Shame, Freedom & Social Justice

A shorter version of this article was first published in the WisdomWomen blog. I am a WisdomWomen Visionary Member and Council Steward.

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” ~ Lilla Watson, Australian Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s

Meeting

I felt excited and trepidatious as I made my way up to the Fritz house at Esalen Institute on Day Two of the 2017 WisdomWomen’s Visionary Gathering. I was joining women who were interested in spending the day feeling into the Social Justice Visionary Council. I felt honored to be asked to facilitate this group, and grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this a conversation.

I felt a lack in my understanding of the issues around diversity and social justice, but also felt tentatively confident that my mindfulness, self-compassion and shame resilience skills would be my rudder as I navigated the waters of this conversation. I knew that I needed to listen deeply with my body, notice how she responded, notice when I started to move into my head to try to intellectualize or fix, allow her to feel the emotions of other women while simultaneously cradling her/my mirrored emotions, and invite her to stay when she wanted to flee for the door. I needed to be a part of this conversation that both challenged her understanding of herself and invited her into the family of humanity just as she was. I needed this conversation to get a glimpse of what it felt like to be free.

We gathered in circle and began. We discussed our relationship with social justice issues and held a lot of space to explore thoughts and feelings. In the morning we talked about what brought us to the gathering, what we name as broken about society’s current system, and what we are ready to release. In the afternoon we envisioned a future where social justice exists in its fullest potential.

Conversations were challenging, and all the while we held each other in our common goal to understand and share.

The group was made up of women of diversity. During our morning grieving session, women of color spoke about their experiences of trauma in a patriarchal colonized society, the weight of expectations placed on them by white women, their anger over institutions that continue to actively cater to white privilege, and their exhaustion over having to continue the fight for justice. White women spoke about their despair over lack of accountability and social justice in institutions of higher learning, their confusion and shame over how to navigate their way through white privilege, and their attempts to viscerally understand some of what women of color experience daily. Conversations were challenging, there was conflict, and all the while we held each other in our common goal to understand and share.

Freedom

When women leaders say that our freedom is reliant on each others, I understand that to mean that it is only through realizing interdependence that we can be free. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and the intricacies of our individual and collective psyches weave together to either form pathways of courage and love or pathways of delusion and fear.

I grew up in a family where no-one ever raised their voice because there was one law in the house and one patriarchal master who no-one dared challenge. I heard no strong women’s voices, no debate. Strong voices were associated with violence and lack of cooperation. In Fritz house there were strong women’s voices, and my challenge was to see those voices as being different from what I learned as a child, to stop projecting onto them my fear of violence. As I acknowledged my childhood wounding, and sat in my own adult power long enough to fully hear the strong women’s voices, my fear gave way to the freedom of curiosity. I started to rewire old patterns into new learnings.

…we dreamed into a new future where every child is born into a world where they know, deep to their core, that they are put on earth to thrive.

Our discussions included the topic of othering. Growing up with shame as my motivation, I learned to be hypervigilant about not upsetting anyone for fear of being rejected. I’ve brought that hypervigilance into my adult life, and my radar for othering is huge. I fear inadvertently othering because I fear being rejected. The healthy side of this is that I feel fiercely compassionate and protective of those who are othered. I found during our Council conversations that being brave and opening to the possibility that I might unwittingly other and that it wouldn’t threaten my survival brought me freedom to talk more creatively. This was only possible because I knew I was being held by women in a safe space.

Learnings

What I gained from our visionary council gathering was momentous, and I felt a visceral sense of being ushering forward into my next new incarnation. While the strong message was that white women need to use their extensive resources to learn shame resilience and to learn about issues of social justice, I felt women’s arms of all colors holding me up as I muddled my way through our conversations. As I felt my revelations and almost simultaneously felt that they shouldn’t be revelations, that I should know better, I felt women ahead of me on the climb to freedom reaching down to hold my hand kindly and knowingly. Holding myself tenderly as I listened to strong voices, I was able to glimpse the pain that lies underneath the words as well as the pain I felt as a child, and a part of me was able to rise up and meet a part of my sisters in turn. And I got to support myself with my shame resilience practice in an environment that, at a very deep level, I knew would ultimately support me and welcome me into a wide and deep river of wise sisterhood.

That afternoon at Fritz house we dreamed into a new future where social justice is the norm, where every child is born into a world where they know, deep to their core, that they are put on earth to thrive. From this conversation the Social Justice Visionary Council weave was created. As a result, this child, also, is starting to feel that she deserves to thrive too.

Thank you to the beautiful women who shared space with me. I look forward to future adventures with you.