Jar 04: On Biting Off What You Can Chew

I have a lot more questions than I do answers, and it's truly the questions I want us to gather around.

New! Listen to me read you this post 🥰

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Hey hey, I’m Martina.

Empty Jars is where I think and build out loud. Each month, I’ll explore the thoughts, questions, inspirations, and challenges that inform and shape my work as a storyteller, community builder and entrepreneur. Consider it an invitation to join in - a call and response, if you will.

I recently celebrated my 35th birthday ( 🎉) and to honor it, I'm fundraising to support people and families affected by ICE raids in Brooklyn and New York City. My goal is to raise $3,500, $7,000 stretch. I’m $500 short of my goal - will you help me reach it?

CashApp: $MtinaAbrahams

Venmo: @Martina-Abrahams

What’s inside this Jar

• Removing the Lid: A reset

• What’s Filled Me Up: Alvin Ailey’s love for himself and his people

• Where I’ve Poured Into: Our Ancestors Were Messy

A collage made by me!

Removing the Lid

Hi, hey, hello! How did we get 3 months into 2025? At the top of the year I had big goals of getting more consistent with my writing and actually sticking to my monthly publishing goal. Then life lifed. But I can’t even really blame it on that. I really just bit off more than I can chew.

I have half a dozen or so unfinished drafts for this Jar. One about the relationship between the depressing tiny windows on this new affordable housing complex by my place and God’s intentions for human creativity. Another about the interplay between discomfort, isolation and visioning. One more about how I would have been a sun worshipper if born in another lifetime, and how that influences my pricing for a new program I’m developing.

I was out here trying to write like Audre Lorde when I needed to be taking baby steps. I am not on her level yet.

I also needed to ground myself in why I started this newsletter in the first place. My intention was always for this to be a vessel for building community and growing as a thinker and builder. You wouldn’t know from my writing so far that I have a lot more questions than I do answers; and it's truly the questions I want us to gather around.

I didn’t anticipate how shy this would make me. It’s one thing to write about the questions I’ve already answered, the mountains and molehills I’ve already cleared. It’s another thing to invite you into the ideas that aren’t fully formed. That make me nervous, or feel foolish, for their audacity.

It's crazy how fear can creep up, and the many forms it can take. Until now, I never quite pinpointed how much fear of other people’s limitations kept me from talking about my work. I cringe when I run into someone I haven’t seen in awhile and they ask, “how’s the podcast?” “What are you working on?” “What do you do?” How do I explain in 30 seconds that I’m conceiving a universe powered by our true-life stories? Where we are the muse, subject and consumer of different forms of media, publishing and experiences? That I want to exist in every Black home so every Black child can see Black people who are like them and not like them at all, and love it all? That’s stewarded and sustained by the community and whose abundance is shared with them too?

I guess I could just say that lol.

Instead of giving my usual answer, ”oh you know, figuring it out,” in an effort to avoid the blank stares, quick subject changes, knock downs, or capitalistic brainstorming I anticipate.

Anyways, I'm 35 now and it feels time to grow past this. Past my fear of not making sense being misunderstood, past my fear of seeming unserious not being taken seriously, past my fear of getting told it’s not possible other people’s limitations.

The format for these will be a little different moving forward. Think of them as seeds to inspire collective dreaming and exploration, and calls for input. The worst thing you could do is to leave me hanging. Well, maybe sunsetting is probably worse. Instead of doing those things, I ask that you consider and dream alongside me. Share things that feel aligned. Lovingly critique. Via email, or my preferred way, which is in the comments.

Finally, I will keep publishing monthly as my stretch goal, but every other month is more realistic.

In Bravery,

Martina

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After nearly a decade as an independent media maker, last year I finally came to terms with the business model flaws¹ that push us (me) out, burn us (me) out, and ultimately cause independent houses (like mine). to close shop. This year, You Had Me at Black turns 9 and to survive, we’re making a pivot that bucks conventional small business wisdom but brings us back to why I started this thing in the first place - to encourage everyday people to share their stories. I’m making a bet that I can deliver liberatory experiences to our community that they value and are willing to pay for, enough to achieve financial sustainability. No more chasing corporations or institutions for a check. There is no love for my people there!

Five years ago I started dreaming about the relationship between community and media. Right now it’s extractive - our communities are mined for stories (read: trauma), with no after care and no share in the ownership of the produced work or any of the monetary gain it drives. Journalists can cover a story and sell it for a book/podcast/TV/film deal, while the people the story is actually about receive little to no compensation, because of journalistic integrity. Meanwhile, if audiences respond well, a whole gang of financiers will get a nice return. When media is produced for research, like an oral history project, the profiled communities often don’t even receive access to the completed work; it’ll sit behind an institutional paywall, only available in exchange for hundreds of dollars.

Sounds a lot like this to me.

So today I’m asking:

• What is the value of a story? What is your story worth to you? What are other people's stories worth to you?

• What could the relationship between media and community look like? How might that relationship prioritize the care and equity of a community?

• If someone captured your story, what access or benefit / gain would you desire? What would make you feel whole, in every sense of the word?

What’s Filled Me Up

• To explore these questions above, I’ve turned to the solidarity economy: everything from sou-sous to cooperatives, to profit-sharing models. The steward ownership model is one that’s piqued my interest and am marinating on. As a place to start, this toolkit has simple explainers and case studies that I’m still making my way through.

• The Edges of Ailey Exhibit at the Whitney Museum closed last month, but before it did, I went 3x (shout out to Free Fridays and 2nd Sundays). You can tell when an artist (and curator) works from a place of love. Love oozed out of Ailey. The way he admired and respected Black women, the way he held his own queerness, the way he revered his southern roots and community, and the way he brought them all together in his art and business. Ailey made sure the people he created for could actually enjoy the work - his company’s tours stopped at YMCAs, community centers, and HBCUs in addition to concert halls. And he documented and saved so much of his process, from journal entries to session scribbles to postcards and letters with friends and collaborators.

• This essay by

  Harmony Holiday
  about what we’ve lost with the dissolution of the rap group and rise of the solo great man emcee (hint: the men are not ok and battles are a cry for help): “I’m praying the genre outruns him and his enemy-cronies and reminds them they are grown men writing one another poems, in love with one another and the form so intensely that they are forgetting what love is, how it requires more strength than cruelty to uphold.” 😮‍💨

• This birthday drawing by my 8 yr old cousin Charley!! Girl power! Martina the baddie prrrr 💅🏾

Where I’ve poured Into

One of my favorite projects I’ve ever worked on is out now: Our Ancestors Were Messy, a show about our ancestors and all their drama. In it my friend + host Nichole Hill and her guests bring to life the gossip columns of Black Reconstruction-era newspapers. A recent episode tells the story of Oscar Micheaux - “a dreamer from Smallville - who, at the turn of the century makes his way to the big city searching for fame, fortune...and a change to his single status! What he finds is a wife he loves, a father-in-law he hates, and a path into Black history he could have never imagined.”

I love this show because our ancestors, they’re just like us. We’re just like them. Figuring out love, life, and freedom - making mistakes (and breakthroughs) along the way. At the end of the day, we’re all just ancestors in training. Listen to OAWM wherever you get your podcasts, and follow along on IG.

Until next time 🤎

1. Dominant media business models like advertising, sponsorship and investments require approval from corporate elite. Black and other creators and audiences suffer from their limited perceptions, risk aversion, and ROI priorities as a result.