I like so many others I know have been struggling with what to say about what has happened in Charlottesville and really in this country in general. I have so many emotions and thoughts swirling in my head that it makes it tempting to say nothing but that would be using my privilege as a white woman and that is not okay. We can’t just look away when these things happen “to other people.” Yes, it uncomfortable and no, I don’t have the right words but I can stand up and say this isn’t right. I can do my best to try to help make change happen.
It’s really easy to get down and feel like the world is going crazy right now. I was thinking about that and then I started thinking about how might I be able to look at it differently? Which brought me to a new thought that maybe, in a lot of ways this is what the world needs to go through right now. It’s just like in our individual lives. Sometimes we need to go through something so we can grow and change for the better. Then as I was thinking about this, I came across this beautiful video post from Brene Brown. She said it even better than I could, so please take a minute to give a listen below. We have to own our stories in order to write a different ending. Take that in for a second. In your life and collectively in the world we have to acknowledge our past & the stories we tell ourselves so we can change the endings.
The white supremacists who were marching in Charlottesville weren’t all old people of an older generation. They were all ages. It feels like there is this resurgence of these hate groups and I seriously can’t believe we are seeing this in 2017 but we need to see it because it WAS there before. It’s just that now it’s out in the open. Hate is a learned behavior so someone has been teaching those young people to hate in ways I can’t even fathom. And we need to see it because if we keep pretending it’s not there, it will only grow and keep coming back to haunt us.
These are uncomfortable things to see and acknowledge. We are the USA. We are supposed to have learned from our mistakes in the past but really have we ever even tried to heal them? Have we really acknowledged it? So maybe this time of uncertainty and of having a leader who most of us (I certainly) disagree with is our collective chance to DO BETTER. To have the things we need to work on highlighted so we can have these conversations, so we can see that our corner of the world isn’t the only corner, so we can finally stand up for what is right and kind and good.
Again I don’t have the answers or the words (and certainly not the grammar) but I want to be part of the conversation because this isn’t acceptable and it isn’t right and I know we as humans are capable of so much better. So let’s collectively start to see what we don’t want to see so we can start having conversations and taking actions that make a change for the better.
In the video Brene starts to break down some of the conversations about privilege, perspective & power that we can start having with ourselves and the people around us. It’s a place to start for everyone and certainly gave me a lot to think about. We can do hard things and we can change stories. I certainly want to leave a better world for my children, don’t you?