Relational Editing

In Conversation with the Center for Humans & Nature

BACKGROUND IMAGE BY JESS DRAWHORN

Throughout 2023, Loam Co-Editors Kate Weiner and Kailea Loften curated an essay series for the Center for Humans & Nature (CHN) as Editorial Fellows.

We are grateful to CHN for their sustaining support, and excited to share that our collaborative publication is now available for pre-order! “How Do We Come Together in a Changing World?” is an anthology of essays that explores disposability culture and community care (you can read an essay by Dr. Kyle Mays on kinship as solidarity from our series here).

As part of our Editorial Fellowship with CHN, we spent an extended weekend together at Mesa Refuge last June. This retreat was a cherished opportunity to be in community.

Our conversation, below, is excerpted from a longer interview with CHN Managing Editor Katherine Kassouf Cummings that we recorded during our time at the Mesa Refuge in 2023. In it, we speak to the art of editing, as well as our intention in curating this series.

Before you begin, we want to provide some context.

Relationship—what makes movements move—is complicated. Relationships can be beautiful, expansive, and nourishing. They can also be messy, toxic, and frustrating. So, when we ask how do we come together in a changing world? we are also asking:

• How do we create space for nuance in our movement-building without exculpating ourselves from right action?

• How do we hold space for the possibility of generative conflict?

• How do we sharpen discernment?

• How do we facilitate spaces where we can practice belonging and care with one another?

We want to note for this series that our “we” isn’t universal. As Mia Birdsong notes in the seminal text, “How We Show Up”, we’re “not talking about building deep connection with people whose moral compass is broken or who don’t respect your basic humanity.”¹ That is bigger than—and beyond—the scope of this inquiry.

With this series, we are more interested in considering how we might talk to a beloved friend who has hurt us or work with a colleague whose theory of change doesn’t exactly align with our own. We are interested in learning how to cultivate the relational skills to navigate rupture and repair, better distinguish between discomfort and danger, challenge groupthink, and cultivate a sustaining sense of solidarity within our movements.

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Katherine: What guides you as editors?

Kate: I think for both of us, editing is really relational. As an editor I really love the opportunity to tend to pieces that have a soft strength to them. I think that is an energy that Kailea and I both hold. I am drawn to stories where there is a power to them, but the way that the story is presented is compassionate and nuanced and makes space for multitudes. I think that has always shaped how I orient towards editing and what I am interested in curating as an editor.

I love working on projects that feel conversational to some extent. I think ideas around accessible writing can be diluted, but there are so many different ways for a voice to feel accessible. And it is authentic—when it feels like someone is speaking to you from a place of open-heartedness and shared interest. I desire to create pieces that are challenging and inspiring, that weave in new perspectives and practices, but are also pleasurable to read—it shouldn’t feel exhausting or make you feel dumb. I've had that experience reading some things before. I'm like, “damn, I don't understand this at all.” There might be beautiful ideas or gems in there, but I can't access them.

Kailea: I think when I consider social movement building, you have to make language accessible. You have to make a story accessible for an everyday person. I've learned a lot about editing through my husband, just through living with him and watching him go through his process. Any piece that I put out publicly, I always share with Kate and (my husband) Adam for backend editing support. Adam has shown me that as an editor you have to be in service to the piece.

My husband has interviewed hundreds of people, and I remember him sharing this secret with me, which is that no one talks in sound bites. And I just remember being mind-blown. I really had no idea. But that's the magic and the work of being the editor. You take a raw form of what someone is trying to convey to you, either through an audio interview or through writing, and you help craft and hone in on what the true message or narrative is. That’s what you're in service to. Now I think as an editor, and Kate and I talked about this a lot, when we're working with writers, we don't actually place the writer at the center in terms of the work being about them on the ego level.

Right now, I want to work with people who want to push themselves with their writing. We always say, the first draft you send in is a first draft. We take that draft through a second, third, sometimes even a fourth iteration so that at the end we all feel in consensus about the piece being finalized. We want it to be clear for the reader what points the author is trying to bring through. I would say that now as an editor, I’m engaging more of my mind as I’m going through the editing process. I’m more attached to trying to be in this co-creative space of really questioning with the contributor what it is they’re trying to convey to us.

Katherine: When I hear you both talk about your work as editors, I'm thinking about how editors play a role in communication, which is such a core quality of being a part of a social species—being human—of establishing and maintaining relationship. What I'm hearing as you talk is a responsibility to really interrogate what is being presented as that first draft. There’s a responsibility as an editor to really question and to advocate for readers. And it involves advocating for the writer, too, in the end, and the ideas the writer is trying to frame and communicate. I want to emphasize what I’m hearing about “relationship,” and how engaged we are in a social experience—in relational work. Even though I think that there’s a perception of editors that we’re engaged in very isolated work. The beauty of the work, I think it’s at its best in what you’re both describing: this engagement and dialogue.

