MARCH 7-WEEK || Unblocked Again: Cancel Culture Edition

for artists and creators looking to find secure attachment with their creativity

with Mia (they/them)

VIRTUAL: Mondays, March 3–April 14, 5–7pm PT / 8–10pm ET. For students who can’t attend class live, there will be optional sessions Tuesday March 18 and Thursday April 10, 10–11:30am PT / 1–2:30pm ET so you can still participate in exercises live.

Recordings of live classes will be available only to students who registered for the full program in advance. If and only if I have to be on set and need to reschedule, makeup classes will be on Sundays, dates TBD.

Are you too frozen to create for fear of cancelation, scrutiny, or a toxic ex who might contact anyone who works with you? This one’s for you.

For anyone keeping themselves small for fear of getting canceled…

The email’s subject line read, “Cancelation: Unsolicited Advice.” I had predicted it from the moment I received the email from my editor in September of 2022 asking if I was interested in writing a book. My prophecy has always been strong, but this one I wrote off again and again as fear, paranoia, neuroses. A way to keep myself small. Avoid my purpose.

This was June 2024. A few days later, my 36-year-old cousin died of an inoperable, rapidly growing brain tumor. I was now contemplating various forms of mortality: the death of a relative, the death of a project, the death of my career, my own death. I still wake up with crushing fear like an elephant on my chest, afraid of a lurking demon in any physical or virtual shadow, come to take me away.

In the days after the cancelation, friends called me to check in, took me on walks, bought me lunch. My partner checked on me and stayed firmly in my corner. As I tried to bypass my grief by problem-solving and strategizing, those closest to me let me vent and word vomit.

Upon receiving word that the book was to be canceled, I reached out to people I’ve worked with, asking them to write to my editor on my behalf. I figured if the editor and publishing house took one email disparaging me seriously, maybe they’d take 30 testimonials from people who’ve actually worked with me seriously. I was wrong. One by one, each person who wrote an email, myself included, got locked out of our Gmail accounts for “spam.” It took a couple days of people telling me they’d gotten locked out for me to piece together what was going on. The upside was that I got to see some of the emails written by colleagues I deeply respect. Many very successful, busy people took time out of a workday to stop what they were doing and write to my editor singing my praises.

A couple days after the cancelation but before my cousin’s death, I had the idea to publish the book on Substack. Having a plan of action gave me a brief respite from the pain. But I began to worry that this person—or the people she’d gotten to—could be around any corner, could be emailing anyone associated with me, could take to the internet to tear me down publicly. When I didn’t hear back from a colleague via email, I wondered if they’d been contacted; when a gig fell through for totally normal reasons, I worried they’d heard something about me. I wondered who I needed to warn, what kind of damage control I could or should do. I considered legal action. I felt helpless, hopeless. I fantasized about anonymity and entertained the idea of moving to some remote place, never to be recognized.

Then my book agent dropped me. A few days later, I told my speaking agent what happened and he replied, “I’m so sorry this is happening to you. But you are in a club of about half my client roster.” It seemed from his response that, when you work primarily with activists, thought leaders, and change makers, you know that this is par for the course. He told me he gets emails like the one my editor received about various clients frequently. I left this conversation feeling like he’d set a new bar: This was the barrier to entry into my inner circle, onto my team. I need to be working with people who stand behind me and what I’m doing, who understand the enormous risks involved, and who have the spine to withstand it alongside me.

•••

One of the most sinister things about what we call Cancel Culture is the way those witnessing a cancelation develop secondhand fear. Some people close to me told me that seeing what was happening to me made them, too, want to hide and go quiet. I developed my own acute fear of cancelation due to witnessing my friend and colleague’s very public cancelation a few years ago. I remember thinking, “If this is happening to her, this could happen to me. To anyone.” The harm ripples and reverberates outward, spreading fear and doubt. The preemptive, self-inflicted silencing of these voices that need and deserve to be heard is, to me, a tragedy.

And yet each of us has also made mistakes. We recognize those mistakes and are committed to doing better. We don’t think in binaries of good and bad, right and wrong—at least not anymore. Though I didn’t harass anyone online or join any public callouts, I did participate in cancelation by unfollowing people when someone DM’d me saying “This person is bad,” as well as more subtle ways of enacting the same kind of harm in my relationships by trying to control what those around me do and say, where they go, who they talk to, where they shop, etc. And perhaps the most notable: I got a sick pleasure out of watching someone fall from grace online. I’d voyeuristically go back to their page to read the comments, and I think, as many of us do, They must have done something wrong if this is happening to them. I’m a cancel kid in recovery, you could say.

Those of us who fight daily to make the world a better place know that no one will come for you like your own. If you dare to take a stand and believe in something, try and fail to move the needle, you will be looked at with a microscope by people in your own community searching for how you’re doing it wrong. The people who will cancel you agree with 99 out of 100 things you say. I’m still learning to accept this.

•••

The book had been completed by the time it was canceled. I was in my final edits. We were discussing book cover designs the week prior. I meant to write a three-part book (I love a three-act structure), but now I’m writing a fourth part: Canceled: The part I never wanted to have to write.

