Elephant Parts

This is my journey, what I have learned holistically, through therapy, C4R committee, and my work with SeekHealing. This is my part of the elephant, an elephant part which is as much a part of me as it is the outer world… 

Our crisis has touched me on many levels, even though I myself was not present for the “events”. 

Conflict is a bellwether for my personal and spiritual growth. Way opens through ease, but wisdom is only found through the difficult. 

Two feelings have been my gurus in this process. Fear and sadness. 

I have heard several people call our meeting their spiritual family. 

I know how difficult and unsustainable family of origin relationships are for many people. I know that families aren’t always the safest place to learn, grow, fail, be different and belong. To be our full selves. In many ways our meeting was more of a family than our families of origin. 

I am a frail fallible, wounded human. And those qualities are not welcome in most of my life. I long for places where I can remove my social masks and be safe. (Things I’ve worn so long they are indistinguishable from me. Feel like part of me. Aspects I actually value about myself) I long for places where my messiness is ok, even valued. 

I rarely get angry. And that’s not OK. It’s my strength of patients, but also a numbness. It’s a mask I wear with joy and yet I now know it also hides something. 

I am afraid. I am afraid of not mattering, of being tossed aside, ignored. In my mind I see a small fragile pink creature, barreled under by an unseeing momentum, dark, unstoppable but most of all uncaring. It doesn’t matter to me if this state resulted from some abuse or neglect in my childhood, it’s part of my experience, it’s my responsibility. Both my burden and my path. I’m grateful that I can sense it now and have something to own in social dynamics that challenge me. 

This fear is so old, that I could only feel the numbness at first. It has taken two years of gentle inquiry to make some sense of it. Somewhen I learned to pull up a veil to divide my heart and mind. I would climb up into my mind to remain present. But its a floaty presence. A presence that observes, but only with my mind. All to protect me from experiencing fear. 

When I am faced with anger or judgment by another that’s where I go. 

So, there is a small part of me that I am only recently finding, that when I hear stories of what people experienced in meeting, its afraid. I am afraid. 

I am afraid of epistemological violence: when one person’s experience is forced upon another’s. That it must use force. When our truth becomes so desperate that it crushes all in its path. Must crush all other truths by any means. 

I’ve been studying DEI for about 15 years, pursued an expensive and exhausting Master’s degree to further my understanding, and yet I fear the activist arena. I have felt the vitriol of justice myself, and seen lifelong activists crushed and ousted by their own community. I have read too many instances of social justice organizations tearing themselves apart from within. Epistemological violence. An epistemological stance that cannot tolerate human messiness. 

This is where I come to my sadness. I am saddened that sometimes we aren’t able to address conflict through vulnerable, authentic processes. For me, it’s a veil that pops up and silences my heart faster that I am aware, which is great for keeping the piece but horrible for discovering my own needs.  

It breaks my heart, for intuitively, I know it’s possible for us… but unlikely given how un-therapeutic life can be. How mental health is not a priority as long as we can graduate, hold down a job and “raise” kids, our society as a whole really doesn’t seem to care.  

When one person “attacks” another in my community, I can now feel the terror, instead of the dulling veil which would put me in the “let’s see this from all sides mentality”.  

Part of me can now begin to empathizes with the “attacked.” I suspect I am not alone, although anger probably comes to the fore rather than fear.  

The sadness that this is the case is half of the sadness.  

The other half, is that I sense that a community that does not recognize this, that people are wounded and that epistemological violence is normal, and plans for it, is doomed to be torn apart sooner or later. That we as a community need to plan for how we want ruptures to be contained and cared for, and that members are specifically given the authority to do just that, step in, separate, care, and aid in healing or compassionate quarantine. Because a rupture uncontained terrorizes the entire community, destroys trust, and clouds spirit.  

I have experienced this kind of collective authority to care in several different formats. There are skills that need to be developed, but it can be done. I’ve seen it work, it’s truly a paradigm shift. Witnessing it, participating with it have been the most consistently spiritual experience of my life. Even as an atheist, if you were to ask me what is god, I would simply point to it.