Embodiment comes with a price…Knowledge
Don’t be alarmed, be brave. Be ready for the brilliance that comes with inhabiting your body, with being present to the world within and the world outside of you.
Maybe you will uncover, as i did, the mass of unrecognized privilege that you hold.
Maybe you will feel the destruction your ancestors wrought on this land and her people, as i have.
Maybe you will feel the hurt you inflict with unconscious bias, as i have.
Maybe instead of defending your innocence, you will choose to listen and learn about the racism that we all carry within, as i do.
Maybe you will stand up and risk not getting it right in the hopes that you will be a better human, as i do.
The more i practice Embodiment, the more my world opens up.
By learning how to connect to myself, by remembering how to feel, and how to move from that feeling I have also remembered that knowledge is POWER.
Knowledge has the power to demystify my sheltered upbringing, to shed light on power structures, to create choice and responsibility where before there was only unquestioned allegiance.
Choosing to feel, choosing to know, choosing to choose
IS BRAVE
My thirst for knowledge is not alphabetical, numerical, or at all orderly. It is pure chaos.
I jump from subject to subject and each book I read yields 3 or 4 more “must reads”. Recently, the knowledge I yearn for is the monumental un-sheltering kind.
The kind that creates ruminations such as
..i have been living under a rock, i know nothing
..it is too easy for an able bodied, white, cisgendered, healthy, not-impoverished, woman to get away with “knowing nothing”
..what the hell are they teaching my kids in school?
..i am a privileged ass hole for not recognizing the privilege i hold
..how do i do better for my kids
..this country is fucked
I honestly can't remember when I started to crawl out from under my privileged safe sheltered rock- my bubble where la la land was real and all that mattered was my immediate family and friends.
I have a vague memory in my mid 20s when I realized the story spun in school of coming to America,the first Thanksgiving, and the brutality of the native people was myopically skewed to favor the white man and the white man did no harm.
I started to smell the decay and filth that this country was built on. But for the most part I still lived in my bubble.
Then there was the time I was working at a brewery and slinging beers, a man came up and ordered. He was wearing a hat that said BLM. I asked him if he worked for the Bureau of Land Management. He scoffed at me and said Black Lives Matter. I thought to myself- silly me i got that one wrong.
It wasn't until a year later, after deep diving into my own internalized racism and unconscious bias, that I truly started to feel shame for that incident.
Last year I went down to Costa Rica and knew not a lick of Spanish. Did it matter, i thought No. I was a privileged North American and no matter where i went, i believed people should speak my language.
Needless to say, during a layover in Mexico City, a woman called me a stupid gringo and asked why i didn't speak the language of the country.
Shame again filled my heart and i rooted around for an understanding. How did i get so sheltered?
I was starting to come around ,to wake the fuck up. I was beginning to search for truths that nobody had necessitated to tell me in the 30 years of my life lived.
Then there was the dive into somatic work which led me to author and psychoanalyst Resma Menakem. Through his teachings i learned how to divulge and contact my internalized racism. I forced myself to look at all the ways i consciously and unconsciously related to people who did not look, act, or are like me.
This process of unlearning the narratives and finding a semblance of truth, it is an ongoing process
I am uncovering, constantly decluttering my world views. Unlearning the bullshit that keeps my scope small. Widening my perspective of all people. I am dedicated to seeing my pitfalls. I long for equality of all, but know
First and foremost, equality must emanate from me
I am on a path to divulge my faults. There is no easy way out in this endeavor. And i wouldn’t want it any other way.
Because The easy way got me here in the first place.
Be Intrepid, find the truth, find your truth, keep choosing choice.
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