Leveraging What I’ve Long Known: A Reflection on Identity & Action
In the context of my anti-oppression work—or more positively, my work toward liberation and human rights—I've been thinking about what I do. Although I don't tend to walk in the door announcing that I'm an educator and a writer, that's actually how I think of myself and what I do. What's interesting is how long it took for either of these deeply held impulses—intertwined loves, I would even say—to come to mind as something I could offer in my commitment to everyone mattering.
As a kid, I found comfort in knowing things, and then letting people know that I knew things: teachers and other adults generally loved this; peers and especially my siblings found it annoying. What began as a form of self-soothing (knowing things) became a deep interest (conveying things), and eventually a solid skill, in that way that weaknesses often daylight as strengths. I pursued leading, teaching, or educating throughout my formative young adult years, and then some.
That whole time, I'd been scribbled strong feelings on scraps of paper that I shoved into an embroidered cloth bag in my closet, a place I thought no one nosing around would find. I wrote long, story-laden letters, crammed hundreds of words onto blank postcards, and as a teen wrote pages and pages of journal entries. It became such a habit that one summer I couldn't fall asleep unless I'd journaled first.
My career in education or as an educator (the two don't always come combined) has been exciting, rewarding, growthful, successful. Along the way I taught Outward Bound courses, directed a robust qigong program, and co-founded the most amazing liberatory school imaginable. Each pursuit featured some aspect of liberation, freedom, trust, or deep personal reflection. I've also had long periods devoted to writing: years of summer writing workshops, intimate writing groups, starting a novel, having several pieces published. During the years without outlet or opportunity for either education or writing, I've felt an ache like when an offspring leaves home. For both pursuits, there's always been a homecoming.
When I had my white awakening some seven years ago, I felt paralyzed: unable to offer anything, weighed down by guilt, seething with anger and betrayal, utterly collapsed. This feels developmental—I didn't know then how typical a reaction this is, how predictable, and how recoverable. I did what many of us have done: read books, taken the Undoing Institutional Racism training, joined discussion groups, changed spending habits, listened to podcasts. And fretted about what I could do to do something.
Walking from the car to my front door one day several years into this awakening, I had a forehead-smacking moment: "I'm an educator. That's what I can do!". My feeling of relief was immediate and followed with a second smackdown: the people I'd need to work with were the white ones. I felt nauseous when I finally got to the door. Another developmental moment: this was a stage when I wanted to distance myself from anything having to do with white identity. Of course, that's shifted.
Gingerly, timidly, I piloted my first racial healing circle. Turns out I love working with white people, love being invited into the questions, concerns, and confusions carried by those of us who want to learn about the system of powerful allegiances and unallegiances we are steeped in. At the same time, I felt certain I could never write about racism, or oppression, or marginalization: it's too new of a language, too tender a subject, too likely to get wrong and hurt someone.
This too has shifted. In fact, this summer I have inspiration plentiful as the plums ripening on my neighbor's tree, and work opportunities as scant as the short solstice night, so I'm doing a lot of writing. Turns out I've developed enough of a fluency around the topic of equity that I can craft a compelling sentence or design an engaging reflection exercise from the same source, about the same topic. I could write an essay examining my relationship to hiking in terms systemic oppression, or I could design a workshop where everyone examines their favorite leisure activity through this lens. I could write a story about finding my voice as a white-identified woman with my positionality or design a workshop where participants identify their positionality and find their voices. The two are intertwined.
So this is what I do: I'm a educator and a writer. My topic is the mattering of all people: how we as individuals participate in our culture's supposition that some people matter and some don't. It's a political undertaking; I mean to make a difference.
So let me know: what education experiences can I craft for you? What pieces of writing would you like to see? I'm full of ideas, open to influence, and expecting convergence.
Share your requests with me here.
August 2024 Back to Blog Home
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