Lithia Park, in my hometown: the day after the election
Today is a day for feeling the hurt. A day when we have no choice but to confront the dark chasm between the world as it is… and the world as we long for it to be. Today is a day for grieving that gap.
Last night the latent stress and anxiety that had been bubbling in my chest all day hardened into the familiar feeling of dread: the oppressive weight of sadness. Discouragement. Grief. Not quite despair… that’s not yet an emotion I have allowed myself to feel.
Hold for relief/mourning
This was the title of my calendar block this morning. Sadly, it is the latter feeling I find myself sinking into. I feel fortunate to have spaces and communities to turn to: Prentis Hemphill and the Embodiment Institute anticipated this moment and held a truly gorgeous post-election gathering space (link to the recording here; well worth the watch/practice). As they put it:
No matter what happens on Election Day, we know that we need each other.
We’re making space to name what our bodies are feeling, space to grieve and space to name what we’re longing for. Right now is the perfect time to be in a community of people with liberatory visions, taking courageous actions, and moving towards the future where all of us have safety, freedom, and dignity.
It was exactly what I needed. Over 2,000 people joined from around the country to be with each other, and to listen to the wisdom from Prentis, from movement elder Alta Starr, and to practice with Oscar Trujillo.
Prentis set the tone, inviting us to keep dropping in. They invited us into our task for today: “opening up to what is.” The space was exactly what I needed: an invitation to feel, in a well-held container, with kindred spirits together struggling to hold the complexity and contradictions of the moment, the “churning” of feelings inside us. Prentis again:
We’re not offering a solution to the churning; we’re offering a space for the churning… first we have to listen to the churning.
As we closed, Alta offered another beautiful invitation, one grounded in her own commitment:
An invitation to staying soft, staying open, and reaching out to connect… with what can help me stay soft, stay open… not shutting down.
Mmm. Yes. Connecting in ways that allow us to stay open, not to return to the rigid protective shapes that have got us to this place. Prentis built on Alta’s offering to ask this question:
Where might I find connection that can allow me to be with what is here without requiring me to contort myself into what has been?
The Earth holds us all
After the beautiful community space, I felt called to nature: to be among the redwoods and Ponderosas, and the gorgeous maples and oaks that are sharing their beauty in this season. I moved slowly, still tending to my knee (7 weeks post-surgery). Listening deeply to the water moving inexorably downstream, following its mandate to return to the ocean. Watching the leaves drop, unapologetically, inevitably, to the ground. Such breathtaking beauty, giving generously of itself, trusting deeply in the cycle of life.
On a day of darkness, it feels important to also see the light. To appreciate the beauty that exists in this world. I felt my body calming, my feet in the leaves, the sunlight warming me after its 93 million mile journey to bring us light, and life. As I felt myself drawing resilience, I found myself better able to allow into my consciousness the dread that I felt last night. To allow myself to wonder about my relationship to fear, and to despair.
The fear of hope, and the fear of despair
My wife shared with me a dream she had the other night, in which I said to her “I’m scared.” In the dream she said to me what she repeated as she retold it to me: “I’ve never heard you say those words.”
Sigh. I felt self-conscious writing my last post, about my relationship to sadness and tears. Self-conscious not because of the topic, but because of the contrast with the moment we were in: a few weeks pre-election, the bombardment of Gaza worse than ever. I feared that it felt self-indulgent to explore my inner feeling state in a time of such external strife. And yet: it feels deeply related. If we can’t feel our feelings, if we aren’t in touch with our fear and our sadness… they drive us.
Yesterday my 7-year-old asked me why people vote for Donald Trump, and I answered that they were scared. And that those of us who voted for Kamala… and I paused. Are also scared. Yet it feels to me that there is something different about our fear. Ours is a fear rooted in hope, in a conviction that things can be better (to be clear, not that Kamala would make them better, but that we together are capable of caring for everyone’s needs). Theirs is a fear rooted in despair: etymologically, it means “without hope.”
That’s why I don’t let myself feel despair: I refuse to live without hope. I refuse to give up on us.
I wrote about this five years ago in the context of anger, contrasting the “anger of hope” with the “anger of despair.” I still think that’s right, but I think I misnamed the animating emotion. Yes it is expressed as anger, but underneath is fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of what we are capable of doing to each other in our desperation. Fear that there won’t be enough for all of us. Fear that we might be alone; that our efforts won’t be enough.
“Caring for us, and you as a part of the us”
I loved this tender line from Oscar Trujillo, as he guided us in an embodiment practice. This to me is what it comes back to: we have to care for all of us… including ourselves. We have to extend the love we long to receive.
I’ve been trying to narrate this election to my children—ages 7 and 9—and strike that balance between “things are fucked” and “our work remains the same… conditions just got more difficult.” Trying to assure them that they will not be affected… and acknowledging that that is part of the problem, that under our toxic systems suffering is not equally distributed. And trying to convey the deeper truth that actually we are all affected, because we are all connected. And until we recognize that fundamental interdependence… we actually won’t make it out of this quadrennial doom loop. As the saying goes: lessons will be repeated until they are learned.
We are not alone
This morning I said goodbye to my sister’s yellow lab, Estrella. She has lived a good long life. I felt surprisingly emotional in our parting; what I felt was gratitude. For how much love she has brought into my sister’s life; I have found peace knowing that she is there for my sister. I found myself marveling at the beautiful reciprocity of that love. Here is a being who has enjoyed what we all so deeply long for: the unself-conscious giving and receiving of love, rooted in a deep knowing that this is our birthright.
I’ve been trying to find a song to capture my mood, to accompany me in this moment. I finally settled on John Lennon’s Imagine: it strikes the right note for me of grounded hope tinged with sadness: recognizing that a better future is possible… and that we have a long way to go.
In his voice you can hear that he knows that many of us will not make it to that Promised Land… as he himself did not. But that we must work to get there all the same. I love the look on his face when he sings the line “You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.” It’s that conviction we need, to know that we are not alone, that a better world is possible.
I am feeling love and tenderness in my heart as I type these words. I feel heavy, but it’s a heaviness no longer of dread, but of an honest reckoning with the weight of this moment, and the work that is ours to do.
I still feel yesterday’s tension in my jaw… but now it’s co-held alongside more expansiveness in my chest. I’ve been texting with friends and loved ones today, reminding myself that I am not alone. That we all want a better world, and are struggling in our own ways to get there.
Tomorrow I will turn my attention once again to strategizing, to dreaming, to co-creating the world I long for. Today is a day for grieving the world as it is, and to doing it together. I hope you are able to be with your people today, and to find spaces to grieve, to feel, and to connect… in ways that open you toward belonging.
Rainbows on the Teton Crest Trail, from a 2013 backpacking trip
I went sixteen years without crying.
Sure, I’d had quiet tears emerge during evocative movie scenes, or the tears of joy/awe that accompanied the births of my children. I’ve experienced the hot tears that come with gritted teeth in the face of extreme physical pain. But not a sob, or the full-bodied release of sadness or grief… since my last long-term romantic relationship ended when I was 23 (a three-and-a-half year relationship with my college sweetheart).
