Sagacious Saturday: The Pre-Script Continued (Sorta)

The Pre-Script Continued (Sorta)

Welcome and welcome back! It's another amazing day in paradise. Thank you so much for being here. 

Yesterday I started writing what I thought was going to be the Pre-Script to Dear White Men...; the first book in the "I Apologize" Series. If this is your first time here please check out this blog post for more information.

If you've been waiting for this to continue, please excuse the shift I'm about to tell you about. In the middle of the night I was led to go in an entirely different direction from where I stared, for several reasons. 

Welcome to the writing process. Welcome to life living under the guidance of the Spirit.

What I wrote yesterday will still be in the book somewhere. But I'm really pleased to introduce you to what I wrote this morning. Your feedback is invited and appreciated. 

If you'd like to continue this journey beyond the pre-script and potentially comment throughout the entire writing process, please contribute to my fundraiser. The incentives for donating are entirely dedicated to accessing the book before it's published as a physical book.

Now... let's get to the content for today. Introducing the revised pre-script for Dear White Men...!

The Pre-Script

Welcome to The Pre-Script! If I was writing a book, this would be called "Introduction". Since this is written as a letter, I'm calling it The Pre-Script.

You know how you write P.S. if you want to add something to a letter after the fact? You probably already know that means "post script". Being clever, I switched it around and I'm calling this a pre-script because it's before the fact!

Welcome to my world!

Before I jump in further, can we just take a couple of deep breaths together? You can do how many you want for how long you like. Please come back though. We've got some important business to discuss.

Mainly, I want you to feel comfortable here. In fact I hope you're sitting somewhere that's comfortable. I hope you're either by yourself or reading this with people you trust have your best interests at heart.

If you can be outside or have some background sounds that represent nature, that would be even better. If that's an irritant for you, then please don't do that. I invite you to connect with nature because we are nature. Do what makes you feel most comfortable but won’t make you fall asleep (wink, wink, smile).

You do what's best to keep you in a relaxed state of mind, in a comfortable state of being. This is called parasympathetic activation of your nervous system. And I absolutely honor and respect whatever that looks like for you. Kudos to you if that space is on a treadmill or something!

I want this to be a safe space to talk about vital matters, both scientific and spiritual. Because we all come from different backgrounds, I cannot guarantee that something I write will not trigger an unexpected reaction in you.

And that is the reason I am compelled to write this pre-script. Don’t get me wrong. Some of those reactions might bring unexpected joy and happiness. But some might not feel so good either! So I want you to be prepared for that.

I hope your reactions are mostly because you feel seen and acknowledged. But, I need to be honest, some things I share (whether my personal experiences or in divulging other information) you might not like or agree with. 

To be clear, I am not writing anything as an attack against anyone. So I hope you’re not reading that into what I’m saying. I will be transparent though. And I'm being vulnerable even attempting this so please bear with me.

The fact is my main goal is to stop the attacks. At some point in the last two years there have been several things I’ve realized. The first is you didn’t choose the skin you are in anymore than I did.

And the reality is you probably didn’t even know there was something noticeably different about you or, worse, that you should be ashamed of until someone pointed it out to you. And when they pointed it out to you, they probably weren’t nice about it.

For many of us, this started at home. But if home was a safe place, then it was on the playground or at the park where the neighborhood bully reigned over other children because they weren’t in a safe home environment themselves. Maybe you were that neighborhood bully because someone kept pointing out how different you were.

And that leads me to another point I realized. We all have our traumas. I think so many of us started out in a similar fashion. Hold up... let me restate that. I know most of us started out in a similar fashion! 

I know many of us started out in the trauma filled home environments where we weren’t allowed to be children because of some societal norm that said, “children are less than” and have to act a certain way, which was against the way our brains were intrinsically going to act.

We either succumbed to the pressure of acting a “certain way” or we joined in the efforts to make others feel “less than”. Either the bullied became the bullies or the bullied became the people pleasers. I really can’t think of a decent story, let alone a good one that speaks of the bully becoming the peacemaker.

The storyline we’re often fed is about good versus evil and one of them prevails. That’s how most of the fairy tales go. Doesn’t that tell us something about our history? Even if there is a consensus to lean towards the good, it is usually at the expense of the evil one, right? They never really transform. They simply acquiesce.

In this letter there is no good versus evil. There is no right or wrong. There might be some challenging spots to endure but in the end, we both win. At least that’s my greatest desire.

But it’s a process right? I’m going to walk through some of the hurts I’ve endured because they have revealed some of the hurts you probably have endured. Personally, I’m tired of hurting. I’m tired of the attacks. I’m tired of someone having to win and someone having to lose.

To me, this way of thinking is based on the system of oppression this country was built on. And I use the word oppression intentionally because I’m not breaking it into silos like is usually done. 

So I am clear, my definition of oppression is a system where those “in power” (whatever that power looks like) seeks to exert that power over others they have deemed less than them (whatever that “less than” looks like).

I have identified several ways that others are deemed less than. So let’s talk about that.

1. Age: Children and Youth - There are many people who expect children and youth to speak and act in certain ways.

From my own experiences, there are people who enjoy children and youth who exist freely as themselves. They think it's the coolest thing in the world. But for others it triggers their sympathetic nervous systems and their unsavory behaviors towards children reflect that fight or flight activation.

(Please note: If you are not familiar with parasympathetic and sympathetic activation, I’ll be speaking more deeply on it. Hopefully the basics I’ll share here are clear enough to give you a solid idea of what I mean before I go there.)

2. Age: Elders - I remember this children’s book about a place that wanted to silo their elders and put them away because the leaders thought they were too old to be of any good to the society. One family would not commit and hid away their elders in a way where they were close, safe and undetected.

