In All About Love, bell hooks writes about love as an active choice built through care, responsibility, trust, knowledge, and respect. That deeply resonated with me because so much of my own life has been shaped not through romantic partnership, but through friendship, collaboration, mentorship, music scenes, mutual aid, and building spaces with people over long periods of time. Some of the deepest love I've experienced has come through creating things alongside others. Through teaching each other. Supporting each other. Sitting around after work talking about life. Building something together that becomes larger than any one individual inside it.

I believe that love, in that sense, is one of the only real counterforces to patriarchy. Patriarchal systems rely on domination, isolation, extraction, fear, and disconnection. Love asks us to remain connected. To stay accountable to one another. To recognize that we affect each other.

But none of this works through leadership alone. I can build structures that prioritize care, fairness, communication, flexibility, and mutual respect. But this kind of ecosystem only works when everyone participating in it is willing to engage consciously too. It's a two-way street.

We need employees who want to be accountable to each other, not just themselves. We need people who are willing to communicate honestly, participate in the culture, and contribute to something larger than individual gain. We need customers who understand that where we spend our money reflects our values, and who actively choose to support businesses trying to operate differently.

None of us can build this alone.

This is where people sometimes get stuck. We all want care, but participating in care can feel vulnerable, especially after living inside systems that taught us to expect exploitation, scarcity, disposability, or self-protection at all costs.

I planted a large rose bush in front of Queen of Swords Salon in Bushwick. When I first opened, the little square of sidewalk it lives in was just dirt packed with broken glass. Over the years people have thrown garbage, needles, dog shit, and all kinds of things into that flower bed. I've had neighbors tell me to give up. Why bother? Nobody appreciates it.

But then I'll see a child trying to smell the flowers. Or someone taking a photo beside them with their elderly parent. Or a stranger stopping for a moment to appreciate something beautiful on an otherwise chaotic block. And honestly, that's enough for me. I'll keep tending to it as long as I'm here.

That's the energy I'm trying to bring. Because if we want different systems, we have to practice behaving differently inside them. We have to show up for each other. Community is not something we passively consume, it's something we build together.

Queen of Swords has survived and grown for nine years because enough people chose to keep showing up. Not because the system made it easy, but because they believed something different was worth tending to. Employees, clients, collaborators, and the strangers who stopped to smell a rose bush on a chaotic block in Bushwick.

That means everything to me. If any of this resonates with you, I'd love to keep the conversation going. Bring it to your next appointment. And thanks for being here :)

-Elma