousness that we can have as good humans who also are running businesses.
I think that there's a lot that is demanded of small businesses in terms of giving back, giving for free, giving more of ourselves than we expect of larger corporations where the version of ... we were talking a little bit earlier before we hit record about Pride month and like all of the access points that queer businesses try and make during Pride month in terms of doing donations, doing giveaways, doing discounts, doing all these things.
Like, it's a fun month. It's a great month to celebrate us. It's a great time to support people. And when you see like all of the rainbow washing that happens at these giant corporations where they're like all of whatever, Target, is giving 1% of all of the profits from this line of clothing to whatever donation ...
ash alberg: Yes! Because they like pick and choose too. They don't even just be like the whole thing. It's just like this one very specific thing.
zoe frost: Yeah, this one brand of t-shirts that has rainbows on it, only for the one month of June, we will donate 1% of whatever. And it's sure, that 1% is going to be a large sum of money because it's a giant corporation, but that 1% that they donate versus even us just donating 1% is such apples and oranges in terms of what we see in our bank accounts and our worlds in terms of like our friends and impact of finances and mutual aid and things like that, that just like, those things just drive me nuts, how it, they become so lumped together in terms of all businesses should give money to X, Y, and Z.
And it's no, large corporations should give a lot more. And honestly, if they just paid taxes ...
ash alberg: Right?! This is the thing.
zoe frost: There'd be so many less conversations we’d have to have around individuals doing these types of non-profit organizing in terms of raffles and donations and things like that. And I dunno, it's obviously a huge conversation about the existence of capitalism and how, like you were saying, how far it's gone in this other way, that just doesn't make sense in our world anymore.
It doesn't make sense that there's four people that own all of the wealth in the world. Like nothing, nothing is right about this. Nothing is justifiable about the existence of those four people as they are. And that doesn't mean that the burden of helping people who have ... who need more help in terms of helping organizations that are getting defunded, helping individuals who don't have access to things, all of that.
It's just so hard how I feel like I've seen so much in social media world,call out businesses, small businesses, for not doing enough and yeah, however many layers you want to get into.
ash alberg: Oh, we can go into all the layers ‘cause it also like, the people who are doing those call-outs, I'm always like, okay, you are either in a position of being like severely burned out yourself and severely under ... like underutilized
or not underutilized, under resourced yourself. And so like you're coming from that place, which is unhealthy for you and also for everybody else.
Like this is not a helpful thing because ... to be so reactive because you are activated in that way. Go to ... like a therapist would be like, calm down, and for good reason. And then on the other side of it, it's the people who are super fucking privileged and refuse to acknowledge that, where it's okay, you calling out the small business for not doing enough, as far as you're concerned, when somebody else is paying you a fucking paycheck on a regular basis, and how much is in your account and you have a savings and you have health benefits and all these other things?
Like, fuck you, basically is where I always get to. But then I also, I understand the desire from our end of things, of wanting to do more and also like the, like luckily being older and having more experience and knowing that it's not sustainable and it's not actually helpful to remain under-resourced yourself, and that actually, if you give too much, and even if it's coming from a good place, if you give so much that you are not sustainable, you will either burn out, hello. [Laughs.] Or like the number of queer businesses I've seen fold because they are trying to help by giving 10% of all of their money every single month when meanwhile, they're not even making enough to break even and then their business folds.
And it's okay, that came from like a genuine place and a genuine desire to help. And also, unfortunately, you're now not actually helping. Like now your business has folded, you can't do that good work that you were trying to do. And also you are now either needing supports yourself or you've had to go back into whatever other place is going to give you money because we live in a world where you can't fully disengage.
If you are living in Western society at this point of time, you can barter. There are ways to fuck with traditional capitalism in lots of really cool fucking ways, but you can't barter with the energy companies to keep your bills on or to keep your utility going. You can't barter generally with a landlord or with a bank who is holding your mortgage.
There are certain things that we have to have money for and money is also not inherently a problem in and of itself. Like the way that it is being utilized at this point of time and the way that it is so unevenly distributed, that's the problem. But money itself is just a tool.
If we decided that we were going to use chicken eggs instead as the tool, like the chicken eggs are not the problem. The way that if we do this similar thing where four people have all of the chicken eggs, and everybody else is fighting after two of them, like that's where the problem is.
zoe frost: Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. The problem is, it always goes back to the root, right? It's not the individual actions in that particular way. It's the root of the system. And it's the isms that will be the thing that are always going to need to be the target of conversation and without deconstructing and redefining all of these different isms, we're not going to make an individual change.
And yeah, like that example of that company that went out of business, it's like that 10%, I'm sure it was making a difference somewhere, someone, and now that 10% doesn't exist. And that if that 10% had been 5%, what would that have looked like in a more long-term impact?
And like for myself, I definitely fell into that trap when I started my businesses, I was getting hit up all the time for donations and free things. And I just couldn't say no, because not only was I interpreting all of this as quote, free marketing for myself.
ash alberg: Good ‘ole exposure. [Both laughs.] Yeah.
zoe frost: It's not free when you have to pay for the materials and your own
labor to do the thing, to send it off. ash alberg: Exaactly.
zoe frost: It's not free. But it was, there was a lot of money that was going out the door and I was feeling it. Like, I felt myself starting to get resentful for how much I was getting asked to donate things when I was feeling like I was getting asked all the time, when then I was seeing ... obviously you can't know everything about every business from the internet, but I felt like I was seeing a lot of larger businesses that weren't getting hit up for all of those things.
And that was just feeling really imbalanced in that way. And so what I did for myself and what my advice would be for other businesses who want to be more socially-minded in that way is figure out what your budget is on a monthly basis, that you can give money to something.
So whether you are going to have a product that is going to have a percentage donation, you're going to do a profit donation. You're going to do a free or quote
free item to a raffle or something like that. Set aside that budget for yourself and you, some months might hit that budget, some months you might not hit that budget cause no one's going to reach out to you. And so then that's the moment in which you can be proactive to try and find something to donate to, or maybe you carry that budget over to the next month and someone asks you for a donation of something and you're able to give more to that organization, or instead of giving the product, you just take that money from the product and you donate it somewhere.
There's a lot of ways in which our mutual aids can take effect and we need to sustain ourselves. We need to sustain our mental health. We need to sustain our businesses. I love supporting queer businesses. They should keep existing and they [audio cut out] existing by us giving them money.
And so there's just a lot of nuances where all of that can happen. And unfortunately, there's not a huge access of resources to the average person who's starting a business to be like, how do you handle donation-based purchases and things like that?
ash alberg: Ohh, yes.
zoe frost: It's all trial and error. Every business is going to be different. And yeah, so it worked for me, was just setting a budget for myself monthly. And if someone emails and I have hit my budget for the month, I say, I'm really sorry. I've hit my budget for donations. Please contact me again in the future for your next whatever you're doing and we'll make it happen.
Because unfortunately most of the places that are going to ask you for something are going to ask you again, because everything is underfunded, everything is under established. There's always going to be a cause that we can be helping.
ash alberg: Yeah. Exactly.
zoe frost: And yeah, it's a tricky, it's a tricky world out there when we get into how we're supposed to reallocate funds when we are small businesses where, especially the past two years, almost three years, our costs of doing business have almost doubled.
ash alberg: Yes. Like literally. It's so funny because I just raised my prices on my yarn and that was actually not even like COVID-related. It was me looking and realizing, oh, I haven't raised my prices since I started dyeing. And these ...
like the cost of even my most basic supplies, like my alum, have literally doubled and they actually doubled before COVID happened, so I actually do need to push my prices up.