The story went on to describe some sort of an event where there were these riddles to solve for a certain prize. The family went to their elders for help to figure out the answers and they always knew. At the end of the story, the intelligence of the elders was revealed and they were welcomed back into the society.

I wish I could remember the name of the book. The one riddle I remember them answering was how you get a drum to beat without hitting it. The answer was to put bees inside. As they moved around, trying to get out, they would knock on the skins of the drum to beat it.

This type of wisdom comes from experience. Yes, times change but true wisdom never dies. Technology brings new innovations but once the power goes out, then what? A generator can only do so much and last for so long!

We need people who have lived experience to keep us grounded in who we are and what we are capable of. Our elders have lived through some of the most challenging times, so many deserve the spotlight instead of putting them in retirement or active living communities where their genius is not seen. Our elders don’t deserve to be diminished because of their age.

3. Sexual orientation - Need I say more? Some people prefer boys. Some people prefer girls. Some people prefer others. I get it. That’s cool. It’s when we try to put down those we don’t prefer that the problems start.

I’m truly discouraged by shows and movies that depict our young men or young women as less than. The clothing or gear with messages that diminish the value of other sexes really makes me heavy hearted.

Everyone deserves to be who they want to be. We haven’t lived in a world that allows that. We’ve been raised in a way that defined what gender is supposed to look like before we even knew what gender was.

That's what I appreciate about Stephen Covey's book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. 

Habit #5 is "seek first to understand, then to be understood". We think we understand someone so we force them to understand us. Sadly most of us don't even understand ourselves and expect others to understand us as well.

We have got to see the beauty and brilliance of one another regardless of what gender we are or have chosen.

4. Skin color - We have to acknowledge that skin color is a factor of why people are oppressed. Personally, I don't see this one exclusively. It usually is in combination with one I’ve already mentioned. 

There are different expectations between Black and White children. The expectations of Black and White boys and girls are different too.

We know there are different expectations between Black and White men and women in all aspects. Those expectations become more pronounced with the transition from children to adults.

I’m going to be totally transparent here. I have the greatest honor of being the mom and student of a young Black male superhero (I’ll tell you more about him later). With all the training I have had, I have discovered that the most oppressed group of people in America are children. Specifically speaking it is Black young male superheroes.

But there is a significant shift once they grow up. They are no longer the most oppressed as adults. White men are. And I’ll tell you why. White men have to deal with being called privileged. They have to deal with being called racist. They have to deal with being accused of practicing White Supremacy. 

All the accusations come in and you have to sit with them. You better not deny it because then you'd be a liar or unconscious on top of everything else. The reality is some of what comes at you might be far from the truth. Then again, it might all be true!

Women have been fighting for years to be seen and heard. The LGBTQ+ community has been fighting for years to be seen and heard. But I know that men, especially middle-class White men, are now fighting to NOT be dismissed. As if, for some reason, your value has to be diminished in order for others to be heard.

It doesn't have to be diminished, even if your viewpoint is a challenge for me to swallow. You don't have to be diminished or dismissed. No one has to be.

So when you are, how does that make you the most oppressed? Because people make those accusations without knowing anything about how you got to where you are. Without knowing the most intimate details of your childhood, it’s possible you might not even know how you got there. And with people throwing it in your face, you likely shun the judgment.

But there you are. You are all those things or none of those things yet people want you to change, like yesterday. You are oppressed to acknowledge what they find unwelcome about you and change everything to accommodate their desires of who they want you to be. 

That's impossible and unfair. Even if you felt compelled to change, without you (or them) even really knowing why you are the way you are you can't, especially in the time frame they are expecting. There is a reason for how you are and it's the brilliance of your nervous system protecting you.

I struggle with conversations that start with, “I know I’m a White man and can’t know what your experience has been.” Well, guess what? I’m a Black woman and I don’t know what it’s like to be a White man either.

All that glitters ain’t gold. It genuinely angers me that we expect so much from you without the expectation being possible for ourselves. Without the expectation first being accomplished by the one asking. 

I realized that to parent a superhero, I had to become one. Otherwise I was going to stifle his abilities to fly!

Too much time is spent stifling one another’s ability to fly! Some of you don’t even know you can fly. And you remain grounded because other people are stifling you too. I'm here because it's time to show you that you can fly.

I don't know how to be anyone but me. However, collectively speaking, I can say I know what it’s like to be human. I do know what it’s like to Love. I do know what it’s like to face fear and choose courage.

I do know what it’s like to be disappointed. I do know what it’s like to feel joy. I do know what it’s like to celebrate. I know anger. I know peace. I speak “Human”. Can we all get there?

Let’s take a breath here. BREATHE with me please because this really makes me emotional. So often we come from the perspective of, “well they hurt me so I need to (get them, teach them, fix them) by…”. You fill in the blank.

How about coming from the perspective of, “I wonder how they were hurt that they felt they had to hurt me, that they had to oppress me”?

Can we ever be curious enough to ask an even more poignant question? One we ask ourselves. "What have I experienced that makes me want to hurt them (oppress them, change them, fix them, etc.) instead of focusing on healing myself and my thought process?"

To be continued...

What do you think? Please let me know. If you're feeling some kinda way about what I've shared and don't know how to process that, please consider taking a look at yesterday's post. Again, this is a work in progress.

One I intend to have done by the 75th Anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights AND my 50th birthday, which are on the same day: Human Rights Day! If you can help fund me getting there, I would greatly appreciate it. Please contribute here. 

Thank you again and in advance. I'll be back on Monday, November 27th. Enjoy the amazing day you're creating. Peace...