Rationally I understood that crying is a normal human emotion, and a way that human bodies process and express sadness and grief. I watch with amazement—and if I’m being honest, some envy—how easily my children cry, how readily they feel and express their emotions. I’d noticed that since becoming a parent my emotions were far closer to the surface, way more raw: I would tear up more easily at movies, books… many things, really. But still: I wouldn’t cry. Not sob.
Today I want to talk about my process (ongoing!) of returning to my emotional self, to allowing myself to access and express sadness and grief in the way humans were meant to.
TL;DR: Patriarchy sucks. And: I am capable of giving myself the care I yearn for… and am slowly building the capacity to allow others to witness my vulnerability.
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Obviously as a student of patriarchy I understand why I don’t cry: I can remember innumerable examples growing up where I was told in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that it wasn’t okay to cry.
I was always a sensitive kid, and a sucker for sentimentality. When I was a teenager I got all the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, and would read them at night by myself… a rare safe space to feel in a world and body where that wasn’t encouraged. But once adolescence started, I understood the way all boys do that crying wasn’t allowed.
But I don’t believe in that shit: I wrote my foundational piece on patriarchy back in 2019. I already gave myself permission to reclaim my humanity and my emotional self… intellectually, at least.
So, like the good rational man I’ve been socialized to be, I decided to look into it: why can’t I cry? Is it that I have nothing to cry about? Or that I’m suppressing my emotions? I started my inquiry in earnest in the fall of 2021, attending Staci Haines’ flagship Somatics, Trauma, and Resilience course at the Strozzi Institute dojo in Petaluma (highly recommend!) Despite doing deep work, I remained unmoved (well, unmoved to tears, to the full-bodied release that I witnessed literally everyone else there experiencing). I felt some envy, and frustration: damnit, how come I can’t feel?
Six months later as part of deepening my commitment to embodiment and better understanding/integrating my erotic self, I attended an ISTA course. I set a number of intentions and inquiries for that weeklong immersion, but a key one was this: can I cry?
Once again I found myself disappointed: while people fell apart all around me, I couldn’t collapse. I accessed pain, sadness, grief, and tears did come… but the same tears as always. Careful. Under control. Contextualized. Disembodied. One of my goals there was to lean into surrender… and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let go. I felt frustrated with myself.
Allowing myself to feel
But something happened during my time at ISTA. Something powerful. When I returned home, it finally happened: my first full-body cry in sixteen years.
It’s been three years now since I embarked on this journey to reclaim my emotional self, and in particular my human capacity to cry. To express and release sadness and grief. And it’s still really hard for me. I realize that I’ve had a tendency to rely on my resilience strategies to discharge the feelings in my body, rather than feeling and expressing them.
In her course, Staci distinguishes between survival strategies that keep us alive but prevent us from fully healing from trauma and keep us closed off, and resilience strategies that help us metabolize trauma and remain open. Good news for me: I’m really good at resilience, at discharging emotions so they don’t get stuck in my body. Usually through physical activity: mountain biking, hiking, or otherwise leaning on nature to replenish me.
Bad news: I’m not very good at feeling. (Yet!) I have learned to discharge my feelings without actually feeling them. Or: I “fix” the issue. I solve whatever thing is giving rise to the sensations… a strategy Prentis Hemphill observes can be a cop-out:
We move toward fixing to skip over feeling.
It’s been interesting to me to note all the subtle ways I “solve” and discharge what I track in my body (often pre-cognitively) as “unpleasant” sensations. Tightness in the jaw, in my chest; constriction. I will intuitively start massaging my chest, or unhinging my jaw. What if I didn’t? What if I listened to those sensations (dare I say, felt them?) and what they are trying to tell me?
I want to feel more. Both for myself, but also in service of connection with others. As I told my somatic therapist in a recent session: “I wish I didn't have to prove to people that I’m human.”
And: people could be forgiven for not seeing my humanity… because I’m not allowing them to. I’m not expressing my vulnerability, my feelings… the things that make me human. It’s a barrier to the thing I long for most: belonging. Intimacy and connection with others.
Feeling me… so I can feel you
This year one of my 2024 intentions was to slow down and allow myself to feel. Honestly, it’s a radical practice. I learn so much when I slow down… and I appreciate in new and different ways why it’s so hard, and why more people don’t do it. As Emily May aptly put it:
For sure. Way easier to just go for a mountain bike ride. And yet: I am a commitment to repairing the ruptures of patriarchy. Including in myself. Which means I owe it to myself to feel my feelings, to expunge the enduring vestiges of supremacy from my body: I will not violate my own integrity for the sake of ease.
That’s not all. I’ve been in a deep inquiry around empathy in recent months, and have reached this troubling conclusion: my capacity to feel what others are feeling is limited by my capacity to allow myself to feel it. How can I truly empathize with someone else’s sadness if I never allow myself to truly feel sad?
It’s been a rude challenge to my self-conception as an empathic person. And I am: I’m really good at cognitive empathy (intellectually understanding someone else’s experience). But it turns out that’s one of only three dimensions of empathy, and not the one people I’m closest to want from me most. There is also what researchers call “emotional empathy,” itself further divided into three distinct sub-components. The one I struggle with most is what they call “emotional contagion”: feeling what the other person is feeling (I actually think I’m pretty good at the other two components: feeling distress at their suffering, and feeling compassion). As Brené Brown put it:
In order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling.
As always, my commitments are fractal and interconnected. The work I need to do for myself is also the work I need to do for my relationships is also the work I need to do for the world. Sigh.
It’s fun to grow
I like watching myself get better. Since that foundational moment in April 2022, I’ve now had four additional full-body cries. And I’m getting better at recognizing the need, and intentionally creating space for it. A few weeks ago on a trip to Seattle I felt the familiar welling up: a tightness in my throat and jaw, constriction in my chest. Aha: I need to cry.
I think the universe is pushing me in this direction: for the second straight year I’ve had a debilitating injury that has prevented me from accessing my primary sources of resilience (last year’s wrist surgery meant no mountain biking; this year’s ACL reconstruction means not only no mountain-biking, but also no hiking or even walking… at least for a few weeks). Which means that if I want to discharge this stuck energy in my body… the only way out is through.
Interestingly, I wasn’t yet sure what the emotion was, or the source of it. I knew I needed release… but from what? I’ve consistently turned to music and movies to help me access and release my emotions. That first time back in April 2022, I knew exactly what songs I wanted to listen to, and in what order. Even then I wasn’t yet fully cognitively aware of what I was needing until I heard the specific lyrics/chords that unlocked the feeling in me.
This time it took me almost two weeks to create the container: no kids in the house, my partners’ needs attended to, cleared my professional plate, so I could claim space for myself. I knew that I needed to watch the end of the movie Encanto, but even with that clarity I still wasn’t totally in touch with exactly what I was feeling. It wasn’t until I got to the scene I had not-fully-consciously been waiting for that it hit me: the unlocking, the release… at last.
