Who Do We Mean When We Say Everyone?

Unity Flag

Yesterday I posted on our Instagram and Facebook pages about some customer and may-never-be customer responses to the Unity Flag sticker I put on the shop's front window. At the risk of seeming like I'm beating people over the head with rainbows, I want to talk about the sentiment not of the flag but of the words on the sticker that I put up. Well, a little about the flag, too, but first, the words:

Everyone is welcome here.

When I had my yoga studio up in Columbus, Ohio (Yoga Happiness), there, too, I said many times that everyone was welcome. At the time, it was a direct response to studios and companies, like Lululemon and other "yoga" brands, that only made clothes for skinny white girls, only advertized to skinny white women, and prided themselves on being super bendy and exclusive. In my studio, I wanted to look at the students on mats on my floor and see different colors, ethnicities, sexual orientations, ages, and levels of experience with this thing Americans call 'yoga'. (I won't get on my soapbox about American Yoga. You're welcome. That's maybe a post for another day or my other blog.)

When my classes started to fill up (12 people max) with students from Ohio State, professors, gay men, lesbians, just about every ethnicity you can think of thanks to the university, and all kinds of people who could and couldn't touch their toes, I was over joyed.

Yes, I thought to myself. This is what I mean by 'everyone'.

Just to lean into 'everyone' a little bit more, I changed my studio to be donation based. Literally anyone and everyone could come.

And then one evening, about ten minutes after class had started, a woman with a newborn came in wanting to join the class. When she walked in, the smell of fryer grease wafted through our essential oil laden air. She was tall, slender, dark skinned, with dark hair. She looked exotic and yet disheveled and distraught. She explained she needed a place to feel safe, and she pulled out a roll of quarters that she had taped together.

"Welcome," I said, and made all the hand and face gestures to my regulars to give this woman and child a space.

During class, the infant would coo and fuss a little. The woman followed some of our poses with the baby at the head of her mat. When she went into downdog, her face would hover over that of her child. In tree pose, she held it to her chest. She created her own Mom and Infant Yoga out of the class I was leading.

And then she pulled down her shirt to breastfeed her newborn.

Only, she didn't have any breasts. This was a flat chested mother of a newborn.

My mind raced. I made eye contact with one of my students who was older and a retired lawyer. Did this woman steal a baby? Were we harboring a kidnapper? What was this woman's situation? Why did she smell like fryer grease? Was she homeless?

Everyone is welcome. Everyone is welcome. Everyone is welcome.

After class, as usual, many of us stayed on the floor and chatted. Those that had to leave did. As the owner of the studio, my primary concern was always the saftey of my students - regarding the poses I taught or suggested for their bodies, regarding any situation that might happen during class, and also their walk from the front door to their car or home. Though I'm not a mother and don't particularly have the momma bear instincts, I guess I did know myself enough to recognize when I was maybe not seeing the entire picture of a situation and getting...uneasy. In this situation, I had the sense to watch my students (all regulars) to see how they reacted to this new and very different person.

After that first class, we learned the students name and basically that she lived with her child above some restaurant down the street. We were still leery because some pieces still just didn't add up. She claimed it was her newborn. She claimed she was the mother. She said she was in town temporarily.

I reminded my students who expressed concern about having an infant in class that the website said "everyone is welcome" so I needed to stand by that. But, boy, my Spidey senses were twitching.

Maybe she won't come back.

And then she did.

Same thing. Ten minutes late. A roll of quarters. A newborn. The smell of old fry grease. Flat-chested breast-feeding during class.

And again the next week.

Finally, at the end of the third class that this woman attended, I approached her. Since I had the safety of a class full of students to consider, I addressed my concerns directly and honestly. I hoped she'd be honest with me.

Here's what I learned:

She was Israeli and had just fled Israel. She was a transgender woman, i.e.; born male, with a transgender husband, i.e.; born female, who had just given birth to this child. As a transgender person, her life was in danger living in Israel. She and her family sought asylum in the United States. In an attempt to find some kind of normalcy - in whatever the hell that could mean in this specific scenario - she sought a yoga class. A sanctuary. Something she knew because she'd taken yoga in Israel and found peace and acceptance there. As for the breast feeding, she was attempting to get the child to imprint on her like it was when it got milk from the other parent.

