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# 2025-02-27 - See No Stranger by Valerie Kaur | |
A friend recommended this book to me and i checked it out from the | |
local library. This book exceeded my expectations. I clearly see | |
beauty in the author, inside and out. The stories brought to mind | |
a salmon surviving aggravated hazards, passing through a gauntlet of | |
trials, and finally succeeding against all odds, returning home. | |
This manifesto of revolutionary love touched my heart. Reading this | |
book had a wholesome influence on me, and it felt worthwhile. | |
# Introduction | |
This book is for a world in transition. At this moment, Far-Right | |
ethnic supremacist movements are rising in the United States, across | |
Europe, and around the globe--propping up demagogues, mainstreaming | |
nativism, undermining democracies, politicizing the very notion of | |
truth, and failing to safeguard the most vulnerable among us. The | |
United States is also in the midst of a demographic transition. | |
Within 25 years, the number of people of color will exceed the number | |
of white people for the first time since colonization, and we are at | |
a crossroads: Will we birth a nation that has never been--a nation | |
that is multiracial, multifaith, multicultural, and multigendered, | |
where power is shared, and we strive to protect the dignity of every | |
person? | |
"Revolutionary love" is the choice to enter into wonder and labor for | |
/others/, for our /opponents/, and for /ourselves/ in order to | |
transform the world around us. It is not a formal code or | |
prescription but an orientation to life that is personal and | |
political and rooted in joy. ... revolutionary love can only be | |
practiced in community. | |
Revolutions do not happen only in grand moments in public view but | |
also in small pockets of people coming together to inhabit a new way | |
of being. We birth the beloved community by /becoming/ the beloved | |
community. | |
# Chapter 1: Wonder | |
My favorite was our origin story: the story of Guru Nanak, the first | |
teacher of the Sikh faith. Five centuries ago, the story goes, | |
half-way around the world in a village in Punjab of the Indian | |
subcontinent, there lived a young man named Nanak. He was deeply | |
troubled by the violence around him, Hindus and Muslims in turmoil. | |
One day, he disappeared on the bank of a river for 3 days. People | |
thought he was dead, drowned. But Nanak emerged on the third day | |
with a vision of Oneness: /Ik Onkar/, the Oneness of humanity and of | |
the world. This vision threw him in a state of ecstatic | |
wonder--/vismaad/--and he began singing songs of devotion called | |
/shabads/, praising the divine within and around him. In other | |
words, he was in love. Love made him see with new eyes: Everyone | |
around him was a part of him that he did not yet know. | |
"I see no stranger," said Guru Nanak, "I see no enemy." Guru Nanak | |
taught that all of us could see the world in this way. There is a | |
voice inside of each of us called /haumai/, the I that names itself | |
as separate from You. It resides in the bowl that holds our | |
individual consciousness. But separateness is an illusion. When we | |
quiet the chatter in our heads, through music or meditation or | |
recitation or song, the boundaries begin to disappear. The bowl | |
breaks. For a moment, we taste the truth, sweet as nectar--we are | |
part of one another. Joy rushes in. Long after the moment passes, | |
we can choose to remember the truth of our interconnectedness, that | |
we belong to one another. We can /choose/ to "see no stranger." | |
The call to love beyond our own flesh and blood is ancient. It | |
echoes down to us on the lips of indigenous leaders, spiritual | |
teachers, and social reformers through the centuries. Guru Nanak | |
called us to see no stranger, Buddha to practice unending compassion, | |
Abraham to open our tent to all, Jesus to love our neighbors, | |
Muhammad to take in the orphan, Mirabai to love without limit. They | |
all expanded the circle of who counts as /one of us/, and therefore | |
who is worthy of our care and concern. | |
But you don't have to be religious in order to open to wonder. | |
Wonder is where love begins, but the failure to wonder is the | |
beginning of violence. Once people stop wondering about others, once | |
they no longer see others as part of them, they disable their | |
instinct for empathy. And once they lose empathy, they can do | |
anything to them, or allow anything to be done to them. Entire | |
institutions built to preserve the interests of one group of people | |
over another /depend/ on this failure of imagination. | |
Love is dangerous business, Papa Ji explained. If you choose to see | |
no stranger, then you must love people, even when they do not love | |
you. You must wonder about them even when they refuse to wonder | |