Honestly, it felt really good. To let myself feel.
Undamming the flow
One key for me has been getting in touch with my resistance, trying to understand without judgment why this is so hard for me. In her work on human sexuality, Emily Nagoski frequently refers to the “dual control model” where she uses the metaphor of accelerants and brakes. I’ve found it helpful in my emotional work to identify the brakes… and then to work really hard on removing them. I think of this work as undamming work: an homage to the climactic scene in Frozen 2 (one of my favorite movies), and a metaphor that reminds me that I am natural and healthy; it’s these supremacist systems that I’ve internalized that are the problem. They need to go… to let me be me.
It turns out: I don’t trust people to hold me when I collapse. I unpacked this more in the stone-catchers post, and it still feels deep. The truth is it still doesn’t feel safe to fully emote in the presence of others. I hold a high bar (an appropriately high bar, given my identities and life experience) about who I let see me in my vulnerability. And I’m practicing letting more of my vulnerability—more of my humanity—show. With discernment.
But there is a deeper practice I’d been shirking, that I’m only just now leaning into. I don’t actually need others to give me that care (I mean, of course I do)… but I don’t have to wait for them. I can provide that care to myself. It’s a revolutionary practice: I can give myself the care that I’m yearning for. I’ve been slowly easing into this work with my somatic therapist: she’s an incredibly skillful space-holder, and I feel safe to allow myself to collapse in her presence.
This week was powerful medicine: I had my longest cry yet, a consistent release of emotion for over an hour. It felt incredible. Cathartic. And even then I was aware I was holding back: I cried, yes, but not as audibly or as bodily as I would have without her there as witness. I wasn’t trying to be stoic… but it still felt too vulnerable to fully let go, even in the presence of this person I trust. Fucking patriarchy.
I’m proud of myself for naming my care needs. And proud of myself for creating containers in which they can be met (therapy, a quiet space alone in my home, in my hammock by the creek). And even more proud of myself for actually feeling. This week felt like a real breakthrough: the first time I’ve given in to a full cry without the crutch/assistance of music, or a movie. I’m getting better.
I know I’m not alone in this. I’ve been fortunate to have close friendships my whole life, including close male friendships. And in the twenty-five years post-adolescence that I’ve been in deep loving relationship with a variety of men, I can’t recall even a single time where one of us truly cried in front of the other, even in the face of deep heartbreak.
Worse: we won’t even allow our wives to witness/hold us in that vulnerability. I was married for 14 years before I let my wife see my truly cry.
It’s a fucking tragedy.
I still have lots of work to do. My kids still haven’t seen me cry. Well, that’s not entirely true: they know which movies get me, and these days I can rarely make it through a whole book without tearing up (holy hell I was a wreck for an entire chapter of When You Trap a Tiger… whooee). But they haven’t witnessed my sobs. I’d like to give them that gift; after all, they do it so easily. It’s inspiring.
I want to close with gratitude to Prentis Hemphill, for inspiring this post. I was listening to their podcast interview about their new book on Glennon Doyle, where they vulnerably named their own struggle learning how to cry. This is how vulnerability and courage works: it inspires others to lean more deeply into our truths.
Today I want to write about liberation: what it takes to get free.
This post—like all my writing—is born out of my struggle to make sense of the world and to act within it. To find my people, to cultivate the skills necessary to move toward my vision. One of the biggest challenges I’ve confronted in this work is the ineffability of it: it’s incredibly difficult to put into words what I’m trying to do. And it’s really hard to practice—or build community around—something you can’t name.
I know I’m not alone. I have been fortunate to encounter many fellow travelers on this journey. And it has become clear to me over eight years of deep inquiry and practice that there is something definable we are doing; it does have core guiding principles; there are identifiable skills and practices that can support our efforts toward transformation. There are things NOT to do. And I know it would support me—and others like me—to try to name what those things are, to give us something to aspire to, and practice together. To refine, improve, and share. I think we can make it easier to build belonging.
So today I want to try to do three things: adopt a label that can help us orient ourselves; name the principles that guide our practice; and point to the skills needed to move toward our vision.
TL;DR: I think what unites those of us seeking to build belonging is a commitment to “liberatory practice.” This work follows five guiding principles:
Inner work is essential
Embodying the future we want
Transformation happens in relationship
Centering equity, attending to power
Centered accountability
And it’s not enough to have principles: we need partners with whom to collaborate. Creating these containers for transformation—communities of liberatory practice—is essential to navigating this moment.
The need for a name
One of my greatest sources of hope these days is the tremendous number of people really trying to transform. To be better humans. Perhaps the broadest heading here is captured in the idea of “doing the work.” This concept, popularized by Nicole LePera and others, speaks primarily to inner work, particularly healing from intergenerational cycles of trauma.
There is a companion field emerging primarily in organizational space, under the broad umbrella of “new ways of working.” This field—with terms like sociocracy, Holocracy, horizontal, teal, self-management—builds on the contributions of Frederic Laloux and others and has been popularized by podcasts and books like Brave New Work. Rufus Pollock led one of my favorite efforts to map/synthesize this emerging space with this ecosystem map of what he has called the “metamodern” movement:
In my view both of these emerging ecosystems are powerful and necessary contributions to transformation. And: there is a risk that “doing the work” in an inner context alone can become navel-gazing and spiritually bypassing. And “brave new work” that limits its inquiry to organizational structures and ways of working can risk downplaying or ignoring systems of oppression and how they shape our context. I find myself skeptical when the leaders and shapers of movements are primarily White. If a movement isn’t diverse, it tells me something is missing.
But there is a third and lesser-known field that I think has the potential to tie it all together: an emerging discourse, primarily led by women of color (and Black women in particular), trying to articulate a theory and practice of “liberatory leadership.” Liberatory leadership as I understand it seeks to provide an integrative framework that recognizes the fundamental interdependence of inner transformation, interpersonal transformation, and systems transformation.
So today I want to talk about what I’m seeing emerge under the auspices of “liberatory leadership” and how that framework can serve both to unite disparate efforts/fields toward transformation, and to invite more people to join us in “doing the work”: not only for ourselves or our organizations, but for the world as well.
Longing for liberation
I’ve been searching my entire life for ways of being and relating that feel in integrity with my commitment to building a world where everyone belongs. And for the last eight years in particular, I’ve devoted all of my professional energy to finding kindred spirits with whom to partner and build community: what I think of as “political home.” People who are committed to building a world where everyone belongs, who are committed to unlearning and deconditioning from our systems of supremacy, who want to collaborate across difference, to heal and grow together.
Unfortunately, here in the U.S. the large-scale political homes that do exist too often emerge in the context of electoral politics, where none of the labels speak to me. I don’t self-identify as liberal, and progressive doesn’t go far enough for me. Radical yes, but the term itself doesn’t tell you in which direction I’m radical, or what I mean by that. Abolitionist? Also yes, but that doesn’t really tell you what I’m for… and neither of those terms really capture the popular imagination. This absence of a name bothers me; labels matter! They help us find each other. As South African activist and elder Mamphela Ramphele notes:
Labels and language are always important. Who you say you are shapes who you are.
