Monthly Archives: June 2020

I don’t want to be racist, but I am. Here’s what I’m doing about it.

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Like many of us in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, I’m having conversations about American racism. This morning, in a group of White women, several said they were taught by their families not to be racist. I didn’t have that advantage. Not only was I raised in a family with overt white supremacist attitudes and beliefs, I grew up and currently live in a racist society. I am racist, whether I want to be or not. I don’t want to be racist, so I’m examining my internalized racism because I want to become more and more anti-racist.

Most of you are further along this journey than I am. I feel very uncomfortable talking about racism. Writing this post, telling you that my parents and grandparents had white supremacist beliefs, is extremely uncomfortable. So what? That’s as it should be. This is uncomfortable work. Because guilt, shame, and all the other self-flagellating feelings don’t help me or anyone else, I’ll leave it at this: I want to root out, as much as possible, my own racist attitudes and beliefs. And I want to work for the dismantling of systemic racism in America.

In listening to Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) speakers, reading books and articles by BIPOC writers, and in talking with other White people, I’ve found these two resources especially helpful. I humbly offer them to you. More to follow as I continue my self-education.

In this episode of Unf*ck Your Brain, Kara Loewentheil discusses why we’re all racists if we grew up in a racist society, why we need to understand that our thoughts don’t make us good or bad, how perfectionism can derail our efforts to become more anti-racist, and how discomfort doesn’t mean we’re doing this wrong. And so much more. This podcast gave me the courage to admit my own racism.

And, following Ijeoma Oluo’s suggestion in So You Want to Talk about Race, I’m inventorying my privilege. Here are a few items from my list.

  • I’m white.
  • I’m heterosexual.
  • I’m cisgendered.
  • I grew up in a middle class family.
  • I usually felt safe from physical harm.
  • My parents were married for the first twelve years of my life.
  • I’ve never been worried about having enough food or a place to live.  
  • I had an excellent public education.
  • I graduated from high school.
  • My teachers almost always looked like me.
  • My parents expected good grades from me.
  • My parents assumed I would go to college.
  • My parents paid for most of my undergraduate degree.
  • My family traveled.
  • My mom read aloud to her kids.
  • My mom was involved in school and girl scouts.
  • I had grandparents who cared about me.
  • I had plenty of friends who cared about me.
  • I am neurotypical.
  • I am able-bodied.
  • I do not have a debilitating or chronic illness.

The list goes on. This is only the start. I’m confident there’s more that I don’t even see yet, because that’s how privilege works.

Of course, the biggest privilege I have is my choice about whether to do this work or not. I choose to do this work. Most of you are further along this journey than I am. Tell me what’s helped you. Show me what I’m missing. I know I’ve only just begun.

“I need to repair my leaks.”

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Woman holding a string of Christmas lights
You’re here to make a conscious, intentional, reverent offering of your energy to the world.

True confession: I sometimes hear voices. To be precisely accurate, I hear a voice. This voice seems to come from both within me and from outside of me. I know that makes no rational sense.

Martha, the heroine of my new novel Lost and Found: A Magical Journey on the Camino de Santiago (now available for free download here), also hears a voice. This voice comes to her, completely unexpectedly, as she’s walking the Camino. To her intense surprise, Martha’s healing is the voice’s aim and highest priority. Martha doesn’t know she needs to be healed, so she’s unprepared for what happens when she listens to the voice.

I got longer missives from the voice on the Camino in 2014, just as Martha does. At home, in real life, the voice isn’t as verbose.

I only hear the voice when I’m quiet, and usually just a phrase or a sentence. Short and to the point. The voice doesn’t mince words. I’m always surprised by what it says.

Here are a few examples. About twenty years ago, while doing yoga, the voice told me my job is “to understand and share.” Two summers ago, while sitting on a rock in the sun, feet in a high mountain lake, obsessing over something or over, the voice told me to relax and trust. “Stay connected and flow,” it said. I hear the voice in my coaching work with clients. It says things like, “Ask her about her connection to trees,” when I have no conscious reason to think a woman’s connection to trees is important.

Maybe it’s intuition. Maybe it’s God. Maybe I’m crazy. All I know is the voice has my healing as its aim and highest priority, and it’s always a good idea to listen.

This morning, feet in the Deschutes River, pondering my new inability to prioritize other people’s priorities over my own, I heard, loud and clear from out of nowhere, “I need to repair my leaks.”

What does this mean? Here’s what I think it means, for me and possibly for you:

I have a tendency to be diffuse, to let my energy leak. Like a porous canal or a pipe with a hole in it, my energy goes places I don’t necessarily want it to go. This is how women are trained in a patriarchal culture.

What’s actually true is that I am in charge of my energy, and I want to notice where my energy goes. I want to decide if it’s going where I want it to go, or if I’m prioritizing someone else’s priorities.