about you. You must even protect them when they are in harm's way. | |
Our minds are primed to see the world in terms of /us and them/. We | |
can't help it. This happens /before/ conscious thought. Our bodies | |
release hormones that prime us to trust and listen to those we see as | |
part of /us/ and to fear and resent /them/. | |
The most powerful force shaping who we see as /us and them/ is the | |
dominant stories in our social landscape. We breath them in, whether | |
or not we consciously endorse them. Even if we are part of a | |
marginalized community, we internalize these stereotypes about others | |
and ourselves. In brain imaging studies, for example, nearly half of | |
black people, queer people, and women exhibited unconscious fear and | |
distrust in response to pictures of people who looked like them. In | |
other words, we live in a culture that makes us strange to ourselves. | |
In the United States, white supremacy is intertwined with Christian | |
supremacy, one and extension of the other. Any theology that teaches | |
that God will torture people in front of us in the afterlife creates | |
the imaginative space for you to do so yourself on earth. The | |
European colonizers who arrived on this soil assumed that dark bodies | |
could not contain the inner life they experienced in themselves. | |
Once they no longer saw the faces in front of them as equals, they | |
could call people strangers on their own land, savage to the touch, | |
ripe for conversion: They could concentrate them, enslave them, | |
pillage them, consolidate their resources, and build an empire on | |
their soil in the name of God and country. | |
* * * | |
"I just can't believe that there could be a God who would send me to | |
hell," I said. There was a pause as she looked at me. I was ready to | |
fight. | |
"I can't either," she said. She saw my shock and explained "I think | |
there are many paths. It just doesn't make sense otherwise. Of | |
course, some people don't agree." Then she laughed. There was a | |
sparkle in her eyes. I started crying, she handed me tissues, and I | |
threw my arms around her. Her name was Faye and she was the first | |
Christian I had ever met who did not believe I was going to hell. I | |
would go on to meet many more people like her and learn that there | |
are many ways to be Christian, just as there are many ways to be Sikh. | |
Seeing no stranger is an act of will. In brain-imaging studies, when | |
people are shown a picture of a person of a different race long | |
enough for comprehension, it is possible for them to dampen their | |
unconscious fear response. We can change how we see. | |
# Chapter 2: Grieve | |
Violence is a rupture. Violence makes a hole--not just the damage it | |
inflicts on the body of a person but the pain it causes in the body | |
of a people. The hole swallows up language, memory, and meaning and | |
leaves us in a scarred and stripped landscape. Hannah Arendt calls | |
this /the private realm/, the dark shadowy place that violence throws | |
us into, shocked and speechless and alone ion our loss. Human beings | |
cannot remain in this silence and survive, and so we have to learn to | |
say what is unsayable. We tell a story about the violence to make | |
sense of it, and the story returns us to the public realm where | |
grieving is possible. The act of naming violence and grieving loss | |
/in community/ is how the hole turns into a wound that can heal. | |
Grief is the price of love. Loving someone means that one day, there | |
will be grieving. They will leave you, or you will leave them. The | |
more you love, the more you grieve. Loving someone also means | |
grieving /with/ them. It means letting their pain and loss bleed | |
into your own heart. ... Grieving is an act of surrender. | |
* * * | |
White supremacy has always been twinned with Christian supremacy in | |
America--slavery was justified as a Christian mission, indigenous | |
people were forced to convert at the barrel of a gun. "Confucian" | |
and "Hindoo" laborers were barred from citizenship. | |
New horrors keep arising from old impulses. The past keeps bleeding | |
into the present. No civilization in the world is exempt. But what | |
is particular to America is that many who suffered enormous loss and | |
destruction have had to do so alone, and had to marshal language to | |
tell the story, only to find that there was no one to hear it because | |
their suffering contradicts the story that the nation keeps telling | |
itself--the story of American exceptionalism. /America is a beacon | |
of light, the singular enforcer of truth./ Our story of | |
exceptionalism doesn't allow us to confront our past with open eyes. | |
A nation that cannot see its own past cannot see the suffering it | |
has caused, suffering that persists into the present. A nation that | |
cannot see our suffering cannot grieve with us. A nation that cannot | |
