On Being Enough (My Talk to a group of campus pastors)

I am a daughter, granddaughter, sister, friend, Jesus Freak, book worm, poet writer, community organizer, activist, builder of things, lover of people. There was a time when this list was in a very different order where I started with organizer and activist and moved slowly to the rest of those things. My priorities were always work focused. 

If you take anything away from this talk today, we are not what we do. We are not titles and accolades. We are not our collections of accomplishments. We are not justice seekers who move from cause to cause to fill the holes that exist in our own souls. We are not defined by our lack or abundance of faith. So today my talk will not call you out. It wont call you out into the world to act or out for your racism, sexism, homophobia or classism. This talk was designed to call you in. Into your own story. Into your own body. Into yourself so that you may come more fully alive to the world. Maybe the only way we can truly go out into the world is to do it from a place of wholeness in ourselves first. If we want to serve well we must not only ask the question of who is my neighbor? But who am I?

We are who we be. Our first name is beloved. And no amount of service acts, or hustling/doing changes the fact that we are special and unique and loved. And what communities need more than acts of charity is people who understand the role they play in society and commit to being just and not doing justice.

Justice and service are important but not substitutes for our own sense of self love and worth. And if we are to do act of justice. It must be out of a place of mutuality and reciprocity. So my question is how do we connect with others? How to we serve others from a place of seeing their own worth when we don’t see it in ourselves?

Now I am not saying there are not systems of power and privilege that we must work to dismantle but I am saying that how we do the dismantling must be from a place of connectedness and integration. We must embody and practiced that which we want to create. And if we can not dream it, taste it touch it, yearn for it and have glimpses of it, how can we manifest it?

I have had the pleasure over the last few years, to have jobs that allowed me the space to find out who I am and be that person and am here today to share a little of what I gave learned with you.

(even though I am terrified)

When I was a little girl my mother tells the story of me coming home really upset. A young white girl in my class has invited everyone to her birthday sleepover but had told me I could not come because her father did not like black people. My mother said she was terrified and wanted to make sure she handled this situation well. She said I knew my response and this experience would form you for the rest of your life. She said she did the only thing she knew how to do with me. Her 7-year-old child who loved reading books on the bus and dancing in front of company. The child with a million questions and her favorite question being WHY? She was honest. She explained racism and prejudice. She told me I was exceptional and that it didn’t matter, or change who I was or that I was loved and surrounded by a community that loved me and supported me. She did the best she could with what she had to give me.

And then she says I did something that has been forever etched in her memory. something I don’t remember. I looked up and said to her. Its okay. Her dad is probably mean to her too.

I tell this story not because I want to talk to you about race or racism, even though I think and live a life that is shaped by it existence but because I want to talk about how our journey in life, is a journey back to our child selves. That somehow all the tenderness, vulnerability and authenticity that children display as second nature gets beat out of us by this life that tells us those things are liabilities. Authenticity has taken me further than anything else. And sometimes it looks messy and unpolished and honest and afraid and yet it always shows up.

We can not understand others, seek meaningful connections with people of difference if we are not fully alive to who we are. If we can not be at peace with all our imperfections our attempts to build bridges will produce little more than guilt and shame based actions that are not rooted in the needs of others.

And yes I have done some cool things. As an organizer and activist; developed curriculum, trained people, started my own business and tried to hold politicians and powerful people accountable but the what I have done is not the most important. The how and the why matter most.

"Bridging boundaries, borders and walls".

This theme resonated with me. Because boundaries, borders and walls are all structures.

Things that are created. They don’t just emerge. We have to consciously construct them. So if we consciously construct them we have the power, the resources and capacity to deconstruct them

But the only way to do that is

1.   Authenticity which I talked a little about before.

2.   Courage

3.   Creativity

Courage for me is about being seen. Walking in all of who you are and owning the parts of you that have developed over time. I used to imagine myself as some new soul India aired natural hair wearing, farmers market shopping person and although I’m some of that. There was always a picture in my head of who I was suppose to me. The longer I ran from that. The more I did the cupid shuffle for people’s approval and time and energy the unhappier I was, the less content I was and the more my work left be unfulfilled and drained.

