Earlier in June, after months of intense revision, I finally updated my commitment statement. It was a long time coming, as I returned to southern Appalachia and newly to Asheville—Cherokee Land in Western North Carolina (WNC)—back in 2024, ten weeks before Hurricane Helene hit.
My writing has been coming slower since the move partly because of recovery and healing from the storm. Partly because of the time involved in putting down roots, building community, and rebuilding a house. Partly because I returned to care for aging parents, and I am coming through a season of intense caregiving, hospice, bereavement, and grief-time.
Now that it has been two years since I moved—and what a two years it has been!—I needed the commitment statement to reflect my new home and the new and always-emergent me.
As my close friend, co-author, and confidant Rasha Diab has taught me: these aren’t statements we write; instead, these are statements that write us. Commitment statements chart a direction for striving and a course to live into.
A year ago, when “update commitment statement” was on my to-do list but not happening in a narrative way, I took to writing poetry instead. A few of those poems have been published (in a blog post, poetry collection, and local anthology), and each expresses a component of my commitments. One of these poems I think of often because it articulates my desire to live with and alongside, as a neighbor and learner, to all life around me.
This commitment statement in poem form is called “Bear Ways,” mixing the literal work of learning to live alongside bears with the larger (un)learning I need to live in the world these days:
Bear Ways
I moved for the woods
Scared but excited
To call bears neighbors
Willing and eager
To learn
Bear ways
To be a good neighbor
I need to be a good learner
To recognize how much
I don’t know
To be more
Curious and cautious
Not certain about
Bear ways
With curiosity, then,
And as a neighbor
A learner
I ask how to move around
And with
Alongside
Not through
Not over
Bear ways
I am grateful to bears—like spiders, caterpillars, turkeys, woodpeckers—as teachers.
And I am grateful for the ways that poetry can unlock and give voice to commitments, especially as they are taking form or being reshaped.
Undoubtedly, the expression of “Bear Ways” anchors me in my core commitments:
As an educator and writer, I commit myself—both in this moment and for the long haul—to struggling against systems of oppression and toward equity, justice, and the true valuing of all humans, non-human animals, and the earth. I commit both to redressing harms and to situating myself and my work within larger webs of relations, honoring ancestors and elders in the work for justice.
As a white cisgender woman, I commit to never stop learning and unlearning, to never stop recognizing my own complicity and harm done, and to never stop naming and struggling against injustice. I commit to doing self-work, to working with and alongside others, and to working for institutional and systemic change.
Toward continuing in everyday relational work, including where I am rooted, with and alongside bears.
Beth
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This post is written by Beth Godbee, Ph.D. (she/her) for Heart-Head-Hands: Everyday Living for Justice. Subscribe to the email newsletter for regular updates, including for upcoming writing groups, retreats, and coaching.
And you might be interested in these related blog posts:
- “Deep Gratitude Following Helene and Support for These Times”
- “Update from (Outside) Asheville: Next Steps after Hurricane Helene”
- “Commitment Statements: Questions and Answers Pointing Toward Action”
- “Slowing Down to Clarify Commitments”
- “Reflection, Retreat, and Recommitment: Learning from the Winter Woods”
- “Resources for Sustaining Momentum and Doing Everyday Racial Justice Work”
- “Mantras to Stand TALL for Justice”
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