Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 92
I wake up with the words to Beyoncé’s unapologetic and passionate song, Don’t Hurt Yourself, from her seminal 2015 album Lemonade ringing in my ears:
When you hurt me, you hurt yourself
Don't hurt yourself
When you diss me, you diss yourself
Don't hurt yourself
When you hurt me, you hurt yourself
Don't hurt yourself, don't hurt yourself
When you love me, you love yourself
Love God herself
When you hurt me, you hurt yourself
Try not to hurt yourself
When you play me, you play yourself
Don't play yourself
When you lie to me, you lie to yourself
You only lying to yourself
When you love me, you love yourself
Love God herself
We just got to let it be
Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be baby
I’ve always appreciated the dharma of these words. The deep wisdom of these verses that cut straight to my gut every time I hear them.
It’s so simple, straight out of the Bible, really. It’s taking the golden rule to its furthest conclusion. Treat others as you would want to be treated. Why? Because if you don’t you yourself will suffer for it.
And even though I know she’s singing about a cheating husband I also hear the voice of a strong Black woman telling the world how racism works.
She’s saying, let me tell you how to love me better. Love yourself better.
Centuries of hurting Black people has only resulted in all of us hurting. None of us are free of this hurt. It doesn’t matter who my ancestors were. It doesn’t matter where my people come from.
We live in a world where a group of people from one place kidnapped a group of people from another and enslaved them and profited off their labour on the land belonging to a third.
If I take the truth of interconnection seriously, then this has everything to do with me no matter who I am or where I come from.
Racism is an undeniable truth. What we choose to do with that truth, how we reconcile it and the myriad forms of hurt and pain and death and struggle that result from it, defines us.
How we choose to show up in this world shapes the person we become.
So if I show up thinking it’s all in the past and has nothing to do with me, isn’t my problem, then I am simply hurting myself. I am robbing myself of my own humanity.
This is how racism works. Forget the covert acts. Although atrocious, at least they can be clearly called out.
What’s much more dangerous, especially to those who benefit from living in a racist culture, are the small, countless choices on the part of so many of us to turn away over and over again when we see racism in action and feel it festering within ourselves.
This is the real demon.
I spend the morning uploading content to my website and advertising the next event I’ll be leading in a couple of weeks for white and white presenting folks who want to explore how they show up in solidarity with Black people in this moment.
In the afternoon I’m on Zoom with my regular weekly group of women practicing in my tradition. The oldest amongst us, in her 80s, says she feels at a loss as to how she can meaningfully contribute to Black Lives Matter.
She mentions that she was involved in the civil rights movement in the States back in the day.
My ears perk up so I ask her if we can spend all of next week’s mtg interviewing her about her experiences. She is delighted by the idea. She says loads of memories have been coming flooding back.
We decide we’ll record the session and I agree to do a write up of it. I’m sure whatever stories she has to tell are worth sharing widely.
When I get into bed I feel a surge of energy. My head is spinning with everything that’s happened over the past two weeks and all the social media posts and news articles and commentary.
I can feel the weight of centuries of colonialism coming to bear on this moment. I feel it deep in my body.
And I can feel resistance to feeling it. I can feel a part of me that doesn’t want to accept that this is our world. That here we are. That there is no more running and hiding and pretending it’s all going to be alright if we just let time pass and act like nothing’s happened.
Suddenly I remember the medicine woman from that conference so many years ago. I can see her clearly before me, eyes blazing, shaking her ankle seeds and her rattle.
Something deep in my belly stirs. Its heavy and thick, like marmite, and it’s moving slow and steady up the front of my spine. As it moves it keeps changing shape, growing and contorting as it reaches up under my heart.
Then it’s wrapping around my heart, about to grip it hard.
I take a deep breath. I know this demon.
This is the part of me that doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to change, tells me in order to be different I would have to have it all worked out ahead of time, some sort of perfect plan for arriving perfectly as a perfect ally in a perfect world.
This is whiteness, so deep in my bones and the cells of my body that I rarely notice it’s there.
It tells me if I’m not the perfect ally then I may as well give up.
I feel into the luminous awareness which is holding this voice steady, pinning it down and looking it straight in the eyes.
In this clear awareness I can hear a whisper of something that feels more real than the marmite gripping my heart. I listen deeply and as I do the voice gets louder and clearer.
It’s ok. I’m ok. It’s ok to be good enough.
Just keep going. You’re good enough.