Kate: Editing is so relational, and it requires both people (editor and writer) to decenter themselves in service of the story. My mom focuses on editing memoir. So, when I was growing up, she’d often have people she was working with come to the house, and it was a relational process. You can really see how it takes years sometimes to refine a story, to really figure out what makes it meaningful. So much of that means you have to let go.

There might be something that feels immensely important to you to share, but that in the context of the story can be distracting or confusing. Or there’s a line that’s really beautiful that you have to realize, I just need to compost this because it doesn't make sense here. More than anything, you have to realize that you can't edit your own work. I give everything I write to Kailea because there is no way I could edit this in order for it to be truly good. I think that’s a difficult thing to contend with at this moment where there’s been such an emphasis on individuals that we need to recognize and remember ourselves back into relationship because story is a collective effort.

Katherine: That’s beautifully said. I'm thinking of Jeanine Canty’s essay from this series, and her work around narcissism, too. When you're describing how editing your own work really does not serve what you're communicating, unless you’re the only audience for the work.

Let’s turn now to the Questions for the Resilient Future series that the Center for Humans and Nature publishes. You both curated this question how do we come together in a changing world? I'd love for both of you to share how you found the question, why it was important for you, and then also why you felt now was the time to bring it forward in community.

Kailea: Kate and I always have themes, questions, and projects that are on the back burner.

Kate: Always.

Kailea: Which is, I think, a part of what has made our collaboration feel so generative. We’re in an endless space together with creation and ideas. And so something that has been on the back burner for a few years was ultimately what we refined the question down to, with a sub-theme of really wanting to explore a culture of disposability; and this is a social disposability. We have this incredible essay that’s brought in from the organization Weaving Earth, where the authors compare and contrast disposability of objects and items, what we consider physical garbage, with the disposability of people and explore the myth of “away,” in which case there is no “away” for either of these things. We can't throw away items—we all know this now with the garbage patches existing in the ocean and landfills running out of space. And also with people. I think we have some lessons that we’re starting to glean over the last years of intensive polarization socially and politically, which is that when someone is canceled, this idea that they just go away somewhere isn’t true. I think even in the case where people feel isolated in some way socially, we’ve noticed that people are susceptible to even becoming radicalized.

I think both of us, as editors, had moments where we questioned if we would be canceled for what it is that we were putting out. There have been real fears around is there going to be retaliation against us? There have been moments where we felt like we had to center a contributor over centering the writing because they didn’t like being edited. I think honestly, it’s an ego space—that’s how I read people now who don't wanna be edited or don’t think they need to be edited. 

We felt like we had to place people at the center instead of the work at the center or even the reader at the center, because we felt scared. I think over the years we’ve worked together, we’ve done a lot of courage building. I feel, at this moment in time, really clear about who I am as a person and really clear about when I feel out of integrity and when I don’t. For me, that sensation of being out of integrity in my body is one of my biggest guiding points.

I feel clear about wanting to speak out on some of the social issues regarding cancel culture and this idea that some people’s lives are somehow worth less or this idea that we can throw people away without remorse. I think oftentimes in the social sphere, especially online, we’re not good at holding nuance and we’re not good at being critical thinkers. I really want to move away from that and instead support spaces of critical thinking to exist, while also asking people to take more responsibility for themselves. We’re past a point where this idea that Loam as a publication is going to be a safe space for everyone. That’s not realistic. And I don't want to promise that to anyone: that I can meet every facet of that person’s story and who they are and make them feel comfortable and good at every moment all the time.

Especially when I consider my own process of critical thinking when I’m being challenged to look at my own bias, an idea or something that I’m reading, I’m not feeling comfortable, it’s like a grating of the self. Do I believe this truth that I was holding as a truth now that I have this information? Does it still stand as strong, or do I need to maybe shift my perspective or take on a new truth? And that’s how I grow and learn and evolve as a person. I don’t want to be Kailea of 2023 in ten years, just like, I’m so grateful I’m not still 21-years old mentally. 

I think everyone wants the opportunity to grow, but with the certain social conditions we've been in, we've actually been stunting our ability to grow. So that's what the series is about. We’re trying to create more spaciousness for that conversation to open up about what growth can actually look like for us internally, and also what personal responsibility can look like for us without having to have our hand held all the time.

