I’m struggling to work today. My head is full of thoughts that keep taking me off in different directions, so I apologise in advance for this blog being messy, unpolished and nothing more than a cowpat of everything that is in my head, that I want to communicate but have been struggling to put together in any kind of logical order.
Since lockdown started I’ve been the one reminding my clients and community, it’s ok to feel vulnerable, it’s ok to struggle, the entire world has changed, everything is on it’s head. I’ve been helping the people around me to focus on creating safety and asking for what we need.
The past week, that conversation has changed, and certainly anyone following my stories on instagram has seen the posts I’ve been sharing about Black Lives Matter and the discussion that reached a crescendo with protests this weekend.
This weekend I’ve had access the other viewpoints and seeing how some of the big names, whose books might even be on your shelf, have gotten it wrong, and badly so. Shutting down conversations, tone policing how, where and when people can express themselves. Using it as a business opportunity, to market to more people.
I’ve also seen the same memes shared over and over, with the same people sharing the same sentiments, but many of them failing to take any action on it. Words have meaning and words have power, but they absolutely must be matched with action, otherwise it’s nothing more than virtue signalling and ticking a box.
I wonder how many people that I see, sharing so many of the same sentiments, will still be talking about this a week, a month, a year from now.
I can’t pretend to be an expert in race matters.
I am learning, and have been for a number of years now.
For me, it kickstarted a deeper search for understanding more than two years ago when someone I knew in the online space announced some pretty messed up viewpoints around prejudice and oppression, particularly denying white privilege and suggesting that oppressed people could rise if only they believed in themselves more. It was some absolute horseshit.
(Obviously I didn’t get to 35 without some understanding of institutional racism, I used to work in the courts for god’s sake. However, those stories are not mine to tell, nor are the stories of friends. It’s too close to pulling the ‘but I have a friend who’s black’ card)
This is not an arena in which I am comfortable speaking but it is one which I support and will continue to support beyond a flashpoint. By learning, by communicating but also by doing what I do.
A key part of what I do here is speaking truth to power.
It’s something I hold back on vocalising too loudly but I have an underlying agenda; to help more people to create sustainable careers and lives that they love, absolutely, but so more of those people can reach a place where they can speak up and speak out and advocate for themselves and others.
My big lens is absolutely focused around work but from there the outcomes become disparate and shifting. Some of my clients will climb the ladder, effect change from the top. Some will jump to a different ladder. For some it was never about the ladder at all. The outcomes are none of my concern, except that I help people to get there. To be able to act with integrity and be able to effect change on whatever level that might be, to be able to do their best work and live their best lives, so that change ripples out from them like a pebble in a pond.
In order for any of us to be better, we have to be able to have the difficult, uncomfortable conversations that we all inevitably learn and grow from.
We need to have the resilience and tenacity to keep going, because nothing important is ever straightforward and simple enough that we can change it overnight.
There are too many fights on too many fronts for it to be simple enough to sum up in a single instagram story post, and I’ve been around for long enough to see too many people share in the moment and then let it drift away, because it got hard or because they felt lost or because it was never something that they were really committed to in the first place.
I don’t have all the answers, but here’s my part of it.
I am committed to learning.
I am committed to growing.
I will share what I know with you, as well as what I don’t know.
We are all going to mess up, publicly, along the way.
I don’t have all the answers, nor will I ever. I commit to playing my part, regardless.
I am acutely aware of my white privilege (among others) and the duty that that places upon me to use my place to help amplify others who may struggle to be heard.
I would love to end this with some smooth, polished rhetoric or some deep and meaningful quote, but we both know it’s trite.
This is difficult.
It fucking well should be.
