Being Woke: An Open Letter to Pain
Photo: Luciana Aranha
Sundays are usually reserved for church in my world.
On a Sunday about three weeks ago the sermon was delivered in the form of an initiation by an unsuspecting preacher and it blindsided me. I was laying in bed, newly hit by the events in the United States and my Instagram share hit a nerve with a sister so she called me on it. The call “in” at the time resulted in her calling me directly on the phone which I so appreciate generally, but little did I know at the time I was walking straight into the fire.
A funny thing about nativity, it’s really charming at younger ages…but at 49 it can quickly turn from something sweet to something shamed and this is exactly what happened on this call.
For months before this call I spent time with a small group of dear sisters in a sacred container exploring inner masculine work, which resulted in divine feminine work, which resulted in raising Shakti work…when I answered the phone my guard was down, my armor nowhere to be found, my heart on my sleeve and wide, wide open and my entire world floating in some “self awareness, sister circle, love bubble” place - the slap back into reality was sudden, it came with no pity and an absolute agenda.
We are all being initiated right now - every single one of us.
In this sermon I learned that saying “I don’t see color” was offensive, I was told it wasn’t my Indian friend’s job to do “emotional labor” on my behalf, that I was “privileged” and needed to “do my work.”
I was overlooked. Just like we overlook people based on the color of their skin.
The truth of the matter is the woman of color schooling me has more “privilege” than I do: a job at a Fortune 500 company making at least six figures and likely more, a secure life living in the UK, a flat paid for by this company and she comes from a well off Midwestern family - as far as I know she has never struggled in her life. By her own account she claims she “didn’t even know she was a woman of color until she was 20.”
I’ve never made six figures, I put myself through college, I come from a struggling middle class family and I currently have less than one year’s worth of my friend’s yearly salary in my savings account. I live in a 15 square meters apartment and struggled just to prove myself to the French government to get my visa and permission to stay.
Privilege is bigger than skin color and to say it isn’t is blatant disregard for the truth.
This initiation was painful, I thought the conversation was going to be heart-to-heart and instead it was wound-based and as much as I resisted being taken into the caller’s Root Chakra she pulled me in with all of her might and the tools I see being used en-mass right now: guilt, shame, name calling, leverage, virtue shaming, a past experience with an old narrative, her pain and suffering, discrimination…
Please don’t misread this as my “fragility” or misguided “privilege.” I’m grateful for this teacher, incredibly. And for every teacher that came after her.
In the weeks that followed this sister publicly shaming me for not voting and blocking me out of her life in all of the “official” ways possible today, I have been called out by other women and similarly, blocked and Un-friended.
After three weeks of research, exploring various opinions (on all sides), asking lots of questions, reading many books, watching lots of videos, workshops, talks, forums…pouring over my own business structure, website wording and procedure and investigating my own truth with being anti-racist I can honestly say that what I have encountered from the handful of women who have subjected me to their energy has been a witnessing of pain.
As long as we continue to react from our pain places, from our wounds, we will not solve anything with anyone.
The last call out, publicly, happened a few days ago when I was expressing my opinion about love being the answer, on my own private Facebook page. A woman who has known me for almost twenty years and who dropped out of my recent program where I was helping her with her new brand told me love was absolutely not the answer. She shared a few more things in her comment on my post, and then Un-friended me on all platforms.
In the last few weeks I’ve been policed for using the wrong hashtags, told I don’t have enough Black friends, accused of sexualizing yoga and other cultural appropriation, pulled in to various other personal pain places that have nothing to do with me or anything I’ve shared, and attacked with attempts at shaming me for my approach to investigating various perspectives.
If each of these instances came from a dear, trusted friend I would look twice and consider it seriously; the interesting thing about the actions of these “friends,” is that I haven’t spoken to any of these women (they are all women) in at least a year and many of them in many, many years.
Pain is blind, and it blinds you.
Each public comment made in my direction was left like a stain in a public space for all to see -and feel. Each much more a reflection on the one bleeding rather than the target.
Not once did any sister offer to sit heart-to-heart, eye-to-eye and really explore, understand, investigate, love…each other. Instead they dropped their blood in my space and turned away and left me with no access to respond.
Sadly, this is not how the new world will work. Sadly, this is not the initiation we are all being invited to participate in. Sadly, this is part of the problem and not at all part of the solution.
Sadly.
So I want to say, openly to these women…thank you. Thank you for showing me your pain, thank you for being my teachers, thank you for helping me to filter my energy and set better boundaries, thank you for showing me that armor and hate and passive aggressive behavior is not the answer and that until we can sit with each other in our discomfort and discuss heart-to-heart, the entire world will suffer…and it will suffer at the hands of beautiful women that cannot see past their own personal narratives to save the world.
I will continue to light candles, to widen my circle, to question myself and do better.
I will continue to work on myself, to live from a healed place, to see past skin color and recognize privilege in all forms: we are all sacred, we are all beautiful, we are all worthy, we are all doing our very best.
And to pain, thank you. You have been my biggest teacher, and you continue to be. But one thing I will not give you is the power over me to not respond from my heart whenever I can catch my breath long enough to realized this is the place, the deserved place, that I want to operate from…that I want to love the world and every human being in it from.