A few years ago when I was talking to someone about my work and in the middle of the convo they exclaimed! You’re in an estuary place. *Thank you Pastor Leila Ortiz and Kristen Kane

I was describing how my formation of being born black and female in the US and all of what that carries with me, had prepared me for this work. But how terrified of failing I was. How a wrong turn in a community meeting, or planning an agenda or being stood up for a meeting with a leader all made me doubt myself. How in the face of corrupt politicians I would muster courage but felt utterly convinced I was an imposter!

My life had made the work absolutely necessary and gave me purpose. But the deeper I got in the work, the more formal analysis and organizing language I learned the harder to relate to the base of people I was building with. The pain and struggle had done more to prepare me for this time in my life yet I felt I couldn't talk about it. My experiences were not valid in organizing spaces only the books I read, the categories I fell neatly into. And because I was removed from the experience of the people I was working with all I had was memories. I was no longer living that life and often felt guilty about it.

So when the person said estuaries! I was like what's that?

Estuaries form a transition zones between river environments and sea environments. They have both to sea influences—such as tides, waves, and the influx of saline water—and to river influences—such as flows of fresh water and sediment. The inflows of both sea water and fresh water provide high levels of nutrients both in the water column and in sediment, making estuaries rich in nutrients and unique places

There are some things that can only live in the mixture of fresh and salt water. Some organisms that survive the in between places. My work and I live in those places.

Learning that I was not the first thing to be shaped by a myriad of different environments let my work take different shape! I could be who I was AND who I was becoming. I could pay homage to my past and work to create a different future. My organizing work became more about what could be possible in the places between the world I lived in and the world I wanted to see.

I became possible. I no longer had to regulate myself to some outside position I could show up the full sum of my parts. Admit the good and no be bound by the bad. I could relate to folks in the neighborhood not out of a place of trying to prove myself but out of a place of authentic connection that allowed my story to be valid.

See the thing about stuff that grows out of estuaries its needs the balance the mix to thrive. To much of one thing causes imbalance I am like that in organizing- to much idealism and I start to want to make concrete ask and do something about the things happening now in communities in our countries. To much concrete traditional campaign work and I long for the creative the visionary. That which is unseen. The mysterious.

I wonder often if those of us who are organisms who need these environments like estuaries are fundamental parts of the things that will create change. We know how to get nutrients from many places. We are not attached to one environment over another. We exist in places where transition is happening and can hold the contradictions of multiple things.

Maybe these are the only places where the work can be done. In places where we aren't attached to what we know or absolutes. Where we are curious instead of right. Maybe it's only the mixtures of a lot of things that give the possibility for new life.

And that is why courage is critical. Because this is never an easy process. It difficult and requires sacrifice and negotiation. It requires us to die to all that which has propped us up.

Lastly creativity.

I have never claimed my identity fully as a poet. Namely because I was always comparing myself to other more accomplished poets.

And one day in the middle of a serious political education training when we talked about the black liberation movement hero’s and shero’s and I was asked to name mine. The names I spoke were Lucille Clifton, Nicki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, June Jordan and Audre Lorde who had been with me and spoke to me and politicized me and for whom art was critical to movement work and a form of resistance.

And I asked a friend of mine how she sustained herself as a writer and she said is it in your space? Put it there first.

So I hung post it its all around my house that said. Writing is how I sustain myself and others.

And I begin think about how writing and creating poems was a labor of love

One that allowed me to be more fully who I am

Maybe you’re not a poet but find what part of you that is creative. If you aren’t creating, how are you living? How are you contributing. Live in that space. Because it will impact all other parts of your life. Creation is not limited to music or art or poetry. Some people create spaces, some people create technical things. Some people create meaning. There has to be room for the dynamic and spontaneous in our lives.

So I leave you with this poem.

Do you truly know how powerful you are?

