I crave love letters.
I crave touch.
I crave community dinners where we stay up for hours
holding our hopes and dreams together.
I crave the moment of being held.
However that comes.
With talking, dreaming, dancing.
With hands, arms, legs, waist.
I crave the chance to hold.
Yesterday I held a sleeping baby,
while friends spoke with me of political resistance.
That felt good.
I crave courage and kindness and maturity and presence.
In myself, for sure.
And also in other people.
I crave other people who have and share these things, and who crave me, too.
I crave mutuality. I desire to be desired.
I’m nervous and eager, and I’m sure I’m messing it up for myself
by not being responsive enough.
Or maybe I’m too responsive. Too needy. Too eager.
I’m never quite sure.
I crave confidence.
Scratch that – I’m basically quite confident in myself.
I crave confidence in others.
That sounds like a terrible thing to say.
I crave the time and space that all of this takes.
Building trust, building confidence, building togetherness.
I crave this with the sharp pain of my own body.
5. Connection/ Community
This #GivingTuesday, Give to the Resistance
Give a lot. Give more than you have in the past. Give to more radical places than you have in the past. Give in significant amounts right now, this week, because it is needed immediately. And set up recurring monthly donations, too, because this work needs to be sustainable. See more guidelines for giving here, and let me know if you want to talk through what giving plan might be right for you right now.
- Give to multiracial intersectional movement building, led by Black activists and other People of Color.
- The Movement for Black Lives
- Black Lives Matter
- Third Wave Fund: Youth vision and activism for gender justice
- Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation
- Movimiento Cosecha: For the undocumented immigrant community
- Give to youth.
- Black Youth Project 100
- The Boys & Girls Club on Standing Rock
- United We Dream: Powered by immigrant youth
- Native Youth Sexual Health Network
- GSA Network: Trans and queer youth uniting for racial justice
- Give to Queer and Trans People of Color.
- TransWomen of Color Collective
- The Audre Lorde Project
- AwQward Talent: The first trans & QPOC specific talent agency
- Trans*H4CK: Creating tech for the trans and gender non conforming community
- National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance
- Trans Justice Funding Project
- Give to the fight for sexual and reproductive rights.
- Sister Song: Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective
- INCITE! Women, Gender Non-Conforming, and Trans people of Color* Against Violence
- Abortion Care Network
- Forward Together: So all families can thrive
- Women of Color Sexual Health Network
- Give to independent media by Black folks and other People of Color.
- Give to individual movement builders with bills to pay.
- Wagatwe Wanjuki on PayPal
- Kyem Asa on Patreon
- Desiree Stevens on YouCaring
- Morgan Collado through many options
- Venus Selenite by ordering Trigger
- And give some more.
- Showing up for Racial Justice
- Astrea Lesbian Foundation for Justice
- Oceti Sakowin Camp Water Protectors at Standing Rock
- Become a donor for a trans person
- The Network/La Red: Survivor-led organizing to end partner abuse
I welcome additions to this list, if you’d like to add a comment or contact me. I am thinking of organizations founded and led by People of Color – especially queer, trans, female, and feminine People of Color – doing intersectional movement building and resistance work.
Please let me know if you have any questions about people or organizations you might support, or if there specific goals you have for your giving/donations that you think I can help you achieve.
And I invite you to leave a comment when you do give, because I’d love to hear.
Why and How and When to Give your Dollars
I’ve seen a lot of fellow White folks ready to donate money since the election. This is important. The redistribution of resources is urgent. See here for suggestions about where to donate money.
See below for thoughts about why and how and when.
I will not address the “how much” question in this post, aside from encouraging you to give a lot. More than you gave last year. And to more radical places. I acknowledge that financial traumas and related anxieties are real for many of us, no matter the numbers that define your current financial context. Check out these awesome resources from Hadassah Damien on financial fearlessness and healing while doing this work.
And then, give.
Give in significant amounts ASAP.
Now. Giving Tuesday. This holiday season. Before the end of 2016. Organizations and activists are recovering and regrouping and strategizing for how to approach the coming year. The money raised in the next month will shape what they can plan and how ambitious they can be. And we all need to be very ambitious.
Become a monthly sustainer.
Organizations and activists need to know what money they have now – and also what they can count on coming in down the line. Becoming a monthly donor shows them that you are in the process with them, and is helpful as they plan ahead. It helps them figure out how to make their work sustainable.
Give tax-deductible donations as well as not-deductible contributions.
This information should be clear on the organization’s website or on the automated thank-you note you receive. Although getting a tax deduction is certainly a perk, please consider also contributing to places that are not tax deductible – perhaps because they are new and not yet sponsored (read: institutionalized), because they want or need to remain political/partisan, or perhaps because they are individuals trying to get by in the world who sorely need your support. If you are tithing or using another system to set a goal of how much you want to give each year, consider setting separate goals for tax-deductible donations and non-deductible contributions.
