“Idk How You Do This Work!”
A note: this was written 5/27/2020 and my diagnosis have since been updated to include CPTSD and ADHD. A lot has changed in the nearly 4 years as my diagnosis are now more accurate but the spirit of this post remains. I’ll be back with updates via substack soon!
It’s the single most used phrase when people talk to me about the role I play in the movement. Honestly, some days I ask myself why and how as well. Not because I don’t see the impact or how we are moving the baton forward but because some days, more days than I let on, I’m not sure I have the capacity to continue doing this work. I question myself, my tools, my resources, hell….even the cycle of sustainable revolution so many of you all have learned from me. I told y’all whyteness is a narcissist...it will gaslight you all up and down, yes, all of us, yes even me! No one is exempt
For full transparency, this is bigger than just the fact that all systems of domination seek to exhaust us. This is bigger than the internet trolls. This is bigger than hateful messages, or weathering or any of the other socio-cultural phenomena that you hear me talking about. This is just me, Weeze, on a human level. I have said this a few times, in a few different spaces but haven’t been as open in a very public way: I have anxiety & panic disorder as well as PTSD. Now I don’t tell you all this to pull on anyone’s heart strings. Quite the opposite actually, I want to normalize this. There are so many of us that have varying degrees of varying diagnoses. Mental health issues are all too real, all too hidden, all too shamed, all too under wraps!!
It took me years before I was diagnosed. I was already well into my 20’s before anyone listened to me…..as I continued to repeat myself through my adolescence and early adulthood that “something was wrong”. I knew it. I knew it in my body (cuz our body always knows), in my spirit, in my whole spirit. But no one listened. Why? Because diagnostic guidelines are far and wide based on whyte male patients AND worst of all, I was “high functioning, high performing, and accelerated at life”.
The problem with being high functioning, high performing and accelerating at life (or any other form of cis-het-whyte-dude “normal”) is that we overlook how these are often times coping and survival mechanisms for folks with mental health issues, neurodivergent folks and the deeply systemically traumatized. As Myisha broke down for us in the video in the previous newsletter, we do not have a culturally competent health care or mental health care system. So many of us get left out of the conversation - meaning that so many of us never find the tools and resourcing to be able to navigate the world at the intersection of our mental health diagnoses and social identities….because those tools & resources don’t exist for US.
Alas, I digress. So, back to the point of this work and the intersection of my own mental health and social identities. I wanted to spend time on this particular post just sharing and speaking honestly to you all because I think it is so important for us to peek behind the curtain. We need to start having real conversations about what it looks like to have to build a lifestyle and schedule that allows for rest, resources, reconnecting, rejoicing, resetting, resisting and ultimately returning home to yourself.
We need to start having conversations about what it means to have to show up and show out for social media, or clients, or the movement when you have nothing left in the tank or your anxiety is skyrocketing in the midst of a conflict while you are trying to hold space for others or maintain your and others safety.
We need to start pushing back on narratives of strength, resilience, fortitude etc, narratives that strip us of our humanity. Narratives that require us to continue to hide behind the mask that society requires us to create in the name of being “okay”. We need to let marginalized people, specifically melanated people, most specifically Black folks fall apart, not be okay, express a FULL array of emotions, react to the things that are happening to them, to cry, to be angry, to be joyous, to be disruptive in own laughter or be still and silent.
We need to normalize having days where you might want to change careers entirely. Where no matter how much hope you have, you just want to walk away and be at peace, where you prioritize your mental health. Days where we can say “I know I have commitments today but my the way my mental health is set up, I need to go unplug, sit outside, be in nature and stillness” and not have anyone weaponize any parts of their own expectations or belief systems against you!
We need to normalize spaces that are fully safe and fully protected. We need to normalize melanted only spaces where culturally competent resourcing and support is available.
We need to normalize full humans being fully human. Period!
And when I remember that, I remember that this is my purpose, and I have the tools, resources, skills and self awareness to come home to myself, to protect my peace, to ground back into myself so that I can get back into the work and lean into my cycle of sustainable revolution so I can get up tomorrow and fight another day as a fully whole human version of myself!!!