Will You Do The Work With Me?

Dear friends,

For those of you in my community who are Black, Indigenous, or a person of color, you know what you need. I cannot imagine the kind of grief, terror and exhaustion you have lived with for generations. I cannot imagine what these last few weeks have felt like as the wound of white supremacy breaks open anew. I know whatever range of emotions and sensations I am experiencing does not compare. For what little it matters, I am holding you in my heart and I am trying to listen more and better (and not only that). I’m not expecting to be someone you seek direct support from at this moment, but if you need immediate resources for emotional, spiritual, or physical care, please let me know: I am available for psychic readings, somatic/nervous system support, or spiritual care, at no charge; if you have immediate financial needs, let me know; AND/OR I can refer/help find you BIPOC practitioners if that would feel most nourishing (no explanation needed).

I’m aware, though, that most of you who will read this are white like me. And we are being called forward now, as you may have heard or seen it or been told directly, to “do the work.” I’m wondering: what do you notice in your body when you read or hear that? What does that stir for you? What is shifting? What are your sensations, emotions, thoughts? How are you working with them? What part of “the work” have you already stepped into? What parts do you find yourself glossing over or avoiding entirely?

Last week I found myself starting through this list of things white folks can do for racial justice with conviction and commitment. I read the first 4 or 5 which were all actions involving a phone call. My inner Little who likes to be seen doing ‘good things’ was like, what call someone?? No way I’m doing that…, boring…” before I was able to catch myself and start back at the beginning. Ok. People are dying. This is what is being asked for. Can I do this? Yes. So seriously, I want to know—what does “the work” look like for you? Where have you been inspired? Where have you been blocked? Write me back and tell me!

I’m aware, though, that some of you might be just inching to the threshold of this new awareness. I get it. Whiteness has trained and tricked you to not see it. And now the brutal murder of George Floyd and our incredibly brave street warriors are making it impossible to look away.

Do you want to “do the work”—but don’t know where to start?

Or aren’t even sure what that means? Maybe you are a little embarrassed that you’re just now coming to it? Maybe you feel afraid of doing the wrong thing? To be clear, I am not an expert on race, nor am I in the front-lines of the movement right now, and I hope you are seeking out the enumerable resources for self-education and involvement from experts with more wisdom and experience than I. But I do know how to care for nervous systems, and to help people manage fear and make choices from a grounded place.

Do any of these feel familiar?

• There are so many “shoulds” about what to do right now. What do I do?

• What if I cause more harm?

• I feel afraid/guilty/overwhelmed/like I want to just go back to sleep…!

• But I’m just one person, what difference will it make?

• I’ve never been to a protest, where do I even start?

• But what about COVID/school/work/(insert any other responsibility or worry you might have)?

Again, I am speaking more to my community members who are white, and assuming most of you don’t need to be convinced that black lives matter. I have been sensing into how to best leverage my own small platform and voice in service to what is being asked of me at this time. It feels like a tricky balance to me. As a trauma-informed practitioner, I recognize the responses of fear, paralysis, overwhelm, and disengagement in myself and other white folks as signs of trauma and the inability to self-regulate our own nervous systems. My cultural somatics training tells me that this in part comes from the trauma of whiteness that, in addition to the horrifying and enormous cultural and bodily violence it has afflicted on indigenous, black, and brown folks, has left white folks without any sense of nurturing, healthy ancestry or ancestral healing practices with which to psychologically attune, co-regulate and manage our own nervous systems through any kind of challenge (Tada Hozumi has written extensively on this).

I know that starting “the work” from a nurturing place for white folks is a disputed topic: I heard local anti-racism author Ijiuoma Ilou, for example (from whom I have learned a lot and whose work I highly recommend!) express strong criticism and suspicion of white folks gathering to work on racial justice together. At a lecture a few years ago, I remember her saying something to the affect of: “I need to know what’s going on in those spaces!” That’s real. It’s easy for us to get immersed in a self-indulgent echo chamber that ends up re-centering whiteness and prioritizing the emotional comfort of white people over the flesh-and-blood lives of POC. But from a neurological basis, I know that learning only happens when a nervous system is within its window of tolerance—that is, not in fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode—and there’s just no short-cut to that. I have experienced the power and do understand and empathize with the need for spaces of trusting relationships for white folks to be vulnerable, to be on a learning continuum, to support shifts in awareness in a way that is sustainable and meets people at their window of tolerance, and nurtures them to keep going. What I have observed in myself and other is that we just do not stay engaged otherwise. So there is a level of “safety” it’s important to seek out to work through the turmoil of these times.

