I shared this meme, and my commentary, on my personal page today:

So you won’t have to immediately click through to see my whole commentary, I will include it here below.

“Our stories may never get picked up by Lifetime or Oprah, but we still matter.

For some of us, what looks mediocre to the naked eye is actually a fecking amazing hero’s quest.

In the last 26 years, I have cared for a disabled husband, walking with him in his multiple suicide attempts, once in my front yard, as I staunched his bleeding and tried to wrest the sharp from his hand.

Through it all, I kept my low level job and lost almost no work to sick time.

I dealt with my own depression, infertility brought on by trauma, and Complex PTSD, sometimes with the help of counselors, sometimes without.

I sat on boards, was and am a vocal and (hopefully) effective activist, and managed to hold on to my property.

Two years ago, not a year after Bob’s last suicide attempt which still brings flashbacks every time I pass the place by the breezeway where the bloodstains stubbornly remain, I founded Lace on Race, which I hope has expanded and enriched the conversation about both justice and applied relational ethics.

Still. I have been wracked with insecurity and deep shame for not going to seminary or earning a doctorate. I have struggled with self worth, and my mission and call have suffered for it at times.

Who am I, this working class grunt, to think I have something, anything really, to say?

How dare I, considering my backstory?

And I am not alone.

How many voices are silenced? How many ideas squelched?

Those of us who struggle are worthy too.”

Just as I told my personal followers, I tell you this not in the spirit of pathos or of self indulgence. I have intentionally been, if not secretive or circumspect, certainly from a place of a sort of modesty, and definitely keeping in mind the fact that my story is intertwined with the story of my ex-husband, and, as such, is limited here by my singular perspective.

But I do think that it is important, vitally so as we enter this new year, that we talk about the issue of what it takes, what we think is required to become a person of purpose, congruence, authenticity, and as importantly, of effectiveness.

Most of us who are drawn to social justice work bring with us a deep sense of justice, of empathy, of compassion, and of service. These virtues are often somewhat feral, in the sense that they have been, for most of our lives, unfocused. Harnessing and leveraging these attributes in consistent service to what we say we believe is one of the reasons for Lace on Race; diffused empathy; impotent compassion; badly defined and inarticulate justice, and provisional and conditional service is how most of us have been taught to live out these values. Here, we confront and attempt to course correct that.

But there is another element that is rarely talked about in social justice circles.

That is the fact that those of us who feel these emotions listed above, however rudimentary or even unspoken and subconscious, but deeply and even painfully and overwhelmingly experienced, even as they drive us, are also sometimes, ofttimes, burdened with the shadow side of these emotions.

I am speaking , carefully, but with candor and determination, of academic, emotional, physical, or even spiritual limitations, what can be called Limps Along the Lumpy Crossings, that have hindered our journeys.

We have spoken of this before; how the weight of our individual buckets can derail our steps; both inward work, and outward praxis.

We have also spoken of the importance of three elements that must be in place to even begin to effect change that matters: Capacity, Volition, and Agency.

This is often a sticking point for us. There’s a lot going on, and we’ve seen people say as much through our last two years together.

We have spoken about how our buckets can slosh onto others. We have spoken less about how those buckets of insecurity, low self esteem and self worth, and untold pain can slosh onto ourselves, sabotaging us in overt and covert ways; sliming our very souls and hindering our footing.

We have heard people say they didn’t have the spoons, or even the smarts to do this work; that they lacked the Capacity to begin to think and process in new ways; that the material presented was too hard, that commenting was difficult because they couldn’t find the words.

I too have felt this, and often. I have so often felt, sometimes mid-sentence as I write, that I don’t have the credentials or the juice or even the right to write about things, about anything really. I have felt suppressed by my admittedly limited education; by my struggle to integrate sometimes dissonant and disparate things into a coherent commentary; by the reminder of my title at my desk job and my cube with no ceiling and no door; by my pedestrian life crammed with the tedium of daily life and the easily ignored musings of the mediocre suburban ex-hausfrau.

This is a renunciation of my convictions; it sounds humble, but really, not so much. This sort of self-deprecation is the Walmart knockoff of authentic modesty and self effacement. It’s arrogance masked. It’s a pass, or an attempted pass. If we say that every mind and hand and experience has value, and we do, then my lack of doors or of letters is not an excuse to step away; it’s an invitation to double down.

And it is not about what nowadays is called ‘lived experience’; that seemingly benign but mostly blunt and increasingly weaponized tool that is supposed to elevate the unwashed to the level of the academy or the press pool.

No. It is not just the raw material of lived experience, that then can be exploited by those who putatively take it upon them to both tell and spin the narratives (think of the controversy surrounding ‘American Dirt’) like mined minerals from Africa that turn into the guts of an iPhone, but the analysis and the connections that people glean outside of a classroom and outside of a press pass. It’s collective neural pathways that only activate when new perspectives are not just folded into the collective narrative, but are actually given authentic respect and primacy; not just the stories, but indeed the wholistic person who inhabits them. The academy has gotten it wrong. A lot. Particularly in areas of race. So has the journalistic tradition; particularly when it divorced itself from the people it covered so as to have a seat at the table of the elites–and even then, almost never in service to marginalized by race.

We, and you, and sort of importantly for the sake of Lace on Race–I, can make sense, sometimes entirely new sense, of available information, not despite supposed ‘deficits’, but precisely because of them.

So can you. The learned helplessness that is part of the Employee Handbook of Toxic Whiteness Fight Club, as well as its counterpart in the more marginalized, is something to be acknowledged and confronted head on. The society riddled with white supremacy wants and needs stasis; needs for us to feel unequipped and unqualified to question the tropes and schemas we have been given and with which we have been forced, coerced really, to swaddle ourselves. Wants us to stay immobile and silent and lulled like we were all covered with weighted blankets. Wants us to refrain from the use of our brains, talents, and gifts, despite and because of our supposed deficits, to question the assertions and conclusions we have been force fed, for the world and for the Other.

