Since 2011 I haven’t tasted the ocean, or sea water as we call it in Antigua. Yesterday, we finally did this thing that I’ve been wanting to do, and at the end of the night as I was making sure that everything was safe and solid before we left the beach, I drank of the ocean. I had no idea why it had taken me this long. And now I realize that I’ve been experiencing it as a lesser than body of water. My home ocean was formerly superior in my mind. And now that I have opened myself fully up to this Canadian water I saw that it tasted just the same.

It tasted just the same.

These two precious amazing young ladies have mamas who have individually personally invested in healing, growth, and in understanding friendship. Our children reap the benefit of our decision to feel and heal, and I could not be happier for them.

I love watching their friendship develop though I have personally taken a step back from friendship for a while.

I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to do research on friendship while investing my heart in it recently. It means that my kiddos had an example based on my life, which I didn’t even think of as being an example at the time.

And I love experiencing them both (though only one is pictured here) growing friendships intentionally.

Today, one of them said to me that their teacher was so excited to see the choices in connection that she and her new friend had made.

I am a super satisfied mother. There will absolutely be ups and downs, and when I see the fruit of the thing for which I and my children’s friends’ parents have laboured lovingly my heart is 100% full of hope, and I am 1000% proud of myself and very grateful for the neighbours who have stepped into our lives along this journey.

Good neighbours come and go, and need not necessarily be good friends. Coming to see and embrace the difference in that is life-enhancing. Good neighbours are a balm to the soul.

So it is with renewed gratitude for a world full of neighbours that I am resting and recovering for a while before I continue on my quest to be a part of building friendships which will be mutually treasured like that pearl of great price.

BeautifulBuddingFriendships #HeartFull

Dear racialized people, as we go through the process of healing, I want to share that we will encounter the energy of White Supremacy with which we have had a contemptuous relationship for all of our lives.

In order to heal and fully experience the love in our world, we will have to confront and purge ourselves of this contempt.

Healing in spaces with Euro-descended people will provide the opportunity to deal with the unconscious presence of this energy. It’s exposure therapy. Lean in to it. It’s worth it.

I continue to be sorely grieved that we need to see some grisly evidence of racism instead of believing the plainly obvious truths shared by those of us who are most grievously affected by it. The every day abuses of racism are perpetuated because we are blinded by shame and shame’s shroud blame, which makes it deeply painful for us to look up. If we looked up, we would see the love, compassion, and significance that we seek standing right there in front of us. We would recognize that we just need to stand up and throw off the weight of shame and blame and work through the grief of all that we have lost while buried and blinded by the system of White Supremacy.

As a person raised in Christianity, I can only speak about the disinformation attached to Christianity which has hidden the true freedom of God and Jesus from us. I can’t speak to this from any other religious perspective. This disinformation has caused real trauma to us as it is intentionally mingled with the pillars of White Supremacy.

Hopefully we can allow ourselves to be distentangled and healed in real relationship with God instead of relationship with religion.

Dear You,

I see You with your hopes and dreams and longing for change. And I see you in this “Not Yet” space with the world banging on your back and throwing shame at what they think is a delay. We hold such toxic stressful ideas of time that did not start with us. That is why there is such anxiety around the timing of your growth and development. It didn’t start with us, and it can begin to change with us.

And so Dear You, I send you the gift of peace from God’s heart to my heart to yours. Rest. And in perfect time all of the moments will lead to THE moment where you rise and with power declare, It IS finished; peace; be still.

And in the meantime I wish for you hope, as you wait for the coming of beautiful neighbours who will be for you with acceptance, and not against with supremacy, superiority, fear, and anxiety.

Make no mistake that many racialized people who are sensitive to the reality of White Supremacy are in deep pain today, consciously or unconsciously.

For those of us who are unconsciously in pain, I pray for an awakening to the pain, so that the necessary treatment can begin.

For those of us who are consciously in pain I pray for support through the pain and sadness, and hope that treatment is close at hand.

Today, some people will be celebrating and others will be sitting in disappointed disbelief.

And I guarantee that we think that here in Canada, and wherever you read from in this world today we are better, or you may think that we are doing just fine.

And in the midst of all of that I just want to say that I can so clearly see that we are not okay.

We are not okay.

White supremacy and its pillars patriarchy, racism, and xenophobia are being given new life because we are choosing to pretend that it is not a virus which is deeply embedded in us. We keep blaming “those people” without stopping to look at ourselves. If we could see the disease in ourselves, we would work towards healing, and then we would be more compassionate and less contemptuous, and there would be change as we worked together to build a better world NOW on Earth as it is in heaven.

In 2020, we watched the horrific personification of White Supremacy as Derek Chauvin kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck refusing to believe that he was robbing a human being of life.

We blamed the police as if the police were not living by the same policies which run the whole world. I did too. Until I recognized that I was blaming and scapegoating which meant that I was not really looking at the truth.

We flocked together to create scapegoats of police, and Derek Chauvin. We othered and othered instead of looking at ourselves to try to understand how this injustice could continue to be perpetuated.

We continue to turn our faces away in shame from the traumatic core injuries that allow the every day racist abuses that deplete our mental and emotional health and rob us all of healthy neighbourly connection.