In the wake of the news, I went for a walk with my friend and brilliant musician, Sasha Ortiz. She said, “It’s almost like you didn’t know the book wasn’t finished yet.” I find my faith in art reinforced time and time again with moments like this, when the art reveals to you, the artist, its own final form, its own purpose. The work has an end in and of itself. It knows what it’s supposed to be better than you, its creator. I have a deep trust in my creative work that lets me listen to what the piece wants to be. This book had to be canceled. That is part of its story. Had I written the book like this as a work of fiction it would have been too predictable. As a memoir, I believe it’s a more complete work of art in its current form.

My hope is that by sharing my experience of the cancelation of Unsolicited Advice, those of you reading who fear a similar fate find solace and solidarity, as well as the courage to continue to put yourself out there. We have to fight this beast that seeks to keep us small by silencing controversial voices. I hope you find comfort in knowing you’re not alone in your fears, and that you continue to create loudly.

Find excerpts from my book, Unsolicited Advice: A Consent Educator’s (Canceled) Memoir, only on Substack.

Are other people judging you, or is it past versions of you?

Some consent practices for creativity:

• Only allow yourself 5 minutes to create/write/play music and then teach your body that you can hold that boundary by actually stopping.

• Pick up the guitar. Hold it. Feel what it feels like. / Open the document and just look at it. / Pick up the paintbrush and notice what it feels like in your hand. Do nothing else.

• Instead of asking yourself, “Is it good?” ask, “Do I like it?”

• Make dumb shit. Make something for no reason that is totally stupid. I wrote a song about it.

I now make music and sing (!!!), which two years ago was the scariest thing I could possibly imagine doing. You can check out my latest EP called Costumes. You can see my ceramics and read about my approach to it all on my art site. You can hear my conversation about consent and creativity with Serena Caffrey on the Share the Load Podcast.

Is this program for you?

This program is both a personal, professional, and creative development course for artists looking to cultivate secure attachment with their creativity, to return to a practice they burnt out on, or to forge one for the first time. If you:

• are keeping yourself small for fear of cancelation

• compare yourselves to others so much you don’t create

• create but are afraid to share your work

• freeze out of fear of doing or saying the wrong thing in your art

• struggle with people-pleasing tendencies in your work

• feel a codependent relationship with your art (“People need this from me, so I will give and give and give”)

• feel guilt or shame about making money with your art

• struggle to find motivation to create

• don’t know where to start or when to stop

• want to make more money from your art

• want to find a sacred relationship with play

• want to find a more easeful relationship with your authenticity and creative self-expression

• grapple with your ego as an artist and want to believe what you have is worth sharing with the world without feeling like an arrogant shithead

This class is for you. It is a trauma-informed, neurodiversity-aware course that takes into account the reality of the Capitalist system we live and create within.

What will we be doing?

This program will give you practice tools to access your creativity, work through perfectionism, mythbust the idea that making money off your work makes you a baaaaaaad evil Capitalist, and help you find or reconnect with your voice.

This is a hybrid live and recorded class. You’ll receive recordings of my Practice Saying No and Nonverbals classes (a $150 value) before we begin. We will work from my workbook Boundaries + Consent for People Pleasers in conjunction with the Unblocked workbook, which I built out of this class.

• Class 1: Perfectionism

• Class 2: People Pleasing

• Class 3: Inner Critic

• Class 4: Imposter Syndrome

• Class 5: Your Voice and Letting Go of What You Can’t Control

• Class 6: Asking for What You Want

• Class 7: Share your work!!! Invite your friends!

• There is an optional and open-to-the-public imposter syndrome practice class session hosted by Josie Alexandra, date TBD.

• For students who can’t attend classes live due to their time zone, work schedule, or other standing conflict, there will be two additional sessions: Tuesday March 18 and Thursday April 10, 10–11:30am PT / 1–2:30pm ET. This way, you can view class recordings for content and attend the live sessions to participate in exercises and breakout rooms.

Knowledge of boundaries and consent can help you find ever more nuance and subtlety in your communication. It gives more options, expands structure, and opens up space for creativity.

What you can expect from this course:

• a close look at your inner critic and where it comes from or whose voice is it

• practices for letting go of what you can’t control (e.g., what other people say or think about you)

• a deep dive into your blockages

• tools for self-regulation, grief processing, and setting up your care plan—as Risdon Roberts says, it’s not if but when you’re gonna get canceled

• a magnifying glass on the ways you may keep yourself small—perfectionism, anyone?

• a thorough examination of your self-sabotaging strategies

• exercises to help create an environment in which creativity can flourish

• a concrete, structured approach to your creative practice, centered around consent with yourself

Read what people are saying about these classes.

Payment + Pricing

This class is $499. Early bird pricing at $399 is available through February 3. There is a payment plan option that will allow you to pay in two installments, three weeks apart.

Get a discount by registering for the bundle option with this class + From “Is this right?” to “Do I like it?”: A Non-Hierarchical, Consent-Based Approach to Art Making (April 28–May 21).

You can read about why our prices are what they are on our Business + Financial Transparency page. If this is cost-prohibitive, you are always welcome to make me an offer, especially if you are in a country where the exchange rate makes this class financially inaccessible.

Please note: The deadline for refunds is 24 hours before the first class.

Register