Give because you mean it.
Get in touch with your most visceral reasons for giving. What are you yearning to accomplish, or to be a part of accomplishing? Are you motivated right now by plans for emergency management, doing damage control? Are you motivated to build a deeper and more radical grassroots movement? Do you want to make sure we are better networked and better organized before the next election? Do you feel an imperative to redistribute the wealth accumulated by your or your family’s participation in American capitalism/ colonialism/ imperialism? Are you ready to start the process of giving reparations to indigenous communities and to Black people whose families were enslaved and who are persistently targeted by multidimensional structural oppressions?
Give here.
For those of you who have the opportunity to move large amounts of money, or want to further get involved in mobilizing people with wealth, check out the book Classified and the work of Resource Generation.
For White people asking me, What do we do?
Taking it step by step. Here’s where I was the first day.
I’ve had many White people – friends, colleagues, Facebook friends – ask me what we do. So here’s what I’m doing now, at least this first week.
Note: I am a queer femme survivor of sexual assault with an advanced degree and enough money. I write and love and work from all of those places. I write with the hope of engaging other White people. I also welcome feedback, pushback, and connection with folks of color who may be reading this, and I want to repeat over and over that I value you and I am with you.
1. Self and community care reminders
- Water, sleep, food, movement, human company.
- Offer support – particularly to people who have been the primary targets of this campaign and of American White Nationalism. Pay attention.
- Reach out – to the extent that you are able – share your own emotional response with people who may be or feel more secure than you do right now – I specifically ask upset White people to reach out to other White people in your life. Maybe you’ll get some real, useful emotional support. And maybe also showing them why you’re agitated will get them agitated. And we need them, too. We need them with us.
***trauma triggers trauma***
We’re all going through different kinds of shock and grief and fear and betrayal and trauma right now… triggering different kinds of shock and grief and fear and betrayal and trauma that we’ve experienced previously… especially all that systemic stuff that is so interconnected. Hold that, give space for that, for yourself and for the people around you.
2. Action planning
- Our 100 — An open letter to Our Nation from 100 women of color leaders — read and sign
- Showing up for Racial Justice — engaging White people in racial justice work across the US — sign up, get connected
- I am also planning a Skype series for anyone who wants to talk, to move from reflection to action. We will talk about Whiteness and the Vision for Black Lives and all that is happening around us and whatever else you/we need to talk about.
***White people need to listen to People of Color leadership and be ready to respond***
And by ready to respond, I mean ready to risk more and to contribute more than we ever have before. Professionally, emotionally, financially. To do that, we will need teams of people we love and trust who will hear us when this gets hard and push us and guide us through it. Let me know if you want me on your team.
3. Moving money
- Give to the orgs I mentioned above: Our 100, SURJ, the Movement for Black Lives
- Fund on-the-ground activism: Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock #NoDAPL, youth at Standing Rock, the Black Youth Project 100, the Trans Women of Color Collective
- Support individual critical & creative work: Wagatwe, Kyem, and so many others, or become a donor for a trans person
***pay folks of color for their labor and leadership***
Many people who can lead us out of this are right now unable to pay their bills. Medical bills. Student debt. Big bills. They are educators and activists and organizers and writers and designers and more. Hire them. Give them jobs, speaking gigs, consulting gigs. Give them money. And do not ask them to do anything for free.
That’s not to say there won’t be a lot of unpaid labor by folks of color in this process. There will be. It’s just that White folks shouldn’t be asking for their unpaid labor. At the same time, White folks who can should be investing more and more of our own unpaid labor – and we should be reorganizing budgets so we can pay folks of color for theirs.
***
More soon. Let me know if you want in on the Skype series, of course.
Thank you for reading. Be in touch. And please, please… stay alive.
First response.
Originally posted on Facebook, 10:00am Wednesday November 9th.
I’m here and I care about you and I’m worried about you. I’m fighting to dismantle White supremacist patriarchy and I’m in it with you and deeply grateful to those who are in it with me.
And I’m here for the work of taking care of each other. My heart goes out to the counselors and therapists and educators and activists and organizers and writers who are spending today holding space for others and making a plan. I’m here to offer care for you, too.
I’m paying attention and I’m ready and I don’t quite have plans yet but I’ll be in touch. I’m ready to act. I invite you to text or message or call if you have feelings or questions or plans or requests or just want to connect.
Black lives matter. I stand with Muslim folks and indigenous folks and refugees. Trans and queer and nonbinary and gender non conforming humans, I value you. I trust survivors. And there’s so much more and I will do better by you because you deserve better.
