IMBY is a virtual community center for revolutionaries.
We’re a place to practice rest, to find nourishment, tools, and resources, and to connect with others who are seeking the same. IMBY is a place to be — to learn, soak up knowledge, connect deeply to one another — and not another membership program with a long to-do list. It's a place to be social off social media.
IMBY is a community co-created by the members, with transparency at its core. We hold anti-oppressive, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist values (though not an anti-racist educational space; we leave that to the experts, of course). We celebrate a variety of lived experiences, opinions, backgrounds, and identities while holding our values, security, and harm-reduction at the highest importance.
We seek to be your favorite place on the Internet to kick off your shoes and slide into your slippers, to take a load off, your soft place to land, exhale, and feel seen, heard, and understood, while simultaneously being the soft space to have hard conversations.
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The Story
I spent my entire childhood growing up wanting to "make the world a better place."
In college, I saw community care in action after Hurricane Katrina as a freshman at Tulane University in New Orleans. I thought I'd get a master's in social work because it was the only degree/job title I knew that was a general "make the world better" type of job.
I didn't end up going into social work. My first job out of college was working in a refugee resettlement office, working with newly arrived refugee youth. I was also volunteering for an organization focused on social justice issues.
And while my "make the world better" spark never dimmed, it evolved and shifted as I took new jobs and explored what that could look like. I worked for three years at a nonprofit dedicated to supporting social entrepreneurs in making change in their community. Then I left to start my own ethical fashion company after being outraged by learning how horrific the fashion industry is to those involved with the creation of our garments as well as the planet.
Then I got sick (womp womp). And as I started focusing on taking care of myself, unraveling my dedication to working ("hustling," barf) 24/7, wellness came my way. And when I closed my ethical fashion business to focus on my own wellbeing, it only seemed natural that wellness was what I was going to focus on next — writing, teaching, and talking about taking care of yourself and the planet. I went deep into it.
Eventually, one day, I realized: wellness, well, kind of sucks. It's vain. And it's focused too much on the individual.
Now, I am a big proponent of taking care of yourself. Seriously, it's one of my top priorities. I’m an herbalist, after all! I think there are all types of important and lovely things you can do to ensure you feel good in your body, good emotionally, strong, confident, and happy. It's important.
But then there's the missing piece: what I call the "so, what?"
Many (not all!) of the people who I saw in the "wellness" space cared more about the next vegan paleo burrito wrap than speaking up for Black lives.
What's your "so, what?" Now that you feel strong in your body from taking your supplements, what will you do? Once you drink your fancy morning elixir, what actions do you take?
How does your wellness practice allow you to show up in a meaningful way for the things that matter? For taking care of your family or neighbor? For stocking the community fridge? For having the strength and presence to call out your racist uncle?
When I dove into wellness, I drifted further and further away from my real passion: community care. Social justice work. It was easy to think that by working on myself and talking about "wellness" to others, I was making an "impact."
And I bet I was, a little.
But we have to go so much deeper. We have to take care of one another. Our individual wellbeing is only as well as our community.
And we need to have a brave space to practice. A cozy, warm, resting spot to fuel up, recharge, and find the tools, resources, and nourishment we need so we can keep fighting for a more just and equitable society. A space where we can build the world we want to live in.
I created IMBY to be that space. But it's not for me, it's for us. It's community-informed and community-driven. I help hold the space, do the backend work, and run the "business," but we are co-creating this together.
A bit about my positionality: I am white, and come from a fair amount of proximity to wealth and resources. I am also neurodivergent, chronically ill, and Jewish. I recognize that I move through the world with a ton of privilege, and how that leads to my own blindspots when attempting to facilitate an inclusive space for all. IMBY members come with their own privileges and areas of lived experiences, and together we weave a mosaic of a space that hopefully creates a space that many feel comfortable in. And I always emphasize multiple opportunities and channels for feedback so I can continue to learn and evolve the space.
In this time and age when so many are lonely when the world needs us to take care one another, I hope IMBY can be a respite for you. For a more liberatory future. For a practice of optimism and community care.
Please reach out any time—I’d love to hear from you!
- Sara Weinreb, Founder