grieve with us cannot know us, and therefore cannot love us. | |
There have always been people who did what the nation as a whole did | |
not. | |
America's greatest social movements--for civil rights, immigrant's | |
rights, women's rights, union organizing, queer and trans rights, | |
farmworker's rights, indigenous sovereignty, and black lives--were | |
rooted in the solidarity that came from shared grieving. First | |
people grieved together. Then they organized together. Often, they | |
sang and celebrated together. | |
You may say: "It's too much--all this grief, all this violence and | |
injustice, it's too hard." You are right: The mind can comprehend | |
one death, but it cannot comprehend thousands, especially when one's | |
own community, nation, or ancestors played part in causing the death. | |
... Can you choose one person to practice wondering about? Can you | |
listen to the story they have to tell? If your fists tighten, or | |
your heart beats fast, or if shame rises to your face, it's okay. | |
Breathe through it. Trust that you can. The heart is a muscle: The | |
more you use it, the stronger it becomes. ... You don't need to know | |
people in order to grieve with them. /You grieve with them in order | |
to know them./ | |
There is something called "empathy fatigue" that happens when we get | |
overloaded by other people's pain. The good news is that you don't | |
need to feel empathy all the time. /Love is not a rush of feeling: | |
Love is sweet labor./ | |
# Chapter 3: Fight | |
The fight impulse is ancient and fundamental. It is biological. ... | |
The question therefore is not whether or not we will fight in our | |
lives but /how/ we choose to fight. | |
Dr. King named three evils--racism, poverty, and militarism. But he | |
left out a fourth--sexism. The assumption that women and girls are | |
less than equal and therefore deserve less dignity and freedom is | |
perhaps the most ancient, pervasive, and insidious evil of them all. | |
But sexism is not a single issue. "There is no such thing as a | |
single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives," | |
said black feminist Audre Lorde. "Intersectionality," a term coined | |
by scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, is a concept that black women have used | |
since Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I A Woman" speech in 1851. It | |
explains how women fight on multiple fronts: Women of color must | |
fight racism in addition to sexism; if they are poor and rural women, | |
they must also fight poverty; if they are queer women, homophobia; if | |
they are trans women, transphobia; if they are disabled women, stigma | |
and barriers to access; if they are undocumented women, the threat of | |
detention, deportation, and family separation. Since multiple | |
inequalities determine our power and privilege and lived experience | |
in society, these inequalities must be fought /together/, by all of | |
us. Otherwise we fail our movements and ourselves. | |
We need allies in our lives, and in our movements, who wonder, | |
grieve, and fight with us and for us. Perhaps a better word is | |
"accomplices," a term invoked by indigenous leaders. We need | |
accomplices who will conspire with us to break rules in order to | |
break chains... | |
So, I invite you to step into this rich part of my tradition with | |
four questions. First, what is your sword, your /kirpan/? What can | |
you use to fight on behalf of others--your pen, your voice, your art, | |
your pocketbook, your presence? Second, what is your shield, your | |
/dhal/? What can you use to protect yourself and others when the | |
fight is dangerous--your camera, legal counsel, a group of allies, | |
public witness? Third, what is your instrument, your /dilruba/? In | |
Sikh legend, our ancestors designed the /dilruba/, a string | |
instrument small enough for soldiers to carry on their backs into the | |
battlefield, so that they could lift their spirits in music, song, | |
and poetry in the mornings before they faced the fire. Your | |
/dilruba/ can be what centers you--singing, dancing, drumming, | |
walking, yoga, kirtan, prayer, meditation. Finally, what is your | |
sacred community, your /sangat/? You just need three kinds of | |
people. Someone who sees the best in you. Someone who is willing to | |
fight by your side. And someone who can fight /for/ you when you | |
need help. | |
# Chapter 4: Rage | |
I had always thought that the opposite of love was rage, the extreme, | |
irrational, uncontrollable expression of anger, the force that drove | |
people to hurt others with their words or weapons. Rage was to be | |
tamed and wrestled down like a wild animal within us. We were only | |
as evolved or spiritual or good as our ability to subdue it. Only | |
when our rage was subdued could we unlock our human potential to love | |
others, even our opponents. I don't know when I learned this, but it | |
