Getting Myself Ready

Unattributed...I wish I could draw this well...

   I attended my first DEI training last night. In the interest in protecting safe space I won't identify the circumstances or participants, and I will try hard to just focus on the things about it that I need to process. I'm feeling like I can't do the work I planned for today until I download some of these emotions here...I already journaled for over an hour about it but this format challenges me to put it into more of an essay form, with things like hypotheses and conclusions and I generally get some personal discovery in the process too. Three of the last four posts I wrote ended up being titled "Finding..." something which I didn't do intentionally and is lazy but often the titles come last after I see where my writing took me. 

I was afraid to go...I listed my fears and most were silly...like that I would be kicked out, that I would have to declare that I am racist in the core, that I would say completely foolish things and prove to everyone I am a fool...but what happened was not anticipated and I am glad about that. I didn't want it to be an experience where I didn't move forward in some way. I didn't have a plan for that motion, just tried to go in and be brave. So I kept my camera on but told myself it would probably not be that many people. It was many more than I expected. 

I have complicated relationships with quite a few of them. We've worked together, I've served them in various ways, I've disagreed with them in various ways, and had confrontations with a small number of them in disagreement that we have not processed. I didn't think about that, being focused on the learning opportunity. I just didn't know what exactly I would be learning.

I missed the first of this three-part workshop, but that covered the basics which I hope I have a pretty good grasp of from all of the reading I have done in the last few years. This part turned out to be visioning, and essentially, unifying toward a common goal. It was a group of leaders...and I am not really in a leadership position in the structure, though I do lead. As I mentioned in one of the breakout sessions, what I do is lead from the middle, as I characterize it. I tend to do it in all of my groups by the way I approach the tasks I choose to do and the ways I support group process. This supports my needs to feel safe and to belong and has worked well most of the time. I'm an avoider and do not do well in confrontation or direct conflict-processing, which is a place I plan to work and learn, but when I am more or less guiding a group in a direction I think it needs to go, I have an openness to where that ends up, and it serves me to keep my goals to myself sometimes so other people can bring theirs. So I mostly focus on recording what happens (taking notes) and providing that written resource for the benefit of the progress we all make together.

When I take notes at a workshop like this, I keep a column on the left where I put my emotional observations and responses so they don't overwhelm me. I was only taking notes for my own benefit, but as the ways things were framed was going to be useful to me, I wrote everything down for later. The column on the left turned out to be a life-saver. My emotional responses surprised me and took a lot of my attention. I had trouble focusing on the content of the workshop. Because it was a gathering of leaders who have specific roles, and I don't have that role myself, I had to spend some time deciding which of my roles I would work within. It was interesting to sort through them and find a place for myself. There was some transformation going on for me that I had not expected and was not prepared for. I stumbled into it. I'm still not comfortable there.

I didn't want to make any of it about me, but my overwhelming feelings were that I did not belong there and was not welcome. That was so useful to feel...that is what marginalized people feel all the damn time. I am not marginalized, really...I'm an old white lady who sells a popular product and has a lot of skills for which I am rewarded in many ways. I've built myself what I would call a privileged life on the foundations of a privileged life as a member of a dominant culture. I've surrounded myself with people who are from that culture and we've banded together to carve ourselves out a physical space where we have a lot of freedom and latitude to be ourselves. It's not mainstream, but it looks a lot like it. I've been able to be lazy about most DEI goals. I care about them, but they're mostly not about me. But this was.

Of course in my case some large amount of it was projection. Nobody was glaring at me or dissing me in any way. One person was super friendly (so of course I felt manipulated...I'm not very trusting sometimes) but things settled out as we focused on the tasks and I did my running commentary about my feelings. I did turn off my camera after the first breakout session as I was shaking and triggered and needed to calm down. Zooms can be intimate as we look into each others' homes and are big heads on each other's screens. I was able to turn it back on by reminding myself that I was just one of a lot of little heads most of the time and I was distracting myself from the work I was there to do. The presenter wanted us to see each other.