Of late I’ve found myself gravitating toward the language of liberation, following a long lineage of activists, practitioners, and theorists, nearly always people of color or those with marginalized identities. I like that it has in the title what I’m about (not only what I’m against). I like that the concept helps ground my vision of belonging in action. And I really resonated with Leticia Nieto’s recent offering connecting the two concepts:
This is what liberation is made of, a recognition that we belong.
In a political context, then, how about this: I am a liberationist: a person committed to building belonging.
Toward liberatory leadership (and practice!)
It was that yearning to find political home with kindred spirits that inspired the launch of Building Belonging, and my aspiration for it as a “community of liberatory practice.”
Liberation as a concept and practice enjoys a long lineage tracing back to abolition movements, where a tradition of Black liberation runs powerfully across time and place (in South Africa, e.g.) It also includes the 20th century liberation theology movement in Central America, and was popularized in popular education through the work of Paolo Freire. And of course it has provided a rallying cry for diverse movements: both to throw off the yoke of colonization, and for women’s liberation, queer liberation, etc. My own understanding and commitments take inspiration from the work of bell hooks, who may have coined the concept of “liberatory practice” in her classic essay “theory as liberatory practice.”
“Liberatory leadership” as a concept owes its emergence in recent years to the field-building efforts of a group of primarily Black women trailblazers: a co-arising emergence of people longing for different ways of leading and working, and asking similar questions. I want to name some of those who I find myself learning from (and sometimes with!) so that others can reach their own conclusions. I have found myself inspired and provoked by:
Trish Tchume is in many ways the initiator of contemporary field-building efforts around “liberatory leadership.” She played a key role in co-convening the collaborative Liberatory Leadership Partnership that to-date is the most comprehensive effort I’m aware of to define the term and consolidate the field.
Change Elemental, and in particular the work of Elissa Sloan Perry (featured in the webinar above), and her new curated offering around Prefiguring Futures.
Susan Misra, who in addition to her long-time role with Change Elemental continues to steward liberatory work wearing her new hat at Aurora Commons (she was also part of the liberatory networks community of practice mentioned above). With Change and in partnership with Trish and others, she helped launch an inquiry into the qualities of liberatory networks.
Cyndi Suarez, in her personal capacity and in her recent past role as president of Nonprofit Quarterly, where she helped chronicle and weave many of the practices and practitioners helping shape this field, in addition to her foundational contributions distinguishing supremacist and liberatory forms and uses of power.
Mia Birdsong, in particular in her recent capacity curating Next River and their gorgeous offering of Freedom’s Revival.
Miki Kashtan, and her diligent work and deep practice stewarding the Nonviolent Global Liberation Community. This long essay is a great example of the depth and conviction that drive her work.
It’s not an accident that most of this work is led by women of color: under our systems of oppression, they are acutely aware of the work liberation requires. We (those of us with privileged identities) often have a harder time recognizing that we too are trapped, that we too need to get free. Yet this is the work liberation requires. I love the invitation attributed to Aboriginal activist Lilla Watson:
If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
“The privileged act of naming”
There’s a fine balance in trying to nurture emergence. Disruption and chaos is necessary to break with the old order: to rush to structure and new norms too quickly is to interrupt the necessary transition, and can risk preempting what has yet to emerge. Wait too long and chaos can wreak havoc, preventing us from seeing the emerging “islands of coherence” and completing the transition.
I’m a pattern seeker: I have a natural tendency to see threads and themes amid complexity. This to me is the role of theory at its best: an effort to distill principles derived from practice… so that others can engage, reflect, refine, and build. Like bell hooks, I reject the false binary between wisdom arising from lived experience and wisdom distilled from careful observation and deep thought. Both are essential, and in relationship with each other. To me the goal is always intentional praxis (and that elusive word I long for, which combines not only theory and practice but also vision/radical imagination).
As Brooke Richie-Babbage noted: frameworks are a crucial vehicle for spreading ideas, to encourage uptake. They are critical tools for transformation. We can’t afford to start from scratch; we must honor the wisdom of what has come before (without being limited by it!) It is my sense that we now have enough emerging clarity and consensus among practitioners of liberation to try to name and intentionally disseminate some core principles.
I also want to be careful—the limitations of the written word!—to convey my intent. I am not seeking to claim ownership over an emerging discourse, or to claim credit for ideas that are being explored in real time by a diverse collective. Nor am I asserting that my conclusions are the right ones: I offer this sensemaking as an invitation to collaboration and co-creation. This is the fraught work of what hooks calls “the privileged act of naming.” As always, the success of good theory is its applicability in practice: do you feel seen? Does this help you be more effective in your work? Does this resonate? Does it move us closer to transformation… and liberation?
I’m sensitive to the fact that I am trying to make sense of a body of work that is primarily led by people who don’t share my identities… and Black women in particular. Indeed, part of what I’m trying to respond to is a sense that this work is the exclusive province of certain identities: I don’t think that’s right. I see liberatory leadership as something all of us can—and I would argue, should!—aspire to.
That work will necessarily be different inside of the diverse bodies we inhabit: Black women will be subjected to very different pressures, expectations, and judgments than I might face in a similar role. The work we have to do to get free, therefore, will look both similar (we are all trying to enact the same universal principles) and different (my job might be to take up less space and project more humility: people with marginalized identities may need to take up more space and project more confidence). Having embodied examples that we all can aspire to is essential.
What do we mean by liberatory practice?
Part of what gives me confidence that the field is ready to take shape is the remarkable degree of consensus emerging across diverse practitioners in diverse contexts. Indeed, it was my study and experience synthesizing the field and stepping into practice inside Building Belonging that led to our core principles (now co-shaped and deepened in collaboration with a new core team), which reflect and engage with much of what I am discussing here.
I see broad agreement on a set of principles:
Inner work is essential… and inextricably connected to the work we’re trying to create in the world. We are interdependent: my liberation, your liberation, and global liberation are all connected. In Building Belonging we call this concept “I, We, World.” It’s about bringing our full selves… and co-creating the conditions for everyone else to show up fully and authentically. As Warren Nilsson and Tana Paddock wrote in their study of social change organizations:
The social realities that they seek to change are not purely external. They are in the room. (Emphasis in original)
Embodying the future we want. There are a couple components here that are essential: we must have a liberatory vision for the world we want to create… AND we must practice living that way right now in the present (echoes of John Lewis’ vision of beloved community). Cultivating and accessing these visions requires accessing multiple ways of knowing: “embodiment” here speaking to integrating head, heart, body, and spirit.
