Some of us are holders and keepers. We feel deeply with the entirety of our beings and take on heart work like it's an extreme sport.
Some of us are also particularly well suited for trauma because we have been trained by the unforgiving hands of socialization, marginalization and discrimination. We see it everywhere. Sometimes it feels that it is trauma that connects us. Everything in the world tells us that this... this... THIS is our storyline. Get used to it.
There's no space for anything but this.
Don't believe it.
Have gratitude today, dear friends, don't step away from compassion even
"if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other,
my god that's plenty
my god that's enough."
Don't stop talking, posting, giving hugs, sharing tears, listening with open hearts. Appease the lump in your throat, the tension at your neck and the grinding of your jaw. Speak forth through the heavy fog of silence and fear and ignorance but don't get lost in it.
Take time to breathe and nurture and have gratitude for the spark of awareness rising up around us. Know that "the wound is an echo." It is reverberating through our communities.
Lick your wounds. You can't make it better, tell someone it's better, or hope it better right this moment.
"Just say here we are together at the window aching for it to all get better but knowing as bad as it hurts our hearts may have only just skinned their knees knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be coming-
Let me say right now for the record, I'm still gonna be here asking this world to dance, even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet.
You- you stay here with me, okay?
You stay here with me.
Raising your bite against the bitter dark
Your bright longing
Your brilliant fists of loss
Friend."
Take heart. Make space. Have gratitude that these things that have made us particularly suited to be holders and keepers also forge our spirits in a way that make us particularly suited to wield compassion in the face of our oppressor. Use your strengths. Believe in your superpower. Take your cape. Hold tight to...
"The ripchord of believing.
A life can be rich like the soil.
Can make food of decay.
Can turn wound into highway."
In solidarity and offering,
COM|PASSionate REVOLT
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Compassion and healing can't be separated from the source of the wounds. You can read Autostraddle's list of articles and action tips on "How You Can Show Up for Ferguson" here. To read Andrea Gibson's poem "The Nutritionist" in it's entirety you can visit this dedicated blog space or learn more about Andrea Gibson on their official website here.