ran so deep that it must have been at the onset of memory. | |
This was a lie. | |
The opposite of love is not rage. The opposite of love is | |
indifference. Love engages all of our emotions... We cannot access | |
the depths of loving ourselves or others without our rage. | |
As a little girl in India, my mother did not know any woman whose | |
body had not been violated in some way. But these women followed the | |
unwritten rule in the sky: Silence is survival. The Sikh faith | |
professes radical equality between women and men, but Punjabi culture | |
was still steeped in patriarchy. She had hoped that it would be | |
different for our generation, here in America. But patriarchy and | |
gender oppression are not local anomalies. There is no nation, no | |
community, and no corner of the earth where women and girls are as | |
safe as men. | |
[As a legal observer at a protest, the author was arrested and | |
injured. Her injuries resulted in chronic, debilitating pain. She | |
made multiple attempts to love her opponent: through understanding, | |
compassion, empathy, and forgiveness. But none of these helped.] | |
The first step to loving our opponents is rage. | |
[Tommy Woon] was one of my advisors from college, a dean of | |
multicultural education and a trailblazer in healing historical | |
trauma. He operated on the premise that healing begins in the body, | |
and the brain follows. Trauma alienates us from our bodies, he | |
explained. When we face a threat, our bodies release a flood of | |
stress hormones so that we can protect ourselves. We can fight, | |
flee, or freeze [or fawn]. If we can't do any of those fully, then | |
our internal alarms never turn off. Memories of trauma keep flooding | |
our thoughts; panic keeps gripping us; the past keeps bleeding into | |
the present. In extreme cases, we cope by numbing and | |
dissociating--abandoning our bodies so that it is difficult to feel | |
sensation. Tommy believed that I had a "disrupted fight impulse." I | |
did not need to relive my trauma through talk therapy. I needed to | |
access my fiercest emotions and reclaim my agency--in my mind /and/ | |
body. One way to do this was to experience an alternate narrative. | |
When I tore up these men with my fangs, I was not destroying them. I | |
was destroying my projections of them. My mind had turned them into | |
monsters--bad guys with infinite power over me. But there is no such | |
thing as monsters in this world. There are only human beings who are | |
wounded. These men had hurt me out of their own suffering. It was | |
common, it was banal. When we cannot see that evil is driven by a | |
person's wounds, not their innate nature, we become terrified of each | |
other. But the moment we see their wounds, they no longer have | |
absolute power over us. I could not see the wound in them until I | |
tended to the wound inside me. And that required me to access my rage. | |
Neurobiologists call oxytocin the love hormone: The more oxytocin in | |
the body, the more care and nurturing mammals show for their babies. | |
Oxytocin decreases aggression in a mother's body overall with one | |
exception--in defense of her young. When babies are threatened, | |
oxytocin actually increases aggression. For mothers, rage is part of | |
love: It is the biological force that protects that which is loved. | |
[I have also read that oxytocin works along in-group & out-group | |
lines. It makes us warmer toward our in group, and less empathetic | |
toward our out-group. I can imagine this might mean that heightened | |
oxytocin or sensitivity to oxytocin might amplify racism as well as | |
empathy.] | |
Rage is a healthy, normal, and necessary response to trauma. It is a | |
rightful response to the social traumas of patriarchy, white | |
supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and poverty. But we | |
live in a culture that punishes us when we show our teeth--we are | |
called hysterical when we tell our story with fury; and, if we are | |
anything other than deferential with an officer, we might get hurt or | |
shot, and even then, our deference might not make a difference. | |
Black and brown people have been schooled in the suppression of our | |
emotions as a matter of survival. ... We now have data to prove what | |
community healers know well: Repressing anger comes at a cost to our | |
health. It results in high rates of autoimmune diseases. It | |
amplifies our perception of pain. | |
The opposite of repression is also dangerous. Too many men have been | |
socialized to unleash rage without apology. For men, violence is the | |
socially conditioned default for male rage, and the proliferation of | |
guns has made male aggression deadlier than ever. Mass shooters are | |
typically men, and the majority of those men have physically abused | |
the women in their lives. | |
The solution is not to suppress our rage or let it explode, but to | |
