Why?/Hello!

There are no stupid questions.

Why?/Hello!

Hi! Thanks for meeting me here. If you came via Instagram or an email I sent you, you probably already know a little about me — but just in case, I’ll tell you a little bit more, as well as a few things about this place I’m trying to build.

My name is Bonnie Morrison. I live in New York City and spent many years working in the fashion industry, so I’m going to tell you right now: I don’t have any training in making diagnoses or giving direction (unless, perhaps, it’s about your outfit WHICH OF COURSE I WOULD NEVER DO). But thanks to the unprecedented events of 2020 — when, as you might recall, we not only had to process complex ideological shifts, but had to rely on digital expression over personal interaction to do it — I suddenly found a higher-than-average number of friends and acquaintances reaching out to ask my opinion – about race, cultural appropriation, about dealing with people with different political views, about forgiveness. This is mostly because I had written about a lot of these issues on Instagram, but I’d also like to think it’s because I encouraged people to ask.

While I didn’t always get feedback on whether my input actually helped any of these people (rude), one thing I did hear again and again was how grateful they were that their questions — sometimes about a contentious subject, or something they didn’t totally understand and were worried they would be criticized for not having been more informed about — were heard and considered. The humiliation of being wrong in public is an anathema to human beings everywhere, throughout time, but it seems that the ubiquity and durability of our online personae has given us cause to be more fearful of it than ever. But when I managed people back in my corporate life, I was always struck by the vastness of the difference between encouraging people to seek clarification (good-to-excellent) and telling them they just needed to “figure it out” (fair-to-catastrophic). When will we learn, I wonder, that without encouraging open communication, we make it a lot harder to be “right” — about anything?

Is It Okay? is my effort to bring these questions to you — person I trust is busy, gets a lot of email and wants to live better (but as efficiently as possible). Whether you are a free or paid subscriber, I will always endeavor to earn my place in your inbox. I promise to do my best to

• make my posts as engaging and relevant as possible

• break them down simply but never talk down to you or about any group

• cover topics that I think are relatable to you and your relationships

• never assume we have the same point of view on every subject.

  I’m not here to judge you.

Every post will be filed with straightforward headings (“Is it okay to…”) so that they are useful, to the point and easy to search.

Thanks for coming. Thanks for asking.

Thanks for reading Is It Okay?

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