Countering Resistance Fatigue with a Both/And Approach

In the past few days, I’ve seen countless posts detailing “the horrors of this administration,” the latest of which include separating families and imprisoning immigrants. I’ve seen friends describing their embodied physical and emotional pain, including pain from complicity and always too-small actions. I’ve seen friends accounting their own family stories of separation, as the history of state-sponsored violence against Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) is long and unrelenting. I’ve seen trauma and responses via trauma-informed care. I’ve also seen requests for folks to share how they’re showing up, standing TALL, and caring for themselves and their communities at this time.

As I engage in interactions around these posts and similarly experience rage and heartache, I find grounding, inspiration, and re-orientation in what I’ve learned from feminists and womanists of color: that we need not only active resistance but also sustained investment in envisioning and building more just communities. We need both critique against injustice and critique for justice. We need a both/and approach to thinking, organizing, and relating with each other.

At this time, I feel it’s important to emphasize that both/and matters because it’s too easy to fall into the trap of either/or. It’s too easy to focus on a single action or single problem and let it consume all of our energy. It’s too easy to prioritize self-care over other responsibilities or, alternatively, to prioritize others at one’s own expense.

Photo from a crowded protest with a poster in the center reading: "Human Rights are Women's Rights are LGBTQ+ Rights are Native Rights are Black Rights are Latinx Rights are Immigrant Rights are Refugee Rights are Muslim Rights are All Religion Rights are Homeless Rights are Disability Rights are Survivor Rights are Veteran Rights are Elder Rights are Child Rights are Student Rights are American Rights." The poster includes blue and red letters against a white background. Photo credit to Lauren Fitzgerald.
Photo credit and thanks to Lauren Fitzgerald.

Let me explain further through two examples.

Example #1: Toward Dismantling Dehumanizing Systems

Yes, it’s important to make donations and call representatives and learn more and post/tweet/share widely. And it’s not enough to stop there.

The problems are much, much bigger than this moment, than this instantiation of violence.

What more can each of us to do invest in emotional literacies, resilience, and long-term staying power? What more do we each need to learn about transformative justice and alternative ways of organizing ourselves as people? What visioning can get us out of the ongoing violence associated with the nation-state? How we can learn “to survive the apocalypse with grace, rigor, and curiosity” (in the words of Autumn Brown and adrienne maree brown in their podcast How to Survive the End of the World)?

Questions such as these call our attention to the need for both small, immediate actions and large-scale, long-term change. We need both direct, imperfect response and expansive, imaginative visioning. Let us not settle for the first without commitment to the second. We must not ignore the immediate nor the long-term.

Example #2: Toward Recognizing Relational Responsibilities

Yes, it’s important to empathize with families torn apart by naming this wrong as wrong. And it’s not enough to see only the most explicit manifestations of violence. 

One of the many lies of living in oppression (white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism) is that our imagined families include only those who share blood or those within close physical proximity. This lie allows for separation and division of people. It plays into scarcity logic, which goes like this: there are a limited number of resources, so I better get mine and make sure my people have all they need. So long as my people are protected and provided for, I am safe and good.

This lie undercuts our humanity, and it also mobilizes the conditions that allow for people to be separated and imprisoned.

To repair the larger damage of separation (related to individualism and social stratification), we need to learn again from feminists and womanists of color who study, name, and teach relational literacies. To see ourselves as truly in relation with—as family to all humans—we need to expand our circle of relations. Such work can begin by studying “abuelit@ wisdoms” (Licona and Chávez), “kinship” (e.g., Collins; Richardson), and the Indigenous values of relationality and “all my relations” (e.g., Powell; Riley-Mukavetz). Such work involves seeing one’s “family” (or familial circles) as expanding outward to include more and more relatives.

What work is needed to shift worldviews toward communal kinship and relational responsibilities? What needs to change in order to see ourselves as responsible not just to immediate family groups but to all humans and beings? Are we ready to let go of national and other dividing lines?

