#JuWriSoMos Reflections, Week 5

My reflections this week are going to focus on something other than my writing…

This week, I reflect not only on my writing but also on the events of the last seven days…and I am reminded of the critical importance of disruption and raising up the next generation with new messages. Despite the pressures, we may feel to maintain or keep the proverbial boat from rocking.

Disrupting, healing, and raising up the next generation with new and equitable messages takes intention and reflection. It cannot stop with pondering and awareness though. Knowledge must meet willingness to recognize that the messages we received are corrupted and deadly. And an openness to see the part we play in perpetuating and protecting these messages by not challenging the systems that are built to make it so easy to fall back into the relative comfort of not being the primary target.  

Bringing up the next generation by modeling the stepping into the work of undoing, defying the existing state of affairs, acting and reacting in another way. Resolving to have brave and bold conversations, to hold boundaries differently, to step into the grief, heartache, and anger with compassion and love…without making it about us. Facing the dark and ugly things we have done and benefitted from, and witnessing joy and celebration and liberation without appropriating or interrupting.

To some, this will seem like madness. Outrageous, infuriating, terrifying, an assault.

And yet, it is what is necessary if we are ever going to find our way to a world that is just in any sense of the word.

This week my child had a birthday, a birthday he wouldn’t have had if it weren’t for my wife. A wife I wouldn’t have had if it weren’t for the community that worked so hard to change the laws so we could have the legal bonds of matrimony. The community that wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the audacious courage of Black trans women in the face of violent systems of whiteness that see them as threats…

I feel the weight of the responsibility of raising a child to challenge systems that would benefit him most, and only benefit him at the expense of so many who are deemed as “other.”

I am grateful to those who chose the difficult and dangerous path of doing exactly that. Grateful to those who chose the loudest love.

I know that I can do the hard things because of them.

I hope that is the spirit I am passing on…