Brave space.



Via https://unsplash.com/@exileartisan

I want to always be who I was on my bravest, loudest days.


The one who danced with Profa to "I Will Survive" the day after election day 2016, while tearful grief settled over the rest of the girls in class. We grinned and circled each other, singing along. "Did you think I'd crumble?? Did you think I'd lay down & die??!"


I want to be the girl so inspired by Emergent Strategy that I stood up in a room of 70+ people I didn't know well (a group of women and non-binary folks assembled to become a network for social change), people I wanted to make a good impression on, and suggested that we talk about the betrayals and hurts that had happened already in the program in order to work through them and give ourselves a real chance to connect.


I want to be that person 24/7, 365.


The thing is, I didn't plan any of those things. It's what I felt in the moment.


And, I wasn't the same person even in the moments immediately after.


In a pilates class a few hour later on the day after election day 2016, I laid on the floor and paused long enough for the panic and grief to catch up to me, and sobbed out loud, cradling myself in the silence of the room. Other people looked at the ceiling or straight ahead. The instructor came over to comfort me but also to whisper that I'd better gather myself, before I set off the rest of the class. For the rest of the class I looked at the ceiling or straight ahead.


For months after, I was put to bed by grief, energy sapped.




And at that gathering? Once I spoke, and was told it wasn't the time for that and I must be mistaken, and my bestfriend spoke to reiterate, and was told the same thing, the two of us left the room and found ourselves in the bathroom, feeling powerless and distraught over our predicament: we might be in the wrong organization. This thing might not be what we imagined, and we still had months and years of membership left, if we wanted to keep the scholarship and other benefits that came along with the program. I didn't leave, stayed a misfit in the program until almost the very end of it.




I want to say one or the other is true me - either the bold, outspoken one, or the one so pensive, weary and afraid - but in reality it's all me.
I can't really flip a switch, or pick my player like this is Street Fighter 2 or something.


These days, my goal is to let myself unfold and not be prideful or ashamed about what comes out. I want to take it all as information, like "Ok. That's where I am, in this moment." I want to get curious instead of being critical or arrogant/self-righteous. In both of those states, I'm missing some part of the truth.


Suspending judgment, or learning to reset after becoming judgmental, gives me more options, in how I think of myself and other people, which affects how I respond/react.


When I say I want to react from a brave space, I'm re-defining that to mean something different than I once did.