Righteous Anger
It is time for a revolution. I’ve been listening to Black women say for a while now we’re in the find-out stage. With the recent blatant racism at a national level, rights being stripped away from select humans, the oceans changing at an unprecedented pace, and public school failings in my community, our responsibility to use our voices to stand up for injustice is essential to our survival.
This means waking up. This means stopping the numbing that we find so much comfort in, our bubbles of life that keep us blind to the beauty and needs of others. This means to stop ignoring the fact that we’re responsible for the people and planet that support us every moment of every day.
Do we really think we’re out here doing this on our own? That we worked hard and have our lovely homes, and our kids aren’t affected because they’re in good schools? Did we get here without the privilege of generational weatlh, lower insurance rates because of our zip code, medical systems that support us because the research is done on our race, the gift of trees, and the convenience of recycling centers so we have somewhere to dispose of our Amazon shame? All of which is provided by the earth first.
It is a time for righteous anger. I’m sick and tired of the shell we crawl into in the face of adversity. We must feel this fire in order to have the energy to do anything about it. We must stop relying on the status quo as our indicator of well-being. We are sick of Spirit, and that is causing disease of the mind and body.
This is why I lead breathwork. Once you wake up, there’s no going back. You can’t unsee the responsibility you have for your own suffering. You can’t ignore the choices you’ve made that are not in alignment with your highest good anymore. You become aware. You get your power back.
This is about our oneness. This is where we’re the same. We all want the autonomy of self and the ability to lean on our community in times of need and growth. It’s how we evolve.
We’ve become a society of complacency. We’d rather hand over all of our power to our boss, doctor, spouse, or the bottle, so that we don’t have to take responsibility for our part. We numb out through binging tv, chemical substances, social media, and shopping, without any regard for what that means for the whole.
I’ve written about what it would be like not having garbage service, why breathwork is important in our overall awakening, and about addiction by distraction. Now I’m writing about the world burning.
Just last week, the Lahaina town of Maui burned. An insightful friend recognized the colonization that had infiltrated that space; that the grieving whales surrounded by tourists who came to see them may get a reprieve. While this horrific loss for so many is met with complete empathy, fire is a cleansing agent. It’s used in wildlife management regularly. It is alchemical in its ability to transform.
We have the ability and responsibility to change our behavior to at least include others where we currently don’t. To open our awareness to more than what we think we know. To have the resolve to stand in our wrongdoing and make it right.
Only when we look at our contribution to injustice will we be able to find peace.
“If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors’ prosperity and goodwill and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities — and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared.” — Wendell Berry