process our rage in /safe containers/--emotional spaces safe enough | |
to express our body's impulses without shame and without harming | |
ourselves and others. Only when we give rage an external expression | |
outside our bodies can we be in relation with it. We can then ask: | |
What information does my rage carry? What is it telling me? How do | |
I want to harness this energy? | |
Divine rage can make people feel uncomfortable: It can feel | |
disruptive, frightening, and unpredictable. There are those who wish | |
to police such rage in the name of civility. But civility is too | |
often used to silence pain that requires people to change their lives. | |
# Chapter 5: Listen | |
There comes a point, in the aftermath of cruelty or injury, when I | |
start to wonder about my opponent: "Why did they do that? Say that? | |
Believe that? Vote that way? What is at stake for them? What is | |
driving their behavior?" And I want to find out. Sometimes it's not | |
safe for me to do this. I need to tend my own wound and keep | |
processing my rage, grief, and trauma. But when it is safe, I think | |
about how to listen to their story. | |
No one should be asked to /feel/ empathy or compassion for their | |
oppressors. I have learned that we do not need to /feel/ anything | |
for our opponents at all in order to practice love. Love is a labor | |
that returns us to wonder--it is seeing another person's humanity, | |
even if they deny our own. We just have to choose to wonder about | |
them. | |
I do not owe my opponents my affection, warmth, or regard. But I do | |
owe /myself/ a chance to live in this world without the burden of | |
hate. "I shall permit no man, no matter what his color might be, to | |
narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him," said Booker T. | |
Washington. ... The more I listen, the less I hate. The less I hate, | |
the more I am free to choose actions that are controlled not by | |
animosity but by wisdom. Laboring to love my opponents is how I love | |
myself. | |
Deep listening is an act of surrender. We risk being changed by what | |
we hear. ... The most critical part of listening is asking /what is | |
at take for the other person?/ I try to understand what matters to | |
them, not what I think matters. ... When the story is done, we must | |
return to our skin, our own worldview, and notice how we have been | |
changed by our visit. So I ask myself, "What is this story demanding | |
of me? What will I do now that I know this?" | |
* * * | |
One night in South Carolina, a white evangelical man stood up after | |
the film and described how he felt under siege in America. "People | |
think that you and I have nothing in common," he said to me. "But | |
you and I are not that different. I, too, am seen as an outsider." | |
He was making a well-meaning gesture, connecting his status as a | |
white evangelical man with mine as a brown Sikh woman, framing both | |
of us as minorities. Far from challenging him, I rushed to embrace | |
the comparison. | |
There was nothing wrong with this insight of commonality. The | |
problem is that I did not follow it up--I did not ask the man to say | |
more about where his feeling of being a minority came from, and so I | |
never found out whether it was our nation's increasing diversity and | |
equality that threatened his position of supremacy and made him feel | |
under siege. Nor did I suggest the ways in which this man and I were | |
/not/ similar, that his ancestors had likely possessed power over | |
mine, allowed them to be stripped of citizenship, and profited from | |
their labor, and that these histories shape the world we both live in | |
today, affording him access and privilege that I did not enjoy by | |
virtue of the body I occupied. | |
Instead I let it be a feel-good moment. | |
White supremacy as an /ideology/ has been pushed to the margins of | |
American culture. But white supremacy as a /system/ of structural | |
advantage that favors white people persists: It animates the | |
institutions we operate in. It is why our nation's policies on | |
immigration, criminal justice, and national security continue to | |
criminalize communities of color, maintaining the climate in which | |
hate crimes keep happening. We keep talking about hate crimes as | |
radical acts driven by individual intention. But they are only the | |
most visible evidence of this broader system at work. | |
Deep listening is about drawing close to someone's story. It turns | |
out it is extremely difficult to draw close to someone you find | |
absolutely abhorrent. How do we listen to someone when their beliefs | |
are disgusting? Or enraging? Or terrifying? How do we keep | |
listening when the words are so offensive and dangerous that it seems | |
that the only rightful response is hostility? An invisible wall | |
forms between us and them, a chasm that seems impossible to cross. | |
