Practicing Mutual Aid in Real Time: Discomfort, Power, and Community Care

CALLING ALL COACHES: What if your coaching practice felt sustainable, values-aligned, and deeply yours? Join feminist coaches Becky Mollenkamp and Taina Brown for a free workshop on Feb. 25th to learn 3 essentials for building a practice that lasts, and to draft your own liberatory coaching manifesto. Sign up at https://messyliberation.com/

👉 Capacity for Conflict workshop on March 11, 2026: https://feministfounders.co/workshop/

What does it actually look like to live your values — not in theory, but in the middle of a messy, real-life situation?

In this conversation, Becky and Faith unpack a recent experience that brought questions of mutual aid, identity, power, and discomfort to the surface. After an unexpected financial crisis, their community rallied to offer support — and what followed was a deeply honest exploration of what it means to ask for help, receive care, and navigate the complicated feelings that come with both.

Together, they reflect on the emotional and relational layers that surfaced: fears about perception, internalized narratives around self-sufficiency, the tension between gratitude and vulnerability, and the ways discomfort can be a doorway to growth rather than something to avoid.

They also introduce a framework for understanding conflict and discomfort through three key relationships — with ourselves, with others and power, and with the problem itself — offering listeners practical ways to approach hard moments with more curiosity and compassion.

If you’ve ever struggled to ask for support, worried about how you’re perceived, or wondered how to live your values when things get complicated, this episode offers both resonance and reflection.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why discomfort isn’t a problem to solve — it’s information
• The emotional realities of mutual aid and community support
• How identity and stereotype threat can shape our responses to crisis
• What it means to receive help without shame
• Navigating fears of judgment, performativity, or “getting it wrong”
• The difference between charity and collective care
• How power dynamics show up in everyday situations
• Practicing liberatory values in imperfect, real-time ways
• A framework for working with conflict through relationship awareness
• Moving from judgment to curiosity when discomfort arises

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