Interdependence: A FutureMaker's Perspective on Success
BY VICTORIA FOSTER
Co-Founder & Chief Catalyst, FutureWomenX
My birthday was this week - Monday, June 19th, JUNETEENTH. Like many white people in the US, I didn’t even know the full history of the day growing up. The day that is considered the effective end of slavery and second Independence Day in the U.S., when federal troops arrived in Texas to ensure that all enslaved people were freed two and half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
This year, I spent a lot of time reflecting on what it means to share a birthday with such an important historical event and now, finally as of 2021, an official national holiday. My first feelings - honored, humbled and accountable.
“No one is free until we are all free” are the words that reverberate in my soul.
What has shifted in me is that my birthday is no longer just an “I” experience, rather one of “WE” and “US”. It is a critical reminder and celebration of our collective interdependence and responsibility.
These themes were echoed over the past month. As part of our special FWX Success Table Topic invitation, I hosted a diverse group of 8 women at my house in Brooklyn for a breakfast to explore the question “What does success mean to us?”
An overarching theme in our conversation was of the reframe of success as thriving versus striving. Success is first about our BEING versus our doing - it is something not measured by external benchmarks or a destination per se but a dynamic internal experience. The experience of our personal agency in living life on our own terms and the journey of becoming our truest selves, living in our fullest power.
While many of us spoke about carrying it forward, mentoring, and leaving a legacy, one of the guests prompted us to go deeper. “We” often first answer the question “what does success mean to me?” based on our individual experience, but what about the success of our communities more broadly? Can we be truly “successful” if those around us are not able to live into themselves?
Being is an experience in relation to others - humans and other living things. Once we shift from success as an external benchmark of what we’ve accomplished to WHO we are BEING in the world, success becomes a relational term. It requires us to take responsibility for how our individual being and actions impact upon the whole, particularly those who have been marginalized by our dominant systems and culture. It also requires us to give up the myth of the solo hero and understand that our being is intertwined and interdependent with that of ALL others. As Heather McGhee states so clearly, we are “The Sum of Us”.
There is much more to be shared on what came up across the Success Table Topics conversations (stay tuned for next newsletters) but for today, I want to challenge us all to consider a couple of questions:
What does the success of your communities mean to you?
How can you contribute to the success of your communities by living and leveraging the fullness of you?
And, I want to inspire our collective success by amplifying and borrowing from The 22 Fund’s (whose mission is to raise economic equality and opportunity for everyone, especially women and BIPOC, founded by the amazing FWX Alumna Tracy Gray) newsletter on Monday, and sharing Lift Every Voice and Sing the “Black National Anthem.”
Who we are and what we do matters.
#wearebettertogether!