Sojourner Truth gave her indelible speech titled “Ain’t I a Woman?” at the Women’s convention in Akron, Ohio on May 29th, 1851. In it, she expressed her grief, her strength, and her soundness of reason, soul, heart, and mind. Sojourner endured, petitioned, and prevailed over the pain of slavery, blackness, and womanhood in her life circumstance.
As I write this, we are already one week past the election, and her words beckon. One week past a day when I saw a master manipulator incite mob action by stoking racism, sexism, rage, fear, and a radical urgency for change at any cost, win the highest office in the land. As a woman, I learned from half of the country that who I am, my body, my mind, and my future does not matter even to other women, that economic failings in the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world and fear of others outweigh my civil liberties. In the seductive face of mob manipulation, a larger epidemic of social dis-ease can suppress our own recognition of what supports our self-interests. One thing is for sure, that the rock has been overturned, and there’s no denying the rot and feeding that goes on beneath.
In Los Angeles, if ever we thought we didn’t live in the bubbles of our cars, our Facebook feeds, in organic markets, in our peace-loving yoga classes and juice shops, we will not forget it now. We Americans are living in many distinct and separate bubbles, and when they pop, they explode with surprise, shock, fear, rage, and vitriol.
As a child, I remember hearing the story about the boy in the bubble. David Vetter lived with a rare hereditary disease that severely compromised his immune system. His body was in essence too sensitive to interact with the microbial reality of his environment. For David, this must have been isolating and lonely. It’s hard to imagine a kid that would enjoy separateness from people and the outside world at such a young age. As Americans, we’ve constructed our very own carefully tended bubbles, bubbles that now are ill with isolationism, have weakened our capacity for conscious dialogue, respect, curiosity, and understanding—every way in which healthy children and society grow. And in our own little bubbles with our chosen others, we have lived for far too long in the echo-washed chambers only hearing what we want to hear. We have become debilitated as a collective. Some would call a version of this elitism. I call it ignorance and complacency across the board.
I have always firmly believed that conflict and dialogue are an absolute necessity for healthy relationships. We must learn how to listen. We must learn how to dialogue with others with differing viewpoints and to educate ourselves about our own mental and emotional health. We must access our own self-compassion, and self-witnessing before we can even be willing or able to truly witness and listen to another. We must learn to advocate and fight from a place of health, without annihilating others, not with our intent, our thoughts, our words, or actions. This is the tall order of the day.
RAGE and POWERLESSNESS
Rage is a necessary and normal response. How could this happen? How could women vote against their own best interests? Perhaps for fear of losing one’s rights, one’s power? Did it activate a hierarchy of need and protectionism for one’s ‘own’ kind?
I’ll be honest. I am not personally surprised at all by the bigotry and misogyny of our country. My receptors for such frequencies were finely tuned as early as six years old growing up in rural, red Pennsylvania. Even then, my brown skin lit the burner of otherness in children and parents. What I am surprised by is how many people are surprised. How many individual bubbles are we all living in? Do bubbles equal ignorance? And if so, how do we pop our own bubbles with the curiosity, appreciation, strength, and humanity we need for real, respectful, and often deeply painful dialogues with others whose bubbles have been burst, who have less preparation, or even desire for participation?
Education is key. We must first start with a basic tenet of empowerment. Know thyself. One must be diligent, understanding, accepting, informed, and vigilant with one’s self, with one’s own infantile rage, distrust, fear, and powerlessness. One must embark on the greatest of journeys into one’s Shadow.
This past weekend, I had the great privilege to facilitate a workshop on the heels of the election. What struck me most in the depths is how we all carry our personal experience, as well as a collective piece. That we all have a role to play, not just in our own lives, but how we connect our service to the greater whole, and how our personal stories and experiences play a part in our understanding and integration of that reality.
Personal pain and trauma can leave us stranded on the shores of arrested emotional development, powerlessness and suffering. And while truth can be simple, love grows in complexity as we mature and evolve. If we continue to polarize in ourselves and dig in our heels of againstness because of our own wounding and trauma, we will stay on the isolated shores of disempowerment, stuck in our bubbles, too weak and sensitive for growth, curiosity, and understanding.
As I’ve been reflecting on the history of ways people have empowered others and themselves for real change on larger collective levels, I recognize that each individual had their own personal struggle that played out collectively. From Gandhi to Abraham Lincoln to Sojourner Truth, each had to be steadfast in their beliefs, partially fueled by anger and fate, no doubt. But the slower burning fuel that had to keep them going was a greater vision, a sublime truth that transcends from the highest and best part of each human. They nourished themselves on such truths, and the pain of their experiences was their Soul food.
I leave you with these quotes from True Leaders of the Free World.
