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​In My Own Words

Reflections From The Collective

5/10/2019

2 Comments

 
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A couple of weeks ago, I facilitated a community conversation and workshop in a city that is near and dear to my heart: Oakland, CA. Oakland is home for me. It holds my community of support; it has my absolute favorite coffee shop: and it holds several close friends that I now call "family." My strategy for entering and working towards racial justice and abolishing white supremacy has always been a think globally, act locally approach. I consider it my love offering to my community to dedicate my time, energy, sweat, and tears to cultivating racial justice right here at home: in the Dimond District in Oakland, CA.

All of the participants for the workshop (what I lovingly refer to as "the collective") identify as white cis women, and what follows is a brief reflection of observations, thoughts, and realizations that arose for the collective as I guided them through conversations, journaling, and group exercises in the workshop topics of disarm, divest, and dismantle.

Disarm:
  • Normalized segregation lead to lack of awareness in the sense that you don't even know that you're missing something. This creates an inability to articulate, let alone understand relationships and culture.
  • As a unit, the white community has lost a lot of time in putting in consistent and impactful work towards racial justice. Time now needs to be spent on being re-educated. Moving away from how we've been conditioned into upholding white supremacy.
  • The system is designed to make racism the problem of the "bad" white people, spurns "helper" syndrome.
  • Class (and other "isms") exacerbate separation.
  • Toxic, baseless and corrosive pervasive FEAR.
  • Lack of language and lack of community within the white community. There was no permission to talk about race. Not having a space to speak out loud and ask questions means not being able to heal or form community -- prevents self care. And without self care, we can't fully engage in the work we needs to be done by white people for racial justice.
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Divest:
  • Balancing the risk and benefit in dismantling white supremacy within the institutions we work/live in.
  • Those who challenge systems often don't (can't) remain or exist within those systems.
  • Feelings of deep and powerful hunger for truth telling -- radical honesty. 
  • Social GASLIGHTING needs to be undone. Honesty -- speaking truth to power is needed to check us on the reality and truth to the feelings of disconnection we have been feeling all along, even after being told that what we are feeling wrong.
  • white supremacy is more insidious -- it is not just the KKK...it's so much deeper than that.
  • ​Grief: we are fighting the same fucked up battles as 50+ years ago. When you remember, you grieve. Grief is a necessary part of the process for white people to fully step into their role for abolishing white supremacy. A role that no other community can fulfill. In going through the process, we set up new generations for the come up. We are sowing seeds.
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Dismantle:
  • ​Not knowing whom to contact or how to disrupt when issues show up in institutions.
  • Yes -- be willing to make mistakes AND learn from them.
  • Being willing to question self, take time, pause, and reflect on impulses and behaviors is an absolute MUST. We have to be willing to recognize our own hangups and share out loud what's on your mind.
  • Be clear: the underlying the issue with white supremacy and oppression is POWER. It is not about race alone.
  • Focus on specific behaviors, not a person/not their character. Connect to how our behaviors impact us as white people. 
  • Tools of white supremacy are able to be picked up and used by anyone. However, when used particularly by white people, the breadth and depth of the harm is incomparable.
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Reflections from the collective is a mirror the exposes parts of all of us.  Particularly for the white community, what emerged in this workshop for the collective are indeed the very churnings, thoughts, feelings, and knowings that so many other white people must be carrying inside and grappling with themselves.  A wise teacher I admire immensely often shares:

"when we give ourselves permission to feel and hold all of who we are, all of our identities -- when we give ourselves permission to NOT leave any parts of us behind, we give others permission to do the same for themselves."  

In that statement is both a simple and urgent invitation for you. I invite you to engage in spaces and conversations that will extend to you the permission to discover, embrace, and bring all of who you are into the work of racial justice. If like me, you are wondering what would emerge for you and your community on the topics of disarming, divesting and dismantling toxic systems for racial justice, let's connect, chat, and conspire to offer this workshop in your neck of the woods.

The truth is that we need you and your community in the pursuit for racial justice, but we are going to need your whole true selves to make any sustainable gains in our audacious movement. Join us. Completely.


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PURE UNADULTERATED, UNAPOLOGETIC POWERFUL LOVE: RE-MEMBERING WHAT MATTERS TO ME

5/9/2019

1 Comment

 
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This past weekend, I had the good fortune of participating in Centering  Leadership in Presence.  This program is an encounter designed specifically for women wanting to step more fully into their innate power to affect change, the space was held by Rev. angel Kyodo williams at Omega Institute. The opportunity to center my leadership and lean all the way into my powerful feminine energy in the spring beauty of upstate New York was literally a breath of fresh air.

POWER REDEFINED, REIMAGINED, & REDIRECTED

In our society, we are pretty much force fed the notion that there is somehow a limited supply of power. And because of the perceived scarcity of power, we exist in spaces which communicate (to women in particular) that we have to work our ass off and bend and contort ourselves so that we can be seen as valuable or worth having power being bestowed upon them. 
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One of the most important lesson I received form Centering Leadership in Presence is that the way in which our culture would have us to define and believe the way power works is completely absurd. It has become clear to me that this absurdity is intentionally designed to sustain an imbalanced power structure primarily within ourselves as women. The internal turmoil women experience within an imbalanced power structure results in an interruption in access to the divine-given power women already possess by virtue of our existence. And it is this constant interruption to access to this resource that severely impacts the way women are seen and heard in the home, in schools, in houses of worship, and in professional spaces.
To counter the traditional and unsustainable way we are taught to think about power, Rev. Angel offered four simple, yet mind shattering truths during the program:

  1. Power is energy. It is simply energy directed in an intentional way.
  2. Power is reciprocal. When your power increases, my power increases.
  3. Power is infinite. Power is abundant for all of us. Power is innate in all of us, therefore it cannot be bestowed or taken away from any of us.
  4. Power is about balance. It is not a matter of feminine v. masculine power. It is a matter of balance between productive and receptive energies. Each of us — whether we identify as a woman or man, have both energies. This truth completely sets aside the mentality du jour of “us v. them/men v. women.” Ultimately, this is about returning our collective to a more balanced state of power for women, men, children, our environment, and our ecosystem.

GROUNDING MY POWER TO WHAT MATTERS (TO ME)

My time at Omega Institute and participating in Centering Leadership in Presence graciously invited me to drop myself into and reconnect to what matters to me. Not what matters to my son. Not what matters to my mother or my pets. Not what matters to my community. Being in this retreat gave me the space and time I needed to re-member soul to what truly matters to me. And the moment I reconnected to what matters, I felt a renewed and intense level of energy and purpose.

To embody and extend pure unadulterated, unapologetic powerful love is all that matters to me. This is all the “true north” I will ever need to tap into, and release all of this here Black Girl Magic that is my innate power.

My invitation to all of my mothers, aunties, and sisters wanting to show up in their lives fully in their power: my invitation to each of you is that you commit to taking the time to re-member to what matters to you, tap into that source, and release all of your beautiful power in a world that so desperately needs it.
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