check in

For the rest of my life, I will be asked to check myself.
Dismantling racist paradigms that colonize my consciousness and re-action isn’t a movement, it is how I must choose to live ongoing.

My “awakening” isn’t predicated because of spirituality and yoga, but it helped me to realize my cyclical nature.

Today, my eyes and heart will learn another way to deconstruct my “highly functional” complacency in this white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist, earth-exploited world.

I will voice loudly and silently.

I will engage, and not.

I will do “my work,” and dance joyfully.

And then, tomorrow I’ll wake-up and realize how I have to do it over again, because any over-confident, self-righteous, bias belief will shadow my actions, and exclude something I’m not aware of, because I do not know everything.

My resilience is forged by a willingness to accept humility.

I will not be perfect,

I will fuck up.

I will forget.

I will fall back asleep.

But I will believe in progress, even when it rarely feels evident.

Systematic oppression is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it will reinvent itself in who’s ever voice is the loudest. So maybe our healing comes when we learn to hold the silenced voices to the same importance.

The black ones who scream, and we don’t hear them, the womxn who cry and we don’t care, the plants and animals who can only yield to our noise.

These stories and cries, are a reminder we have to LISTEN.

The Civil Rights act for equality and equal protection under the law passed in 1964 - 56 years later, we are still marching.

The first bill for the ERA gender equality began in 1923 - rallied in 1970s - 97 years later - still not ratified.

Laws will not determine our actions, nor ensure equality.

But you can. How will you listen, act, and serve for the rest of your life?

Make a pledge, a daily commitment, because this is our collective reality for the long haul.

Listen, act, and express with care/consideration of the whole.

Be willing to accept that it’s going to be hard.

You won’t always like it.

But that’s okay.

I am here with you.