Wherever you’re going, whoever you’re becoming, whatever you’re going through keep emerging. I’ve been thinking about who i'll be on that other shore once we get through this and we can be out in the world again. It’s been a year of SIP in which we all experienced a LOT of really weird days and feelings. We might not know what is ahead but when we get to the other shore...have you thought about who you’ll be and what you’ll do?
Looking through photos from March 2020 to March 2021, I can see that a lot of life has been lived. I’ve somehow eked out enough persistence to persevere what I thought was impossible. It felt like a year that should have been impossible to experience and yet it was reality. Yes, we can do hard things and yes we can continue and keep going. At the end of the day the biggest question I’m turning over is how will I show up on that other shore and who will I be?
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I experienced the social justice movement as a woman of color, reckoning with my past silence, in my home with my family.
We lived a lot of life last year, on the inside. My family chose to not social distance see friends (except for 1-2 times in the year), eat out or travel. Grocery store visits were limited to once a week and only one person went. I personally put gas in the car twice (because my husband took the lead on that while I did the bi-weekly Target trips). I started going to Target because I started to feel concerned about my ability to be around others and needed practice. I experienced the trauma of the social justice movement as a woman of color, reckoning with my past silence, in my home with my family. I saw the online bullying of people pushing the agenda of continued silence and the persistence of accepting hate. And as the vaccines roll out I’ve been working my way through a series of reflections:
How do I come to terms with the things that happened when we were inside now that there is a possibility of being outside?
How do I distance myself from hatred and discrimination from people who used to be in the inner circle of my family's life? How do I take on an understanding of their choices and allow room for myself without making them my focus?
How do I uphold that line when others don’t and it’s inconvenient and there are pressures put upon me to accept the “old ways”?
I’m grappling with the likelihood that on that other shore, I want to stand tall when others will want me to shrink. I’m adjusting to the reality that I will probably walk this walk alone in my everyday life as the only black adult in my family. In 2020 parts of the world learned how to say “Black Lives Matter'' but can they turn that into action on the other shore? Like others have said, I’m my ancestor's wildest dreams. On the other shore, whenever we get there, I want to emerge and embody my wildest dreams.