We don't even know why we should try to cross it. Those beliefs | |
don't deserve our attention. In these moments, we can choose to | |
remember that the goal of listening is not to feel empathy for our | |
opponents, or validate their ideas, or even change their mind in the | |
moment. Our goal is to understand them. ... In order to create a | |
safer world for all of us, we must not only defeat such opponents but | |
invite them into transformation. That means finding a way to | |
overcome our own emotional resistance and choose to ask questions | |
about them. This takes work. Neuroscientists call it "cognitive | |
load"--trying to understand the perspective and pain of people we are | |
inclined to hate is a dramatic cognitive challenge. The load only | |
lightens with practice. | |
When listening gets hard, I focus on taking the next breath. I pay | |
attention to the sensations in my body: heat, clenching, and | |
constriction. I feel the ground beneath my feet. Am I safe? If so, | |
I stay and slow my breath again, quiet my mind, and release the | |
pressure that pushes me to defend my position. I try to wonder about | |
this person's story and the possible wound in them. I think of an | |
earnest question and try to stay curious long enough to be changed by | |
what I hear. Maybe, just maybe my opponent will begin to wonder | |
about me in return, ask me questions, and listen to my story. ... | |
Listening does not grant the other side legitimacy. It grants them | |
humanity--and preserves our own. | |
Everyone has a role in the labor of birthing a new America. If you | |
find yourself in harm's way right now, then it is /not/ necessarily | |
your role to listen to the people who are terrorizing you. Or to | |
tend to any kind of wound in them. Your primary responsibility is to | |
survive, find safety, and tend to the wounds they inflict on you--to | |
build bonds with people who are willing to wonder bout you, grieve | |
with you, and fight with and for you. In finding ways to breath, you | |
are creating the kind of energy and joy that can sustain us all in | |
the struggle. That is your act of revolutionary love. | |
But by virtue of whatever privilege you have, if you find yourself | |
safe enough to do the brave work of listening to your opponents, you | |
have a vital role to play. | |
How do we make peace with beloved ones who become ghosts? The secret | |
is to understand that our relationship with them has not ended even | |
though they are gone. If haunting is possible in death, then healing | |
is possible too. | |
# Chapter 6: Reimagine | |
The greatest social reformers in history did not only resist | |
oppressors--they held up a vision of what the world ought to be. | |
Nanak sang it. Muhammed led it. Jesus taught it. Buddha envisioned | |
it. King dreamed it. Dorothy Day labored for it. Mandela lived | |
it. Gandhi died for it. Grace Lee Boggs fought for it for seven | |
decades. They called for us not only to unseat bad actors but to | |
reimagine the /institutions of power/ that ordered the world. Take | |
any crisis and notice the antecedents--in the United States, some of | |
the same detention camps that hold migrant children today once held | |
Japanese Americans and before that indigenous people; the criminal | |
justice system controls more black people today than were enslaved in | |
the year 1850; the military-industrial complex that President | |
Eisenhower warned about in the 1950s has run a war on terror for so | |
long that distant war has become a normal feature of American life. | |
Any social harm can be traced to institutions that produce it, | |
authorize it, or otherwise profit from it. To undo the injustice, we | |
have to imagine new institutions--and step in to lead them. | |
The most powerful institutions in the United States were not built | |
for most of to be there, let alone hold any kind of power inside | |
them. Law schools were not originally built for women or people of | |
color, certainly not women of color. But that doesn't mean that we | |
don't belong there now or that we cannot change them. | |
I immersed myself in the study of Constitutional Law, the subject | |
that Reva taught. I can't say much for my performance in my other | |
first-year classes, but Constitutional Law I mastered. Reva, my only | |
woman professor, ran her seminar more around shared inquiry rather | |
than interrogation. ... All I know is that I found my way into the | |
law. It began with a simple but profound revelation: The founders | |
crafted the U.S. Constitution to consolidate power for white | |
Christian men of an elite class. The rest of us were not counted in | |
"we the people." The law was designed to colonize and control the | |
rest of us, not set us free. And yet the founders had invoked words | |
whose power even they could not constrain--justice, freedom, | |
equality, the guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of | |
