[Lace Watkins]

https://laceonrace.com/2022/02/28/laces-hope-vision-2022/

Lace’s Hope & Vision 2022

Discussion

[Shannon Brescher Shea]

Your vision and compelling passion has always been what has drawn me to this space and kept me committed. Seeing you continue with the level of respectful grace combined with accountability towards the people who have hurt you most provides a real model of how to do that in our own lives. Your ability to combine values with the skills to carry out those values shows that it isn’t enough to just “care” – we have to practice to build those skills and then carry them out with action. Real commitment isn’t tied to trends or how you look to others. That gives you an earned authority that the “cult leader” accusers are afraid of.

[Rebecca McClinton]

I love the Cartographer metaphor. As your mothers life journeys have been a roadmap for you, here you pass that same legacy along to us. Grace upon grace, you simultaneously hold us accountable and invite us back to your flat and round table to dine together, walk together, lesson and mitigate harm together. I equally acknowledge that it’s my responsibility to flip this script, so that we, that I, am no longer placing that burden onto the backs of Black and Brown lives to break that ground, draw those maps, showing up late to follow pathways already trodden. Sending you and your family your own grace and strength as you navigate the goodbyes and endings ahead. These searing words have sprung out of that sorrow. Crying with you, and wishing you comfort as you navigate these pathways.

[Kelsi Watters]

The cartographer image stuck with me as well, knowing the full roadmap. I have witnessed you navigating this roadmap with tenacity, grace, Hesed, and unwavering commitment and trust you implicitly Lace. And yet, as you said Rebecca, there comes a time where I will need to step up and be a GPS for others navigating the roadmap, to not rely on Black and brown people to always carry the full burden and responsibility on their backs.

[Emily Holzknecht]

I have seen how people expect full perfection from you while simultaneously letting me slip and giving themselves a free pass to act however they see fit, as if a Black woman slipping up is somehow a greater sin than other people never intending to be kind or virtuous in the first place. I am working to be a strong back to stand on and also to examine where I am expecting more of others than I expect of myself, where I give a pass to others expecting more of Black people than they expect of anyone else.

[Kelsi Watters]

Emily, this struck me as well, how Black women are given very little or no grace when they are not perfect, yet white people like me are given endless grace and coddling, even When we behave attrociously. We have seen it here in this space with the way Lace is expected to model perfection while we white women are forgiven when we slip up. I, too, need to be aware of when I am giving myself a carve out, when I expect more of others than I am living out myself, and when I expect more lack women than from others or myself.

[Kelsi Watters]

Lace, thank you for sharing your journey through the Crucible with us. I will walk the roadmap with you as we navigate together. I am grateful for your guidance on this roadmap where I am still learning, yet at the same time I will be walking with you, arm around your shoulders, eye to eye. Even as you hold the roadmap and GPS, I think of what it took for your body and heart and soul to get to a place of developing that G’PS, of surviving the crucibles. I cannot be content with living the passive way, following the GPS but ne’ver learning the route. Racial justice work is not done passively, but with commitment and Hesed. So, I am h walking with you, to offer a steady shoulder to lean on, to face the fire, and to do the heavy lifting.

[Author]

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