Again, these questions call our attention to the both/and. We need both inward-oriented healing and outward-oriented building. We need both self-care and community care. We need to engage in the work of looking both backward (reckoning with the colonial past and present) and forward (imaginatively creating a relational future).

My hope in sharing these examples is that we might use this moment of mobilized political engagement to engage in bigger dreaming and scheming. To move beyond resistance fatigue, we’ll need to leverage both this moment and all the moments to come.

Recently, I shared with my Reiki teacher that I’ve been “burning up” with anger, and we reflected on the contrast of fire as warming versus fire as all-consuming. Instead of allowing the fire to rage out of control (and to burn down the house), how could I tend to my anger (my fire) as I would tend to a fireplace that provides light and warmth?

At least in part, the answer involves ongoing attention. Whereas an either/or approach alternates between a raging fire and burned-out embers, a both/and approach invites continued maintenance and planning: from preparing materials and adding wood to fanning the flame and keeping it alight. May we embrace the both/and approach and keep the fire burning—to brighten our path into the darkness that surrounds us and is still to come.

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This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “What I’ve Learned in the Week Since Charlottesville: Five Lessons for White Folks Who Care about Racism and Racial Justice,” “Triangulating the Heart, Head, and Hands for Justice,” and “What Is Justice?” Please also consider liking this blog on FB and following the blog via email. Thanks!

Turning 39 and Thinking about Age(ism)

A few weeks ago, I turned 39.

The number 39 printed in blue within an orange circle against a gray background.

I get excited about birthdays, believing that age is cumulative, as “we’re all the ages we’ve ever been.” I think of new ages as adding experiences and insights while keeping all the previous ones: I’m still my toddler and teenage selves, and now I’m adding multiple adult selves into the mix. I joke that “I’m greedy and want all the ages” as a way to affirm and reclaim the joy of aging.

And I do see joy in aging—in experiencing more of life, in growing into different embodied identities—despite the prevailing cultural messages that denigrate the very young and old alike. With awareness of how ageism constructs and constrains ideas about aging, this year’s birthday felt significant for at least three reasons:

First, I’m not freezing myself at 39.

I remember being conditioned in childhood to see 39 as a benchmark, as the age when adult women “freeze” themselves in place. When asked their age, older women would respond, “39, of course!” Laughter and cautious reminders would ensue: “You know better than to ask a lady her age.”

Witnessing these interactions taught me a lot about the intersection of ageism and other -isms: women, particularly able-bodied, cisgender white women seeking class standing in the United States, didn’t want to be associated with older age. Thirty-nine (and later I’d hear 29) was the last desirable age.

As a young girl who already understood how adultism made me seen as less-than, I took note of this form of gendered ageism. Before I had the language to describe myself as a feminist or to play the rebel, I’d made a promise not to freeze myself at any age. I looked forward to reaching 39 and all the ages to come.

Second, I’m reclaiming feminine strength expressed in 39 (a multiple of 13).

I grew up seeing the number 13 as unlucky until learning a few years ago that 13 has a long history of being associated with goddesses and the divine feminine. It’s not just that aging (moving through cyclical stages of maiden, mother, mage, and crone) has been interrupted and interpreted negatively (hence, women being frozen at 39). It’s also that whatever is considered “feminine” (from intuition to caretaking) takes on negative associations: in this case, 13 has literally become the basis of many superstitions and prophesies of bad luck.

What if 13 conveys good luck instead?

Luckily, 39 is a multiple of the number 13. As I count up by 13s (13, 26, 39), I recognize ages that have signaled important turning points for me and ages that feel powerful for reclaiming and integrating characteristics considered “feminine.” I’m particularly excited about 39 being a time to become more fully human—not limited by gendered expressions but able to reclaim what’s been cast off and to heal what’s been broken.

Third, I’m making choices that break from what’s “age appropriate.”

