Silence

I have a clear image of my dad's hands. Open wounds, taking the wear and tear of our world. My dad was usually driving truck when I was growing up. Lifting boxes. Hauling them from the truck into the warehouse. Opening that giant steel trap back gate. Bumping against the crates. Bits of flesh being ripped off. Open, exposed wounds covering his calloused and hard hands. I would see him each weekend and he would be wearing fresh battle scars from doing the labor needed to sustain an economy of stuff. An economy that wounds people as it goes.

Even now, sitting a thousand miles away, I can picture my dad's hands and my stomach tightens, flips and aches. My dad's wounds, his many scars pain me. Even though and maybe because he never shared them. The pain stays in his body, swallowed long ago and more today, with no outlet, never given voice. Depression is what we can see. Pain swallowed and held so tight, blows received from his father, and the world since, held inside with nowhere to go but down to the depths of despair.

The weight of silence.  

My words.  
My struggle.  
The brokenness I see.  
My dreams.  
They get trapped in my body.  Rising. Giving heat and color.  
Turning me red, but without release.  

My neck turns bright red any time the spotlight is on me.

As a small kid I would hide behind or between my mom’s legs when others would try talking to me.  Don’t put the spotlight on me.

Yet I know I have so much to contribute and when I keep my thoughts and dreams and struggles to myself it makes me feel alone.  Removed. Small. Especially in the face of all the hurt and destruction I see.

I have been reflecting on how our current power structures are kept in place at least in part because white people are disconnected from our bodies.  We see so much devastation around us. We know our bodies are to blame. The color of our skin has been used as a weapon to enslave, murder, rape, jail, destroy black, brown, indigenous bodies. Our skin color has zapped the life, literally killing, people of color.  It is used as a wedge to divide and conquer. We must be distant from our bodies or else we could no longer live with the way things are.

I believe part of the healing journey is getting back in touch with our bodies.  For me it is to give voice to the words that get trapped in my throat. It is to feel the anguish of the blood spilled.  

Deep. Raw. Exposure.  

There are emotions hidden inside our bodies.  

Penetrated and brought out.  

As I write I feel scared.  There is an opening deep within. There is a wound I rarely see or tend to. The wound is not mine alone. It has traveled through generations. Passed from people I know and don’t yet know. There is raw, muddy, muck and I am swimming in it.

What does it feel like?  

Sandy, gritty, grimmy sludge that is hard to move through.  Forces me to slow down. This muck is life. Sometimes we try to sail ahead as if we aren’t in the depths of a broken, damaged and damaging world.  But then we are left raw.

I reflect on the life altering moments that got me to see the muck?  That allow me to slow down and tend to myself. To the people I love.  To the people my day brings into my orbit?

I was 10.  

Carmen and Tito lived in the apartment directly below my dad.  Their baby was 2. We connected instantly. I loved on that little girl the way pre-teen girls long to do.

One day I bathed her.  She had sat in a dirty diaper all day and I so desperately wanted to get her clean.  As I stripped her I felt a deep sadness. As I washed her soft skin in the worn, old tub she laughed, but the weight of her life was not lost on me.  

A flash into their apartment window.  Jagged edges of glass barely holding on in one pain.  Tito with a pipe in his mouth and fire in his hand.

Carmen had many children, all but this young one were taken by the state.  Soon Carmen would give birth to another child who we would visit in the ICU.  Born crack addicted, never to know her parents. Tito also taken away by the state.  Thrown in jail, leaving Carmen alone with her heartache.

The day Carmen brought me into her apartment.  Speaking words I could not understand, but the message was clear.  She held my hand so tenderly and placed in it a little silver necklace.  She closed my fingers around the necklace. The cold metal resting in my palm.  Her warm hands wrapped around mine. Holding me with such tenderness. Her words a lullaby.  Her eyes filled with love and pain. Gratitude and sadness. She blessed me in that moment.

She turned something in me.  Opened my eyes to see all the love and tenderness that is suffocated in all the pain and destruction.  

Pain and destruction caused by an economy that uses people. Caused by the creation of race, so effectively used to divide and conquer.  Pain and destruction that lives in my body, that lives in all of our bodies. Suffocating love and tenderness.

In this world I cannot remain silent. We must give voice to what we see.

