Especially over the past 5 years, I’ve spent a lot of energy on thinking and developing my personal integrity. What roots it? How can I tell when I’m tapped into it? When do I stray from it? How do I come back to it?
When I say “personal integrity,” it’s less of a list of good/bad or moral/immoral. Of course there’s a baseline of integrity that I think that most of us can agree to. What I’m more referring to is that deep part of me that is tapped into embodying my existential destiny that is rooted in my ancestral magic. No one on the outside can decipher that compass, but me. The more I learn from my history, Black femme revolutionaries, Indigenous folks, fellow comrades, the more supported I am to be attuned to that compass.
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Drawing from emergent strategy, the “how” is where the transformation happens. For example, how I create and make art is where I put the emphasis. How I talk to myself and keep myself accountable. How I move between spaces and seasons. How I am in relationship with my body.
Read this incredible passage from Practicing New Worlds by Andrea J. Ritchie that I read this morning:
[A quote from Mimi Kim] “The feminist wisdom of emergent strategies urges a slowness but not a hesitation - a reflection on what feels connected and right rather than a reaction to what is going wrong. For those of us who have participated in collective processes to intervene in violence, we know that there is a balancing of reflection, compassion, trust, and action that can move human beings in conflict toward connection or spin them further into despair. It is true that this balance feels more like nature than the mechanics of machinery.”
Juicy stuff! For me, integrity is rooted in connection with the world I want to see and less from the reaction to what is wrong. Also, to state the obvious - having a reaction to what is wrong is absolutely necessary and natural. I’m always a champion of righteous rage and big grief.
Let’s explore the “less of a reaction to what is wrong” part. On the outside, my actions probably look exactly the same, but I know and feel where things are coming from. I can’t say I’m there. Right now, I can feel I’m pulling from a reactive place. *Extending compassion to myself.* Watching genocides is so painful and my whole world is flipped on its head. However, I do sense that I’m slowly shifting to a more rooted place as I’m reminding myself what I’m struggling for.
The iterative nature part of liberation is really so beautiful and challenging to accept. My capricorn/virgo parts really want things to be spelled out. If we do this then that will happen in this timeframe. LOL. “Balancing of reflection, compassion, trust, and action” is so nuanced - I hate it and love it. I feel the tension between all of those elements. That’s why honing in on my personal integrity is so crucial. There is so much that pulls me to do xyz. Why and how can only be known by me. I hold myself accountable to those answers.
I feel like a huge theme in my life recently is accepting that I am not perfect and that perfection isn’t the goal on the road of struggling towards liberation. That’s something I’ve been preaching to my art and liberation folks for a long time. Oof the embodiment part is no joke. Releasing myself from the should’s and reaching deep within to that personal integrity is where it’s at.
To take it a step further, to release the standard of perfection in other people is another huge part!
That doesn’t mean I don’t hold myself and other people to a standard of accountability, but there has to be space to be human. So while we reduce harm, we also need to practice creating a culture of self accountability (pulling from transformative justice from Mia Mingus.) And and and people will f**k up. So then, how do we repair and hold each other accountable in a non-punative way? That’s something I have yet to witness and experience well. This year might be the year.
What does Liberatory Imagination spark in me today?
Extending so much space and softness for the tuning into my internal compass and not getting everything right. The energy is determined and hopeful. The color is clear bright blue. The essence is hot and piercing.
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