So I stumbled along trying to refine my vision and answer the challenges from the presenter and set my feelings off to the left for later. I identified what I call some of my catholic things...will I be forgiven for my trespasses, am I guilty of all of the possible sins people might be assuming (or correct about) from the recent or deeper past, am I, myself, forgiving? One of the things listed as ways to reach the welcoming attitude we all aspire to was to turn judgement into curiosity. Another was to allow for non-closure, accept it. Not everything is going to be neatly wrapped up and pretty forevermore. Some of the damage we cause each other is lasting, and I cannot believe that I am immune from causing damage to others. A lot of things have happened while we have not been working together in person that are in between us when we first meet again. But there we were, working together, which I deeply believe is how we do our best, so at some point I realized that I was, by my presence there, re-committing to my work, to my complex relationships, and to my leadership such as it is. I was easing into a healing process. 

I'm still hesitant about it. My idealism hasn't recovered and divisive things, and bullying actions, are still happening and still possible. I do not have trust relationships with some people and might not regain them. Maybe I don't want to...maybe I'm safer if I don't trust everyone in the room. But maybe we can work together despite that...if we share a vision, and if it is a one we have for the common good.

And, at baseline, we do. We were being asked to identify that vision and then refine it into specific actions and strategies to work for it. We weren't expected to do it all at once...it is a long term project. What I finally did do was default to the vision that I have been working toward for decades...I call it ending the Us vs. Them. As soon as I mentioned it in a breakout group, we all agreed we had seen the gaps in reaching that. We had slightly different versions of it, but it is real, and it still persists despite the work I have done to diminish it, and really it is the core of DEI itself. Some people are perceived as others, either "below us" or "above us" and "we" see ourselves as a particular group that is either marginalized or burdened by the marginalized. We're not unified in working toward a common vision. We're not trusting that others share our vision that we are a bit afraid to believe in ourselves. 

Is it realistic? Is it improvable? Are we under the weight of a broken idealism that wasn't reality to begin with? Why haven't the things we've been doing worked better? My focus has been education...encouraging others to see the resources available and see others as available to help us access them, and not out to get in the way of our personal goals, which are often selfish ones.

It's certainly complicated by our roles but I return to the thing that spurred me to volunteer way back probably 15 years ago. I'd been volunteering in my other groups for my whole life here...fairly consistently. I'd been critical of lots of people for not being available as resources to me...but as I wrote the complaining letter that I didn't send, it boiled down to realizing that I didn't feel seen, and that was because I wasn't showing myself. I wasn't pitching in and bringing my skills. So I volunteered to take minutes and began a long and varied commitment to the pitching in of being a part of a flawed yet powerful group.

I'm still cynical and wary and hurt and loyal to others who are still hurt, but I can't sit forever in that place, and I can't just walk away. So I have opened the door. Probably only a person or two will even notice. I doubt my absence was noted, as I doubt my presence last night was noted. I'm glad I haven't burned too many bridges as I struggled through everything, and much of it is still in motion so this is a tenuous hold I have here. But it was a transformation. 

The work is transformational. It scares us because it is so essential and it can be a rollercoaster. All of the parts, ugly and lovely, have to happen because it starts with the individual, and that is me. 

Next is the interpersonal. I saw allies for me in that group, along with the people that I project hate me (that self-aggrandizing, because they probably don't care about me enough to hate me.) But I feel like I might be able to reach for that common vision when we do meet again and have our first interaction after shunning each other while we figured it all out. We don't have to all like each other. We just have to work together. We can learn to be more forgiving, more comfortable, more committed, and claw back a little of that unrealistic idealism that has fueled us to get this far. 

I feel like I can, and must, do this. I'm not afraid of ugliness, and I've gained a lot of strength in the last few years to call out things like bullying and all the many ways we oppress each other instead of supporting each other while we heal and walk forward. It's worth doing. I have missed my idealism. I long to buy back in, wary and with some limits, to a bigger vision for our community and our world. 

Just saying...I'm the one who asked for the logo with the Diversity Equity and Inclusion around the outside. The t-shirts I made said "Transforming the ****." I still want that. I want to move my dial from the cynical end to the idealistic end, just a notch or two at a time. I know it is a path fraught with pain and suffering but also that damn, elusive joy. I just have to choose that. I will carry a piece of it for you. Next time we see each other, let me slip it into your pocket. It can be a secret if you aren't ready.