And then like with my classes and things, realizing oh, I'm adding, I've added extra material in. Like I don't need to raise the price of something if it's just, it's the same thing and I haven't done anything. Like, to me that doesn't make sense if I felt like it was priced fair to begin with.
But if I have added additional video classes and extra resources, or like with the Creative Coven, we're adding in co-working sessions. And I'm like, I think that this is going to be really beneficial, and also I am now committing to an hour a month, every single month to be showing up and co-working with folks and holding space for that.
So actually, the price needs to go up a little bit. It doesn't need to be artificially inflated, but we do need to like actually keep up with inflation because nobody else is adjusting things for us. And yeah, it's just ... same with the way that people expect free shipping from small businesses that are selling products.
I’m like, do you understand how fucking ... it's, I will happily, figure out like sales that I do throughout the year. That is gonna save me. Still, you'll get a break and also I'm not going to be swallowing all of these expenses. Canada is fucking expensive to be shipping with. It is ... like free shipping for parcels, like you're asking people to give like $20, $25, $30 of for them to swallow that expense, nevermind the cost of the packaging materials and the time it takes to package the thing itself.
There’s so many hidden costs that people don't consider, but because they're used to like Amazon where something ships free the following day then it's like with a small business, they're like, oh, but it took almost a week for me to get my shipping notification.
It's yes, because a small business that has one, maybe two people behind the helm, has other shit that they're also doing. So like it's not, it's generally not an emergency.
zoe frost: Yeah, and I will relate this also just to like fast fashion world, just another example of somehow as small businesses and individuals, seemingly all of our prices have, for all of our raw costs of materials and supplies, have doubled in the past two years yet there are all these new companies popping up that are cutting all of these prices in half.
And so it's this unrealistic and misunderstanding of what things are getting inflated, what things are getting deflated. Like just being so confused, why our food is now costing more money than the dresses that you could get from whatever fast fashion company.
And not that our food shouldn't cost more money. I don't want to pay more money for our food ...
ash alberg: Yeah.
zoe frost: ... because it's already really expensive, but the problem is not that the food costs the more money, it's that those labor costs are not being passed on to laborers. And. think that people get lost in like all of the production lines and information chains of what that money is doing, where it's going, what it’s being raised from.
And it's a little bit easier to track in our businesses where I'm a person who is a one person business. So my, I see my class, I see what the labor is for myself, and I make those price changes accordingly. And so people can see oh it's, she's raising her prices, she's covering her costs. One-to-one ratio.
But when we're out in the world of looking at gas prices, food prices, clothing prices, all of these things, it is making less and less sense and therefore making our world less and less sustainable because the more expensive things get the less people can afford things when we're not actually raising wages across the board.
And therefore, we are going to be reinvesting all of our money into the cheapest possible things, because we just are hitting the barriers. Like we are just hitting those walls so hard of what amount of money the average person has and what they can spend it on versus what we're getting access to on a daily basis and what is going to be comfortable and sustainable in some sense for our daily lives and pocketbooks. And yeah.
And there's even things that in my own business, I would love to figure out how to make certain elements of packaging or materials or things like that. I would love to be able to source a hundred percent of everything I get from the U.S.
You know what they don't make in the U.S.? Embroidery hoops. You know what it is 95% of my business? Embroidery. [Chuckles.] So I am regularly paying for shipping to come from China because I don't have another source. And there are a few random businesses that I've seen pop up here and there that
are making different frames and things like that. It's like, I've started working with this woman, Kate, out in Virginia, who makes these really beautiful frames in her studio.
And I'm like, okay, those things I can get from the U.S. Those things are also extremely expensive and are a huge upfront cost for me as a business but those are my version of like, how do we support other small businesses? And I have started making project bags with this company in Astoria, Oregon called Shift + Wheeler, and they are doing an amazing job.
They're also a queer owned business and so they are making all of my project bags for me. And so I think that's another thing that we can do as businesses is figure out not only how to reallocate our funds in terms of like donations, but also how, as a business, do we support other businesses in manufacturing?
Like we need to figure out like, how do we grow and then sustain these other things, other people, other businesses, other products? And there's a lot of different ways to do it. And we're just going to sprinkle a little bit of magic all over the place. [Giggles.]
ash alberg: Exactly.
But I think that's a really big thing that people don't necessarily think about is that even when you're running a small business, you're still ... like, even if you're a, if you're a micro business and you're the only employee, like there are still things that you are using where you can make a choice about, based on what you have accessible to you in that time, and like, and allowing yourself the flexibility to change as well.
But to be like, okay, I am committing to, making this choice and investing with this other company for this part of my business, whether it's that like, you really like one particular tech company's ethos and so you use them for your website or for me, my wool would be the same as you sourcing your hoops, right, where I'm like, okay, I work only with Canadian-sourced and milled fibers.
I know the teams that are doing the milling. I either have worked directly with farmers for some of my lines, or I can go and talk to the farmers for the other lines because my mill owners are the ones that have the relationship and so they can help me connect with those people if I need. But then there's other things where it's just, like with the natural dyes, I, it is not possible for me to grow enough dyes at this point in time within my own post of ... postage stamp of land, but then also to be foraging ethically at this point, like I dye too much.
There's not enough. And so if I'm going to be sourcing stuff, there's not anybody who's growing that level of dye material locally, or even honestly, within Canada, that is again, like at a price that I can then afford to then be able to pass on the yarn to the consumer at a reasonable rate too, where it's like ...
And so then it's okay, in that case, then now I have to figure out who is importing and figure out from there, can I find a company? Which like there's a couple. And so I do work with Maiwa out on the west coast because they do the importing, but they work directly. And so being able to track those things back and keeping things as transparent as possible while acknowledging that there's not going to be every single thing that I can control.
Like my shipping boxes that things come in, I can choose to be recycling the boxes that I'm using but I don't know who manufactured the boxes. Probably ... I don't know like what conditions they were first manufactured in. There's lots of things that, we do the best that we can, but ultimately there's those four people that actually could make a difference and control, make an impact on changing things, just because of how much money they have.
It's such an absurd amount compared to everybody else. Like the fact that Elon Musk was able to be like, I want to buy Twitter for $44 billion because I get mad that people are mean to me ... like, that level of wealth is fucking insane, but it's also, that's ultimately the problem is not, it's not ... it is a problem that he has that kind of wealth, but ultimately the problem is less so about that and more so that we have a system that allows any individual person to have that kind of power.
If you took a fraction of that and split it amongst the wider world, people would have enough in order to live comfortably. Like I think that's also a thing that people ... it's this like false sense of scarcity, this false lack of resources when in reality, like the resources actually are there and there's ... we have enough, like the problem is not that there is not enough in existence or that we can't make enough available.
It's that the way it's been distributed is so dramatically uneven that the vast majority don't have enough and there's a very tiny few who have way more than they need and if they would let go of honestly, even the majority of what they have, they would still have way more than they would ever need and could ever use reasonably.