Transformation happens in relationship. This is connected to the points above: the goal is a world that reflects our inherent belonging, in interdependent right relationship to each other and all beings. This process requires spaciousness and commitment: the idea of “going slow to go fast.” It is both the goal AND the mechanism of transformation. As Peter Block reminds us:
The hardest thing for people to understand is that the relationship is the delivery system of anything you try to accomplish. (Emphasis in original)
Centering equity, attending to power. This is what Change Elemental calls “deep equity”: naming and navigating power dynamics, and working constantly to redistribute power with a reparative lens. Both to heal past/present harms and to support everyone in accessing their “power within.” This is also where I see the structural work of what many of us call “liberatory governance.”
Centered accountability. We are going to make mistakes and cause harm: it’s inevitable. Nearly all of us are colonized peoples living inside supremacist systems. Centered accountability is about committing to repairing ruptures when they inevitably occur, to acting in integrity with our values and supporting others in doing the same. We need each other to heal and transform. As bell hooks wrote in All About Love:
Rarely, if ever are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.
I chose this title in homage to Mariame Kaba and Shira Hassan’s brilliant contribution to transformative justice Fumbling Towards Repair. I like the idea both of capturing what we do know (lessons learned) and gesturing toward places where we are still stretching and experimenting.
There’s one such edge I would add to the emerging field of liberatory leadership/practice that feels really important: liberatory work must include an aspiration and practice of working across as much difference as the container can hold. Race, gender, class, nationality, ability, etc. Much of the work thus far that has emerged has focused on distilling lessons from the practice and wisdom of women of color leaders (and Black women in particular). That’s essential; we have so much to learn by centering the experience of those most marginalized by our systems of oppression, whose voices and insights dominant culture has intentionally excluded.
It’s incredibly important to create liberatory space for marginalized people to breathe free from the weight of having to navigate whiteness (and male bodies). I’m glad that early efforts have sought to distill lessons free from those ubiquitous pressures. And: we can’t stop there. To be in liberatory practice across race and gender adds another level of difficulty, and exposes new work for all of us to do.
This is an edge to liberatory practice that we rarely touch: committing to deep collaboration and shared power across our foundational fault lines, with race and gender in particular. Nearly all of the experiments I’ve chronicled thus far have been intentionally curated containers featuring primarily or exclusively BIPOC people, and often primarily or exclusively BIPOC women. Again, I want to be clear that this is a both/and: we have so much to learn from those configurations, AND creating and experimenting inside multiracial liberatory space—specifically to include White people—is also essential.
This was always a founding objective for Building Belonging: to create intentionally curated multiracial, multigender, multinational space for us to grapple, to fumble toward liberation… together. I learn a lot from people who move through the world in different bodies and identities than me; I learn even more collaborating and working WITH people who are different from me. It invites me into deeper reflection about my own assumptions and biases and conditioning: a level of practice I can make the mistake of skipping in interactions with people who share common identities.
This remains one of my own toughest growth edges: aspiring to centered accountability in ruptures across lines of difference without falling into the familiar traps of under- or over-accountability… and inviting my collaborators to do the same. I’ve noticed how challenging it is for people with marginalized identities—even those committed to liberatory practice—to step into centered accountability with White men in particular, given the deep histories of trauma linking our identities with the systems we are trying to escape.
Putting principles into practice
One of my favorite things about Building Belonging is the opportunity to learn from/with people who are deeply rooted in practice, and experts in teaching concrete skills. In this context I’m really excited about the work my teammate Leonie Smith has been leading through her Care & Repair series (co-sponsored with her Vancouver-based Necessary Trouble Collective), and the collaboration she is working on with Kazu Haga around what they are calling Movements of Belonging. This is about putting principles into practice: it’s not enough to know what to do… we need to know (and practice!) how to do it. As Ericka Stallings notes,
This lack of knowledge about how to operationalize liberatory values exists because we’ve never actually experienced it, so we are almost imagining it into being.
This is the good news: thanks to the work of people like Trish and those profiled above, we are finally in a place where we can practice with greater intentionality and clarity. Thanks to the work of people like Leonie and Kazu, we can build the skills and capacities we need to practice liberation… to build belonging.
And more people are documenting their work and disseminating practices we can experiment with; I love for example this gorgeous collaboration curated by Trish and others called Calling In & Up: A Leadership Pedagogy for Women of Color Organizers (I find the lessons relevant for anyone aspiring to liberatory practice).
I want to close with a lovely quote from this essay by liberatory practitioners Ingrid Benedict, Weyam Ghadbian and Jovida Ross:
To build the world we want takes practice. Our everyday actions shape and grow culture, which ultimately shapes systems. By allowing ourselves to imagine what we really want, creating structures that serve that vision, and doing our best to repair the harm we inevitably cause along the way—we grapple, feel, stumble, fall, and get up and try again, transitioning our world into the one we want.
And of course: we need partners with whom to practice. Relationships strong enough to withstand the inevitable stresses and ruptures that come with trying to practice liberation inside supremacist systems. This remains a long-term aspiration I hold for Building Belonging: to help create larger scale political homes for the many people ready to engage in liberatory practice.
Tomorrow I undergo my second serious surgery in 12 months… this time for a combined ACL/meniscus tear sustained playing competitive Ultimate frisbee. Sigh. I haven’t been as diligent as I would like with my writing of late, and trying to listen to my muse while balancing other life responsibilities. This post has been percolating for awhile; I’m curious how it lands, any adjustments you would make to the principles, and in particular who else you see engaging in or creating containers for liberatory practice.
Bridging toward Belonging is a reader-supported publication. If you value these inquiries, please consider subscribing. Our next community gathering will be Friday, Oct 11th @ 9am PT.
It’s been a wild few weeks in global politics: a surprise victory for a Left coalition in France, holding off the surging far-right in snap elections. A dramatic win for Labour in the UK. An assassination attempt targeting Trump here in the not-so United States. And finally: Biden stepping down from his re-election campaign, and endorsing Kamala Harris.
So I want to take a break from (ir)regularly scheduled programming to share some thoughts about how I’m making sense of this moment:
Biden did the right thing in stepping down. It’s a great example of leadership, putting country before ego. I wish he had not run for re-election in the first place, or stepped down months ago, and I wish the Democratic Party hadn’t insulted the electorate by naming an octogenarian as standard-bearer against the most dangerous politician of my lifetime… but at least we finally have a chance.
Endorsing Harris is the wrong move. I get the politics… and I wish he hadn’t done it. Primarily because it feels like missing one of the most important lessons of the 2016 primaries: no one likes a coronation. It was the biggest failure of the 2024 primary: there wasn’t one. And now it’s a repeat, moneyed elites telling us who our candidate is going to be. Even if she’s the right candidate—a big if—the process doesn’t feel good. It’s fundamentally undemocratic, and that’s a bad look.
Defeating the far-right is imperative. It’s difficult to overstate this point: Donald Trump is a danger to democracy. His first tenure was disastrous for basic protections: for the climate, for women and LGBT+ people, for foreign policy, for COVID response, for migrants. And everything he’s done since leaving office ratchets up the potential for violence: encouraging the January 6th insurrection, stoking lies, and calling upon our darker angels.
