ST Healing Love-IntoBalance October2022 - Flipbook - Page 29
I think with COVID, I would say with Black Lives Matter, the George Floyd tragedy – I
don’t know what I expected. I was encouraged by the movement for a moment. But with
COVID, there was this other moment, I remember, it was probably the end of March,
early April 2020, where we all we all thought, Oh, we’re all in this together. And this is
gonna’ be a breakthrough moment and people kind of understanding, relationships and
community and possibility. And then the data came out that this was mostly
impacting people of color, and then it switched up and it’s all gone in another moment.
And we went away from everything else. So that to me was a fresh, deep
disappointment and then everything that came from that… like all the
people that you meet who don’t wear masks and don’t respect
other people. All those kinds of daily disappointments, including
the people that you discovered voted for Trump. They were
asking why are we wearing masks. I’m surrounded
by assholes. I mean, you knew it was confirming.
So much grief about that.
—Bill Traynor
We’ve been in this collective
“beat down” since March 2020 from the global
pandemic. We need to express our grief, our sorrows, our
disappointments, our hurts as well as to acknowledge all the resistance, the joy, the awakenings, the
coming together of hope and resilience. Both are true. This is an important part of embracing the
abundance living inside each of us.
In a white supremacist world, how do I love someone who fears having equanimity with me, as a person
of color, bridge my rejection and righteous anger of what they want me to think of myself and other
BIPOC? How do we bridge?
Whiteness, in a white supremacy world, unfortunately lives in everyone. It’s a mindset, a worldview,
a set of beliefs. Whiteness doesn’t just belong to White people. Remember Clarence Thomas and
countless others who may be “skin,” but not “kin.”
Many if not most or all of us in the justice work are full of righteous anger. Righteous anger is an
expression of love. It’s a part of defending something we love. Healing is not rejecting righteous anger,
Healing Love: Into Balance | A Brown Paper
29