Choose The Bear Tour Begins!
It’s time! FINALLY, I’m heading out on the Choose the Bear Tour!
Choose the Bear Tour is an eight-week bike ride across Michigan for women’s safety and autonomy. I’ll begin in the Upper Peninsula, cross to Sault Ste. Marie, then zigzag south to Detroit. Along the way, I’ll meet with frontline organizations that help women recover from abusive relationships and gender-based violence. I’ll cover the journey through writing, interviews, and social media.
This trip was inspired by my viral story on patriarchy and human wholeness, “A Woman Who Left Society To Live With Bears Weighs In On Man Or Bear.” Our goal is to open up useful conversations about women’s safety and autonomy, while advocating for survivors of gender-based violence. You can read more at Choosethebeartour.org, and follow the journey via my Facebook and Instagram.
The Choose the Bear Tour is a partnership with orsa credit union, a Michigan-based, for-impact credit union with a history of investing in women’s wellbeing. It’s a truly unique partnership that I’m honored to be a part of.
If you follow me on social media, I won’t start posting until May 20, our “official” start date. (I often delay posts about my location by a few days, for general safety.) But in reality, by the time you read this, I’ll be on my way to Michigan!
Creating The Safety That We Seek
The Choose The Bear Tour will center women’s stories, experiences, and realities. I ride in solidarity with survivors of gender-based violence.
On social media, I’ll focus on the adventure across Michigan. In my blogs for orsa, I’ll write about the structure of financial abuse in relationships of coercive control. And for outside publications, I’ll explore the foundations of gender-based violence through the lens of patriarchy and social change.
We live in a time when conversations about women’s safety and autonomy are still highly fraught. My man or bear story was widely celebrated as a balanced, hopeful perspective about our shared humanity; it also received some hateful backlash from men who didn’t want me to talk about gender-based violence. On my own social media pages and among my own community–including men I know in person–I often receive torrents of angry messages, some of which bring me to tears.
I am a soft soul and I’ve never really grown a tough skin. Instead, I’ve learned to feel things deeply and just keep moving. I’ve learned to see the world and everything that happens to me as useful data. I’ve learned to study my experiences–good and bad–and integrate them into a larger sense of hope.Some of the strongest, most extraordinary people I know are survivors of gender-based violence. They are my heroes and my inspiration on this ride.
About a third of all women will experience some form of physical or sexual violence in her lifetime. It’s a problem that we have to face, and I believe we can. I’m grateful to all the people who continue to show up to hard conversations–who continue to listen, empathize, and build the safety we seek. For me, this is what the Choose the Bear Tour is all about: it’s about becoming the safety that we seek for ourselves and each other.
Thank you for joining us on the journey!