And everybody else would also be able to function. So it's that like, how do we, being on the other end of the spectrum, figure out, okay, how can we
redistribute and be reinvesting in our communities in our own ways and like defining for ourselves what is enough and what is excess and what is abundance and making sure that we stay in the not falling into scarcity ourselves.
zoe frost: Yeah. And the joke of it as these small businesses is here we are talking about the nuances of like where our boxes come from, where our packaging is printed, where our materials are being sourced, all these things. And these are conversations like obviously are happening on a major scale with these large companies, but they're not happening in the way that they should be happening.
If those companies were having the minute conversations of okay, what does it mean to use these ethically and sustainably sourced materials for X, Y, and Z, including what would it mean if they did start charging for shipping so that the people who were doing the deliveries were being paid an appropriate amount of money to be doing all the deliv-- ...
If it was just even started on that scale, like how would the world change? And instead, it feels like the burden gets put on the individual, especially as an individual business of being so hyperaware of the nuances. [Clears throat.] Excuse me. Of the nuances of running our businesses, that we, I think, have the tendency to get down on ourselves about not being able to meet all of our expectations with the assumption that if we're not meeting our own expectations, someone out there is going to see that and then tell us that we're not meeting those expectations and then we'll be even more disappointed in that way.
Like I just ... you know, we're in this loop of judgment in so many parts of the world in so many ways, so directly related to social media and like the fast-pacedness of information and with having moved the past week, I just have not been on Instagram ... it’s been amazing. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Right?? Isn’t it wild, where all of a sudden your body's just like, when you take a break from it ...This is also the thing where I realized that like, I'm in burnout and I need to step away is because I'm actually like engaging on social media more than I had set boundaries for myself and the reason I'd set those boundaries was so that I could stay engaged in a good way, in a way that was like supportive for me.
And that has not been the case for many weeks at this point. And I'm like, oh yeah. Okay. We need to back it the fuck up. Because like, when you take a break and then you re-engage, you become very aware of how your body starts to shift
into anxious mode where like your shoulders come up and your breathing gets shallow and you get anxious just thinking about honestly, what most of the time doesn't even happen for us, but is, you're like worried about somebody saying something mean, or you like accidentally writing something in a way that offends somebody and then people just plowing on and it's just not helpful.
And the fact that there is like a root of that fear that is rooted in reality also doesn't help.
zoe frost: I think one of the really beautiful things about a handcraft business, like knitting and yarn business or cross-stitch business or all these different things is that like we ourselves are creating our own tools to decrease anxieties.
ash alberg: Yes.
zoe frost: I mean, ideally. Like we, we have access to all of our own tools to be able to get off of our phones, get off of screens, sit with ourselves, sit with feelings, sit with experiences, sit with surroundings and be a little bit more present in our own experiences of what our bodies are telling us, what our bodies are needing and be able to just have that consciousness to slow down and make something.
And I wholeheartedly believe that is also directly related to like our conversation around sustainable businesses and making, because when we ... obviously knitting something by hand or cross-stitching something by hand is going to go a lot slower than if you had a machine, but I think that there's just such a disconnect of people's understanding of just what it takes to make something.
ash alberg: Yes.
zoe frost: That that is where our confusion around pricing and sustainability and just like a slower pace life come to. And I know not all people can afford to have a slower pace life. Not all people can slow down in this way, and that's not the fault of the individual. It's again, the fault of the system.
ash alberg: Exactly.
zoe frost: It's such an interesting conversation. Like, when I teach workshops, I usually do a two hour chunk of workshop and I have to be really clear at the beginning of the workshop, like you are learning a new skill. This is a skill that
takes a long time to get good at. And this is a skill that just takes a long time to do in general.
So we're going to stay here for two hours, I'm going to teach you how to do all of this. We're going to have a great time and you know what, you're also not going to finish this project today. This is going to be something that I am hoping that you're going to learn enough today, enjoy this enough today, that you're going to be excited to finish this on your own time because this going to be a labor of love.
This is going to be something that has intention set into it because you are literally sitting there with your hands and needle and thread, and you are just one by one making this happen. I like to just give ourselves just a little bit of a break in terms of these judgemental conversations about what we're doing and what we're creating access to and just like taking a minute that if for nothing else, like we're creating our own resources for our mental health and our bodies.
And it's so important to figure out how to keep our own businesses sustainable so that we enjoy what we're doing to be able to pass that joy on to other people because if we're not enjoying our daily lives of what we're spending, generally a minimum of 40 hours a week doing with all of our social medias and thoughts and everything. Like we, if we're not enjoying that, it's going to show ...
ash alberg: Yes
zoe frost: ... in our products and it's going to show in those conversations and that, what's the point of putting all of that burnt out energy into something that then no one is having a positive experience with?
ash alberg: Exactly. That's one of the things where ... it's funny because this episode is going to be coming out while I'm on sabbatical. And it's literally because I was on the, on a video call yesterday with my doppelganger Kalea and I was like, I'm burnt out. And she looked at me. She's, I can see from your face that you're tired. [Both laugh.]
I was like, I know. [Laughs.] I was like, I'm not being a nice person right now. She's, I know. [Zoe laughs.] Thank you for witnessing me being shitty. And it's just this thing of recogniz-- ... I'm like, I don't even have the ... initially I was like, I'll take a two week vacation and it'll be fine. But the fact that at this point in time, I can't like book a flight and book an Airbnb to like actually take me away and do a proper reset ... I know that's not an option.
And I also know that as a result of that, those two weeks of sitting in my house and just stressing out is not going to fix things either. And it's okay, I can either keep being this burned out where I can't even pretend to be excited about a thing and that very clearly shows in my writing because I have no poker face or poker voice, or I can take a few weeks and step away from the ... at least the front facing side of it and reengage with the slower part portion of it and with the making again, and with these big creative projects that like, they demand my energy, but they also deserve my energy and so let's re-engage with that stuff again.
And then also, find time to do other things and be an actual human. Then maybe in theory over the time that I'm on break, then the snow will melt and I'll be able to plant things into the ground, what a concept. [Zoe chuckles.] But it's, there's so much privilege and like benefit and grace and being able to have a life where we can recognize that level of burnout and also give ourselves permission to step back, but I think also within that, it's really fucking hard to do when you are a small business owner.
Like even if you recognize that you are in burnout ... three years ago, that version of Ash wouldn't have been like, no, you actually need to take six weeks or seven weeks and like fully just step away from the front facing side of it. The rest of the business can keep on functioning and here are the tools that you have learned to be able to like, keep those bare bones going, but you actually do need to just go away for a longer chunk of time.
Three years ago Ash would have been like, that's not possible. Everything will fall apart. My business will end. The world will end.
zoe frost: [Chuckles.] Your business won't end and the world won't end. And I also don't think it's a coincidence that we have spent the majority of this conversation talking about finances and burnout and money on the week that Elon Musk buys Twitter.
ash alberg: Right?!
zoe frost: Because I, I think that it's just this ethereal understanding of finances where when I see that number and I see this one person buying this thing that I also still don't understand. I've never been on Twitter.
ash alberg: Right? Also that.
zoe frost: Like I know the importance of it. I understand the like existence of it for social change in particular, and seeing the demise of that version of free speech, I just ... both disassociate from my phone in that, you know, what it's telling me and also have a little bit of what the hell is the point?
ash alberg: Yeah.
zoe frost: Why am I doing this? What am I doing? Is anything important? Does anything mean anything anymore? Because if that's what's happening in the greater world, like where is my place? And I think that it's such a great time for you to be taking sabbatical, to be able to just ... obviously there's a lot of different reasons why you’re taking sabbatical and this just happens to be something that's happening the week before you leave.