Throughout childhood, I also learned cultural scripts about what’s expected at what age. I questioned these scripts, especially when I realized as a pre-teen (around ages 11-12) that I didn’t want to have children. I had so few models for women pursuing lives of learning and activism that I looked to the few I saw on TV and thought briefly about becoming a nun.

Despite my recognition that normative age expectations do harm by reinforcing whiteness, heteronormativity, and other parts of “the mythical norm” (and thanks again to Audre Lorde for this language), I’ve still found myself internalizing scripts about what’s possible at particular ages. Like internalized sexism and white superiority, these scripts involve internalizing class superiority and then denying the privilege and power it carries. What if instead of denying my class privilege and the choices it allows (choices to follow or to break from what’s considered “age appropriate”), I locate my choices within the finding that “white families have nearly 10 times the net worth of black families”? What if I recognize privilege as possibility and, moreover, responsibility? What is I see power as not to be hoarded but to be yielded, wielded, spent, and transformed?

The more I work on releasing myself from age expectations (and expected timelines), the more I am called into action. Currently, as I enter 39, I’m making major career changes and a cross-country move, which involves downsizing to roughly the amount of “stuff” I had when entering college at age 18. It’s seemingly a move backward to move forward. A move that involves giving myself permission to “retire” from a career in academia. A move to pursue commitment-driven “passion projects” that I’ve been allowing to backslide for too long.

Realizing that I’ve been holding off on passion, I’m hoping to course correct mid-stream. I’m hoping that “retirement” at age 39 allows me to act on the enormous privilege to pursue my heart’s desires. It might not be age appropriate, but it sure feels age-igniting, inviting, and inspiring …

This year’s birthday (my 39th) has me asking a range of questions, which I hope might to speak to others whenever you’re experiencing age:

  • What if we think differently about age and aging?
  • How might we interrupt aging timelines and other age expectations?
  • How might better understandings of ageism mobilize understandings of other -isms (racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism, sizeism, nationalism, +++)?
  • What possibilities come with redefining ages and our associations with them?
  • How can we do more to interrupt ageism and its limitations on who we are allowed to be, what we are allowed to do, and how we are allowed to play?

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This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Reclaiming Childhood Power with Coloring Books,” “Wrestling with Whether to Wear Pantyhose,” “‘We’re All the Ages We’ve Ever Been.’” Please also consider following the blog via email. Thanks!

Wellness Tonic

Recently, I’ve been sick in a sort of “full system reboot”: weeks of allergies turned into a sinus infection, grounding me with multiple days of self-care through sleep and solitude. I’m still healing through Reiki, acupuncture, a simple diet focused on rice and veggies, and this wellness tonic.

I make this warm drink throughout the year—both for everyday wellness and whenever my body needs a little extra support. It’s vegan + gluten-free, and it’s sweet without sugar.

Simply combine the following ingredients:

Image of these ingredients sitting side-by-side on a wooden table.
View into blue and white patterned mug with wellness tonic on the inside and tea label “Traditional Medicinals” on the outside.

Certainly, this tonic can be simplified or modified: I sometimes leave out the turmeric, use fresh ginger, or add more lemon. Other herbals teas like chamomile or licorice can also be made into tonics by adding vinegar, lemon, and ginger. The idea is to create a warming, comforting, and soothing beverage with a lot of taste and wellness reinforcement.

Throughout my journey with back pain, I’ve learned to see food for its incredible healing potential. Now I think about the heating and cooling, anti-inflammatory and GI-strengthening properties of food. To help with my full-system reboot, this tonic gives a full-system boost.

My wish is that this tonic may come in handy at the time you need it, as I need it now.

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With gratitude, this post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Roasted Veggies with Tahini Sauce: Linking Creativity and Self-Care,” “Three Chocolate Smoothies for Fueling the Road Ahead,” and other vegan + gluten-free recipes. Please also consider following the blog via email. Thanks!