happiness. These were magical words that had a power of their own | |
and seized the imagination of the people for whom they were never | |
meant. | |
Law was a strong tool to reform broken institutions. But these | |
prison were not broken. They did exactly what they were designed to | |
do. [Guantánamo where people were tortured.] We could not reimagine | |
them--there was no version of them that did not inflict harm. No, we | |
had to dismantle them. We had to imagine America /without/ them. | |
# Chapter 7: Breathe | |
This time, it happened at home. My skin broke out in a sweat, my | |
legs gave way, and I collapsed on the steps, my back arched. I felt | |
like a mongoose squeezed by a boa constrictor, gasping between slow, | |
deliberate squeezes. Sharat carried me the rest of the way upstairs, | |
peeled off my clothes, and lowered me into the bath, but my body | |
would not stop writhing. When the contractions came, there was no | |
language in my mind except a voice that said "Breathe." Sharat held | |
my wrists as I twisted in the water. I leaned over the edge of the | |
bathtub and vomited. He held my back, strong and steady. When the | |
wailing quieted and the water stilled, he laid me on the bed. ... My | |
back throbbed and the stone in my belly burned, but I feel asleep. | |
Later, when Sharat leaned over me with a cup of herbs, he said that | |
my lips had gone gray. This time it lasted six hours. It would be | |
another twelve hours before I could eat. And another twenty-four | |
hours before I would be able to get out of bed again. | |
It happened almost every month... always at the onset of my period, | |
suddenly, dramatically, without warning. Like labor without the | |
gift. ... It went on like this for four years. | |
A specialist at Yale saw me right away and diagnosed the problem: | |
endometriosis. Cells similar to the uterine lining were growing on | |
my ovaries and intestine, bleeding at the onset of my period each | |
month. The intestinal twist from scar tissue caused the abdominal | |
contractions. The condition was correlated with vaginismus. [Which | |
was the result of the author being sexually abused as a child.] The | |
specialist recommended surgery. | |
I was lucky. Nearly nine million women and girls in North America | |
suffer from endometriosis, yet it remains underdiagnosed and | |
undertreated, an "invisible" women's disease. On average, women and | |
girls wait eight to eleven years and see five doctors before a | |
confirmed diagnosis. Women of color and low-income women often | |
suffer far longer without access to care. | |
* * * | |
I had been made to believe that overwork was the only way to make a | |
difference. I had come to measure my sense of worth by how much I | |
produced, how well I responded, and how quickly. I had worked for so | |
long, and so hard, and at such great speeds, that I had become | |
accustomed to breathlessness. I could not remember the last time I | |
had a long night of rest. Or gazed at the night sky. Or danced. I | |
told myself that it was for a good reason, that the need was so | |
great, and our work too important. Perhaps you too have felt this | |
way. | |
This is what I want to tell you: You don't have to make yourself | |
suffer in order to serve. You don't have to grind your bones into | |
the ground. You don't have to cut your life up into pieces and give | |
yourself away until there is nothing left. You belong to a community | |
and a broader movement. Your life has value. We need you alive. We | |
need you to last. | |
The self-help industry profits from "spiritual bypassing"--the belief | |
that we are changing the world by investing in our spiritual | |
wellness, even as we continue to participate in the same systems that | |
oppress people. But we can act consciously so that our wellness does | |
not come at the expense of others. | |
# Chapter 8: Push | |
Healing is the long journey of returning to our bodies. It is a kind | |
of labor that requires breathing and pushing--resting--and then going | |
deeper. We must be willing to notice and befriend sensations, | |
including pain and discomfort. "Physical self-awareness is the first | |
step in releasing the tyranny of the past," writes trauma researcher | |
Bessel van der Kolk. Talking about the emotional trauma doesn't | |
necessarily alter our relationship with it. We must be able to | |
/feel/ where the trauma lives in our bodies and invite our bodies to | |
orient to the safety of the present moment. | |
Forgiveness is not forgetting: Forgiveness is freedom from hate. ... | |
I thought about my own community's choice to pray for the gunman | |
after the mass shooting of Sikhs in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. | |
Forgiveness was not a substitute for justice; it had /energized/ us | |
in the fight for justice. It reframed justice not as retribution but | |
