Habits of agency and rising to the risks and rewards of relationships.
As I think about the Hopes and Visions series for this year, I’m humbled to be walking with this community. On a daily basis I am thinking about how to be relentlessly reliable and resilient in service to our North Star. For me, these BIG goals can feel a tad overwhelming, and my experience with managing my mental health has meant I’ve turned to really practical steps that I can take. New habits in service to our North Star.
I really love creating new habits. I start tiny. I believe that it is only by starting small and manageable and then building on the success of those small habits, do we create change. I know that change can happen because my life is unrecognizable from what it was 20 years ago. And I know that the work of racial justice requires that I bring every small and large change I can into my life so I am able to walk with relentless reliability and resilience in service to our North Star – to lessen and mitigate the harm endured by Black and Brown people perpetrated by white people (me) and white supremacy.
I was reading about Octavia Butler’s process as a writer and this quote jumped out at me about inspiration: “Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.”
This makes me think of Lace. Of her urging us to become persistent and create habits that align with the North Star and to do the things that habits make possible: walk and practice every day. Habits create strength we didn’t know we could have. Habits create reflexivity. Habits can create new beauty and the world we say we want to see.
I was quite surprised to be asked to be part of the Lace on Race Leadership Team, unsure how to live up to the expectations and trust. I’ve struggled in the last few months as I strive to keep up with our Leadership text chat, to engage more consistently on the LoR Facebook page and website, and to stay active in my offline responsibilities as a parent, friend, wife, and community member. At times I have felt overwhelmed. I’ve needed to create new habits both in my actions (hello second alarm clock that I set 5 minutes after my phone alarm clock and hide in the kitchen so I’ll run out of bed in time to turn it off before waking my two young kiddos… so I’ll have time in the morning to engage at Lace on Race) and habits in my thinking. I have needed to catch my thinking when go down the rabbit hole of “I’m not enough”, “I’m not doing enough”, and instead shift things away from myself and distortions in my thinking. As I’ve been writing this reflection, and even the act of writing anything at Lace on Race, or taking any anti-racist action, I’ve realized that I’m relearning lessons in the pinned posts – about agency, curiosity, and relationship.
What I’m learning in our Leadership Chat is that consistently owning my own agency to course correct, making a plan to cause less harm, and then follow through… are incredibly freeing of the energy that I had previously kept in my head. That energy opens me up to actually take a step instead of staying silent and passive. Instead of being embarrassed, I am working to lean into being accountable in my relationships and proactively make plans so I can follow through.
Not surprisingly, I have a tendency to beat myself up for not doing things perfectly or enough (as we’ve seen, it is a common pattern of how white supremacy shows up for white women). Instead, I have been learning to catch that thinking and challenge it, confront it with new questions, to confront it with curiosity. Below are some questions that help me shift my perspective – many of them directly from Lace, and others growing out of conversations at Lace on Race and in Leadership chat.
- Who do I want to be, in service to the North Star?
- What can I do specifically today towards being that person?
- How can I take a small step that actually moves me towards the North Star?
- What can I shift in my life so I’m more available to be healthy and able to engage more consistently?
- How do I take care of my body each day so I’m paying closer attention to what’s going on for me?
I know this is a big list. And at this moment I want to pause and emphasize that undergirding all of this is Hesed love, durable love for myself as I make changes, make mistakes, tweak things and try again and keep walking.
I made a commitment to be in a relationship with this community, with Lace and the women on the Leadership team. Commitments make sure that we follow through on the things that matter most… on who I say I want to be. I’ve found that rarely do casual friendships have that clarity – of how we align ourselves with our values and the expectation that we’ll need others to help us keep aligned, make course corrections, and support us. And obviously, these kinds of relationships take work and risk – because we will be seen and see others.
Through relationships, Lace is investing in me and taking a risk on my potential. She is taking a risk on all of us, by letting us in and sharing of herself and her love so freely. Her risks are calculated because in order to move this stone of racism she needs ALL of us to work together to root out the thinking and systems that keep harm happening to Black and Brown people. And it is in learning how to do relationships better, how to walk together and be known and to know others in their full humanity, that we can create this kind of change.
Because this change – rooting out white supremacy in ourselves and our world – is such a big task, and rising to the risks and rewards of relationships can feel scary, I know for my own health and sustainability I must start with habits that are small and real. Habits that focus on my own agency. Habits that are specific, and embody the ethos of Lace’s method. Habits that let me take steps each and every day towards being the person I say I want to be as I walk towards our North Star.
What habits help you walk consistently? What habit could you add to your life so you are able to live in deeper alignment with our North Star?
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