On Choosing a Writer’s Life

I’m writing.
Daily.

On scraps of paper and printed pages.
In email boxes and google docs.
On business cards and birthday notes.
In calendar entries and comments, too.

I’m writing.
Daily.

For a co-authored article.
For a friend’s affirmation.
For a series of pieces.
For an apartment to be.

I’m writing.
Daily.

In a bustling café.
On a park bench.
In a quiet room.
On a hotel floor.

I’m writing.
Daily.

Some is due now.
Some is due later.
Some is not due.
Some is long overdue.

I’m writing.
Daily.

And longing to write more.
Regretting when not writing much.
Pondering writing while watching TV and waking at night.
Wondering what it means to choose a writer’s life.

I wake and choose again, because …

I’m writing.
Daily.

Image from an outdoor café. In the foreground are a vegan tea latte and laptop open to the writing website 750words.com. In the background appear metal chairs and tables inside a metal fence. Beyond the café are cars, trees, and row houses.

I share these reflections with gratitude that I’m choosing again and again to see myself as a writer and to invest in writing as everyday activity (even when I’m hard on myself for not writing more). Truly, writing lifts my spirits, calms me down, and bolsters me through the toughest days. May I remember to write when I need grounding and when I need the courage to stand TALL for justice.

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This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. To more posts like this one, you might try  “7 Lessons from My First Year Blogging” or “Practicing Yoga Through Writing.” Please also consider following the blog via email. Thanks!

In the Midst of Big Changes

Big changes have been rumbling through my life, and I’m finally ready to announce them.

After seven years at Marquette University (in Milwaukee, Wisconsin), I’ve been promoted with tenure, and I’ve also made the big decision to leave academia to pursue public writing and community education. I’m hoping to combine writing, teaching, and even Reiki and hiking. I’m now in the midst of planning a move back to Washington, D.C.—moving closer to family and to the Appalachian Mountains, which feels like coming home.

I’ve recently written about these changes in the article “Making Career Moves by Saying No.”

Screenshot of the opening to “Making Career Moves by Saying No” published in Inside Higher Ed’s Carpe Careers advice column.

Appearing in this week’s Inside Higher Ed, this article considers how saying no has the potential to open new opportunities, creating yeses not even articulated:

“At its core, saying no is actually saying yes to something else. Sometimes it’s saying no to let what needs to fall away, fall away. Sometimes it’s saying no to imagine something different or to build toward something new. Sometimes it’s saying not yet or not in this way. Simply put: yes and no are related. Both can block, and both can build. Both are powerful for making career moves.” Click to read more.

In addition to this article, I gave an interview for my department’s newsletter, sharing some of what I’ll be working on as I venture into public writing and community education.

Screenshot of the Marquette English Department Newsletter showing the first few paragraphs of the article titled “Dr. Beth Godbee’s New Venture.”

Here’s an excerpt from the interview, reflecting on my process of blogging, which has given me the courage to make these career moves:

Tell us about your blog. What made you start writing it?

I started the blog in fall 2016, though I’d been thinking about it for a couple of years before that. I kept noticing recurring patterns—the same sort of questions and conversations coming up again and again. I thought that rather than have these conversations only within tight-knit groups, I’d like to make them public—to share beyond what friends in my social network might see in a Facebook post, for instance.

What do you hope people take away from it?

A lot of blogging advice encourages writers to speak to niche audiences, and I’m breaking that advice big-time by trying to speak widely to readers interested in social, racial, and environmental justice. I’m still learning about what works—and doesn’t—but I hope that readers take away a sense that everything in our lives from food to classroom conversation, from prayer practice to transportation is related to systems of (in)justice (and histories of colonization, exploitation, and dehumanization), which demand our attention. To strive toward justice, we need to be more in touch with our full selves: embodied, emotional, messy, fully human selves.

Have you used your success with academic publishing to inform your writing process when you write for the public?

