Let’s participate and support all of this! Let’s lend our voices to the opportunity for everyone getting an equal shot to rise strong. It is brave work to point out each and every inequity you witness. It is also brave work to look inside yourself and see old, racism bullshit living inside you. I ache all over thinking about what it must feel like to walk through this country as a Black person, the dignity and restraint that is shown as we struggle to catch up. It is brave work to rise strong over and over and over again. What I now think (please correct me in the comments if I am way off base here) is that we have to put out our hands, open our ears and eyes, clear a path, amplify the voices of Black women and men so they can have an easier time of rising. I hadn’t taken the time to stop and look and listen, and for that I am so sorry. I admit that I just didn’t know how bad it still was. It shamefully took the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery in early 2020 to wake us up to how extremely broken our systems are and how dangerous it is for Black Americans to simply exist. It took a global pandemic for us, again, white people, to sit still long enough to look beneath our denial, our comfort, and our privilege, to see what is still a reality for our black neighbors and friends. I have been habitually reading that line again this past year, as we, meaning white people, finally took the time to truly understand the systemic racism that still exists in our country. I will never understand what it is to be a Black American, but I can sit in my very best empathy and compassion place and try. That last verse is heartbreaking and so very triumphant. I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I have so much gratitude for this woman’s voice.īringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, Each time it helped me center back to my own knowing of who I am and stand up and get back to the living of my life on my terms. Going through my divorce, I must have read the poem, Still I Rise, 87 times. You belong to you, the vast curiosity within you, the longing to be seen, the right to be exactly who you are, in any moment, she teaches us is the ultimate self love and self-actualization. Self-love is just talk and bubble baths until you stop looking outside yourself for completion. I have learned by her example that the truest sense of belonging comes when we finally belong to ourselves. Maya Angelou simply told her truth, not to belittle others, not to cite victimhood, just told her truth for the telling, because it needed to live outside her mind and heart. My goodness gracious… what power she speaks with, what grace! It was one of the first times that I was conscious of reading power without “power over.” This kind of strength and ownership of one’s voice was new and beautiful to me. When I first learned this, I googled ‘ Maya Angelou poems’ and began reading. But moving to Winston Salem there is only one spirited celebrity that defines our city, Dr. You can go out seeking Johnny Cash’s Nashville or Patsy Cline’s Nashville. There are all sorts of spirited celebrities that make up the fabric of Nashville. I moved to Winston-Salem in 2008 from Nashville.
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