But it's just like, the amount of bigness in that number, in what this is going to mean, in it being just another example of another billionaire white man owning everything. There has to be a moment where we sit and say, okay, let's take a minute to reset, to then figure out what the next thing looks like, because obviously this isn't the end of the world. Obviously there's a lot going on that needs our attention in so many different spheres of our own particular countries, our own particular families and also the grander scheme of the world as a whole.
And someone, some group, some beautiful mind somewhere is going to say, alright, this is my idea, and we're going to have a great conversation moving forward in terms of like how we can all start to make a better change. And like with that, there's also going to be a lot that we're going to have to combat that's going to try and pull us back into this shithole that we keep getting sucked towards.
And I spent some time last night ... we're about to vote for our new governor and state representatives in Oregon and so I was reading through a bunch of things and just, it is just unreal, how ... you know, so within the primaries, you are only allowed to vote for the two major parties that you're registered for in the U.S. So this is only the primaries, but it's, there's Democrats and Republicans and you, if you are registered Democrat, Republican, you can only vote for the people that you are in the registered party for to get those names onto the ballot.
ash alberg: Already there are like so many things that are a problem with that but okay?
zoe frost: All resulting in still not having socialized medicine. Anyway. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Oh my god.
zoe frost: So I'm reading through just trying to figure out like who I want to vote for, to put on from the primaries onto that. And just like the amount of shitty Democrats ... [Laughs.]
[Both talking at the same time.]
I’m just like, why, why are you doing this? And even I had this moment where there's one Congressman. He is a white man who has been our representative for however many years now. And there's some other white man that is running against him, who is younger, who I was like, okay, what if the change that needs to happen is that this person needs to be younger? What would that look like?
And so I'm like reading through his statement and the entire statement is just shitting on the older guy. And I was like, this tells me nothing. Thank you very much. And like, here I was going to like investigate this, give you this shot. And I'm just like, you had one chance to tell me how you want to address these things that you are calling major issues within our state and instead you just harbored on this other person who actually laid out the entire plan of where the money's going to come from, how it's going to happen?
And okay, maybe it's still not the best person. I'm still going to go and research the younger guy and see like what that actual plan looks like but it just feels like we're just in such a combative mode. Like the way that politics are playing out is we're just like we're spending so much time just fighting even within our own parties, as evidenced by like his biography had nothing to do with him, it was all about how bad the other guy was.
I was just like, what is this? [Both talking at the same time.]
ash alberg: It’s this like weird binary thinking of the only thing ... like this is bad and therefore I am good. And it's like, that doesn't actually, that's a false like correlation and also tells you nothing. And I feel like it like swings us back around to what we were talking about at the beginning of, if you're at this stage of the only thing that you are able to do is to be reactive and to be like, this is a
problem, but then not be able to offer any sort of solution then that's a point where you need to step the fuck back.
And it doesn't matter like what community you are from. It doesn't matter what layers of privilege or lack of privilege you have. It doesn't matter how big or small a voice you feel like you have in whatever thing or whatever movement you feel like you are part of, or you are a part of. If you have hit that level of burnout, the best thing that you can do for yourself and also for the collective is to back off and go and figure out, go and regroup.
Because if the only thing that you can think of saying is this is shit, like yeah, that's true. That's accurate. It is shit. And there is absolutely a place for this is shit and just letting that sit and being in that grief and being in that moment of frustration or anger or whatever. But then that's one moment and then you need to move on to the next moment, which is figuring out, okay, then what do we do about it?
Because otherwise, what the fuck is the point? Nihilism is useful in a brief period of time in order to force us to rest, if that is all that's going to force us to rest, but then we need to move beyond that and figure out, okay, how do we fix it?
zoe frost: I think that your use of the word grief is really interesting because we are as a civilization going through a collective grief in a way that the people of, most specifically of our age, are experiencing for the first time. And so we're getting comfortable existing in the uncomfortable levels of grief that we are experiencing on a daily basis.
And it's not healthy. It's and it's not ... it just always goes back to it’s the system that's the problem. If we had access to mental health resources for everyone, if we had access to COVID testing, if we had access to science and we had access to all of these things that became general consensus where populations could better understand and create and like access resources to make our own daily lives more sustainable in X, Y, and Z, there would be a different version of the past two years.
And the fact that we are entering this third year of collective grief and there doesn't seem to be an end. In fact, we just seem to be going backwards and making these little loops of okay, we're going forward. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. And then we're back to where we were three months ago, and then we're going for --
We're just like literally making these little loops where I'm going to say that we're mostly going forward and that doesn't mean that our emotions and our baggage are moving forward with us.
ash alberg: That's ... yeah, that's a big part of the puzzle too.
zoe frost: Yeah. And so how do we ... and I, so I think that it just we keep going back to this me culture, me whatever, because if we, as a society, are not able to reach collective healing, we have to take it on ourselves and we have to hold that burden for ourselves.
And without having the access to all of those resources, even as an individual, we're not going to be able to do that for ourselves and we're not going to be able to do that collectively. And so there needs to be a shift in our ability to even just have conversations around like what mental health looks like and what [audio cut out] looks like. And then it's also that funny thing where it's in addition, the more common that all of these words become ... like, so the more that people use the word burnout, the less meaningful it is because we start using it incorrectly.
We start misunderstanding what that actually looks like for an individual and who is burnt out and what are we burnt out from and are we burnt out from our own self-making or are we burnt out from the systems that are keeping us down? And are we ... there's in this mental health renaissance that we're having, that we're like, we're creating more access, we're creating more conversations. It is becoming more normalized to seek, help seek therapy, seek access to these things.
Like, we also need to work on progressing our language with all of them, because we don't have enough language to have these conversations for the individual. And it's of course you're burnt out. We're all burnt out on a certain level. How do we differentiate those nuances of what burnout is?
ash alberg: Yes. Yeah, exactly. And it's this thing ... it's funny ‘cause it's ... it's not funny, but it's funny where it's like we've all been collectively burned out for an extended period of time. Like I think the vast majority of, even if we just look at millennials generally, like millennials as a generation, we are fucking burned out.
But then different ... like for me, I'm like, oh, I'm in burnout, like burnout and recognizing that it's oh yeah, I, my version of this level of burnout is I have lost my ability to empathize easily. I've lost my ability to even pretend to give a shit
and I'm tired. And my body, like I'm physically sick in ways that like, normally I am not.
And recognizing that, okay, this is like, true burn out, but that is different from the collective burnout and collective grief that we, as a society and as a collective, are experiencing. And what are the different ways that we look at that, and that we ... yeah, vocabulary is huge, right? Where it's like, how do we figure out how to explain and express and identify these different ways that this manifests, and then also recognizing for ourselves that if the system isn't going to fix it, that sucks. That's not fair. And also we have a responsibility to figure out for ourselves in that case.