I know that what we really want is to be in kind loving neighbourly connection with each other.

I wish that when we saw an ill in others we would pause to check in to see if that ill is also present in us. I wish that we would get curious about why.

I am still hopeful as I observe exactly what I expected to be. I am also sad that what I expected to happen has happened.

Contempt has never elevated our world.

I hope that this time around we will humanize and analyze, instead of demonize so that we can get to the path of healing which we so deeply need, so that we can have the energy and focus to be a part of the power that smashes the poisonous thrones of supremacy to bits, to create a new and loving world together.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1HEZpbWtCX/?mibextid=UalRPS

The creator of the content in the link above did a great job of showcasing the absurdity of forceful guidance. And this is what many think great leadership looks like.

Our world is in trauma expecting freedom to come through violence.

This shows why we think that name-calling is effective therapy.

This shows why we lean towards harsh coaching and think that it is effective.

This is how we think God is.

This is sad.

We deeply underestimate how much power God has packed into the rare moments of connection to counteract our deeply flawed harsh ways.

Can we even fathom how much more effective healing spaces would be if we intentionally incorporated gentleness?

I’m so grateful that God sees our hearts and compassionately brings Their glory to the room even when we think that barbarous rivers of blood literally or figuratively are what we need to be successful.

From Solomon’s forced labour and barbarous sacrifice, to parents fear tactics to force good behaviour, to hell-fire threatening religious beliefs, to neutral disconnecting aloofness, we are deeply misinformed about how to work together to mine for the gold of love.

But God shows up anyway and magnifies our 30% best.

What if we consciously moved through the struggle to get to gentleness the other 70% of the time?

Black lives cannot matter as long as the lives are Black.

Whiteness will always wield a colonizer’s whip and carry the harshness of supremacy.

BIPOC will be inferior as long as they are BIPOC.

Because there is great power in names.

When we become people again we will rise.

When we grow into being our real selves, just beautiful people, we will collectively finally be free.

This might seem like an obvious or a foolish statement depending on who reads and their perspective or experience.

Nevertheless let me also state that in order for us to become simply people again we will individually and collectively have to face and weed out the racist supremacist ideas that have been planted in us which have made us take on the functional identity of White and then other – BIPOC.

Good day, family. May peace, health, and every branch of lovingkindness be known to be ours.

Let me clearly state that in order for us to become simply people again we will individually and collectively have to face and weed out the racist supremacist ideas that have been planted in us which have made us ALL take on the unconsciously functional identity of White and then other – BIPOC.

When we begin to see each other as PEOPLE there will be zero concern about being minority or majority. We will finally be able to work together without anxiety.

I will continue to speak and work FOR this to become reality.

A public speaker once invited anyone who wanted to engage in conversation about racism in North America to converse with them. They were focused on sharing the idea that Euro-descended people were in danger of being marginalized because of Affirmative Action, and social justice movements for equity.

They became very angry when I insisted that Western wealth was built on the backs of Afro-descended people. They were happy to hear that I did not support Affirmative Action although we had different reasons for not supporting Affirmative Action. I believe that it is a policy which whitewashes the reality of ongoing inequity. He believed that it was putting Euro-descended people at a disadvantage which was jeopardizing his children’s future.

Another person associated with them suggested that it was their experience that Afro-descended people could not be trusted to manage funding in their communities because they misused and misappropriated funds.

When I was operating a nonprofit organization on my own and seeking funding they continued to suggest that I was failing to live within my means because I was looking for funding to operate.

They remain staunch in these beliefs even though the nonprofit work to which they are connected operated by seeking funding through donations to function while I was raising all my funding by working WHILE operating.

Although in many ways they were kind and neighbourly and once considered friends they fail to see how their various beliefs informed our interactions, their idea of whom I SHOULD be, and how they could save me.

We need to understand that the sick system of White Supremacy feeds this fear and hero mentality because they do not see us all as equals who are equally capable of living well when investments are made in us all.

The paternalism of White Supremacy sees Whites as providers and managers and stewards while the rest of us are labourers to support the system.

Therefore in relationships with non-Whites there is huge fear of being unable to provide which creates perpetual anxiety, fear, and a deeply held unconscious scarcity mindset.

This all creates significant barriers to being consistently good neighbours and friends with the ability to see each other as just people working together to build and maintain a thriving ecosystem.

It is even worse when immersed in Christianity in the Western World which is also deeply rooted in paternalism and supremacy.

In addition to clearly naming intimate partner violence we need to be clear that this is FEMICIDE.

Femicide has increased in Canada since 2020. We know this because a group of women became curious as they observed the happenings in the world and began to track and do research to find out if their observations had value. What they discovered is disturbing and is the reason that feminism is important and essential work. It frees women from the harmful ideas attached to womanhood that rob women of the right to exist and to LIVE as autonomous free beings who bring equitable value to the world as WOMEN.

The femicide watch does not include the data for women who continue to live with intimate partner violence. Each victim named is a woman who was murdered by their partner or another male because of our systemic unhealthy ideas of women’s obligation to submit to male rulership which is subliminally translated as ownership.