~ my reflections were inspired by Audre Lorde’s work Transformation of Silence.

My People

My heart is with Jewish, Transgender, Black, Latinx families.  

Mourning death, political erasure, and the reverberating fear.

This is a deeply troubling time.

At this moment I gain hope from being around people whose love is expansive and contagious. People who are choosing to open up, be real with one another, and lean in.

I have been in several trainings and meetings these past weeks that have begun with the question, who are your people?  

Who are my people?  

I come from people who struggle with addiction, depression and untreated psychosis.

From people who swallowed abuse and spit out love.  People who abused and people who fought abuse and injustice at every turn.

I’ve seen dear loved ones turn into monsters and others squashed by the monsters around them.  

I always had safe housing but my dad did not.

I come from Catholics, Mormons, United Church of Christ ministers, Unitarian Universalists, atheists and agnostics. I come from people whose life purpose is to bring justice for the people.

I live a privileged life.  I am a white woman married to a white man, with two white children.  We own a small row house in DC. I have a social work degree and my husband is a journalist with a satisfying and secure job. We fit the mold of educated, white liberals.

We belong to All Souls Church, Unitarian, which is not only a spiritual haven, but is also a place where we practice building the beloved community.  

I come from a lineage of people who saw working for justice as the purpose of this life and I feel most at home in spaces where people are breaking the norms.  

The other week I was at a Movement Matters Facilitation training at a socially responsible hotel in downtown DC.  The space offered a beautiful illustration of where I feel at home. The group at the top of the stairs was a room full of suits, mostly white, mostly male, all chairs lined in one direction listening to a PowerPoint.  White linens on the tables. When I turned the corner and saw the room for our training I could feel my whole body relax. Our room was covered in bright table cloths. It was a racially diverse group of people. Colorful posters covered the walls.  Several languages popped in conversations. Vibrant. Dynamic. In motion.

Yes,  These are my people!

And it made me see that there is something suffocating for me about static spaces.  

I think it goes to the community where I was raised.  Trees were everywhere. The ocean was ten minutes away.  The air was fresh. The people were mostly white. The connections were usually shallow. Expectations were narrow and economic opportunity was limited.

I come from a split home.  I grew-up living in two communities.  My mother, my primary parent, raised three of us.  Taught us to love by loving us fully and unconditionally.  Addiction grabbed my older brother for 20 years and he sank into the bottle. Losing his personality, his job, his home and much of his community to addiction.  While he suffered my mother loved him. When he was in jail she took herself there weekly, redesigning their relationship while he was sober.

My weekends were with my father.  Often he’d pick us up in an 18 wheeler, on his way back from a week on the road, we’d travel with him to return the truck to the company.  Working class, white American. Struggling to pay basic bills. My dad taught me acceptance and appreciation for people in all walks of life.  Depression. Addition. Gambling. All limiting his ability to raise us, but never interfering in his love for us. Often several hours late to pick us up because he’d stop and help someone broken down on the side of the road.  Never having much, but happiest when he could lend a hand. My father holds no judgement.

My grandfather, son of a UCC minister, tried the ministry but discarded it in exchange for social justice as a driving faith.  He bestowed on me that we all can and must do more to make this a better world.

My people both lived to bring about justice and moved to a majority white community that suffocated it’s people.  That left me without room to expand or a sense of possibility.

My high school vice principal literally told my brother to drop out of school.  Your only welcome if and when you fit the mold.

Although I could pass, I did not fit the mold.   

I’ve walked to the edge, ready to follow my big-brother into trouble. Luckily my road veered toward community, support and meaning, but not before isolation, despair and meaningless suffering rubbed me raw. Two roads that run parallel at all times. The world is no less harsh when we come together, but we are able to resist the blows in a different way. When working to change the unjust systems, when organizing, activating and collaborating, the spark inside me offers a light to follow.

I remember the day that high school vice principal stopped me and treated me like a human. Disgust filled me.  It was in direct contrast to how he treated me before I was making good grades. I needed to be seen when the world was failing me.  I needed him to embrace my brother and our friends who struggled. I will always tend to those who feel like they don’t fit. Who struggle.  Because I know what it feels like to be invisible in a community and a system that only values people who look, act, and perform a certain way.  

My people offer radical welcome.  In hard times we open-up, lean in and hold one another.  

Who are your people?