To defeat the far-right… move Left! This was one clear takeaway from the French snap-elections: to stave off the far-right needs a broad progressive coalition; centrism is a dead-end. Yes we need to unite a broad coalition (this was also the lesson in Poland)… but that coalition HAS to turn out the base. The most active and engaged opposition to authoritarianism in America is among progressive and radical activists who are overwhelmingly Gen Z and Millennials.
It’s time to flip the script: let the Boomers follow Gen Z. Democratic party elites and talking heads have consistently argued that we need to tack to the center to pull a broad coalition of Democratic voters and so-called “independents.” I think that’s exactly wrong. I think there is very little risk that we will lose votes if we put forward a more progressive candidate: are moderate Boomer liberals going to vote for Trump? Are they going to stay home? Older people are the most reliable voting bloc out there, consistently voting in higher percentages than any other age demographic. Youth, women, and people of color, on the other hand, are the most reliable voting bloc for Democrats: an astonishing 98% of black women voted for Clinton in 2016. And without a compelling candidate, many will stay home. It’s long past time to stop taking the base for granted: give us a candidate worth voting for… and let older generations follow our lead.
To get elected, you have to motivate the base
Here’s the problem: what it takes to lead our country in this moment of global crisis, and what it takes to get elected are two different things.
An effective president needs three things:
A compelling vision
The competence/ability to govern (strategy, political savvy and relational skills)
The support of a broad coalition to advance their agenda… both inside the Beltway and out in the streets
To get elected in our plutocratic two-party system, on the other hand, a winning candidate needs three different things:
The support of the party base
The support of major donors
Broad appeal to the electorate
I think you can actually win with only two out of three, as long as you have the party base: Trump has only the first two, and thanks to an aggressive anti-democratic push to limit voter turnout, he actually won in 2016 despite losing the popular vote. And if you get the base and the electorate, donors will fall in line because they don’t want to be left on the outside looking in (this was Obama’s strategy). Clinton lost in 2016 because she never had the base; too many people stayed home.
Biden won in 2020 largely thanks to an exceptionally high turnout among youth and voters of color: we showed up for him because we rightly assessed the threat Trump posed… AND we wanted him to be responsive to our concerns. His lack of action on Palestine (among other issues important to progressives) was a slap in the face: the young, multiracial, progressive base is overwhelmingly against Biden’s Israel policy (as but one example where there is a huge gap between the base and party elites… something you no longer see in Trump’s takeover of the Republican party). He dropped out because he recognized that he wouldn’t be able to pull a repeat: he can’t take our votes for granted (this is true for Black voters in particular).
I’m concerned about Kamala because so far she only has one of the three: party donors are rallying around her. She’s never had the base… largely because she’s never had a compelling vision. Which means it will be incredibly difficult for her to do the primary thing she needs to do both to get elected and to effectively govern: build a movement. I resonated deeply with Anand Giridharadas’ 10-step plan to defeat Trump… I’m just skeptical that she can deliver.
I hope I’m wrong: this is her chance to earn our votes, and to turn out the base. The prosecutor vs felon matchup narrative does have some potential to resonate with voters (even as I cringe at carceral metaphors), and I also appreciated the potential of Ezra Klein’s argument about building her campaign around safety (not my primary motivator, but I take his point). But perhaps her strongest claim is what she represents: a highly competent Black woman leading our country for many of us is itself deeply compelling… especially in contrast to yet another old white man who's only out for himself. She symbolizes the future we are moving toward; he the past we are trying to leave behind.
When in doubt… build a movement
This remains where my energy is. I don’t have much faith in Kamala Harris as a transformational figure, and even less in the Democratic Party. But I do think it is an absolute imperative to do everything we can to prevent further authoritarian consolidation, and to prevent Donald Trump from taking power again. So while I will not be canvassing for Kamala (unless I see a compelling vision for our future that has so far been absent, and in particular a strong statement on Gaza), I will continue to support those who are working to stop authoritarianism and build a future of belonging. A few people/organizations I’m following here in the U.S. who are paying attention to the big picture:
has been doing a great job highlighting folks doing good work in electoral politics and focused on this election cycle, often partnering with Anat Shenker-Osorio who was one of the key architects of the organizing effort in 2020 that anticipated the “stop the steal” big lie and ultimately helped weather the Jan 6th storm.
It’s a scary time to be alive… there’s no doubt the storm clouds are here, and that the assassination attempt only ratcheted up tension. And: we have an opportunity to weather the storm, to prepare for November 5th and beyond, and to continue building belonging in our lives and communities. Nothing is fated.
Our next gathering for subscribers to this newsletter is this Thursday, July 25th, @ 10am Pacific. Thanks to everyone for bearing with me as I’ve rescheduled to accommodate summer camp schedules and kid drop-offs; I look forward to seeing folks there and creating space to process this moment. If you’d like to join, please consider upgrading your subscription (or if that’s not possible, please let me know and I’m happy to comp you).
In his book Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson recalls the biblical parable in which Jesus intervenes to save a woman from being stoned by saying “let he without sin cast the first stone.” His comment had the intended impact: the Pharisees were “convicted by their own conscience” to put down their stones.
Today, however, in a time of heightened fear, trauma, and polarization, he observes that we cannot rely on people to put down their stones, to trust that they have the necessary capacity for self-awareness. But nor can we allow someone to be stoned. What is needed is something incredibly difficult: people to intervene, to step into the fray, and catch the stones. He explains:
Some of us actually have to position ourselves in front of the condemned… And we have to catch those stones…I want to catch them because I don’t want them to be battered and beaten and destroyed by this unjust anger and violence. But I also want to catch them to give those who cast the stones an opportunity for one more chance. To hear what we are supposed to hear; to be called to what we’re supposed to be called to, which is not condemnation and judgment, but to justice and mercy.
This is not a role for everyone. To step into the line of fire is not for the faint of heart. But I think Bryan is right: we desperately need stone catchers in this moment. People who can intervene on the side of justice both to prevent harm… AND to invite the transformation of those who would throw the stones. As Mia Birdsong notes:
Truly preventing harm means that we have to support the transformation of those who perpetrate it.
Today I want to talk about the burden of the stone catcher, and what vulnerability asks of us. Here’s what I’m slowly trying to learn:
TL;DR: Some of us are called to be stone catchers: to intervene in the face of harm both to prevent that harm… and to invite the perpetrator into transformation. That work can be lonely… and painful. Acknowledging and showing that pain is an act of vulnerability… and that vulnerability, if we can express it, is the invitation to transformation. We must be discerning about how much vulnerability we show, and to whom… and allow ourselves to be held and supported in this work by those who love us. I want to strive for what Kazu Haga calls “fierce vulnerability.” Fiercely protective of what I love: defending those who would be stoned. And vulnerable: open to seeing the humanity of the stone throwers, to the possibility of their (our!) mutual transformation.
During my psychedelic plant medicine journey last year, I heard a repeated refrain as I sought guidance from the Earth on my role in the world: “be the bridge.”