Kate: I resonate so much with what you just shared, Kailea, and it’s making me think about something we’ve spoken to in this series, which is how we’re continually remade within the container of collaboration, and so we’re always learning new things. We’re always composting old ways of being. I look back even on the last few years alone, and there’s some stuff I just had to learn by doing it and making that mistake. There are things I would do really differently now, and I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful that I’m not a static thing; that capacity to change and respond and grow is evidence of life. And I want to be living and I want this work to be living. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about why this project feels especially meaningful in this moment. Not just given the landscape of relationality that social media has wrought, but also how there’s this real pull towards black-and-white thinking. I understand what makes it so seductive. In this profoundly painful moment, we need to take urgent action, and I get that. This is where somatic practices are so helpful because I think there’s a real need to discern, and being discerning will require you to slow down and breathe and practice embodiment. And that’s lifelong work. Something I feel so grateful for in this moment is that I feel very held in my community, and I have a clear sense of who I feel immediate accountability to. I also feel like I’ve been really gifted over the years an understanding of how to discern and to sense what feels in integrity and what doesn’t. And again, that’s always evolving and changing, and I want that for other people, too. I want everyone to feel at home in their bodies and able to discern. There’s a real need to continually be in that practice together.

Katherine: Thank you for speaking to the body and the somatic experience, and for bringing those ideas into the series. Can you share some of the ideas and stories that have come through in response to this question? 

Kailea: I had written down this line from the essay by contributors from Weaving Earth. Lauren Hage, who is one of the directors of Weaving Earth, where they run a youth program, had witnessed younger children in the game of playing private property. She wrote, “training in the rules of society starts early.” What that line evokes for me, considering this broader theme and the rest of the essays, is just thinking about the conditioning that we have all experienced and continue to live into. I’m in this moment of time wanting to let people know that you have the choice to shed conditioning that is no longer serving you.

In the essay there is also a theme of group think. Group think has the potential to be brilliant. There have been moments when I’ve been in group educational programs where I’ve totally released into the thought fields of the space and I feel like what’s coming through me as ideas don’t even necessarily belong to me because we’re in this field together. It’s generative and really juicy and exciting. That’s a style of group think that I love.

But then there’s this group think that is oriented around scarcity and ultimately this desire for belonging. It’s a sensation of feeling like you don’t belong; that’s the scarcity piece. And so you have to go along with what the dominant narrative is or the dominant society is so that you can find a space of belonging and feel acceptance in a way. That form of group think has the potential, as we've seen in recent years, to be really dangerous. It takes courage to assess what group you might be a part of, or what aspects of group think you might have even unconsciously fallen into, and to start to reconsider how to actually step back and even how to use your voice. I want to let people know that that’s always a possibility. There is always a choice, and there will always be people ready to meet you on the other side.

Kate: I’ve been really sitting with the interview we did with Lucía Oliva Hennelly, who is a political organizer and a Zen practitioner. I really loved how she spoke to spiritual disciplines in framing this conversation and what Zen Buddhism can give us in terms of how to approach ideas around compassion that are really grounded. And to do that requires a certain kind of discipline and devotion that means we’re always in the act of questioning and listening and learning. I really love how she wove these two worlds together. That’s what has made Lucía’s piece so powerful, she’s very fierce and forthcoming. I think sometimes we think that strength can’t coexist with nuance or compassion but I felt like she really illuminated how that can be. 

Katherine: The ideas you were just speaking to require us to not just think about how we’re handling each other, but the implications for how we’re handling each other, how we relate to each other as they then become a filter for how we relate to the rest of the world, to other lives beyond the human. This has been a big project, to gather so many writers and thinkers and curate this series of responses to the question of how to come together at this time. What were challenges that you experienced working on this question? 

Kate: We’ve been in the conversation on this subject for such a long time, and I still can find myself accelerating into judgment. I want to distance myself—when maybe there’s a sentence that didn’t land, and my first impulse is to delete it. But that’s not the work. The work of this is to invite in complication and to let myself be challenged. And it may be that after critically reflecting on it and talking with friends that I find, yeah, that idea doesn’t feel true, or maybe with time it does. More than anything, it’s not really for me alone to gatekeep based on what my ideology is in this moment and to impose that upon whatever it is that I’m editing. That’s not the work of an editor. The work is really to serve the story, to decenter yourself and your own ego and positioning to some extent. I think that was a challenge—that the very thing we’re tending to and exploring, I could still find myself enacting. I could feel that heat in my own body. It pushed me into a place of realizing that this is deep conditioning. These are the waters we’re swimming in right now as a culture. Disposability culture, which contributors from Weaving Earth note is supremacy culture—that lives in me and that can manifest the desire to make this “good” and this “bad” and this “right” and this “wrong.” You have to really continue to be a critical thinker and continually challenge and decolonize and decondition yourself.