Like it's, it's, it's absolutely not fair. And unfortunately, the more marginalized you are and the more under-resourced you are, the more frequently that is going to be the case and the harder it is going to be for you to figure out your ways around it. And also that doesn't change the fact that if those things aren't going to change, you waiting for them to change isn't going to fix it either. And figuring out, okay, based on what I have available, what do I do? And ...
zoe frost: I think that you made that extra important point that the system was broken before COVID started. The system has always been broken. The system is now exasperated and people are making an active choice to not participate in the ways that the system has faulted them for so long.
And there's not ... there's a clear correlation between not having enough employees for some of these small businesses and even large businesses that like, there's a reason that everything is deteriorating down the line of succession. Like it, it wasn't sustainable before. It won't just magically become sustainable without a change.
ash alberg: Yes, exactly. Exactly. It's like when all of a sudden all these restaurant owners were like, we can't get our staff back because they're on a they're on EI and these benefits are, they’re choosing to stay on these benefits. I'm like, if government benefits are giving your former staff more stability and more emotional support than you were at your job, you were a shitty boss.
That's just the fact. Whether you meant to be or not, you were. Even if you had all the best intentions, if your staff members are making more money on government benefits, you shouldn't have hired them in the capacity that you hired them.
If you had a thousand dollars a month, it doesn't mean that you hire your staff for a hundred hours. It means that you hire them for five or for 50 hours and you pay them a living wage for that shorter period of time.
zoe frost: Yeah. There's not a lot of resources and availability for the certain small businesses to be able to have enough capital to start a sustainable business. And it's such a tricky thing because it doesn't mean that those businesses shouldn't exist, but it also doesn't mean that those businesses should only be able to exist if they're not paying a living wage for the people that are working for them.
And so we're stuck in this dichotomy of, we want to support small businesses. We want the things. We also ... like it's just a shitty cycle. Without proper wealth distribution of the richest people in the world, we are not going to be able to have enough wealth for other people to exist in this way that actually creates like microeconomies in different places.
ash alberg: Mhmm. Yeah. But I think the other thing that's important for people to remember is that we don't actually need all of that wealth. Like we don't ... it would be great if Elon Musk suddenly became a functional human being and if Jeff Bezos suddenly became a functional human being and they had empathy and they had emotions and they realized, wait a second, this isn't cool, and they distributed their wealth evenly across every single human in the rest of the world.
That's not going to happen. [Chuckles.] But we also don't actually need that much. Like the ... and I think that's goes back to how like within queer community where this “eat the rich” mentality is so pervasive and also so unhelpful because like, our concept of rich is relative. And this idea that if somebody starts making enough money, like often our concept of eating the rich, like rich equals that you are stable and that you have sustainable ongoing income that puts you in a comfortable position.
And that's our definition of rich. And it's no, that's actually how all of us should be functioning. And actually, the more of us that can get to that point, the more that we are going to have capacity to reach back and help pull more people up with us into that stage. If I become a millionaire, that would be lovely. And also there are ways for me to do that in an ethical way, in a way that does not take advantage of people and planet and other beings and also gives me then so much more capacity to be like investing back in community through donations, volunteering, all of these things, but then also to be hiring people and bringing them similarly with me.
I think of Chani Nicholas, every single time I see a new hiring announcement from Chani’s team, I'm like, fuck, this is amazing. I want to be able to run a business like this, where like when they are hiring, there is nobody that starts at less than 80K U.S. a year. And there is a wealth stipend for everyone. And there is unlimited menstrual leave. There is unlimited vacation time and it's this incredible like ecosystem and microcosm that they've created.
And it's okay, but this is one queer astrologer who has managed to grow this incredible business and is continuing to grow it in a way that supports that being the way that they function. It's not as they get bigger, they're like, okay, we need more employees so we're going to change our standards and we're going to change the way that we are doing this so that we can bring more people on.
They're like, no, this is our baseline. This is what we have determined is appropriate. And so as we get to the next stage and we can continue to support that being the baseline, then we bring in the next person. And it just naturally keeps growing because then your employees are well-resourced and they're able to do better work because they're not burned out.
Like it's, it's feeds this beautiful cycle. There's so much possibility. It's just, how do we get ourselves there? And, if there's a quicker way to get there, that would be lovely but if not, how do we support ourselves in the longer slog of it too?
zoe frost: Yeah. It's a lot to hold. ash alberg: I know. [Both chuckle.]
zoe frost: And also just makes me really excited about wow, what an amazing business model to run. And also like I'm trying to sit with that and be excited for that. Not get down on myself of oh, I'll never get there. [Both laugh.] I'd love to be able to do that. And I'm like, okay, one step at a time.
ash alberg: Right? It's okay, if that's the goal, then what are the steps we take to get from here to there? So I feel like on the one hand, we haven't necessarily explicitly talked that much about magic, but I also feel like it's like, magic is interwoven through all of this, where it's, I think a big part of why magic feels inaccessible to a lot of folks these days, or feels stagnant is also because these systems are stagnant.
And it's like, how do we like shift ourselves and shift our situations to allow us to be better resourced so that we can be doing that manifesting, which involves like luck and being open to the universe and putting things out into the universe
and trusting that the universe will bring them back in the way that they're meant to be? And also that when the universe is like, here you go, that we have the energy to be like, okay, great. And then do with it.
zoe frost: Yeah, I think that there's also just so many type ... definitions of the word magic and like interpretations of what we can all attribute the meanings of magic to be. And you can think of ... there's positive magic and there's negative magic, and there's magic within us. There's magic in the world. Like all of the ways in which we can redefine how we want to interpret the magic that is happening.
And I feel just so much of this conversation is just rooted in we're just, we're existing in such a net negative right now that like our little like flickers of positive magic are not in a shareable stage right now for a lot of people. For myself, and it's it's a very selfish existence that I'm having right now of, I need to just hold onto my positive energy. I don't have the ability to share all of it right now because I'm just like trying to get through one step at a time. And whether that's like my personal life, my work life, whatever is happening, like I've gone through this transition period and I am just like immediately having to jump back into work.
I have a fair this weekend so I'm just like, all of my spoons, all of my magic, all of my whatever, I'm just like, I'm just holding a little bit tighter right now. And I think that it also relates back to like us needing to be in a place that is positive enough that then when we are making the things that we pass on to other people, they have better intentions set in them. And whether that's just like us being functioning enough humans that we're not making mistakes or functioning enough humans that we are like literally putting good vibes into the packages we're sending out, into the things that we're making.
Like there, there is a piece of us that is just still existing in that grief that hasn't healed yet. And so I feel like the ... yeah, just like the positivity that we can have right now, like for myself personally, I'm just holding a little bit closer so that when I need to have my moments of empathy, I can actually find it. Because it is hard to have some empathy for certain people right now that are making decisions that I feel like are like posting us backwards in our experiences currently.
And so I'm just like, yeah. I feel like that's a lot of that magic in terms of energy and in terms of what our personal capacities are. And I can even see that in my progressions of like certain patterns that I've made over the past few years of
like, when I first started my business, everything was just like the most radical cutthroat phrasing that it could be.
And then all of a sudden, we started having political conversations in the U.S. around Donald Trump. And I was like, I am so angry that I cannot transfer that anger into my work because I will just be too angry all of the time. And so my work and the patterns I started making were like almost exclusively, like no language floral designs.
ash alberg: I remember that stage.
zoe frost: I was just like, I needed a happy place. And I was like, if I'm going to have to keep working, I'm going to have to keep making money, I'm going to have to keep putting myself out there, I can't do it in this way. I can't be all encompassed anger person right now. And then I feel like, okay, we like kind of, we're moving out of that phase, although I still feel like we're in it a little bit in the U.S.