I’ve long-identified with the role of the “bridger,” the mediator, the one seeking to reconnect, to transcend binaries, to find the “both/and.” john a. powell of the Othering & Belonging Institute has popularized the concept of “bridging” in recent years, inviting us to “bridge” to hear the perspective of the “other,” to create the possibility of connection. This conception of bridging is between me and you, between us and them: bridges connect two points, and are built from both sides.
But there is another conception that involves the bridge itself. Where the act of bridging isn’t from one side to the other, but extending from the middle to connect the points. To intercede. To mediate. That role is essential… and can be painful.
This is the concept of bridging that bell hooks had in mind when she observed that bridges are made to be walked on… and that Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherrie Moraga invoked in their classic anthology This Bridge Called My Back. Gloria explains the role of the bridger (in her case, speaking of radical women of color):
Liminality, the in-between space of nepantla, is the space most of us occupy. We do not inhabit un mundo but many… we must become nepantleras and build bridges between all these worlds as we traffic back and forth between them…
It is risky to venture outside the confines of our color, class, gender and sexuality, as it is to make alliances with others who do not fit into the categories of our self-identity. One of the biggest risks is isolation from the group with which we identify.
It is this latter conception that I felt called to on my journey: to step into that middle space. To catch the stones. To invite others to connect across the bridge that is my body.
This feels core to my lifework, and already a deep commitment I’ve carried since childhood. To repair: to create and hold the space for transformation. To intercede to transform violence. I tell myself that I can: I am large. I can carry a lot of weight. And I have unearned advantage in the form of my privileged identities: isn’t this a good use of them, to put them in service of those whom dominant culture would destroy?
Catching stones is painful work
But it’s exhausting work, and painful. When I step into the fray, I can become the target: the stones are now aimed at me. And unlike in the biblical parable, in my work the stones are being thrown from both sides: it’s impossible to fully protect myself.
My capacity for empathy is great: I try not to take it personally. I see the trauma that is behind the stone throwers; I recognize that hurt people hurt people. I can see their humanity.
But they can’t see mine. If they could, they would put down their stones. So my pain increases as they continue to throw stones; it becomes harder not to take it personally.
I have a deep commitment to not giving up, to perseverance, to refusing to capitulate to systems of oppression. And yet over the last week I’ve had three different experiences from three different parts of my life that have made me feel, in a deeper way perhaps than I’ve ever allowed myself to: sometimes the stones simply hurt. I heard that wounded piece of myself that I have so often ignored calling for reprieve, telling me: sometimes it’s too much to bear; it’s too painful to continue on.
I allowed myself—possibly for the first time in my entire life—to acknowledge the somatic impulse to curl into the fetal position and just say fuck it. I can’t take it anymore. I recalled this line that resonated with me:
And another piece of myself resisting that call: no. Do not collapse. We can’t afford to; we must soldier on (we, the many pieces of my multitudinal self in dialogue). I have watched friends be pulled down and destroyed in this work: by cancel culture, by the weight of our collective trauma… I can’t allow that to happen to me. I have to take care of myself.
The transformative potential of vulnerability
But damnit… I don’t want to shut out my feeling self. As part of my new declaration to “repair the ruptures of patriarchy” I made a commitment to myself to feel my feelings… and to try to share them with others. I want to be seen for the flawed and imperfect person that I am, doing my best to heal and to be part of the transformation our world so urgently needs. Sometimes I just want to be held.
But I feel stuck: I sense at some level that to allow myself to feel how much it hurts is to collapse, to suffer a mortal wound from which I might not recover. Better to let the stones bounce off then to acknowledge how much they hurt. But if I don’t let myself feel, then I’m both violating my commitment to myself and inadvertently disconnecting from others. I’m read as invulnerable… in other words, not fully human.
I brought this dilemma to my somatic therapist last week, and she offered an observation: perhaps they keep throwing their stones because they don’t see that you are hurting? She went further: perhaps, if I allowed them to see my pain, they might not throw as many stones? Perhaps showing my pain is one way of showing my humanity? Of allowing myself to be seen?
Initially I resisted: how could they not see that I am hurting?! I’m getting pelted with stones! But I allowed her point to land: it’s true that I don’t often allow others to see my pain, to acknowledge the impact. A friend once remarked with some incredulity about a particularly painful public episode in my life, “how were you not affected by that?” I was surprised: what do you mean? Of course I was affected: I am human. But I hadn’t let her see that; I did what I have always done: I soldiered on.
Oh. Damn.
This landed: it’s easier to throw a rock at a police officer clad in full riot gear, helmet, baton and shield than it is to throw a rock at someone unarmed and unprotected. It is easier to attack a symbol (me as a white man seen as the embodiment of white supremacy and patriarchy) than a person. To see someone disarmed is… disarming.
Indeed, sometimes witnessing someone else’s pain is what transforms the conflict. I have been thinking a lot lately of the 1984 classic Miyazaki film Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind, where the titular character is trying to save an injured creature: intervening between two warring parties to prevent disaster. Her efforts are ineffective: the creature is so blinded by its own pain that it lashes out and injures Nausicaa. Even then Nausicaa persists in her efforts… and only when the creature is finally able to sense Nausicaa’s pain, and understand that Nausicaa endured that pain to help the creature from a place of love… does it soften and the conflict is transformed.
This is what nonviolence asks us of us. To stand in the middle while the stones are being thrown, to witness the humanity of the throwers, and to remind and invite them: you are only frightened. Put down your stones. (Hat tip for this framing to this gorgeous essay by Jerrine Tan exploring the radical nonviolence of Nausicaa).
Then to feel the pain when the rocks hit, and to stay in the middle. To allow the stone throwers to see the pain I am feeling… the pain they are causing.
Finding the courage to feel
It feels incredibly risky. I’ve previously talked about one quality of leadership as the act of unilateral disarmament (particularly for those of us with privileged identities); this is more than that. This is about intentionally letting down my guard. Dropping the shield; leaving myself open to pain. Letting them see that I too am a person. What if they don’t see, or don’t see in time? Will I too collapse under the onslaught?
This is the definition of vulnerability I’m holding on to here: Gabor Mate’s reminder that etymologically vulnerable means “open to being wounded.”
Yet I’m intrigued by the possibility. It feels true in my body and my experience that showing softness can invite reciprocal de-escalation. And I like the idea that I have agency, that the invitation to transformation starts with me. I don’t have to wait for them to put down their stones… I can still choose softness. I don’t like my invulnerability: I experience it as a barrier to connection; it blocks me from accessing my compassion. It takes so much energy to protect myself from the stones that I find it hard to show the stone throwers my care.
I can still put down my shield. This, actually, is what I yearn for. My goal is not only to protect the person being stoned; I want to invite the thrower to choose to put down the stone. What might it feel like to allow more softness in the face of stones? What might it feel like to allow myself to acknowledge what I know to be true: that this work is hard, and heavy, and sometimes it’s more than I can bear?
As I tentatively allowed my body—in a supportive space held by my therapist—to lean into the impulse to curl up… I realized that I wasn’t actually afraid of collapse. My roots run deep: I am strong enough now to withstand the gales without toppling. I have no doubt that I will get back up. Failure is not an option. My roots are connected to the Earth, and the Earth is always there for me, a renewable source of resilience. She will not let me down; she never has.
