This week was really emotionally heavy, folks, and I consider myself to be pretty resilient, but it was very trying on a lot of levels. I don't consider myself to carry a burden any lighter or heavier than any other person born in this country, living in this skin...
and I really, truly do love the skin I'm in...
with that said, this week did it to me. Many well-meaning folks reached out to ask how they could do better, and very few reached out to make sure I was being cared for or caring for myself. Lots of asking and taking, very little exchange, or giving.
Today I went to a friend's house for lunch. She is a White woman. I no longer have White friends with whom I cannot be completely honest, those I can't "say anything" to.
A lot of my friends and colleagues who identify as IBPOC do not have any White "friends" because they feel there can never really be true friendship between people who do not see one another as equals, and this society poisons us with toxic ideas about power and positionality.
But we sat at her kitchen counter...she made me a sandwich...I brought our favorite salad...and we talked.
We talked about how broken hearted I have felt at times this week, so much so I couldn't get out of bed. We talked about the joy I felt when I was able to feed my children literally and physically by cooking for them and trying to process with them all that is going on.
We talked about how many children in schools and families there are who identify as "mixed-race" or are children of color adopted into White families and what this time might be like for them. How there are no quick or easy solutions.
We talked about how the "check on your Black friends" text must have made it all the way around the world because I had a White friend on another continent in my DMs asking me to write a letter for an online publication explaining what it feels like to be a Black American.
I told that friend, "no". I love her, and we've been friends for decades. It just so happens that at the exact same moment we were DMing, we discovered we were both, as fate would have it, worlds apart, sitting on our beds in towel turbans and robes trying to process.
I had to explain to her how disturbing it is right now to be expected to play out your pain for anyone else's edification, that yes, the rage is constant, that yes, I fear for my children and myself every single day, that knowing that fear is justified...amplifies it.
I had a mild anxiety attack thinking about going to the grocery store this week, and then I went and had to get over the anxiety that built up during the trip, after the trip.
Back to lunch at my friend's house, we talked and laughed about how being 35 plus means you will have the bodily aches and pains. We talked about how so many Black people live with chronic pain due to misdiagnosis or lack of access to proper healthcare...
Western medicine wasn't made with healing us in mind. And so, as I seek out healing for me and mine, healing for our bodies and our minds, I think it's important to note that as many of us suffer from chronic aches and pains, so does our society.
...and though we all hope that this is more than a moment, we also have to think about treating root causes, rather than symptoms. What is the antidote to racism? I hardly know. I know we have to talk honestly to one another.
We have to use the language and feel the words nobody wants to say roll around in our mouths. Yes, I'm talking especially to the people still uncomfortable saying the words "Black" or "racism", those who whisper such things.
I know the antidote cannot come from asking a person who has lived with pain caused by this racist, unjust, toxic and violent society to give you answers or solutions for how to hurt them less without any consideration for how extremely painful this moment in particular might be.
I told someone this week not to be surprised if their IBPOC "friends" don't want to have anything to do with them right now and I repeat that unapologetically. This moment cannot be about putting a band-aid or topical ointment on a centuries-old-wound.
It has to be about deep and permanent healing, seeking alternative methods and new solutions, and it has to be about honesty with each one of us taking a hard look at how we have been so silent for so long.
My little girl said to me this week half-joking, but also serious, "No justice, no peace, Love", and there cannot be. There will not be. I hope the young people do get rowdy and I hope we learn to listen to our elders because they have seen this before.
It will be devastating, heartbreaking, infuriating, if in 100 years our children are the olds and they have to see it again.
*I acknowledge that if I'm feeling the shortness of breath, tightness of jaw, rage, sadness, horror, fear, I cannot imagine what someone must be feeling who has lost a loved one, economic stability or lives in an area overrun with sights and sounds of police, sirens, helicopters.