Now I'm getting excited and getting ready to redefine how I'm putting myself back into my work and like being able to take some of that like mixed positive and negative energy and create this new ritual for myself of making that is once again my outlet for things that are nuanced and are like going back to my initial intentions of my business, which were being like queer, radical, subversive, like all of these things that I'm like, okay, I feel like there's a place in me and in the world again for me to be making the statements.
And I just, I needed that little moment of breather to be able to just hit pause. And now I'm really excited to get back into that and transfer all that energy and be like, okay, shit's still really fucked up in the world, but you know what we can do? We can bring it back to cross-stitching.
Like we can re-cycle through some of these things that are happening in just like a slightly different way. And being able to take those intentions and being clear of like, how do I create this thing that has a little bit more of myself in it, that I can give a little bit more of myself to it, that I can go back to my roots a little bit more of what the intention of this business was? And also be able to hold the energy of what that means to put that sense of vulnerability out into the world, because I think that there ... I think that there's my, my website, my persona of this is what I do, this is it. Everything's great. Like we're queer radical, blah, blah, blah.
And then people don't see that there is the negative comments side of the social media messages, the private emails, the reviews of things that are like specifically attacking the queerness of the existence of my business. And so even though I am really excited about what I do, I'm really proud of the work that I put out, there's always going to be a moment of just here we go again, like ready for the floods to come back and be like, I'd really like this if it didn't say this word.
ash alberg: Right?!
zoe frost: I'd really [audio cut out] so pretty if it wasn't so blaaah. You know,
like whatever the word is that they're glomming on to.
And so it's, that's just another way in which I just feel like I have to hold a little bit of the positivity for myself to be able to keep running the business, to do the things, to put out the new things, to then reach the other queer people that haven't found me yet. It's just every step is just sometimes it can just be a challenge, just existing as a queer business with the internet while also like being so wonderful that we can reach so many people on the internet.
ash alberg: Right? Yeah, exactly. Like that, it is this ... there's like the pros and cons of ... like nothing ... it's very rare that something is like fully shit. There’s definitely things that are fully shit. Most of the time things fall within a gray area.
But I feel like you make such a good point in terms of, we like, especially when we're going to be making work that challenges certain people's concept of whatever, we have to have a certain level of energy that is prepared to deal with those things and just let them roll. And that takes a certain baseline of energy that if you don't have that, then yeah.
Like I think of like the Them as Fuck design which is one of my favorites, shifting from that, and Homo Sweet Homo, which is another favorite of mine, over to like literally birds and flowers. [Zoe laughs.]
Which are also beautiful, but it's just, it's such a different audience to where it's okay, like I just don't have the energy to deal with all of you who like ... even the ones where they think that Homo Sweet Homo is cute and quaint, but fuck is a terrible word.
zoe frost: Yeah.
ash alberg: It’s just like, fuck off. [Both laugh.] Which is also, I think it's funny too though, when especially when we've chosen to keep our queerness as like a central part of our work and especially as queer femmes that get ... are queer femmes that are able to pass as cis straight women. Our life is already one of erasure so much of the time.
And so to be like, no, fuck this. I'm keeping my queerness like front and center as a core part of my business. I'm not interested in making it go away. But then, then you get the people who ... honestly, it's the word fuck seems to be a thing for a lot of people. And it's so funny to me because I'm like, this is actually my way of weeding you out because the people who are that bothered by the word fuck are also the ones that don't want to hear about capitalism and how fucked up it currently is.
And they don't want to hear about racism and they don't want to hear about transphobia and queer phobia and femme phobia and homophobia and dah dah. Like you're also going to be those same people so if I can make you go away right from the get-go because I dropped the word fuck into a sales page or into an Instagram post, great. Please do fuck off. [Chuckles.]
It does make life a little easier. But yeah, you also need to have the energy of dealing with ... like most of the time they will fuck off actually by themselves quietly, which is exactly what I would like them to do. But every once in a while you got the one that just feels the need to announce their departure as they go out the door and it's just, you are the person who just made the next three weeks of my life annoying as shit. And I don't appreciate it.
zoe frost: Yep. Yeah. You are the, your comments are the ones that linger the rest of the day at the fair that I was just like ...
ash alberg: Yesss. Why?
zoe frost: Why did you have to say that? Why did you have to go there when
it's all ...
ash alberg: When you could have just turned around and walked away.
zoe frost: Just turned around, just walked away, just left me alone so that when I have those positive interactions, they're not outweighing the negative. They're just existing in the positive.
ash alberg: Yes. Yes. It's, yeah. It's so interesting the way that like, some people feel like they just need their opinion heard every single moment of the day. And also that their opinion is valid in every single circumstance. Like it's really just not. And there's ... you can also just like easily remove yourself from a situation.
I will always say punch the Nazi. That doesn't mean that I make a point of going out and searching out the Nazis, like a) safety, but b) like I don't want to be in the spaces where they happen to be existing. And if you, for whatever reason, feel the same way about like me as a queer person, walk away.
It's actually really fucking easy to do. You actually don't need to engage because it's not necessary. It's not helping anything. You expressing that is not going to change the fact that I am queer so like just go away.
zoe frost: Yeah. There's a reason why the first design I put out this year just said, Fuck This Shit.
ash alberg: It was so nice.
[Both talking at the same time.]
zoe frost: ... like we’re entering 2022 and like ... [Both laugh.]
ash alberg: Oh man. It's so funny though ‘cause I saw that one and I was like, oh yes. And then I thought to myself, I am not in a place to be stitching that and hanging it up right now. I need to take time to heal one instead. [Zoe laughs.]
zoe frost: Yeah. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: That's what I need to be working on. Then later we can do Fuck
This Shit but right now that just feels a little too real to me.
zoe frost: [Laughs.] See and I've had Take Time to Heal up in my walls for five years now. And I'm like, I need the Fuck This Shit right now. [Laughs.] Like I just ... [Ash snorts.] So many things happening.
ash alberg: Oh man. Oh my god. It's so good.
Okay. So how do you ... I feel like I've talked about a lot of really big, like outsidey-ish things. Specifically with your own biz, like how did you get started
with cross-stitch? What was ... ‘cause I also feel like there's not ... even now, like you've been running your business for quite a few years. I still don't see anybody doing what you are doing, which is interesting and I think lovely.
And it's also one of those things where it's yes, there's space in the market. Also I'm really glad that Zoe can do this, but like how do you decide ... maybe not necessarily the designs that you personally are doing, ‘cause we just talked about that, but how do you decide on collaborations? ‘Cause you've also done some really cool collaboration pieces.
zoe frost: Yeah, so some, so I started my business about six years ago and I was living in Oakland, California, and I was doing long distance with my partner who was living in Southern Oregon. And after a while, we were just like, alright, we're either going to be together or we're not. And so we chose to stay together, which meant I moved to Southern Oregon, which we were in this very small rural town in the middle of nowhere.
