A Shared Path to the Future
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Healing Intergenerational Trauma
A Shared Path to the Future
As I make re-entry into my normal life after a week in a beautiful place with beautiful people doing work that also embodies beauty in the truth sense of the term, I'm thinking, as I often do, about belonging. Last week, it was the first time in years (those years) when I found myself in a group of people who were new to me, and gracious if it didn't start my old 'I'm the outsider' tape playing in my brain's reel-to-reel.
Human biology sometimes confounds logic. Our biological, embodied reaction to feeling estranged is to put up defenses, to withdraw, to have the same brain reaction as we do to physical pain (or at least, to have activity that looks the same as pain in an MRI scan). So it took a bit of soothing and self-talk to get out of my particular reaction to "being the interloper" (which tends to be a bit of a "performance of nice") and to remember that I belong to myself. And in the meantime, I really got to be compassionate to this little person inside me who changed schools so many times and had this weird background, weird brain, and weird identity that I learned to veneer.
What is belonging?
Belonging is not the same thing as fitting in- in fact, I would say it's the opposite. Fitting in requires buying into a perspective of one kind or another that can never be the whole truth for ourselves or for our community.
Belonging, at least to my mind, means we get to recognise that we have our own individual perspective that is different from every other person, that our experiences and intersections and biology and epigenetics make us singular. We get to be allowed, not by other people and perhaps not even by our selves, but by the fact of our existence. We get to be where and who we are and to have that be perfect in that moment.
With that wholeness, we can begin to inter-relate and recognise interdependence as well. We can start to think about how we in our perfection can allow everyone else to be themselves. Not to say that anyone needs our permission. As soon as we think we have the power to grant approval, we are living in dominance.
We are living in a time that feels broken to me in many ways. A time when dominance is imbued in most of the systems in which we participate.
So much of our current discourse seems oriented around nostalgia for times that were never great for a lot of people, or trying to address inequity by focusing on equality. Many people have pointed out that equality is a poor substitute for equity, but even that argument misses something important when it comes to the opportunity to change our future.
Action > Hope
The head of the Othering and Belonging Institute at Berkeley, john a. powell, has one of the most powerful ways of articulating a way forward. Instead of trying to somehow get marginalized or under-resourced people up to the same bar as privileged people, he suggests that we think about what we want for ourselves, for our families, what would reflect our well-being, health, and our sense of belonging and then figure out how to get all people to that place.
We are "intraconnected" and no one really can be free and be whole as long as systems of dominance enforce the idea of 'have and have not' or 'I'll get mine' or any other way of thinking that positions my happiness against yours, and my needing 'power over' to get what I need.
Communities are microcosms where we can practice this idea. As builders, we can seek to understand what we're all collectively aiming for and to create structures that can help every member to get there, no matter what their starting place looks like. And that means that each person's process is different and needs different supports and entry points. We don't have to "manage" this; instead, we need to remove barriers to allow individuals to craft their own journey while becoming more integrated.
The key to this, as with most things we do together, is listening with curiosity and without judgment or the intention to "fix" something. Listening to ourselves the same way. And as we bring people together and foster conversation with this orientation, we're likely to discover our common goals and hopes and needs.
There's not a magic formula for unity. There's work involved and I don't know if we will make it. But we have possibility and undiscovered connections that are worth the effort.
Worth your time:
john a. powell speaks to bell hooks [video]
UnLonely Film Festival [website]
The "Other" Building Belonging (who are doing amazing work!) [channel]
picture caption: the trail leading to Olatunji Hall at Hollyhock
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We're starting with a collective of people who care about community here.