She understood my concerns and my curiosity. In a non-passive-aggressive way, she said she'd be on the move soon, anyway, so I had no further need for concern. She would be fine. The baby would be fine. She did have concerns about the other parent and their mental state - which seemed like the main reason she was getting back on the move.

This was in 2015. The term 'transgender' was realtively new, at least to me. I was only just learning about non-binary and attempting to wrap my head around that. I was honest, at least with myself, that I was uncomfortable but mostly because I didn't understand. So, I got on Reddit to try to learn more about 'transgender' even if I never saw this person again in my life.

Everyone is welcome here, at first, was one of those flowery, yoga things I wanted to be true. Then, when I was faced with discomfort at a new kind of "everyone", I said, you know what, walk the talk, Burg. Let's be honest about this. Though I didn't see that person again, when I met my first openly non-binary person a month or so later, I asked them to help me understand. They said, "Thank you for asking. That's all I want from people."

My list of "Everyone" keeps growing. And by that I mean, the list of people I need to have some inner-dialogue about. When I say Everyone, I need to make sure I really mean Everyone. Because when a Not Everyone person comes into the wine cafe, I need to make sure I understand what I mean, and that I've expressed this to my team. That's the biggest thing, now: I have a team.

On August 1st, we had our first staff meeting. I reiterated that we were leaning more into the words and concepts related to Community, Creativity, and Conversation. I expressed disappointment that Petersburg didn't do anything for Pride this year and that I would like to do something next year...but with their okay.

I'm new to the South. I'm relatively new to Petersburg. I'm from Clintonville in Columbus, Ohio, one of the hippiest sections of that city. In June, many houses fly rainbow flags. I had zero concern about putting a very large flag outside of my studio. My Yoga Happiness logo went rainbow during June and into July because I was too lazy to change it. I've never had a question or concern in my life about this. Until I moved here. And the concern wasn't for my safety. Now, I've got employees who are working in a shop that has my name on the window and is built upon my personality. I felt the need to make sure they were all ok with putting up a small unity sticker on the front window. Did they feel afraid for their safety? Did they have any conerns?

No. We agreed we may lose or push away customers, but who we would gain would be the right ones.

I emphasized, though, "Everyone is welcome here means that EVERYONE is welcome here. Even the people who don't believe that everyone should be welcome here."

Faces got tight. And I don't blame them. That's the part that makes all the difference. Everyone doesn't mean just the people we like or the people we agree with. It means EVERYONE. That's the point. That's the point of our whole ethos. Community, Creativity, Conversation. This is our ikigai. The reason we open our doors.

However.

That does not mean that I will allow anyone to express hateful rhetoric in the shop. Beliefs and actions are different things. You're welcome here, until you're not. I'm not non-confrontational or soft on this. The safety of my team and all of the customers in my shop are my top-most priority.

Let me be clear. Everyone is welcome here, hate is not.

I believe that people do not have to remain tied to their beliefs.

I believe that hate can soften into something else. Hate can dissipate if you put it in the right environment, like fat on a griddle. (Jesus. Did I just make that anology?! I've been in the South too long.)

The United States has become divided. It was happening prior to the pandemic, and then all that isolation and time with the internet without diverse human contact made it worse. Before and during the pandemic, I owned a yoga studio and was a massage therapist. I can tell you from first hand experince (pun intended), that what humans need most is a mixture of people and thoughts and beliefs around them. Just like you need to eat varied types of foods to have a well-rounded, healthy diet, being around different types of people is good for the part of you that is deeper than what your diet impacts. Call it your soul or your spirit or your energy body or whatever.

What we need is a diversity of eachother. As amazing as I think that I am (and I must think highly of myself to keep building businesses that put my personality and beliefs at the direct center - eyeroll), I would go insane if I was only around people just like me all the time.

I do believe that Community, Creativity, and Conversation are central to who we are as human beings and who we should be as Americans. And I I belive that we do not have to agree on everything, ever.

Audrey Hepburn said, "People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed: never throw anyone out."

I believe we can do that together.