And it also meant that I had to quit one of my jobs from the Bay because I could not keep doing that physically anymore, and I just, so I went to school, graduated with an art degree. I was always, maybe I'll start a business. What would that look like? Like just always had these semi-fantasies of how that would exist.
And then all of a sudden, there just became this opportunity where it was so cheap to live there. So I was paying hardly any money. And I was like, had only one very part-time job I was doing remotely. And I was like if I'm gonna start a business, I think it should be now. [Both laugh.] This is it.
And I had a friend at the time who was living across the country and we were having a lot of different conversations about like different types of handcrafts that were starting to become more popular. And it seemed like embroidery was really like starting its progress upwards and becoming a more like everyday word that people were starting to like understand what that would look like.
And no one was really doing cross-stitch yet. And I thought that the business was going to be just like a very large grouping of different types of handcrafts, of like how to hand stitch your ... this type of clothing. Jow to draw this on to this, how to do cross stitch. Maybe we would start doing embroidery. There's just a lot happening.
And I didn't know how to cross stitch. So in all these conversations about starting a cross-stitch business, I was like, oh, okay, we'll see what happens. So I
went down to the only craft store in town, which was a Joanne Fabric. [Ash laughs.] In this rural town, and I bought some cross-stitch supplies and made a pattern and cross-stitched it, and I was like, okay, let's put a kit together. And I put the kit together and within a month was running the business.
And I was like, okay, now I'm just going to keep making designs and keep doing things. And it was a great outlet for me because I had nothing to do. I had no queer community. I was completely isolated in this very Republican small town and just like really delved into, I am not at Pride for the first time in like years.
And it was just like, so that's when I made my Queer as Fuck kit, where I was just like, I know no one in this town is going to see this. [Ash laughs.] [Audio cut out] But it’s also really good that I am sitting in my little apartment cross-stitching my like super Queer as Fuck kit and like everyone outside is running around with their guns and like bashing on queer people.
And I'm just like, okay, I’m doing my little thing.
ash alberg: I’m just going to stab this a hundred times.
zoe frost: Yeah. It was, yeah, it was totally the moment of stabbing this to make myself feel better. So that's how it all started. And then I think we were there for eight months together and then moved to Portland. And that's when I started growing the business in terms of doing wholesaling to people around the country and now Canada and Australia, and like a few other folks.
And just started figuring out like, what is the demand, what is happening, how to focus my resources. And it just really seemed like the cross-stitch kits were happening. And I should focus my resources and energy on that because there was a market that I was tapping into that I was just like discovering for the first time.
And Julie Jackson who makes Subversive Cross-Stitch, that's her business, Subversive Cross-Stitch, has been around for a really long time. And she reached out to me at the very beginning. It was just like, just want to let you know, like everything, like you're awesome. I really love what you're doing.
And it was just this like really nice moment of validation of okay, we can all exist together. Like I would be doing something that was different enough from what she was doing. We weren't in competition from each other. We were just like, wow, we're both out here in the world making subversive cross-stitch patterns.
That was really exciting. And yeah, so just like really hit the ground running with how I chose to like hone in my business of what that was going to look like. And then with COVID and all of these brick and mortars closing for places where you can get supplies and things like that, that's when I started selling my own supplies and obviously I have a stockpile of all the things that I use to put my kits out, so I started selling the cloth and hoops and things like that.
And it's definitely not the focus of my business. Like I still most importantly like putting out the kits and the patterns and things like that, and teaching workshops and really engaging. And I'm also happy to be a resource where people know the quality of the products that I have, so they know that what they're buying individually, if they're not getting a full kit, is going to be the same high quality. So I feel really good about that and like being able to set people up with that success.
And then I think a lot of the collaborations that I've been doing have really just come from having such a great community of small businesses in Portland. There's just something so incredible about the community of people here that are just like really entrepreneurial and really excited to support and promote other people around town.
And so like, the kit that I put out with Ritual Dyes last year that says Make Mend on it with the little scissors and flowers, that was something that I just happened to be in the shop and Rachel, who owns Ritual Dyes, we were talking and she was like, oh, maybe we should do a little bit collaboration.
I was like, yeah, that'd be great. And then she sent me an email. She's like no, let's do a collaboration. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Like I'm serious.
zoe frost: Oh! Like you’re serious. And so she and Martha who works there, they dyed all of the fabric for it and I made the design. So that was a totally new experience for me because I hadn't worked with someone like altering the base materials for me before. And I love them, I’m so excited how that came out.
And I'm like, I'm ready to start finding other people who are like going to be dyeng things for me and making that happen so we can make it just as custom as possible in some really exciting ways. And I have a new collaboration that just came out with Sew House Seven, who is another Portland business. So Peggy makes sewing patterns and she also approached me a little while ago and it was like, I think that we could make something really fun of putting some
cross-stitching onto clothing. And so again, she made the clothing sample and I made the pattern.
And so now we're putting out kits together to specifically do cross-stitching onto these two different top and dress patterns that she has. But it's also just a baseline of this, these are the materials. This is how you could do the cross-stitching. You can do it specifically onto these clothes, or you can take that skill and you can put it somewhere else.
And I'm really excited to see where that goes. That collaboration sold out in 24 hours so I am definitely making more. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Amazing. That is amazing.
zoe frost: I will be sending out more. But I'm just really, like for me, I have my work, which is cross-stitching, and I enjoy doing it. And then I have my passion, which is sewing and like making all my own clothes, and so this was the first time that I was able to really merge those two like love interests together.
And I'm just like, I feel like we just barely touched the iceberg of what that could look like for the future. And one of the exciting things about this new place that we're at, because we have such a big property, I have this goal of starting to teach my own workshops in the back and just have a little bit more of that like, community-based aspect for like, how can we take these different skills and bring them into different parts of our making practices?
So like, now we have the skill of cross-stitching. What does that mean to add it to clothing? To add it to bags, to add it on to like different ways where traditional embroidery and cross-stitch were used to make homewares. And I feel like most of the contemporary ... word I will use is contemporary, like crafted, cross-stitched pillowcases and things like that are still awful. [Laughs.]
And so I'm like, I'm really interested to see the ways in which I can bring some of that homewares up to snuff in a lot of ways where ... I don't expect everyone to want my designs on a pillowcase. Like I'm not interested ...
[Both talking at the same time.]
ash alberg: Queer as Fuck on a pillow, I can think of multiple people I know.
zoe frost: Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that it's not going to happen, but I'm also saying that I think that like in a lot of handcrafts there's the making of it and then there's the, so what am I supposed to do with this?
ash alberg: Yeah. Yes.
zoe frost: And so I want to start to work on bridging the gap of what to do with
that afterwards.
So I want to be able to start, like you don't need this whole setup to be able to add your embellishments onto whatever you want to have embellished. And so I think that'll be a really exciting project. And then lastly for June, June is always Pride month and is going to be a fun time. And I always have goals of releasing a special new pattern.
And I do have one in mind. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get the kits ready in time, because all of a sudden it's April 27th when we're recording this and there's ... [Ash laughs.] But if it's not a kit, it's going to be supplies and a pattern.
And one thing that I did the other week was I created these kind of like mystery grab bag kits for this new book pattern that I created. And that was just really fun to be able to just make something that was really different. And every single one of them came out differently because I just used a bunch of scrap supplies that I had and put them all together, so literally no two kits that were sent out had all of the same colors.
