Okay, this may be a bit of a ramble but hang in there with me as I find my way.
I was at the gym this morning walking the track and listening to a podcast with Lynn Twist. Last night I was on this very same track listening to The Time of the Feminine with Lauren and Shaina as they interviewed Betty Kovacs on Cosmic Consciousness.
This morning as I listened to these amazing women on their journeys I was struck by the audacity of these women (I mean this in a good way) to go to the places they have gone. To travel, to meet with teachers, shamans, spiritual leader around the world. To pick up the phone or send an email to ask for an interview. Even to be able to imagine that these places and spaces might be for them.
I also notice how many of their studied stories, myths, history don’t include the African stories, even though it is the birth place of all of us. I notice this exclusion because it’s almost always left out. We are almost always left out. I and people who look like me are almost always left out. I don’t say this to blame anyone but to notice the places in me that have internalized the story of these places aren’t for you.
To notice how I often lack the audacity to pick up the phone, or send an email with an invitation to join in, or for me to learn from these women who have been welcomed into these conversations. These women who often don’t look like me.
There is a personal grief and an ancestral grief that I feel swell up in me as I’m lifting weights and I start to cry.
I cried for all the times I have stopped myself before I even got started and how this was the teaching of slavery that is still embodied in me. I cried for the message of my friend saying to me that people sometimes feel overwhelmed by me and maybe I should be aware of my part in them feeling uncomfortable in my presence. I cried because I know this is the message of the police killings of people of color. This is what I hear in the cries of the Trump supporters. All of it are just different ways to tell me, to tell people of color, to stay in your place! Don’t make White people uncomfortable. If you do there will be consequences and you carry some of the blame.
Behind all of that is a grief that I haven’t been willing to really feel and therefore I haven't been willing to release. Until now, those tears while lifting weights were releasing some of the weight that I have been carrying. It swells up in me again now as I write this post.
So today I ask myself, where in my life do I need to be more audacious? And, how might that audacity free me?
Quanita