Lastly, trauma triggers trauma. I’ve heard from a lot of people already who are dissociated and I encourage you to try not to be alone today, and to check on your loved ones too.
“You’ve done everything right up to this point”
The most dominant image I have is me sitting on my couch staring at the ceiling. But really I was luckier than that – it was a beautiful fall, and I spent a lot of time lying in the grass soaking in the sun. In the park down the street… on the field across from the gym… on the hill by my office… resting my concussed brain, trying to cope.
I was coping not only with the concussion, but also with the effect of the concussion on my basic emotion regulation abilities. It was like there’d been a buffer zone around my feelings that had dissolved, dissipated. Hard feelings turned to panic much more easily, with a dangerous intensity. And panicking could only make things worse: spiking my heart rate, sending me down a steep dark spiral, and only aggravating the injury further.
So I had to ground myself. I had to. Feeling the grass underneath each limb, waves of guilt and shame and fear threatening to flood my system for uninterrupted hours in which I was supposed to be recuperating so I could get back to the Regret.
I have done everything right up to this point.
That’s how I would anchor myself.
I am alive, loved, and enrolled (as in, enrolled in grad school, even if I didn’t know when or how I would be able to finish). I have done everything right up to this point.
I would focus on those words, repeating them over and over and over again, for weeks and weeks.
—
Of course, it wasn’t true. I mean, it was true that I was alive, loved, and enrolled. But it wasn’t true that I’d done everything right. How could it be? That’s not a thing.
I said it to myself so much that it became a habit – telling myself I’d done everything right because at least I’d gotten to that point, still in the game, with people in my corner. But those good things can be true even if I haven’t done everything right. And I haven’t. I didn’t do everything right in grad school (shh don’t tell!); and I certainly haven’t done everything right by the people who have so valiantly loved me.
Sometimes I’ve messed up and hurt only myself. Sometimes I’ve messed up and really hurt people I care about. Sometimes I’ve messed up in ways that hurt marginalized folks around me and perpetuate the very systems of oppression I’m committed to dismantling.
—
I want to hold these truths. I need a way to be here and to feel them and then to do the repair I can do in/for myself, in/for my relationships, and in/for my communities. Can I tolerate the reality that I have not done everything right, without getting stuck in spirals of regret or shame or self-flagellation?
The first step is feeling the feelings. And then comes speaking back, but not to negate or deny what I’m upset about having done. Not to claim rightness or say it’s okay when it’s not. What can I say instead to speak directly to/with those feelings? I’m gonna play with some ideas here, and I’d love to hear feedback and reflections from you, too!
To regret, I could say: This is how things have happened. I did what I could at the time. This is the only way it’s happened, and this is what I get to live with now.
To shame, I could say: I care about my impact. I want to understand and address the impact I’ve had. Having a negative impact doesn’t negate everything about me. Everything else is still true, too, and I can be complicated.
To self-flagellation, I could say:Actually what I need is the opposite. What I need is self-care. To do better in the world, I need to do better for myself. The more okay I am, more aware of my own feelings and holding more of my own stuff, the more responsibly I’ll behave towards other people and the more I’ll be able to do for/with other people.
Perhaps these thoughts can help me ground myself in the presentand future, and engage with the pain and complexity of the past. By paying attention instead of turning away, maybe I will find an opportunity to do repair work, and maybe I can expand my capacity to do differently next time.
—
I am alive, loved, and employed. I’ve done a lot right up to this point. But not everything. I’ve messed up in some significant ways.
I did the best I could. I care about my impact. The more I take care of myself, the more I’ll be able to address what I can of what I’ve done, and to do better moving forward.
I hope?
Hopes and Dreams for 2016
- Stop saying I “just” moved to NYC
- Cook – like, roasted vegetables and soups
- More reading and writing
- More music and dance and prayer and poetry
- Host another dinner party
- Go back to not checking email and Facebook on Saturdays
- Read/listen/talk more about the impact of white supremacy and structural racism on the work I do and how I do it
- Read/listen/talk more about the impact of gentrification and what it means for me to be living where I live
- Further systematize my financial contributions to bolster the work of the people most impacted by local and global systems of oppression
- Stop getting annoyed when people send me vague text messages… avoid over-interpreting
- Open my heart to other humans
- Feel as much as possible
Having Feelings in Public (& Other Themes of 2015)
I didn’t mean to alarm people with my Facebook statuses; I just wanted to share. But perhaps there’s something in the genre of Facebook status writing (and Instagram selfies, apparently) that is not well-suited to the kind of self-expression I’m trying to achieve. I try to invite you into these thoughts and feelings that I’m having, but in a brief status – that you’re reading while scrolling – I can’t show you the whole thing. I can’t show you what it means to me and how I’m holding the experience. sex education, public schools and youth development programs. And authenticity, and I’m finding within that authenticity a kind of connection with community are what allow me to invest in my work as an activist, to build relationships that will facilitate and propel change dance. To careand question. So hard but so needed.
