It’s Saturday morning, the day after Juneteenth. I was embarrassed and humbled to learn of my ignorance about this holiday, which celebrates the end of slavery in Texas almost two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. When I outed myself in my Antiracism Reading and Learning Group, I found I was not alone.
The good news is that the sharing and conversation woke us all up a little bit more. The even better news is that my county (Fairfax) and state (Virginia) just made Juneteenth an official holiday, joining major companies (Nike, Cisco, and many others) in this healing step forward. Juneteenth is now recognized by 47 states and Washington, DC, as either an official holiday or day of observance.
Change is happening, friends, and I’m personally swimming as fast as I can to be part of it. Actually, that’s wrong. I’m not swimming fast. It’s more like the careful pacing of a distance swimmer navigating ocean waters. The first step, as I wrote about in my last post, was admitting I have a problem, coming clean that I had blindly thought that race issues were somebody else’s problem.
I’ve come to realize that some aspects of this moment in time feel familiar to me. The year of my cancer treatment (2009) sparked an awakening process that burned away a thick layer of unconsciousness. I wrote about my journey to present moment awareness in Blooming into Mindfulness. The past few weeks have ripped off another layer of unconsciousness — this time with respect to my racial blind spots that come with White privilege.
Just like in my early days of present moment awakening, I am highly attuned to how interconnected we all are. I am acutely aware of my impact on others — including, and perhaps especially, Black people. I am easily triggered, including by my own internal thought processes, recognizing my missteps, overcompensating in my emotional response. I am like a raw nerve, exposed.
The difference now is that I can sit with all of these emotions, take in the information they provide, and consider where my personal value added lies to move forward skillfully. Swimming in open ocean waters requires energy management. I am building my “racial stamina,” as Robin DiAngelo calls it in White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.
Today, my value added lies in being able to share the work of two Black friends who have invested an enormous amount of time, energy, and thoughtfulness into projects designed to help us move forward, to be part of the social transformation that is playing out in our lifetime.
A Bridge To Better
Michelle Lopes Maldonado is the Founder and CEO of Lucenscia, a Search Inside Yourself senior teacher, friend and mentor. She and her husband and 16-year-old son co-created A Bridge to Better: A Family’s Open Letter to Humanity, A Free Resource to Inspire Individual and Collective Transformation and Systemic Change. Informative, practical, comprehensive and concise (no small feat), their guide provides learning and action opportunities for self, family, community, and organizational change. They have a webinar series planned as well!
Check out the Maldonado Family’s website A Bridge to Better, where you can download their resource guide and sign up for their upcoming webinars.
The Just Listening Project
Toussaint Bailey is the CEO of Enso Wealth Management. He and I were in the same Search Inside Yourself teacher training cohort (yes, he personifies the Mindful Leader!). Toussaint has responded to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmad Arbery and the multitude of Black lives lost as a result of our cultural and institutionalized racism with The Just Listening Project.
Toussaint’s focus is on the need to talk about racism at work at the level of our shared humanity, not only the institutional framing focused on numbers and policies. His story helped me face some of my own hesitancy in reaching out directly to Black friends, since there is a lot of mixed messaging about whether it’s right or wrong to do this.
Many Black voices on social media are telling us White people to stop calling, don’t ask them to educate us, to do our own work since so much material is already out there. It’s not their job to move us up the learning curve. Their energy is drained and having distressed White people calling them just adds to their burden. All of that made sense to me. I took those messages to heart. I didn’t call anyone. I have been doing my own work.
AND
I know now that there are other Black voices as well, other opinions shared with a quieter approach. There is no right or wrong voice here, no right or wrong Black opinion during this period of consciousness raising. We need every voice out there. We owe it to the Black community to hold the space for whatever arises from the pain, grief, and suffering that the past 400 years have imposed on Blacks in America.
Each of us needs to sense into our own truth, our own purpose, our own friendships, our own path forward. Toussaint’s video made me realize that I have Black friends whom I “didn’t want to bother” during this difficult time. For me, it now feels like that decision was fear-based rather than truly compassion-based.
So I am taking some risks, reaching out to Black friends even when louder social media voices may be telling me not to. I want to be a better friend, just listening, humanizing racism so that I can engage more effectively with others who don’t see the problem. Not reaching out feels constricting in my heart. Reaching out feels expansive. My heart is always wiser than my thinking brain, so I pay attention to it.
Huge gratitude to Michelle and Toussaint for stepping forward with their generous energy, vulnerability, and service-driven work. I hope you’ll be as inspired as I have been by their projects. Please join me in honoring their efforts, in honoring #BlackLivesMatter and #BeTheBridge by reading, watching, and sharing their gifts to the world.
Looking back on 2020, I want to be able to say, Yup…I showed up for that work and was part of the change! These are easy steps to take from the safety of your home in our odd covid-19 infused world.
