This week, I just couldn’t bring myself to watch the news. I had heard about the blatant racism and killings which continue to go on, the Black bodies continuing to be murdered. I had heard about the protests and the police stations burned down by hopeless, hurting people demanding change.
I was also starting a new job in the midst of coronavirus quarantine as a black woman and I needed space to care for myself. I chose to show myself grace and allow myself to be just a girl starting a job, even as the world crumbles around me.
I am a strong, beautiful, compassionate, creative, and resilient woman whose skin is a delicious mahogany brown, and I would change none of those things about me if given the chance. But I don’t know how to be here anymore. HERE as in America. I don’t know how to have hope for my future in this nation which won’t face the realities of its self-inflicted wounds in order to heal the people who inhabit its land. I can’t imagine loving and cultivating and birthing a baby boy into this world, because honestly, I wouldn’t know what to tell him. That he is "kind, and he is good, and he is worthy, but this world will never treat him that way"? The thought is too much to bear telling a child my own body loved and produced. I feel like I have to choose between the future of my family and the future of this nation, and if that’s the choice, mine is made. I’ll choose me and mine over the land I was born into any day. Every nation has its problems, but America, yours are becoming impossible for me to bear.
Americans with good sense, those who claim to subscribe to reason and logic and compassion, it’s time to do your work. Ready or not, you don't get the luxury of sitting back and ignoring the death of your brothers and sisters anymore. We are exhausted of screaming and lamenting, and we need those in power to care.
White evangelicals, I need you to realize that the whole body of Christ MUST be uncomfortable (and move into uncomfortable conversations about privilege, power, and redemption work, for that is where progress and understanding is birthed) until the WHOLE body of Christ is healed. I know it's trendy to sing about God's Kingdom coming to earth. But the reality is that we are not all living in Victory on this earth. The kingdom of God has not come because WE AS THE BODY have not ushered it in yet. We are a fractured, broken body. Black people are equal parts of the body of God--- in equal measure as White people are. We are exhausted of pleading for justice and watching our people be murdered. You want to be a Christian? BE the body of Christ. Do your work. There are resources out there to do so. Shout out to the work Melissa Deeken is doing with White folks on the West coast. Get involved: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/letsjustshowup
For Black women (and men) who need space and wellness during this time, The WE Collective exists to bring you resources and help you navigate mental health and wellness resources in community. I can't think of a time when we need these resources more than now, when we are disproportionately dying of COVID-19 due to inequality of resource and lack of access to health care; losing our jobs or sacrificing our health to keep them; confined to our homes to protect our neighbors but being killed in the streets because of them.
The words of my colleague, Amanda Morris, ASW, speak to the space we all need to create for ourselves in the midst of this unspeakable pain we have carried in our souls since we were brought to this nation, in chains. Please take time to read, journal, and make some space for yourself in this time: https://www.thewecollective.org/today-i-cant/
We at WE Collective love and care for you, and we encourage you to make spaces of care for yourself. Perhaps that means picking up a vanilla iced coffee like Amanda and allowing yourselves to simply be where you are. Perhaps that means calling on the ancestors to cover you when you dare to go for a jog and remember Ahmaud. Perhaps that means doing your nails or indulging in a glass of your favorite wine. Black people, its time to rest. White people, its time to fight. Everyone else, we need you.
The invitation is obvious.It's time to heal our land. And not just by singing about it.