Kailea: Editing is such an invisible labor that I think the challenge of being an editor is being an editor. Most people don’t know really what’s going into it. It’s also its own art form, which is the editing with the curation. There is a lot of pre-designed work that goes into trying to figure out how to match voices with each other that have maybe never come into conversation with each other before. What you’re trying to do is make sure that in the outcome of all those voices together, there’s a through line and a clear message that resonates as an ending point, but you don’t know what it will ultimately be before the pieces are actually written or before the interviews are actually done. You always start out with an idea of what it could be, and then you have to take the idea and throw it out the window in order to completely show up for what shows up.

Then once you have all the material as the curator and the editor of all the perspectives, you have to find the through voice that is one entity. The contributors aren’t talking to each other, so you have to become the voice through all of them to make sure that the ending point is cohesive. That’s what I love about editing, you have no idea what will be. But it’s also a challenge and it’s a completely invisible challenge no one knows except your co-editor, if you have one. When we’re working, I go to sleep with the project every night and I’m having dreams about the through line and I’m waking up with ideas. You have to empty yourself in order to receive it. 

Katherine: I love framing editing as an art. It’s true! Moving this project out into the world, what has the question generated for your editorial work and how do you feel it influencing your publishing work going forward?

Kate: The series has really gifted me with some tangible practices and perspectives around what it will take to transform our culture of disposability into a culture of care. I'm really curious about living into that as an editor, but also as a person and in my creative collaborations and the projects we tend to at Loam. Every contributor brought forward something that I feel very gifted by and grateful to receive. Moving forward, I’ve been reflecting on what would it mean to honor that gift that they gave, the gift of their time and energy, and reframe how I can embody that in how I approach publishing as praxis, as an expression of the care that I hold for our communities and our climate. 

Kailea: We’re recording this right as the series is launching online, and I think it remains to be seen in terms of what it will bring out in readers. That’s the thing about working in publishing: There is a quality of energetics around putting something out. And there are the readers and how they receive it and then what they bounce back from receiving it. That’s the energy that keeps me continuing to want to generate and explore. I don’t know what the quality of that energy will be from the readers or what this might spur, in terms of other spaces that might open in dialogue. 

Katherine: Kailea, can you talk about the relationship between this question and the work that you're doing with Black and Native communities? 

Kailea: For context, my mom is Black and my father is First Nations, so I sit in this middle point between these two worlds. Over the years, I’ve been quietly doing narrative strategy as a way to bridge build between Black and Indigenous communities. This has looked like facilitating a panel where panelists explored some of the pain and possibility points between these groups, coalition building with Black-led climate organizations as a climate justice organizer with the Indigenous power building organization NDN Collective and more recently, putting together an issue of Loam called “Black and Native Attention as Miracle.” 

“Black and Native Attention as Miracle” was the first time that I publicly explored these two identities. The entire issue was composed of Black and Native contributors, or people who identified as Afro-Indigenous. A theme that emerged was about recognizing each other as kin, and was explicitly brought forward by Afro-Indigenous scholar and author, Dr. Kyle Mays who we had interviewed for that issue. In 2023 I published the LANDBACK Magazine through NDN Collective, where I featured a long form interview I facilitated with NDN Collective’s Policy and Advocacy Director, Janene Yazzie and Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty (BLIS) Collectives, Trevor Smith and Savannah Romero. 

In this interview we detailed how the two main movements that Black and Indigenous people organize around, reparations and Land Back, are inherently at odds with each other. Historically speaking, the land reparations promised to Black people are in opposition with Land Back, so there is a tension of figuring out how we reconcile painful histories between us by making sure that our liberatory calls are encompassing beyond our individual communities. As Dr. Kyle Mays reminds us in this series, we need to recognize the other as kin. This concept is something that can be applied to many different communities outside of this specific context. 

Katherine: Thank you for sharing that idea of kinship, Kailea. Even when there is apparent conflict or difference, this call to seek kinship keeps us in connection, where possibilities for change and transformation can emerge. Thank you both for tending this question how do we come together in a changing world? especially as it guides us towards places of connection—and thank you for the courage and commitment you bring to this work.

1.  Birdsong, M. (2020). How We Show Up: Building Community in these Fractured Times. Hachette Books.