Academic publishing has taught me a lot about writing, storytelling, and translating research for different audiences. As a researcher, I’m especially grateful for my academic training in ethnography, conversation analysis, and other research methods, which allow me draw keen insights from everyday interactions and patterns of living. As a blogger, I share these insights, as I work against anti-intellectualism and instead bridge academic and public writing. Hopefully, I’ll continue to bridge in ways that not only build community action, but also feed back into higher education, which still feels like home.

*          *          *          *          *

Big changes come with a lot uncertainty and a lot of excitement. These changes feel like rumbling potential. May I stay grounded through the rumbles, and may I walk with purpose: learning to tread new paths and to listen to my “strong YES.”

In the coming months, look for expansions to this blog, Heart-Head-Hands.com, which focuses on feeling, thinking, and doing (everyday living) for justice. Let me know if you’re interested in workshops, e-courses, retreats, consulting, or coaching. And many thanks for support in the midst of big changes.

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This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. To learn more about these changes, check out “Going Public as an Educator,” “Listening for/to the ‘Strong YES,’” and “7 Lessons from My First Year Blogging.” Please also consider following the blog via email. Thanks!

Learning to Ask for What I Want

I’m learning to pay attention to small signs and recurring themes that show up in my life, and in the past week, I’ve seen time and again messages to ask for what I want. I’ve seen these messages through friends’ social media posts, through conversations with former students, and even through Chani Nicholas’s astrological reading:

Screenshot of Chani Nicholas’s Facebook post saying “Note to self: ask for what you want.”
With gratitude to Chani Nicholas for so often saying the thing I most need to hear: http://chaninicholas.com/ …

These messages are reminding me of how often I encourage other writers to do the big, bold move of submitting work before it feels ready. How often I encourage students to pursue their “strong yes,” even when it means taking risks and speaking, writing, or acting through fear. How often I repeat the line, “Go ahead and ask; let someone else tell you no”—believing that it’s important not to close the door before attempting to open it.

How well do I follow my own advice?

At times, fairly well. At other times, eugh … (I bury my head in my hands.)

I don’t doubt that I’m seeing these messages NOW because I need the reminders. I want to follow my own advice—readying myself for the possibility of rejection and asking for what I want anyway. I want to see the Universe as generous and to imagine the abundant possibilities that can come from asking. I also want to stitch myself into complexly woven relations in which I give and receive, ask and answer, share with others and value what others have to give.

To ask for what I want, I need to do some things that I’ve been shortchanging recently:

  1. Pay attention to my desires or what it is that I want.
  2. Counter internalized sexist dialogue that’s conditioned me as a white woman to see my wants as selfish (leading me to internalize judgment and resistance through over-indulgence in sugar and other forms of acting out, which can hurt others).
  3. See my wants as worthy—that is, value my dreams and desires and, therefore, myself—and not as more or less than anyone else but as fully human (neither dehumanized nor super-humanized).

Toward following this guidance, I’ll be practicing asking in the days, weeks, and months to come. I’m asking toward healing long-held messages that I should do everything on my own and suppress inner desires and prioritize work over play. I’m asking from a place of prioritizing right relations—understanding myself as a part of relational whole—with much to give, to receive, and to grow.

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This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Everyday Divination,” “Expect Miracles,” and “Caterpillars and the Butterfly Effect: Noticing Small Signs and Taking Small Actions.” Please also consider following the blog via email. Thanks!

A Barrage of Microaggressions

Some years ago I began recording everyday microaggressions toward learning to recognize racism, which is so often coded and which whiteness has taught me not to see. This recording project aimed at building a repository of common microaggressions to teach with and practice interventions using Augusto Boal’s theatre of the oppressed.

The project emerged from conversations with colleagues of color, who shared how often white colleagues failed to believe their experiences. Across a number of institutions, colleagues and I began writing what we observed—disguising the primary players, but keeping the details true to life. We hoped this project would help to counter epistemic injustice, or the problem of prejudice resulting in marginalized peoples not being believed about their own experiences.

