HOW(AND WHY) I FORGIVE...WHITE PEOPLE

I like my bubble and I have for many years.

I'm one of those people that has enjoyed being alone with my family and close friends. The necessity of sheltering in place has sharpened the focus of the world in which we have allowed to develop around us. In my bubble, I began to get more remote work as an artist and I was able to spend more time with my new baby and husband. But can you remember what it was like before COVID? In my mind it blurred together something like this:

• 24 hour media showing a different black person being snuffed out at the hands of police officers on the daily
• Quentin Tarantino teams up with Harvey Weinstein to combat racism
• Harvey Weinstein outed for sexual assault
• #Metoo movement dominates the media that had been reporting on a seemingly endless loop of murderous brutality aimed at black people...with little to no retribution for the victims
• The catalytic George Floyd footage film is seen by the world and galvanizes people around the world stand together chanting Black Lives Matter
• COVID -- a new, more unpredictable killer of everyone...but, according to this article published by the CDC, Black folks are among those who are most vulnerable to this predator...again ?

Whatever the progression of events, my head crammed with new information to process and , silly me, I thought, as a Black American woman, I had already found a balanced cocktail of extreme depression, trauma, numbness, and suppressed rage; I was mistaken.

I'M SO GLAD I WAS MISTAKEN

In my life, I find truth in my lived experiences, not from what others have taught me. One major example of this experiential living is how I found out that the God I had been taught was "god" was a construct to help people cope for any number of reasons. In the case with my upbringing, my single Black mama told us

" I can't be with you all the time, but the Lord said, 'Lo! I am with you always. Even unto the ends of the earth.' "

Mama only read from the KJV. Now that I am an old-assed woman with two children and gray hairs I ain't even trying to cover, I get it. She needed to believe that she has some protection from all those monsters we would encounter in this world. God was the construct that she used to make herself feel safe about our well being.

BUT MAMA WAS LIMITING HERSELF

With any construct their are boundaries and parameters that, when pushed through, destroy the structure. When the structure is destroyed or even altered beyond recognition, there are new questions to answer and old answers may not hold true. Though my mother was a brilliant woman with a beautiful, protective spirit, she was limiting herself from embracing more about her abilities to recognize means of empowerment and protection within herself.

Like so many parents she aged and grew smaller as her fears and hurt grew larger. I pushed against her teachings of who and what God is and that caused no little bit of contention in our relationship as I watched her die of cancer.

I am not saying that my mother's cancer experience was solely because of her inability to expand her concept of God, but I do remember her telling me, as a registered and licensed Pharmacist for over 40 years, that she believed cancer came about because of unresolved hurts and resentment. She told me that 20 years before she herself was diagnosed.

I view the American public as a metaphor for my understanding of the mother. I was angry with my mother for many years because I felt she lied to me, didn't prepare me to deal with the world effectively, and didn't take better care of herself. Putting her life into context, I realized she was doing the best she could and she didn't ask me to "take care" of her. I chose to do that because I loved her. In fact, she asked me not to worry about her and do what I needed to do with my days even as she was getting weaker from the illness. I started to understand that the more I gave her compassionate thoughts, I could release her actions with a genuine chuckle and make a like joke, (that she usually didn't find funny), or physically remove myself to collect my cool again. I didn't excuse my mother's behavior, but I could put it in its place.

She spent years limiting herself and now she was getting closer to either the most liberating or limiting experience any of us will ever know. My anger was never going to change her mind, but my love always found a way to shift her construct whether she liked it or not. By choosing to take care of myself and releasing my anger I could make space/distance for her limitations to fall away in the expanse of my acceptance.

I had to choose to accept that mama wasn't going to change and her immovability wouldn't keep me from growing and creating the life experiences I wanted.

WE ALL 'ACT WHITE'...SOMETIMES

Apart from the obvious historical reasons for the mixing of cultures and ethnicities, I feel like we all have a bit of the privilege perception in different areas in our lives.

Yes, White Supremacy is real and the systematic oppression of non-white, non-male identifying people

White people who cared about being allies were scare of not being allowed to stand in solidarity and the White people who "didn't know what the fuss was about" were angry because they felt like they were being blamed for something they didn't feel they could control.

I don't excuse their behavior and ignorance, I choose to put it into complex and live my life in a different way. I choose to forgive. Forgiveness is not an easy endeavor all the time but it is worth it for my well being. White people are the group I'm referring to in this particular instance, but I also have to forgive men, colleagues, family members. All of my forgiveness