And: my roots are intertwined with those of others. I am not catching stones alone: I have community. No man is an island; no redwood stands alone. I have people who do see me, and love me. Who want to show up for me… if I let them. What I need in these moments when it all feels like too much… is to be held. The refrain that came to me in therapy, what my wounded self wants to say: can I have a hug?
What if I allow myself to see that there are people around me who will not let me collapse, who will not let me be stoned? What if I have my own stone catchers? What if they feel the way I feel… that we will not allow each other to be destroyed by injustice? I’m reminded of this scene from the West Wing, which still gives me chills:
Listening to my resistance
I’m ready to practice more softness. Indeed, it feels like the only way to be in integrity with my commitments. I want to feel; I want others to feel me. I want to transform violence; only nonviolence can do that. I want people to feel my love… which means I have to let them feel my pain. Here’s Gloria again, in the foreword to the 20th anniversary edition of This Bridge Called My Back:
We must be motivated by love in order to undertake change—love of self, love of people, love of life. Loving gives us the energy and compassion to act in the face of hardship; loving gives us the motivation to dream the life and work we want.
But it won’t be easy. Nonviolence in the face of violence never is. The stones will hurt. Nausicca did get wounded. But even before I face the stones out in the world, I have to overcome my own resistance: reach an agreement with the parts of myself that tell me I’m crazy for even considering taking off my armor. Here is what those parts are telling me, with wisdom gleaned from hard and painful experience:
To show vulnerability is to invite punishment. This is the wounding of growing up as a boy under patriarchy: don’t be a sissy. Toughen up. Don’t cry. Be a man. Not only did showing my feelings not elicit the response I was needing (nourishment in the form of a hug or the expression of care), it invited the opposite of that: punishment, turning away, callousness.
To show vulnerability is to provoke fear in others. I think there are two aspects here. One is a feeling of scarcity: if they have to hold space for my feelings, they fear there won’t be enough collective care left over to hold space for their feelings. It feels zero sum: to care for my needs is to abandon theirs; mine are threatening, and must be denied or shut down. I don’t have a right to take up space. The second aspect is not knowing how to handle it (this is a particularly gendered dynamic under patriarchy, where men can’t show vulnerability to women for fear that they won’t be able to hold it). I’m reminded of this scene from the Departed (and yes, I tend to access and recognize my feelings by noting my resonance with scenes from movies… hey, at least it’s something!):
To ask for care can provoke guilt/shame, and actually add to my emotional burden. Again, I think there are at least two elements here. One is a version of the DARVO response: they feel guilt/shame at being perceived as the cause of my hurt, and instead of holding space for my feelings put it back on me. How dare you make me feel bad! The second is that witnessing my vulnerability can provoke their shame for having suppressed their own vulnerability; it can be confronting to exiled pieces of themselves, and they can lash back out. In both cases the result is that not only do I not have my emotional needs attended to, but I then have the added burden of attending to the emotional needs of the other.
Taking accountability can be dangerous. Not everyone has yet reached a place of somatic safety to take accountability for their actions: to acknowledge harmful behavior can trigger toxic shame. So if I show a willingness to take accountability for my actions… others can use that as an excuse to offload their responsibility onto me, to avoid looking too closely at their own behavior.
So yeah: practicing feeling (and showing!) vulnerability after a lifetime projecting invulnerability… will be difficult. All of these fears feel present, and real to me. And: I now feel like I can handle them all… with discernment, and support.
Boundaried generosity: fierce vulnerability
There is a balance I’m trying to strike: feel too much and collapse; feel not enough and I contribute to my own dehumanization and lose the potential for transformation. This is where discernment comes in: how much softness to show… and to whom?
Inside myself my feeling practice can be unfiltered: my work is to feel the fullness of my feelings, knowing that I will not collapse.
And with trusted partners to allow myself to be held: it feels revolutionary to relax into the knowledge that I have people in my life who want to show up for me the way I aspire to show up for them, and for others. Which means I can practice receiving care, and love: letting that sustain and resource me when the weight becomes too much, so that I can return to my work. Allowing them to catch stones aimed at me: trusting that they are capable of it. De-armoring there will be hard because it’s new and requires un-learning, but it’s a safe domain of practice: I can trust that I will be held.
It’s a different story putting down my shield and showing softness outside of close relationship, practicing nonviolence in more violent or dangerous contexts. Here discernment is needed about how much to feel… and how much to show. My goal is to let the stone throwers know that I see their humanity… in order that they might see mine… for it is in that mutual witnessing that the potential for transformation exists.
I have fallen into this trap as well: when someone is hurt they need that hurt to be acknowledged; they want to know that I feel them, that I am impacted. If I remain impassive in the face of the onslaught… I can make it worse. They feel unseen in their pain, and can throw the stones even harder.
Paradoxically, then, allowing them to see my pain (and my humanity) is a way of acknowledging and validating theirs. Can I show enough of my pain to allow the possibility of acknowledging our shared humanity… but not so much that it triggers any of the defensive responses I’ve named above?
I think of this as boundary work: deciding what to let in, which stones to let land. Juliane Taylor Shore offers a great metaphor for boundaries that I’ve found helpful, inviting us to think of them like a “jello wall,” a semi-permeable membrane where we interface with the world. She offers two prompts to consider before responding to a stone thrown in our direction:
Is it true?
Is it about me? (are their big feelings a response to my behavior?)
I’ve gotten quite good at this discernment: this is my commitment to “centered accountability.” But of course in my work for social justice, the answer is nearly always more nuanced. Of the many stones being thrown at me, some are probably true. And some are probably about me. If I dodge or catch them all, I miss an opportunity for growth and learning. If I let them all land, I am crushed under the onslaught.
So I ask a third question: do they care about me? (Are they invested in my growth and well-being?) If so, I can try to stay with softness. If not, I need to proceed with more caution, exercise more discernment, or call for more help.
I aspire instead toward what I think of as boundaried generosity… a concept I adapt from Pat McCabe’s description of the Earth as giving from a place of “fearless generosity and radical abundance.” I feel a need to be more boundaried than the Earth has been: I fear she trusts too much. I hold this vision in dialogue with friend and Building Belonging teammate Kazu Haga’s work (and forthcoming book!) around Fierce Vulnerability. Yes, this is the posture I want to strive for. Fiercely protective of what I love: defending those who would be stoned. And vulnerable: open to seeing the humanity of the stone throwers, to the possibility of their (our!) mutual transformation.
Thanks for joining me on this process of inquiry; writing for me is always a helpful space in which to process and integrate thoughts and feelings. I’m curious if this resonates for others, particularly for my fellow stone-catchers out there: how do you discern what to let in? When to curl up?
Who cares for the care-givers? I’m slowly learning to accept that care, and to ask for it… but it’s slow unlearning work, and I’m grateful for loving practice partners.