So like maybe I'll do something like that for June where it'll be like a really gay pattern. I don't know. I'm trying to find those moments of joy where like I'm having fun in this and although I don't want to burn myself out on doing super custom things like that because they do take a lot more time than just like the putting together of the same thing, so trying to find the balance with that.
But I, yeah, I have some goals for June and then I usually will also do like a small re-release of some old ... or not old, because they've only been around for six years, but older, of my like gayer designs that I don't carry kits for regularly. I'll usually do a small batch release of some of those, like the Yes Homo kit or the Femme as Fuck kit or things like that are just fun to have in stock for just that month to make it feel like this is the uber special gay month that we're all coming together and like supporting all these gay businesses and like wanting it to just be like, as in your face as possible.
So I hope that happens. Yeah.
ash alberg: Right? I like buying from and supporting the actual gays. Not just that ... I'm like, if you're a corporation that makes a point of having queer faces front-facing and employed amongst your workforce, also front-facing, year-round, fine. You can have our pink dollars.
But if you literally only put a very palatable to the general public queer face on whatever the fuck you're doing for the month of June, fuck off.
zoe frost: Yup.
ash alberg: Go away. Fix yourselves and then maybe you can come back. It's like whenever the Conservative Party is marching during pride week, I'm like, no, you can go away. You don't get to march in our fucking parade and then try and take away our basic human rights. Fuck you.
zoe frost: But they do!
ash alberg: Oooh, man. [Zoe laughs.] I also just generally don't understand like
queer Conservatives and queer Republicans.
Like the only ones that I've ever met are usually like white cis gay men who are able to be like, it's okay. I just ... like they’re conservatives because of their finances. And I'm like, yeah, but your entire fucking community is being shat on actively. [Laugh-snorts.]
zoe frost: Yeah.
ash alberg: It’s funny, funny, not funny. Oh, humans. We’re such complicated,
weird creatures. [Groans.] zoe frost: We certainly are.
ash alberg: So, I think we managed to just, oh, we, so we already answered what you're doing next, but what's something that ... we'll just loop back around. We're also like, we've been talking for a couple hours, so you're welcome everyone. It's funny too ‘cause when you were saying about how like Portland is just like super entrepreneurial and like I'm like, yeah. The two interviews that are coming up before this, like Maria from Seagrape Apothecary and Melissa from Starlight Knitting Society are coming out the two episodes before. So this is just a Portland month, I guess.
zoe frost: I have worked with both of them. [Both laugh.]
ash alberg: They're both great. They were super fun. This is ... clearly I need to come to Portland or we need to just like transport like your guys’ and your businesses, just north of the border. That would be ...
zoe frost: [Audio cut out, both talking at the same time] ... for everyone over there.
ash alberg: Yeah, exactly. But what's something that you wish you'd been told when you were younger about magic and ritual?
zoe frost: Mmmm ... that's a great question. And I feel like I'm humming and hawing a lot trying to figure out like, where to begin answering that because I was raised by two ex-hippies. [Ash chuckles, Zoe laughs.] And so my, like my version of magic and ritual in growing up was rooted a lot in like home care medicine and homeopathy and things like that.
And I feel like I've taken that into my adult life and I also am grateful for the ways in which my family really blended that type of home care with also like Western medicine and like rooting in science. And I think that the one thing that I wish that would have been explained a little bit more are like the ways in which our emotions are also completely wrapped up in that type of care, in that type of medicine and science, and like the emphasis on the importance of our like well-beings and mental health.
And I think that a lot of that is just generational in how I was raised by two older parents that like, they're very lovely people. They are coming around very well to the idea of therapy and like our practicers of therapy now, and I think that's so wonderful.
And I also see how it took them getting into their late sixties for that to happen. And I feel grateful that I entered into therapy when I was first in college. And I also feel like I could have benefited from a lot of therapy much earlier on in my life. And I ...
ash alberg: Right? Right? And not even as that parents have done a bad job or that there's been like significant trauma, it's literally just, it's helpful.
zoe frost: Yeah, literally just having someone else to talk to would have been so wonderful for me. And so I feel like that's my version of where I'm at with magic a lot of the time, is like the magic of mental health care. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Yeah. It’s so true.
zoe frost: Like the magic of sustaining ourselves by having outlets is so important and it is not something that the majority of people have access to. And it is something that I feel so passionately would change so much of our interactions in the world if people had access to stable mental health care.
And I think that it is no coincidence that both my sister and I married therapists. [Both laugh.] I am so grateful for my partner who is a therapist. We absolutely do not practice therapy on each other in any way whatsoever. That is ... and the communication skills and styles that we are able to have in our relationships, because he is such a great communicator and such an active therapist. And like, the way that I have been able to benefit from that and see myself grow in my own like ways of communicating and being just like a better person, is just pretty incredible to have like just one person change your world in such a positive way.
And I feel some people get that from partners. Some people get that from community members. Some people get that from their paid therapist. And I just feel like, yeah, that if we can make our mental health care, our ritual of like, this is how we are practicing taking care of ourselves. And if we are able to get access to what those resources would look like to make that happen, I think that we would all just become much better people.
And yeah, so I think that, that's the one thing that I wish had just been instilled in my practice of fine tuning and getting in touch with my emotions as a kid so that when I became an adult, it wasn't such a big adjustment. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: It's so true though! And it's just, oh man, you like hit on so many things there that resonated so hard. And yeah, like it's so funny, ‘cause like I, I realized that I was in burnout mode honestly later than usual recently because I didn't have the number of freakouts that I have been having over the last several years because I ... my therapist has helped me like, get better at being like, okay let's pause for a moment and think about this and put it into context and so it was like, okay, like these things are doable.
I can figure this shit out. I can handle this. And so it just took me longer to be like, oh, but like I can handle it. Absolutely. That is true. And also I’m allowed to be overwhelmed and to need a break. That's okay too.
zoe frost: Yes. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: But even within that being able to be like, okay, cool. And like me knowing that, okay, my version of not being a nice version of myself these days is not that I am being like super reactive to people. It's that recognizing before I get to that stage, that I'm just not able to be super, super nice to them and that like, that's the point.
Imagine if all of us, imagine if social media functioned in a way where people stop themselves before they felt like they needed to hit send on that comment.
[Willow’s collar clinks in the background.]
I'm so sorry. Willow is chewing a bone in the corner beside a cardboard box on hardwood. [Zoe laughs.] It's semi impressing.
zoe frost: She’s like uhh, I’m pretty sure the conversation’s over. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: She's not subtle at all. She's got her times, like she knows with Snort and Cackle, she's two hours, that's all you get. With other she's you only get one hour with this one. She's a very, this is when we stop. [Both laugh.]
Oh man. Fur babies. I think we've answered all of the questions. It's been absolutely delightful. I really appreciate you chatting with me, especially with having just moved and still like being in like the midst of that. This has been super fun and lovely.
zoe frost: Yeah, this has been great. I can't believe that this is the first time we're actually talking when, like we've known each other for so many years!
ash alberg: I know! [Both laugh.] I think that's why it's really easy to talk to you though. It's just oh yeah. It's as though we talk on a regular basis. We’re just like, okay, sure, you guys.
zoe frost: Anytime you want to come down to Portland, come say hi. ash alberg: Yeah, I do actually need to come down.
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