How beautiful

How creative

Before the world beats no into your brow

Before heartbreak can be spotted in your eyes

Before you lips learn protection as you first language

Your creation was majestic

Your being enough

Do you know how enough you all are?

On not being organizer

So this is my truth. 

The biggest gift BOLD and this time of rest, reflection and reading has given me is the space to discern what I am not. There was a time when it was more important for me to declare what I was. It was as if saying what I was at all times helped me feel and embrace it that much more. (Especially when  I was unsure of myself) This year I offer my reflections on what I am not, because shedding labels that once defined us is important to us in this journey of growth and becoming. 

While I respect and value the craft of organizing I can not say that my own role in movement is one of organizer. I love and support those who are called to that work and those who do it out of necessity because their very being is called to and inclined to it. There are people who eat, sleep and breathe it and while that was once who I am, I am taking a different shape. There was something for me so calculated in my being. I have realized I need to be a little more free with myself and the world to be happy. Plus I have spent much of my life controlled, controlling, deliberate and intentional and freedom in my next life looks like being careless with my love and words. I need that freedom of movement in life and in my work and I am not sure how to get what I need from life by doing this work in its current form. 

For me, the work is beginning to be unrecognizable. Its blending and becoming some advocacy and activism hybrid that does not make sense to me all the way. (sorry, my opinion) The thing about organizing I loved was the politics of it all. The way you could work with those who hold conflicting viewpoints.  The clarity of the ask that has an impact on peoples lives and moved us closer to a different version of the world. There was something about claiming power and building it and talking about it with people that I loved that was amazing. My benchmark was I need to be able to explain this to my brother and cousins and if my grandma don't get free from my work, than what does it mean. That may be stupid to some people but those people held me accountable and made me who I am. 

This is not to critique the current work that is happening in DC and around the country, it is to say I don't see myself, my world view, the way I manage conflict reflected in it. I take accountability for that and also ask the question: if we are not building power what are we doing? We cant disagree without disregarding each others humanity, what do we gain? Lastly if our claim to fame is the number of organizations we bash, or how much mainstream media we do or how may likes on a post, than we reduce movement to moments and burst of energy sustained only by mass consumption and the energy of a few instead of the collective, cumulative and quiet work of many. 

I look forward to discovering who I am in movement. After many months of thought and prayer and distance I can say "I am not an organizer". 

I am a writer. a poet. a lover. a warrior. a prayer. a reader. a talker. relational by default. creative. curious. I'm a lot. Finally getting okay with being a lot. 

As someone who has organized in a neighborhood, who has been stood up for more one to ones than she can count, someone who has met with people in apartment living rooms and church basements, stood on street corners I have realized that lack of relationship is not the only problem. My assessment is it is the lack of clarity about what freedom looks like that keeps us bound and its our unwillingness to see each other's vision of freedom as valid. It is not only Nicole's vision that matters the most and the more I impose one way of being free the more I mirror those oppressive forces that discourage our dreams and visions for ourselves. Part of freedom is self-determination and if freedom is joy for you and revolution for you,  if freedom is anarchy or maroon space, its part of loving you believing in the power of YOUR dreams. Not my own for you. 

In one breathe we say those most impacted carry the answer and then don’t slow down long enough to listen. We talk past each other rushing to regonition  and praise by calling each other out on our weaknesses. We forget to be gentle and tender with one another and we forget that our politics was formed over time by mentorship, scholarship and experience and yet we want other people to just arrive already formed, already awoke, already ready to die for OUR Cause. We are unwilling to admit our own privilege because we have reduced blackness to a monolithic experience and thus we say things like “we are the community” but fail to realize our own class and educational privilege. We forget in between our panels and events, to love the reflection of ourselves we see in each other. 

All of this shyt has limitations. But whats not negotiable is our impact. At some point, we have to think about who we are each accountable to. At times the choice is our own body. I want to be accountable to the different version of Myself. The whole version. The playful version. The less cynical version. The honest version. If the only way to "do the work" is to be an organizer than our vision is limited.  