I will keep seeking community, I will keep hosting events at my place, and I will even keep going to Brooklyn to see what people are building there. Let me know your other ideas, hopes, dreams, visions, suggestions, etc. I’m in it with you!
You. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of my village this year. Family of origin and family of choice. Best friends, old friends, new friends, people who weren’t yet my friends but welcomed me with warmth anyway. You are the reason I can do anything, you are the reason I could write my dissertation and finish school and get a job and move to New York. You are the reason I could start a new job and take on new projects and set up a new life. You are the reason I have hope for myself, and you are the reason I have hope for the world.
Sending you warmth this winter, with so much hope and so many wishes for care and love and justice in the coming year.
Authenticity, writing, and regret
Regret has been my go-to emotion these days.
The times in my life I most regret are the times when I have succumbed to inauthenticity. When I have not been my authentic self. When I have turned away from myself in order to turn towards something else, and then that something else ended up being really bad.
I can’t go back to any of those times and wake myself up. I can’t enter those key moments and decide to listen to myself, decide to take myself more seriously, decide that I am worth facing challenges for.
I can’t go back. That’s the whole point. That’s the one rule in all of this. I only have now and in the future.
This recent wave of regret has been triggered by something that feels rather silly in the context of all this existential reflection. But still, it is real and it matters and it’s bringing up some really strong feelings for me. It’s that Feministing contest.
Many of you were so overwhelmingly supportive and enthusiastic when I made it into the final round of the Feministing.com “So You Think You Can Blog” contest. I got the email on a Tuesday afternoon at work—I had arrived at work late after spending the morning presenting a lecture on adolescent sexuality at a Boston College class on Positive Youth Development and then getting lunch with the professor (at Inna’s Kitchen!). I was totally amped about the lecture and discussion and the prospect of more teaching about sex and sexuality.
Then I got the email that I was selected as a finalist, and I couldn’t stop shaking in disbelief. In fact, I didn’t stop shaking until I got the email three weeks later that I wasn’t selected as a winner.
And I just think—I can’t help but feel—my understanding of my own situation is that it was that very disbelief, that very shaking, that very frozen-in-time, this-can’t-be-happening feeling that pulled me out of myself and threw me into a state of inauthenticity bordering on emotional paralysis—and now remembering that state of being is at the core of my current regret. I regret that I didn’t slow down enough in order to enter the last round of the contest as myself. From the minute I got the email, I was thinking about how to fit into their club—how to write the way they wanted me to write and write about the topics they wanted me to write about—I wasn’t thinking about how to be myself and be true to myself. I ended up writing blog posts that I thought were smart and well-written, but I personally wasn’t anywhere in those posts. They could have been written by anyone.
My biggest challenge was the one instruction they gave us—to be timely. When I blog, it’s always timely, but to me, to my timeline. I’m blogging about the one thing that I’ve been stuck on recently, the one piece of my life, past or present, that is eating away at me and that I want to come to understand by communicating it to others. I don’t tend to discuss current events or pop culture, and I’d never written a post on-demand before. And instead of slowing down and considering how I would proceed were I to actually win the contest and become a more scheduled, more public blogger, I plowed forward without reflection. I was plowing forward without myself, because I wasn’t giving myself time to catch up.
I don’t know if any of this is making sense to you. I can only get it to make sense to me part of the time. But it’s really at the core of what I’ve been feeling and thinking about these days, and it seemed to be more honest and authentic than the “why I hate competitions” or the “what does this mean about my professional identity and career goals” posts that I was considering writing as another form of reflection on the Feministing contest. Maybe those will be important posts for me to write at some point in the future, but today I needed to write about regret. Because noticing this regret about the times when I haven’t slowed down to address myself, to try to be true to myself, to attend to my own feelings and boundaries and goals—noticing all of that regret regarding the blog posts I wrote made me notice all the other regrets I have, too: regrets about times when I turned away from myself in ways that had much worse consequences than losing a contest.
Feministing Contest Final Round
I got the email on Tuesday, October 9: I was selected as one of six finalists for the Feministing.com “So You Think You Can Blog” contest. The winners of the contest would become regular contributors to the site. The final round was simple: we each selected a four-hour shift the following week in which we would write three posts for the main page.
Although I did not win the contest, I worked carefully on these entries before posting them on Monday, October 15. Here are the links, for prosperity.