Spotlight: Jamie Lee Finch
JAMIE LEE FINCH is a sexuality and embodiment coach, intuitive healer, self-conversation facilitator, sex witch, and poet.
She is a founding member of The Sisterhood, and she caught up with Amelia Hruby in the midst of COVID-19 shutdowns to discuss the importance of embodiment, challenges healers and people who hold space are facing right now, and what The Sisterhood means to her during these times. This is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
can you tell us about yourself and your business?
My name is Jamie Lee Finch. I am a sexuality and embodiment coach. I'm also a poet and an author. I self-published a book last year called You Are Your Own reckoning with the religious trauma of Evangelical Christianity.
My sexuality and embodiment coaching is generally a four to six month long program where I work with people to shift their perspective of their body from objectification to personification. I hold space for moving people from calling their bodies an “it” to treating their bodies like a person. That’s very personal work, but it also includes education about the objectifying systems that taught us to relate to our bodies as if our bodies are an object or a machine—aka authoritarian religion, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, diet culture, etc.
What brought you to The Sisterhood, and how has it impacted your business so far?
I found out about Sister from Caitlin Metz who designed my website and runs On Being in Your Body. Because my work is about breaking down objectifying systems, she told me about Proposals for the Feminine Economy. That book was so important to me, and at this point, I’ve actually bought and given away more copies of it than my own book, because the ethic completely matches up with my work.
So when The Sisterhood opened, it was no question if I was going to join, because it's so aligned with what I'm trying to teach myself and the people I'm working with.
In terms of how The Sisterhood has impacted my business, there are so many things. First, the questions asked in that space have helped me get clear with myself on what I think about certain things in business and feminism. I also really appreciate that it’s been a space of occasional frivolity, because it helps me decenter the capitalist paradigm that work always has to be work. Because it's a feminist entrepreneur group, there's a switch in my brain that says: I'm working when I'm here because I have on my entrepreneur hat, but I’m also playing when I’m here, because it’s so enjoyable. It’s really helped me fuse work and play together in a way that feels good.
The Sisterhood has also been a great place for creating connection and community. I don't know many people who are in business in the way that I am in business. A lot of the business-owners I know have either have been running their own business for a long time or have very recently started a business. But I've been in business for two and a half years which means I’m at a different place than either group.
The Sisterhood definitely feels like a peer space, which is awesome because most peer business spaces that I encounter are not very feminist, and most feminist spaces are not usually very business-oriented. So for me, The Sisterhood is a very much needed peer space, and it's a peer space with a shared ethic.
How has this pandemic impacted your business? What are you noticing has changed for yourself and for your clients?
In terms of the financials of my business, I didn’t have a significant drop off in income, because I didn't have a significant drop off in clients, and I have passive income that comes with my book sales. So right at first I felt like my business was unchanged to some degree.
But then I started to realize that my body had some additional information for me about how this wasn't all normal. I realized that I used to be able to do five or six client sessions a day and now I'm exhausted after two. In theory, I'm not doing much, but my body processing this uncertain, really frightening time is actually doing a lot.
A thing I say a lot is that I do inner work for a living. That means I hold space to facilitate other people doing their inner work, but also I can't do my job unless I'm doing my inner work. I've heard from so many people who want to work with me right now because of what they're noticing and what's coming up within them. But then I feel limited in how much I have to offer, how many hours a week I can work, and how many clients I can take on right now because I'm also processing my own inner child grief work at this moment in time.
So lately I find I'm feeling like I'm functioning at a lower capacity, but I'm telling myself the story that I need to be opening up my capacity because my clients need more from me. I think it’s important to say that that's not necessarily a true story. My clients don't need my productivity. They just need my presence.
All of that is to say, I feel like I’m not affected by the pandemic in the sense that most small business owners have been. But my energy level to do the depths of what I do for a living has felt very affected. And that's probably the hardest thing for me to deal with right now.
Knowing how your business has changed since January (when you joined The Sisterhood), what would you say to someone considering joining The Sisterhood now?
First of all, I want to say that The Sisterhood is completely worth the money. I know that uncertain financials are probably holding people back from making investments in monthly memberships right now. When everything started, I sat down and made a list of all my memberships to assess where my money was going. I paused or ended a number of them, but I never even put The Sisterhood on the list because I never considered leaving it. It's not only very well priced for all of the value that we're getting, it is also incredibly worth the money for the energy it creates.
For example, a couple months ago I had a pitch with a company that wanted to help me create an online course. After the pitch I had a bunch of questions about the contract they sent over. So I asked those questions in The Sisterhood, because without that space I would have had no idea who else to ask. And I got back not just great information but also so much attention and care from the other members. They said things like, “Hey, I'm going to send you this thing. Keep in touch. Let me know how this goes. Follow up with me on this.” It's not just they they were providing me resources, but also actual tangible support. Like, “I'm not just giving you a tool and then sending you on your way. I'm here with you in this.”
So for me, being a part of The Sisterhood means contributing time, money, and energy in the direction of this thing that I deeply believe in. And then getting back real support from a community that shares my values. It’s such a great example of feminist business practice at work.
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