The good think about not being something, it opens up space to be something else.

And I love what I am becoming. 

Love Letters to my daughter

If ever my daughter

The one not born

Whose imaginary curls I style in my head

Even though my own fall careless around my face

The one whose own image resembles mine

So much that I can’t tell where she begins and I end

The one who will wear tutus and sneakers

angel wings and mismatch socks

Love nail polish and football

The one who is so real sometimes it is scary

The one who maybe once was

And isn’t

Could have been but wasn’t

Tells me she is too much..

Too big for some man

Or some woman

Or some job

Or some friendship

Or some teacher 

or some fear 

or some dream 

I will proudly say

WE are indeed that kind of woman

Too much is your legacy 

We are those kind of women

Loud shit talking

Quick witted sarcastic funny woman

Big women

Take up space woman

Magic laugh women

Neck rolls and whiskey women

We are well read sure of what we know

Kind of woman

Come from a line of smart woman

Like purses and poems women

Tea and fashion woman

Scared to stand down

Because we might get comfortable back there woman

Contradiction woman

Wild woman

Full of love women 

And I will tell her we fought to be all of who we are

that I fought to be all of who she is

and she will be all of who I am and more

I will tell stories of my own mother

so unsure of herself 

that I hated the traces of her I saw in my eyes 

until I learned to love myself better 

and could see her as strong in her own ways 

And my grandmothers

The model women 

The before her time woman

The taking care of everyone women 

and graceful 

fierce women 

who i model my life after woman 

And I will say we are all THAT woman

Tradition is weaving the story together to make sense

Coming to terms with your flaws and

choosing to love yourself anyway

Women who know that at some point her choices

Will be questioned

But her integrity can not be

Women who know that being yourself

Will sometimes cost you

And that her birthright to full

Humanity

Has been bought already

That she

And I

And we

Are already always enough

black musing 2

The brilliance of black children 

Can not be seen by those accustomed

To solving algorithms and problems 

Who crunch data 

and believe that information is wisdom

the brilliance of black children 

has no room here 

so we plow through lessons because 

Saving us must not be disrupted 

Or off script 

Or out side the line

Education designed not to 

make us curious about the world 

Or love learning

or love ourselves

Teaching us is always about compliance and obedience 

making us believe who we are is never enough to 

stand alone 

The brilliance of black children is that 

we know what you think 

What you believe about

our innate capacity our humanness 

Our character

and we still find joy

The brilliance of black children is 

that we can not be reduced 

to test and text books

to put your cell phone away 

or take out your pencil 

raise your hand to go to the bathroom 

sit up 

walk straight 

stare ahead 

metal detectors 

have no magic about you 

Like black boys with no headphones listening to fetty wap on the train 

And trashing talking

Like the after school let out 

We know we are our own best kept secret

And the only place we are fully free is with each other 

With our own bodies 

So we sit quiet 

Even though now a days that too 

Has a cost 

If ever I am ripped from my chair 

Tossed like a rag doll 

Told by hands of a white man

a stranger 

forcibly taking my body 

to satisfy his own rage at my defiance 

Let the rage of my sisters be penance you pay 

Let the love and protection of my dignity 

be a force for you to reckon with

Because only a woman was brave enough to save and stand for another 

We are the ones we been waiting for 

And to the rest of the room 

To everyone else 

we are collateral damage on the way to

our peoples full destruction 

An Open Letter

This poem has been saved in my notes on my phone since 4/6/13 because this is the last time I could look at this or touch it or try to finish it. I finished it tonight only after deciding to write again. I realized recently writing has been the only thing in my life that has kept me. It helped me find myself and find my way back to what was important through some of my most difficult times. I thought my voice was unimportant and small. It is not. It is clear and cutting and crisp and mine. The most important is that it is mine. 

I was scared to share this. I don't want to hurt my family. But I have been unable to speak my truth because I don't want to hurt them. So I was silent because the wholeness of my story might open other people's wounds and make them look bad. But who I want to be in the world is dependent on the truth that comes only when you find your own voice and decide to share it. 

