I have this thing where if I let a practice of mine whether it’s writing or posting on instagram sit for a bit too long, it takes much longer for me to approach it again. That’s what happened here on substack! But I’m here and proud that I inched myself over the hump. As usual, my challenge for myself arriving on substack is to show up in the messiness. If you’re in for riding my stream of consciousness, buckle up.
A couple weeks ago, I had a soul enriching conversation with my friend Chi (an incredible liberation artist and comrade.) Chi referenced a podcast that Alok Vaid-Manon was featured in.
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Alok started the conversation by describing people they were addressing as “people who are choreographing the rhythm of their life to the cadence of love whose metronome is beauty and not normativity.”
That statement made me cry immediately, because they so poetically described what I feel. My resistance is rooted in love and I’m almost manically doing everything I can to not lose that rootedness while trying to find people who are committed to the same. Writing it out, it feels so simple, but my bouts of loneliness tells a different story.
The part about normativity reminds me of another podcast of a conversation between Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes where Mariame talks about compulsive normativity. It’s like comphet (compulsive heterosexuality), but with the state of our colonial white supremist society.
The compulsive normativity is a siren call for people to run away from discomfort, grief, and sacrifice at the cost of knowing truth and ultimately their own freedom - this is my understanding of listening to Mariame. It’s a coping mechanism that provides surface level security, but at the expense of the human spirit and collective connection. And the more racial and class privilege you have, the louder the siren call is. For me, I watch people doing “normal” things with this disgust but also this twisted version of longing.
If I step into who I should be and want to be as a human tapped into my connection with other humans, there’s no way I can engage with the world like I did before. I know and believe too much. It doesn’t mean that I can’t have pleasure or enjoy my life, but it means that it has to be done with as much alignment as possible. That simultaneously lights up my soul and scares me.
It scares me, because I’m afraid I won’t have much access to the alignment I want to see in my life and therefore access to things that can bring me purpose and joy. I’m afraid that numbness and depression will overcome me and stagnate me. I’m afraid that the betrayal of people who I deemed as comrades will force me to be alone.
My intellectual brain is already kicking in and telling me all the things to dispel my fears. But part of healing is to feel and to be honest with what comes up in my body. Part of the expansion that I’m building towards is not intellectualizing my way out of feeling. Feeling discomfort, grief, and pain, is part of tapping into my human spirit which is key to this struggle towards collective liberation.
Back to the interview with Alok - they talked about “performance of consistency” being dangerous. People want this fake kind of security in the consistency of behavior and binaries. The fact is that we embody all kinds of contradictions and we are always changing! That’s what it means to be human. We are conditioned to idolize this unrealistic purity at the cost of truth. And I get it, because it’s so much easier to flatten everything in order to justify apathy. I feel that pull every day.
In my grieving, I feel so much and too little all the time. It’s scary to see the contradictions in myself. Constantly, I’m swinging from feeling so much ancestral conviction and then into depression and numbness. The way that small tasks are so incredibly hard makes me scared while trying to survive under capitalism. Like twice this week, I missed my train stop. It’s such a small thing, but it made me question my situational awareness that is so crucial in direct action.
It’s liberating and so destabilizing, but what I think is happening is that I’m practicing letting go of the “fiction of control” (Alok used that term in the podcast.) In the practice, I’m flailing a bit because it feels so new. The letting go calls me to be present with all of it.
Maybe not at the same time, but it’s an invitation of presence in truth. Not the sanitized truth, but the raw truth.
The truth is that I am witnessing the slaughtering of the Palestinian people in Gaza. I am witnessing the displacement and forced starvation of the Sudanese. I am witnessing the violent exploitation of the Congolese. I am witnessing cop city in front of my eyes. I am witnessing state sanctioned violence every week right in front of me at direct actions. I am witnessing myself and peers drowning under the pressure of capitalism. I am feeling the affects of intergenerational trauma and trauma from my lifetime. I am unwell. We are unwell.
At the same time, the truth is that it is an honor to be in this resistance alongside of my community and comrades. The truth is that I am consistently in awe of how I was chosen and am supported by my ancestors to embody what it means to be human. I have the privilege of learning from Black feminist and indigenous activists and organizers. They give me the gift of having language of understanding and support me in embodying liberation in a way that is expanding my mind and spirit every day. I embody the healing my ancestors have passing down to me. I am supported. We are supported.
Holding or maybe dancing with it all is a collective effort, because I can’t do it alone…and shouldn’t. But that means I need to learn to trust people. UGH! Back full circle with what I wrote in the last post about how hard it is to determine who is trustworthy. It takes so much energy to protect the softness and to be rooted in love!
What does Liberatory Imagination spark in me today?
Holding the complexity, nuance, contradictions with my chosen family. The more I can give myself space to be complex the more wise grace I can extend to the people I commune with. Being able to hold healthy boundaries can co-exist with softness and love. I don’t need to put up harsh guards up when I am in trusted community
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