Facebook Publication Date: 1/8/2019 8:01

Walking Together In 2019

I am grateful for all of the calls, emails, messages and texts I have received in these three weeks of my health situation. I am healing, in no small part to your caring for and about me. To answer the questions some have had, I am definitely on the mend, but yes, physically, I am tired. Small things, like taking out the trash for the week, wipe me out. But it’s all good.

I have had time to rest, reflect, and renew my commitment to you and to this work. It has involved taking a deep dive to why I feel called to do this work, and why I have been bold enough to ask you to do this work with me.

There are many separate reasons, but they boil down to this: I want legacy. For all of us. I want each of us to be able to say to our children, nieces, the stammering kid who bags your groceries, that we did everything we could to deliver a different and better world. That we took risks, and made real sacrifices.

And legacies for ourselves, as well. As I have done different permutations of justice work over the last three decades, I have changed. Sometimes for the good. Sometimes, though, for the worse. I have fought against cynicism, futility, and resentment. I have deeply unpacked my motivations for doing this work in the first place, asking myself if what I offer moves the needle. If what I have to say is different. If what I have to say comes from a place of alignment with the woman I want to be. Am I living in my conviction of speaking truth with loving candor? Am I congruent; do I remember who I am and walk that path with faithfulness? Am I, in doing this work, becoming more or less of a woman I would admire and want to follow and emulate myself?

2018 tested every one of those things. I need to be absolutely sure that I, Lace Watkins, am, and to the best of my ability remain, a woman worth your following; a woman with words worth listening to, considering, and then internalizing; a woman of what we have been calling ‘resilient reliability’, whose core is solid and steadfast, a woman with whom you can disagree without fear of censure, a woman whose influence, however small, is always guided by the people she serves: people who have chosen to walk with her, and people she will never see, because her words and actions have impacted others who will in turn impact.

I believe this to my marrow: I cannot ask people to do more and be more than I myself am willing to strive to do and be. The day that happens, I will close my laptop, pull the plug and go silent.

So, as we take Lace on Race to the next level, we are, I am, doubling down on these principles.

Because, here is the secret that has been hiding in plain sight for the last year: The work we do here has been all about race.

And also this: The work we do has never been about race. This is, at bottom, about co creating a world worth leaving when our individual times are done. That work cannot happen without race at the center, but it is not and will never be about coloring in the lines neatly. This work has never been neat and linear. It has never been a one and done. We have been talking about something different, something bigger, this entire year. It is about becoming people with convictions that permeate our entire lives. It is about changing our DNA and, then, the collective consciousness of those we influence. It is about making a new map for the world. This is about co creating a world worth leaving when our individual times are done.

This is especially poignant for me. This time three weeks ago, I almost died. I didn’t.

This is not the first time I have been granted clemency of sorts: two car accidents, an emergency operation, deep and terrifying poverty, and the time, coming up on twelve years ago, when I was convinced that my work was done on this earth, and decided on my own to leave it, as it turns out, less than successfully.

Each time, there has been something more to learn, something more to confront, either in the world, or in my own interior landscape, something more to release, something more to embrace.

And there have been people. Because the relational is crucial; is in fact the key to a praxis with staying power.

Every year, I take stock of the people who have come into my life in the past year, and of those who have left. Those I succored and championed; those I failed. Sometimes those abdings and failures have been with the same person.

I have noted reconciliations with those whom I absolutely knew I would never speak to again; I have mourned the loss of those whose affiliation, fellowship, and love for me and with me I thought would be durable and lifelong.

Two years ago this month, I told the story of Becky of The Boots. I have now durably and authentically reconciled with her.

Shortly after, I began the process of reconciling with the pastor who participated in my discipline from a denomination that I loved.

I have also begun the halting, intermittent, dogged, not-at-all-linear path of reconciling with a sister with whom I have been functionally estranged for over 40 years.

In each of these, and of others I will not mention here, the internal work, the work where I examined myself and found where I was harmed, where I might have displaced, where I was the perpetrator of hurt, and how that did or did not align with the woman I feel I am called to be, has been the work that has been the most important.

The outward efforts that one can see, that of engaging and abiding, has frankly been the least of it.

Authentic gestation has been vital.

Doing this work with a minimum of residue is important. It makes way for humility and for grace and for curiosity and for openness and vulnerability, essential virtues for this work.

I am telling you all of this because this is exactly the work that I feel is so crucial, and so often lacking, in the work of justice, racial or otherwise. It is the work we have begun to do, millimeter by millimeter, in Lace on Race.

I am telling you all of this because you need to see past the professional photographs (although they _are_ exquisite. Thanks again, Chris.) and to read past the pretty prose to be able to see me and confront me and engage with me eye to eye.

I am not without knowledge and experience; nor am I some kind of guru whose fish you swallow, bones and all. I am a flawed, deeply human woman who has things she has the audacity to believe are worth saying out loud and are worth mindful and intentional consideration.

By you.

But, I will rigorously examine for for self indulgence and self aggrandizement. I will never leave you. I will never humiliate you. When I say I will always walk with you, I mean it.

Toward that end, by the end of this month—hopefully by our one year anniversary date on January 21–we will turn the key on an actual website. This is thrilling. It is also terrifying.

We need you. I need you.

Right now, there are about 4000 followers on various platforms. Those platforms will stay, in concert with the website.

Obviously, I would love to engage with and abide with all 4000 and more. I do so hope I will be allowed that privileged blessing with each and every one of you.

What we also need is a strong core cohort of those followers who will become anchors. Who will do focused work to learn to do internal gestation, and then commit to passing that on. That will most probably be a much smaller number than 4000. But whether that number is 4000, 400, 40, or 4, I am confident that there will be a group of people committed to walking together who will be forever changed to the marrow at the end of this year.

We say we influence influencers, we lead leaders, we mentor mentors. The numerical amount of people is less important than the depth and the breadth of the work we will do together. We will co create metamorphosis, and we then will release other butterflies whose fluttering wings will change discourse, policy, legislation on both an individual and on a collective and corporate level.

We believe we can. And we believe you, the person reading thus far, have the willingness, capacity, and volition to do it, too.where we each are lacking in these attributes, we will learn to fill each other up.

It is not hyperbole when I say that the greatest blessing of my entire life was when we launched Lace on Race on January 21, 2018. It has been my greatest privilege to walk with you. I humbly and boldly ask you to continue to walk with me.

If you are ready to commit to becoming one of these core community members, please comment below, or message us at Lace on Race, or at laceonrace@gmail.com.

To 2019.

With love,

Your Lace

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