An open letter to Crack

For every birthday

For every Christmas

And every time I tucked my own

Little body between

Ice cold bed sheets

For every unexplainable tear

And every emotional outburst

For every promise

Of new pants

Or shoes

Or a movie or a toy

For every time

I knocked on the door

And got no response

For every unread bedtime story

For every living room blue glow tv light

At 3 AM

For every time my hunger was met with a wait a minute

And for the time I walked into the bathroom

When blood was everywhere

For bare feet and quick steps

For dark

And for the backgammon set I played with alone

And for alone

Solitude

Solitaire

This is an open letter

For every heartache I couldn’t explain

For every lie I told and

Still tell

For truth that gets twisted

For every time I wished to be an orphan

And pretended that my parents

Weren’t really mine

I have told countless stories

To explain being born to them

Constructed a life that

Looked a little more normal

In which you were not there

Your presence not missed

My fairytale included

Happy endings absent

Of you

But they were just stories

And you were real

You were constant

The only thing I could count on

To occur

To happen

Sometimes I will admit

When you showed up I would be happy

Then I wasn’t crazy

I could justify my stories

Plus I liked seeing my dad talk

And mom dance

I liked that I could get ice cream

For breakfast

And not have to do my homework

I like that I had no curfew

And my boyfriend could spend the night

You were bittersweet

I hated you but

Love that in your presence I could become

As invisible as I had come to believe I was

I could blend

No one cared when you were around

So this is my open letter

How mundane and ordinary

Your presence had become

How dreadful weekends and

Weekdays

Were

How fleeting money was

And how I tried to hold it all together

In the small fist of a seven

Then ten

Then fifteen

Then twenty

Year old

How I'm still trying to hold it all together

And brillo pad dreams

Are fleeting

Like crack pipe highs

I know all to well

How hard it is to pry you loved ones

Out of your grips and this is an open letter

To you

Twitching faces

Glassy eyes

Wire coat hangers and sheets

On the windows

This is the calm before the storm

Of coming down

And withdrawals

How I leaned to tense and brace

How I know how to knuckle down and

Fight

My shoulders hunched in permanent position

Like ink marks that never fade

And stolen dreams I still crinch

At the words geeker

Crackhead

Because the image it congers

Is the shape of mother

Of father

And this is an open letter for secrets

You try to flush

Because even in your young mind you

Know drugs are bad

So rid of drugs rid of bad

But still you cant flush

Enough

There are no porcelain toilets

Big or deep enough to flush

away

A life that in punctuated

By you presence

I am so used to men calling my

House looking for my parents

That sometimes

I answer the phone with

An attitude

Just so they know

We are never here

I am never not angry

I am so used to having the baby

In my bed

That now I don’t even remember

That I am not his mother

Or how my ex boyfriend

Told me my eyes

Told him I was a crack baby

And when I asked

My mother she said

I never used when I pregnant

There is an elephant in the room

And it is you

The neighborhood boys

Laugh at me and want to fuck me

That same ex sold you to

To buy me food

And so

This an an open letter

About

Shame and guilt

And what I wish for you

I wish you a 100 birthdays

Punctured

By your own hell

I wish you eternal damnation

Every time

You think about my family

I want you to spontaneously combust 

For every family you have destroyed 

I want to burn

and feel the pain of choice and dependence 

and to understand 

there are to many Me's who you have tried to kill

because you hooked the people 

who were to love us

At 28 I am still crawling out of the shadows

knowing I am worthy 

knowing I am loved 

that I am more than you

and that my parents are more than you 

and my family although bent is not broken 

and that the carnage left over is not just a sad story 

but the story of finding your way home 

and through forgiveness

and choosing laughter and happiness and joy over and 

over again 

because the 28 year old me knows that feed on the sorrow 

and my own story is one of resilience and rising 

rinsing strong and rising often 

but always rising and always loving