Wander 5 & Testament

A few years ago a friend suggested choosing a one word intention for the New Year. In 2019 I chose “abundance”—and a few weeks later found out I was pregnant. The universe sometimes has a good sense of humor. This year the word was willingness.

If you are a regular at any 12-step meetings, willingness is a familiar concept. But before I found myself in recovery rooms, I’m not sure I understood it at all. My understanding to be willing is to prepare the soil of yourself to receive the seeds of a benevolent force greater than yourself—and to agree to care for them.

During our short time wandering together, we have already worked with our willingness—to allow ourselves to be witnessed by other sentient creatures—and to dance under cover of darkness with the new moon. Now it is Full.

The murder of George Floyd and the outpouring of feeling from communities everywhere has me again deepening into willingness.

There is a greater collective willingness to be vulnerable, to be seen in our grief and anger, to be courageous right now. Let’s use it.

My invitation this week is to show up with a deep willingness to be lame. Nearly a decade ago, a passage in Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things planted this idea in me. A man—“Bewildered”—writes into her column asking how to support his grieving fiancé. Her response: 

"Get comfortable being the man who says oh honey, I’m so sorry for your loss over and over again…I know saying those cliché and ordinary things makes you feel squirmy and lame. I feel that way too when I say such things to others who have lost someone they loved. We all do. It feels lame because we like to think we can solve things. It feels insufficient because there is nothing we can actually do to change what’s horribly true. But compassion isn’t about solutions. It’s about giving all the love that you’ve got.”

And isn’t that what people are doing? Publicly. We are tearing at our clothes in anguish, and wringing our hands, and grieving the deep losses that Black People in this country experience and feel on a daily basis. And it is my profound loss also, as a white person. Aren’t we grieving our separation? I know I am. Don’t we as human beings long for connection and acceptance more than anything else? When RACE suddenly enters friendships of over 20 years I can suddenly feel I have no words, no ground—only my own frozen shame of my slaveholding ancestors, my privileged life. I feel the chasm that was created there for me in childhood. And this shame is my own responsibility to wrestle to the ground, so that I can move, without the right answers, forward—lamely. I don’t want that chasm for our children. We must be willing to be lame and we must be willing to grieve.

We have already been wandering with willingness, with lameness. When you praise a plant don’t you feel a little lame? At least at first? I do. Let’s go and find our plant allies. Some plant you can call to your back when fear sets in, when you are making a choice about whether to be frozen, or whether to move lamely forward.

I call on mighty toothy leaved Dandelion! With her yellow mane and green teeth, survivor of great atrocities, offerer of endless medicines, resilient to her taproot core to give courage to this cowardly Leo.

Here is my testament: 

I am a privileged white woman who grew up in a city whose identity has long been twisted and dominated by being the Capitol of the Confederacy. I have confederate soldiers in my bloodline. I have at least one ancestor who I know was a slaveholder. I was lucky enough to grow up in a relatively integrated neighborhood, but where a confederate monument dominated over our shared green-space. My family’s income has been tied to the correctional system—and I was able to go to a private, and mostly white school. I have been held up at gunpoint by a boy just a little older than I was at the time, who was black. When I walk around, I feel the skin of all these experiences and knowings influencing my perception of myself and the black and brown and white people I encounter. I feel the skin of caution and judgment that we often wear around strangers whose histories have been so tied together by tragedy and conflict. I need this story to evolve, because my life has only been enriched by the connections that overcome this history.

I have been supported through transformational moments, months, and years of my life—by individuals who are also black—this includes Robin's birth. While I exhaustedly collapsed back on my doula between contractions—she gave me access to comfort, and then offered steadiness and courage and confidence as another contraction came.  I dearly dearly love people who are also black. One of these people has a baby a few months younger than Robin. We swap pictures and give each other moral support about our sleep deprivation. We have been friends for 20 years, and yet I feel tongue tied, frozen—shame when I get stuck in RACE. With the ancestral history I describe, is it possible to BE an ally? Is it possible for me not to see myself as a white devil as I heard being taught to a young black child when we were both children learning about the world? The answer is YES. We can TRUST our intentions. We can TRUST our courage. We can TRUST each other. 

We CANNOT trust our fear. And how we walk through that fear is the WILLINGNESS to be LAME. 

I don’t know what to say. I’m with you. I love you. I’m here to support you. I'm sorry. I can be witness to your pain, and own my own pain. I don’t know what to say. I’m with you. I love you. I hear you. I see you. I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you. 

My friend Kaki taught me that last part. It’s a Hawaiian prayer.

I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you. O ho'oponopono.