And also– the conclusions we have been force fed about ourselves. We are too anxious, too depressed, too lazy, too fragile, too flaky, too distracted to do anything but nebulously ‘care’. We are good for nothing more than Target runs and cut creases and complicated drink orders from Starbucks–drink orders that take up more of our synapses and ability to think than our supposed passions.

And those who are against authentic and sustainable change want it exactly this way.

Moving against limitations, both those imposed by the world, and those self imposed, is an act of resistance, of revolution. Saying that we are more than what we have been assigned makes us dangerous. Living out loud and with full throat and minds fully engaged is seditious.

Seditious, that is, to an order that would have us complacent and complicit.

Which means it is an act of heroism in our individual unremarkable skin suits, to fix our mouths to say a clear and audible No.

And to then pivot, hard, and say an equally unequivocal and piercing Yes.

So, then. Volition.

This is tricky. I can want something, but want something else more. Volition moves past yearning without skin in the game. It’s the clear yes that makes for relentless reliability.

In my life I have struggled with that very thing. I want to fit into the fake leather skirt, but I want Foster’s Freeze more. I want a trash free front field, but i want to binge watch Netflix more. Closer to the orange tree, I can say I want radical change, but I want entropy more, especially when on its face it serves me. I can want something, but sometimes it’s not about the wish; it’s more about the ranking. Sometimes, even, and ever so quietly, I want justice. But I want to stay wrapped in the weighted blanket of my afflictions more. Hear that. Can anyone relate to what I am saying here?

So. What ranks above a sustainable and reliable and relentless pursuit of racial justice for you?

Don’t say nothing. Name it. Or, rather name them. Because how many of us can truly say that arching our backs and extending upward beyond our clench in order to reach the highest oranges is something we consistently do?

Volition is what has to happen after the yes. Volition is what must be married, cleaved, to priorities; including the priority of preserving our self concept. I feel this when I remember myself as Lace the Fieldmouse, good for only nibbling, as opposed to Lace the Lion, ready to roar with conviction and choosing to use my teeth to get to the heart of it all.

Volition is hard for those of us with afflictions, which is to say all of us.

It is easy to say ‘I want to, but…’. Volition says, simply and with depth, ‘I will.’

We have seen this too.

And I want to be quick not to seem to minimize or deny real challenges. But here is where curiosity and creativeness can be engaged to make real and authentically change-making progress despite skill level, despite afflictions, despite limits.

Saying ‘I will’ first to the issue of racial justice, and then looking for ways to back that up will always be more effective than trying to look at what is required like some kind of Waze map where you are most concerned with looking for the first off ramp or rest stop. Giving it primacy in your life makes creativity and curiosity and congruence possible.

But first you must believe you can say a Yes that sticks. You must believe that your failures and your half measures and anything else that you feel is a disqualifer for this journey is moot.

This requires the most important element that melds the first two.

Agency.

Everything in your life, including your supposed failures and even the very things society has convinced you to believe to persuade you to tap out and sit on the folding chair in your street clothes while others stretch and sweat and move the ball forward, are actually distinct qualifiers.

Hear this deeply: there are people only you are qualified to reach. There are first downs only you are qualified to make. You don’t have to ask permission to Suit Up and Show Up and Stand Up.

Peter , my therapist/mentor/coach/all around kick ass in a leather chair and interesting socks, confronted me with that very thing when I was agonizing over LoR when I thought we might shut down. It was wrenching. Was I , this person so unqualified on paper, really the one to show another way? Who was I to create a mission and method and ethos from whole cloth? Shouldn’t I leave this to smarter people with more social capital and confidence? Peter said this: welp (ok, I added the welp):

He said, but those hordes of smarter savvier folks with more juice than you didn’t do it. Where are they? he asked as he looked around his office.

There’s just you, and you gotta go with what ya got. Only you had what was needed. The only person who pressed the submit button that started this whole thing was you.

That was his parting shot at 6:55. Then he stood up, and made sure I remembered my jacket, and that was that.

Feck. Only me. Only me.

Only I, this mashup of gifts and deficits and confidence and insecurity, could do this. And only you can fulfill the reason why you are here in the space my whole messy self created. Hold on to that. That’s a charge. And a distinct directive. And an affirmation. And, if you need it for now: permission.

My physical therapist, Christopher (another mensch), listened to me patiently last week. I had hoped, even though I have been sick for almost three months straight, that I had made more progress. He looked at me, and quietly reminded me not to forget my cane.

‘But I haven’t used that damn stupid cane in almost a year!!’ I said laughing. Christopher looked at me, laser sharp.

Listen to yourself, he said. And I did, and then I walked straight-backed and pain free (save for my glutes. large muscle work is killer) out into the Kearny Mesa night.

If you know what to look for, I still walk with a slight limp.

I still have unrelenting depression, sometimes deep and seemingly intractable level 20 depression. I still remember March 17 2017 and against my better judgement, still turn my head towards the fading blood on my concrete every time I walk towards my front door.

I am still anxious every time I am confronted with a blank page and my mind’s eye envisioning all of your faces trusting me to walk beside you with purpose and clarity.

But that head turn these days is less a swivel than a gentle nod. And I walk. And I type. My afflictions can make for a crowded dining room table indeed. But I still clear a space to write. The afflictions become my companions, not my nemeses. I belly up to the table and do what I am called to do; indeed, what only I can do. In service to what only you are made to do.

A scarred and burned table with a chipped bowl with all the oranges. Even, especially, the bruised ones.

I show up, scars and lesions and limp and all.

So can you. So must you.

Keep walking.