However, it is important to be clear that this kind of space is designed for white folks doing work with other white folks where we can be vulnerable with our mistakes and weaknesses and be supported in learning and growing from them without doing more and towards the ends of causing less harm to our black and brown neighbors. It is important to make the distinction that our (white folks) nervous system regulation is of course towards the ends for our own healing, which is never individual, and always collective, and so also it is towards the ends of not calling the police when we feel ‘unsafe’ in the presence of a ‘suspicious’ black person. Fear in white people is toxic to our nervous system, and it is also fatally dangerous to black and brown people—because power enables us (white folks) to violently externalize our fear, because our nations militarized police will disproportionately favor our (white folks) fear over the humanity of a black or brown persons. So the fear you and I might be experiencing right now—the fear of messing up, the fear of being called out, the fear of getting arrested for protesting…these fears are valid and must be tended to with care, yes, and I want to help with that. And it is not the kind chronic fear that white-supremist terrorism has flooded the bodies of black and brown folks with for many hundreds of years.

Furthermore, it is a reality we must just bear soberly that that black and brown folks will continue to suffer and die while we are taking the perhaps necessary time to do the slow inner work towards our own self-regulation that allows us to keep facing the magnitude of the wound of racism, to remain engaged with “the work” authentically and sustainably. I do also believe that, even given the long-overdue urgency for justice, it is important to not rush this process not just from a neurological standpoint—rushing racial justice work results often in various forms of white saviorism, performative allyship or inadvertent harassment of our POC friends——and I speak from my own experience of engaging in all these! There is a tension and a gravity to that reality that harm continues while we learn. I struggle to remain in touch with and take responsibility for that reality even now as I right this.

So many others have had way better things to say that this. Please read them. But I wanted to at least let you know I am here, and share my current thoughts and wrestlings. Below are ways I’d love for you to connect with me to do the work together—not as a checklist, or a short-term jaunt into activist fantasies (I have those!), but as a new way of life we are being called into together:

1. GROUND WITH ME: If you are wrestling with any of the above questions, or the general chaotic swirl of this time, and would like 1-on-1 spiritual, emotional or somatic support during this time, please schedule time with me here. All sessions since COVID have been donation based. All proceeds for the month of June will go towards Black healers in our area to provide scholarship for their BIPOC clients. (If you are or know a Black healer and would like to be a beneficiary of these funds, let me know!) You can book time with me here.

2. PRACTICE WITH ME: I have been starting a daily practice with this list of 75 things white people can do. Would you like to go through it with me? Or maybe you’ve found a better resource to work from? E-mail me back and let me know! Let’s support each other.

3. CONNECT IN COMMUNITY WITH ME: Do you know the work of Layla Saad and her book Me and White Supremacy? I will be a co-facilitator in the Me and White Supremacy book circle starting next week. About the book: “Me and White Supremacy is a Based on the viral Instagram challenge that captivated participants worldwide. Me and White Supremacy takes readers on a 28-day journey of how to dismantle the privilege within themselves so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.” This book circle is hosted by my friend, colleague, and mentor Emily Ann Peterson at the School of Bravery, an incubation and inspiration space for brave creations. It runs from Thursday, June 11th, for 6 weeks, and is free of charge. I aim to be bringing all my tools of somatic resilience and spiritual care to our engagement with racial justice. Click the button below for more details and to register.

What we are seeing in the collective body right now is a cultural nervous system that has finally said—ENOUGH. The anguish and rage of this cry will echo through every body capable of staying open and receptive to hearing it. I can help you—we can help each other— anchor and metabolize fear, shame, guilt, and hopelessness in order to make choices and stay engaged from a resourced and wise place so that black and brown people don’t keep dying, so that we can all live and thrive.

These are just some starting points, of many. Feel your belly. Feel your feet on the floor. Invite the possibility that you are connected a bigger ecosystem, a bigger ancestral story, that is going through portal of transformation. It is transforming you and me and us already. Where will ‘the work’ start for you?

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A deep bow of thanks to the many scholars, activists, teachers, colleagues and friends who have patiently influenced and nurtured me in this work, including: Najeea Leslie, Yvette Murrell, Hien Hong, Dr. Caprice Hollins, Dr. Angel Parker, Dr. Beth Kraig, Dr. Jennifer Fernandez, Tada Hozumi, dare sohei, Thy Nguyen and The People’s Assembly; and Paul Wagner and Protectors of the Salish Sea. The list of intellectual and ancestral influences is much longer! Please check them out and support their work.