Word Art

From my vantage point as a white woman, there’s been MUCH systemic racism I haven’t recognized in everyday life, but the more I actively choose to listen and learn, the more I witness. This process of witnessing means that some days are beyond tough. Recently, I had a day that felt like a constant barrage of microaggressions making themselves visible in individual and intimate ways.

To help me process my emotions, to sort through my response-abilities, and to figure out when/where to take action, I returned to the practice of documenting microaggressions—making a list of what I could recognize from the tough day. I’m sharing this list in the spirit of showing how microaggressions are anything but micro. They stack up, cumulate into vast inequities, and feel like a constant barrage or ongoing assault.

Though these scenes are tied to higher education, such scenes happen daily in and out of workplaces, family gatherings, church settings—throughout all of our everyday lives. May sharing them bring attention to the work that’s needed when we talk about standing TALL for justice.

Morning

  1. Even before arriving to campus, I recognize that my university is reeling from white supremacist hate speech (photos circulating as clear threats against students of color) that’s drawn campus-wide and beyond-campus attention.
  2. While hearing from students of color how little the university is responding, I see that my participation in the YWCA’s annual #StandAgainstRacism campaign has been used to give the optics that the university is responding.
  3. A white campus leader goes completely colorblind on a situation disproportionately impacting faculty of color.
  4. Another white leader says that a faculty member of color will be fine, professionally, because they’re “well liked,” making clear that white folks LIKING a person of color is what determines career viability.

Afternoon

  1. A panel on the school-to-prison pipeline names numerous problems rooted in racism, including that the majority of K-12 teachers in Milwaukee are white women who play into the savior archetype and expect students of color, therefore, to play the victim. Students’ behaviors that show strength and independence (not victimhood or gratitude for being “saved”) are considered behavioral problems.
  2. Following this panel, a white professor posts to social media how proud she is of white students (pre-service teachers) for buying school supplies for “underserved communities,” playing into this savior script and celebrating altruistic charity instead of teaching ways to re-route power.
  3. Another white pre-service teacher tells a white student colleague that she’s doing an act of Othering by designing a teaching unit with literature by authors of color. The student receiving the feedback takes it seriously, expressing concern that she might be marginalizing white authors. (Short answer: that’s not possible.)

Evening

  1. In a Facebook group, white feminists say they don’t appreciate me citing/amplifying Alice Walker in a recent blog post because she’s not vegan. When I take time to engage in discussion and calling-in, I have to ask: “Do you take seriously only the ideas and experiences of vegans?” before they get just how shitty their dismissals are of a womanist of color (in fact, of the feminist leader who coined the term womanist).
  2. A colleague of color is asked to bear emotional labor that goes uncompensated, while financial compensation is offered to white faculty/facilitators doing similar work.
  3. And all of this is happening against ongoing anti-Muslim rhetoric and hate speech, while the Supreme Court “weighs” the Muslim ban, Chikesia Clemons is assaulted in Waffle House, and Starbucks plans a day of anti-bias training.

Such a day calls attention to why a commitment to racial justice needs to be actionable in everyday life, why it asks us to be in it for the long haul (not quick fixes), and why self-care and community care are so important for bolstering ourselves against the constant barrage of microaggressions.

May we—especially those of who are white, who hold power and privilege within this white supremacist world—do more to name and speak out against injustice.
May we do more to find humanity in the midst of dehumanization.
May we do more to recognize and counter ongoing, everyday microaggressions.

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This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Microaggressions Matter,” “Trusting the Alarm Behind Supposedly ‘Alarmist Rhetoric,’” or “What I’ve Learned in the Week Since Charlottesville: Five Lessons for White Folks Who Care about Racism and Racial Justice.” Please also consider following the blog via email. Thanks!