I was quiet for a long time. I along with many others spent the first two months after the election in something of a numb state of disbelief. I felt overwhelmed by the constant insanity and wanted to hole up, seeing no one outside of family and church.
Christmas was nice. We didn’t really have to see my brother-in-law and his wife save for a brief lunch. Unfortunately, that meant we didn’t get to watch them opening the thoughtful gifts I’d made and bought for them, but c’est la vie. While we were with my in-laws, we made some beautiful memories, including my having a good talk with my mom-in-law. We wanted to be home, but we also didn’t want to hurry away.
In mid-January, we realized that the blast of craziness from the current administration was designed to overwhelm us as citizens. It was pure PSYOPS (psychological operations) meant to keep us unbalanced, confused, and to send us into defensive mode. The point was to make us want to stay home, be safe, and distrust our neighbors. Once we realized what was going on, we got out, and we started building community. See, community runs counter to all this <gestures vaguely> that’s going on.
Luvvie Ajayi Jones says that “community is a verb.” It is not just something that we can take for granted. White people suck at building community; it’s how we’ve been socialized. White women in particular have been taught that our primary agenda is to take care of our homes and families. That doesn’t leave us a lot of time or energy to build community. At the same time, it’s that family–our nuclear families–that hold us accountable. This means we’re not accountable to those in our circles–friends, elders, and adopted aunties and uncles. These wider networks of accountability are not usually available to us white people, and they prevent us from gaining the wisdom of our elders. We suffer this lack of community to our detriment as well. When things are hard–when sickness, grief, trauma, or injustice happen to us–we have no one really to turn to. We also often find ourselves alone in our celebrations and victories.
This community work is hard. For those of us who lack this, trying to find and build it is challenging and feels daunting more often than not. We white women are crafted for competition; it’s part of our socialization from a young age. So it’s difficult for us to trust each other even as we need each other in doing this work. We know full well how our fellow white women might treat us behind our backs because we so often treat them the same way.
Hard as it has been, though, my teen and I have been doing this all-important work. We began to get more active again as January’s bitter cold bore into our bones. We got with our groups, our people, because the work is too hard and too big to do alone. We, of course, want to go all-in, blue Scottish war paint on and a primal scream echoing over the countryside, not letting off until the fight is over. A bunch of our compatriots do, too. There’s no faster road to burn-out.
We have to rest. Moments of rest, of laying down our proverbial arms, is necessary for the long fight. We can’t all rest at once, though. In my choir days, when we had to hold a note for several measures, our director would instruct us to slip a breath, but we couldn’t all slip a breath at the same time; otherwise, it’d sound like there was a rest in the music that wasn’t actually there. So some of us would grab that quick breath right before we needed it. Others might grab two in that stretch, barely feeling a strain before grabbing a breath. No one listening to us knew we were taking these little breaks.
And so it is with fighting for our experiment in democracy. I’m good for about five weeks, then I have to take a break. During this time I do things to feed my spirit. I’m just coming off a break now. In addition to working for our democracy, I also do my own anti-racism work. Earlier this week I finished Anne of Avonlea, the second book (of eight) in the Anne of Green Gables series. This book was a pure delight–heartwarming, funny, cozy! It was the balm to my mind and soul I needed. As of two days ago, I’d started reading Nice Racism: How progressive white people perpetual racial harm by Robin Diangelo, author of White Fragility. It’s the reality check I need before diving back in to doing the hard work.
Let’s talk! What are you doing in your needed breaks? Let us know in the comments.
