This little berry lover is 10 months old today. Oh to be a summer baby.
In the midst of everything else that is going on in the world and especially in this country this week, I am still taking time to savor his littleness and the sweet wonder that is the lens through which he is experiencing life thus far. As ever, the content of my days continues to be my best teacher.
I have been reflecting specifically on the learning process this week. Mine in particular and how that relates to my understanding of how others learn in general. I too, like many white persons striving to be good allies to People Of Color within a system built around their oppression and my supremacy, have been scrambling to do better in whatever way I can. Right now this looks a lot like trying to inform myself to the best of my ability. And while this is an imperfect undertaking, it is still of immense value. Which is circling me back around to, again and again, Life Of Practice.
There has been a lot of traffic on social media in the last week that is both important resourcing and information dispersing as well as incredibly overwhelming. Yesterday, a friend of mine shared a post by a Woman Of Color commenting on how white women should stop purchasing and reading White Fragility because Robin DiAngelo is herself a white woman, and wouldn’t those dollars be better spent in support of POC writing? Being a white woman who just recently began reading this book, I had a response when I read this. One sharp enough on my end that were I not in the practice of checking my reactions, I might have scrapped this educational endeavor. DiAngelo is an expert in the field of educating White People around their own White Supremacy, Inherent Racism, and White Fragility. She is also cited and resourced for her work in diversity training by many other writers, educators, and activists in the POC community. In terms of white people endeavoring to understand their role in conversations centered around race, I think that DiAngelo’s work is an incredibly useful place to begin. I also think that learning new things is difficult. Especially if you are someone who wants to get it right, do a good job, succeed, or appear to know what you are doing. Which, if we are honest, is most of us. Which, again if we are honest, is beside the point.
So, what I think I am coming to understand, is that being an ally is a practice. Like most things. It is not asking that I somehow show up knowing what I am doing, proficient in my own ally-ship. Instead, the ask is to simply show up and do the work and learn from my mistakes and more than anything, stay engaged.
Life of Practice is a moving target. By the very nature of being living. There is nowhere to arrive. There is simply the consistent and earnest effort to do our best, improving upon mistakes we have made in the past. To be mindful of how we show up and compassionate for ourselves when we fall short without excusing away any harm that we may have caused when we didn’t yet understand what we were doing. That is the ongoing preparation that is studentship.
In this same vein, I am taking a step back from Life Of Practice Mentorship at the end of this month. While it is work that I feel passionate about, the time required to offer what I would like to be offering is eclipsing the time I have available for my own life of practice. I am sacrificing my own studentship in support of other people’s and anyone who is currently in mentorship with me can perhaps feel my own internal drift as I bargain my availability within all of my various roles. I don’t think it is going away forever, or even for very long, but I am certainly pressing pause, perhaps for the remainder of this year. I will be focusing more on my own practices, writing, family life and home educating, as well as collaborative teaching with Practice Wellness Community. (Our next program, Grow hOMe, begins in July with more information as well as registration details coming later this week.)
And I am wanting to cultivate more time for my own education around racial wounds. In particular, I am very interested in the work of Resmaa Menakem and his book: My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathways to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. My teaching partner and mentor, Rachel Peters and I will be discussing this work in weekly learning “horse shoes” beginning next week and if that is something that you too find yourself interested in, feel free to email me and I will send some details your way. For transparency’s sake, I will share that I am also leaning into initiatives to Defund the Police, more information about that can be found here.
Also this week, my teacher Christina Sell, is offering a contemplation and prayer during which she will read a list of almost 200 names. In her words: “And, of course, the list stretches back centuries into the founding of this country with the enslavement of Africans. There is no way to bring any one of these people back to life, to heal the rents in the fabric of their communities and families that their deaths have created, or to adequately make amends for the damage that has been done, although there is a good case for reparations. We can, however, say the names of the victims with reverence, respect, and remorse for the ways we, individually and as a culture, have failed to value, safeguard, and nurture their lives.” You can register for this here.
As ever, thank you for reading. I am hoping to show up in this space more in the days to come.
xxx,m