My fundamental belief is that our wounds around race and gender hold us back significantly from any and all other brilliant ideas to transform our politics, economic systems, and relationship to earth's precious resources.
The "us" vs "them" that allows our very worse fears to turn into policy, war, and cruelty is not rational.
We have to truly believe in coexistence to create strategies that are life-serving for more than just one group at a time.
Until we admit and transform that trauma: it erodes trust, it breaks down coalitions, it manifests in "trying to do everything right so as not to offend", it creates resentment if people can only show up part way, and that leads to disconnection and re-traumatization. It continues to divide and splinter us internally and externally despite our growing *desperate need* for greater unity with the national and global challenges at hand.
And I feel SO validated by what I've read so far in "My Grandmother's Hands" by Resmaa Menakem. What Resmaa speaks and calls for, with clarity and specific practices, is a kind of healing that inspires hope and supports me in my new attempt to be more publicly in service to something that I think we need many iterations of in every town in America (and beyond) right now.
"Addressing the intergenerational trauma of white supremacy and its effects on all of us-- understanding it as a true soul wound-- is the first order of business if we hope to pull out of the current morass. As this amazing work shows, policies alone will not do it, and bold social action, though vital to achieving justice, will require those engaged in it also take action on the injury, deep and personal, from which we all suffer"
-- Tim Wise, speaking on "My Grandmother's Hands" by Resmaa Menakem
With love and hope,
Katie