as cultural and institutional transformation. | |
Reconciliation rests on accountability. It requires perpetrators to | |
accept full responsibility for their actions. In truth and | |
reconciliation commissions, the survivor shares the impact of the | |
harm; the offender accepts responsibility, finds a way to repair it, | |
and is reintegrated into the community. Such commissions have been | |
used in more than thirty countries around the world, and, although | |
imperfect, they were powerful alternatives to retribution. | |
Reconciliation mends what has been torn asunder, but it does not | |
return us to a point before the harm happened. Perpetrators and | |
survivors can just leave each other alone after that. | |
Two years later, the #metoo movement swept the nation, holding | |
powerful men accountable for sexual harassment and abuse in public | |
reckoning. | |
As time went on, and more abusers were led away in handcuffs, I | |
realized that I had never see a man who committed sexual or physical | |
assault make a public apology; a sincere and complete public apology. | |
... I began to wonder: /could we protect spaces for women to rage and | |
heal and find justice, and also for men to claim their own process of | |
accountability, apology, and transformation to earn a pathway back to | |
community?/ | |
The labor of reconciliation is complicated, unpredictable, and | |
painful. In most truth and reconciliation commissions, a third party | |
leads survivors and offenders through the process. | |
America needs to reconcile with itself and do the work of apology: To | |
say to indigenous, black, and brown people, we take full ownership of | |
what we did. To say, we owe you /everything/. To say, we see how | |
harm runs through generations. To say, we own this legacy and will | |
not harm you again. To promise the non-repetition of harm would | |
require nothing less than transitioning the nation as a whole. It | |
would mean retiring the old narrative about who we are--a city on a | |
hill--and embracing a new narrative of an America longing to be born, | |
a nation whose promise lies in the future, a nation we can only | |
realize by doing the labor: reckoning with the past, reconciling | |
ourselves, restructuring our institutions, and letting those who have | |
been most harmed be the ones to lead us through the transition. | |
# Chapter 9: Transition | |
But if we see the story of America as one long labor, then we have a | |
different view. Progress during birthing labor is cyclical, not | |
linear. It is a series of expansions and contractions, and each turn | |
through the cycle brings us closer to what is being born. I see this | |
path through U.S. history: A generation fought to abolish slavery and | |
free people from bondage, but it was followed by a Jim Crow system. | |
Another generation built a civil rights movement to end segregation | |
and win equal rights, but it was followed by criminal justice, | |
immigration, and national security systems that continued to punish | |
black and brown people. The labor is ongoing, the injustice | |
relentless. But each time people organized, each turn through the | |
cycle opened a little more space for equality and justice. | |
It is time to seek out the deepest wisdom of those who have been most | |
silenced by the forces of history. When I am in a place that /begins/ | |
by recognizing indigenous peoples, /centers/ black lives, and /leads/ | |
with women of color, I am in a place of deep solidarity. We can | |
model solidarity in all our movement spaces, both in person and | |
virtual. | |
Transition is the most painful and dangerous stage, but it's also | |
where we begin to see what comes into the space we open up. | |
Transition is an imperfect metaphor: There is no one point when a new | |
society is born. | |
# Epilogue: Joy | |
Joe is possible even amid great labors--the labor of dying, the labor | |
of birthing, and the labors in between. We cannot force it. But | |
when we create moments to breathe between labor pains, and surrender | |
ourselves to the present moment, notice the colors and light and | |
feeling of being live, here, together, joy comes more easily. It is | |
a felt sense in our bodies. In the face of horrors visited upon our | |
world daily, in the struggle to protect our loved ones, choosing to | |
let in joy is a revolutionary act. Joy returns us to everything good | |
and beautiful and worth fighting for. It gives us energy for the | |
long labor. Letting joy in, therefore, is the tenth practice of | |
revolutionary love, the core practice that sustains all the others. | |
author: Kaur, Valarie | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Valarie_Kaur | |
LOC: BF575.L8 K37 | |
tags: book,compassion,gender,manifesto,memoires,political,race | |
title: See No Stranger | |
# Tags | |
book | |
compassion | |
gender | |
manifesto | |
memoires | |
political | |
race |