  • Are things plugged into me that I don’t necessarily want to power?
  • Am I trying to manage others’ reactions to me?
  • Am I maintaining a façade? A fake front?
  • Am I pretending to care about something I don’t actually care about?
  • Am I attempting to control the uncontrollable?
  • What incompletions and open loops are draining my energy?

You are in charge of your energy. Your energy is your life. Your energy is all you have.

You might be asking, “But won’t being selfish about where my energy goes make me a heartless monster??”

No. Here’s why: Being who we are, being connected to and flowing with the holy in our unique way in our unique life, is why we’re here. We’re not here to power other people. We’re not here to power institutions we don’t believe in. We’re not here to be colonized. We’re here to be free.

Ask yourself what you’re NOT here to do. What’s on your “To Don’t” list? Repairing those leaks directs your energy to your soul’s purpose. This is why you’re here – to make a conscious, intentional, reverent offering of your energy to the world.  

Photo by Natalya Letunova on Unsplash

“Uncertainty, Risk, and Emotional Exposure”

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That’s how Dr. Brené Brown defines vulnerability.

On June 1st, I put my novel, the story of Martha, a middle-aged woman who walks the Camino de Santiago, on my website as a free downloadable PDF. Yesterday I posted about and promoted its presence. Today, I feel vulnerable in about twenty different ways.  

I don’t know if anyone will read it. If you do, will you like it, hate it, or be bored?

If you don’t like it, if it offends you or annoys you, what will that mean about me?

I’ve shared a few raw pieces of my childhood in it, and I’ve included a scene I’m just not sure about. Martha’s conversations with the Divine will offend some readers. (If there are any readers.)

I’m swimming in uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

Thankfully, other creators have lived through this and shared their wisdom. I’m finding strength and courage in these words from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic: Creative Living beyond Fear:

“Recognizing this reality – that the reaction doesn’t belong to you – is the only sane way to create. If people enjoy what you’ve created, terrific. If people ignore what you’ve created, too bad. If pople misunderstand what you’ve created, don’t sweat it. And what if people absolutely hate what you’ve created? What if people attack you with savage vitriol, and insult your intelligence, and malign your motives, and drag your good name through the mud?

Just smile sweetly and suggest – as politely as you possibly can – that they go make their own fucking art.

Then stubbornly continue making yours.”

So why be vulnerable? Because here’s the thing. Everything I’ve said about my novel applies to my life, my whole life, when I’m being who I am in the world. There are aspects of me, when I’m living in integrity and letting all of me show, that you might not like. I may say something that offends you. I might just be ignored. Or misunderstood.

It’s simply not my job to manage your reactions to me. It’s not your job to manage my reaction to you, either.

Our purpose is to be who we are, as fully and completely as we can be at this moment, stubbornly and continually. Living as whole people requires accepting the discomfort of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. As my ability to tolerate and even embrace the discomfort of vulnerability grows, the fuller my life becomes. My tolerance for uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure — vulnerability — is directly correlated to the amount of peace, freedom, creativity, and true connection in my life.

I’m proud of myself for sticking with Martha, myself, and this story. I’m proud that I’ve brought it into the world. I’m proud of myself for risking vulnerability. Whatever happens, I’ll have done this courageous thing. However this turns out, I’ll have grown my capacity to tolerate discomfort for the sake of growth.

You can download Lost and Found: A Magical Journey on the Camino de Santiago here.

She’s here! (My novel is live.)

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A statue of the Virgin Mary in Najera, Spain

What does it look like when a woman returns to her true nature?

What does it look like when a woman sheds the armor of culture and reclaims her true identity? What does it look like when a woman discards the disguises and camouflage she’s accumulated over decades of striving to fit in, to be who others want her to be?

A middle-aged woman walks the Camino de Santiago, and finds a whole new life within herself she never knew existed. What happens when that woman, faced with the potential disruption created by allowing that new life to emerge, says “Yes”? What shifts when that woman begins to understand that her healing is the highest desire of God, the Universe, and the Camino? What wisdom does that woman hear when she acknowledges that her former ways of getting through her days no longer serve her on this journey?

Lost and Found: A Magical Journey on the Camino de Santiago explores these questions. You can download it here. And thank you!

~Barb

The Audacious Act of Taking up Space

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Get in the habit of taking space — unapologetically speaking, writing, creating, and sharing — with clarity and conviction — for no other purpose than claiming the space allotted to you at birth.

We live in a society that gives more space to some than to others. This is called privilege. Although privilege feels automatic, built into the structure of reality, it’s not. Privilege is constructed, and it can be deconstructed.

If those with privilege — white, male, wealthy, for example — won’t use their space to deconstruct an unjust system, those to whom space is denied will eventually deconstruct that system from the outside by any means necessary.

Each and every child of the universe has the right to their allotted space. No more. And certainly no less.

Novel coming later today. I’ll post a link in tomorrow’s post, where I’ll continue audaciously taking up space.