Special Note: We believe in reflection.  Reflection is both an invaluable skill and meaningful practice.  We believe in time to let words and thoughts settle in, be processed, and continue to be worked with over time.  None of this work is surface work.  Our offerings to you will be content, questions and ideas that invite you into deeper reflection so you can make meaning of the experiences you’re currently having in your own life, specifically related to identity, power and privilege. 

We talk to people all day, every day in workshops, in coaching sessions, in mediations, and in meetings.  There is a strong pattern across positional roles, industry and organization that people are feeling unhappy at work, and it’s not just about us being in a global pandemic.  There’s a lack of value being placed on relationships, both with other people and with ourselves.  This article is the first in a series to explore what might be underneath the surface of the frustrations and disagreements that are happening in workplaces.

These three areas of exploration are just the tip of the iceberg.  We invite you to reflect on how you see yourself in what’s named here, where you feel defense and/or resistance showing up, and what you might add based on your own wisdom. 

Follow the experiences of our hypothetical client through our suggestions and their reflections on each other the points below: 

Banya is frustrated by their work and finishes the work day feeling exhausted, demoralized and uninspired.  They spend their days watching the clock, holding back on what they really want to say to their colleagues in meetings, and often feel invisible with their organization and unvalued for their contributions.  They feel unmotivated and defeated, and are resigned to just “doing their job and leaving” rather than being fully invested in the work they’re doing. 

Getting clear about your sense of purpose

• It’s possible that the work you’re doing in the world right now (and getting paid to do) aligns with your sense of purpose.  Congratulations!  That’s a profound expression of who you are in the world. 
• It may also be possible that you don’t feel your “day job” is aligned with your authentic sense of purpose.  Maybe you want to get paid for your purpose.  It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.  One immediate action is to get clear about what the purpose is in the job you’re currently doing.  

Banya reflects and acknowledges that they took the current job that they are in out of fear.  They’re in the job now and it doesn’t actually light them up.  The job involves working with communities they were told they should be working with and doing a job that matches up with their degree.  While all of that is misaligned with Banya’s authentic sense of purpose, it is possible for Banya to find a sense of purpose in their work at this organization.  Some questions to consider: 

• How does your current role relate to the kind of impact you want to have in the world? 
• How does your current role align with your values?  
• What values can you bring to your current role that would support you feeling more connected to the work and the organization? 
  • Some examples:
    • If I value connection and believe we are all connected, how can I show up living through the value of connection with every colleague that I interact with each day? 
    • If I value trustworthiness, how can I show up in every conversation, interaction, and meeting being as trustworthy as possible?
• Your focus can be placed anywhere.  Right now, many people are placing their focus outside of themselves at work, which often elicits judgement. 

Identity matters and the ways that identity has been constructed matters, too

• Identity is always present and active.  Getting clear about the complexity of how identity is always at play can involve noticing: 
  • Your social identities (race, class, gender, sexuality, etc.) 
  • The ways that you learned these social identities
  • The ways that others learned about their social identities
  • The ways others have learned about your social identities, if different (or the same), and 
  • The ways in which all of our identities interact with each other
• All of this can cause a massive traffic jam of identity.  It can cause gridlock in our relationships and have all of us feeling stuck, frustrated, anxious and confused, particularly if we have no consciousness of all of the identities we each hold all the time.

Banya notices race, but doesn't really understand race’s impact on the experiences that they are having at work.  Because Banya doesn’t have a deeper and broader understanding of oppression, they often think that they are the problem or that a member of their team is the problem, therefore they often stay in an individual place and understanding of identity and its impacts in systems of oppression.  Banya often is in judgement, blame and shame in interactions with their colleagues and as a result experiences very superficial relationships with their co-workers making the workplace an unhealthy place.  It is possible for Banya to deepen their understanding of their own identities and their location within systems of oppression.  Doing work on identity is a constant practice and questions that support that practice might be:

• What identities are present (or salient) for me at this moment?
• What are the identities of others that might be involved?
• What are patterns that can be noticed across systems of oppression?  What are ways that oppression keeps itself alive and functioning through behaviors, practices, and policies?
• What patterns of oppressive systems might be playing out right now?

Understand what power means to you and how that might impact the way you experience your work, colleagues, and supervisor/ees

• In systems of oppression (which is the nature of all of our lived experiences), power is always present.  We’ve learned an experience of power that is “power over”** or one of domination.  Our “power over” socialization will still show up in our actions, speech, assumptions/story creation and we have to be ready to see and work with the dynamics of power that we’ve learned - and decide how to shift them if we want to create cultures of work that are useful and enjoyable.
• “Power over” takes agency away from each of us. 
• A few examples of how “power over” can look and sound like include:
  • Banya’s colleague decides that they need to take a day off because the colleague has observed Banya emailing late at night and appearing “tired” during meetings. 
  • A member of the program team at Banay’s organization unilaterally decides what is best for the community the organization is serving without ever asking community members what they might want and need. 

As a result of these actions, Banya often feels like their voice is silenced or their perspective is not valued, though no one has said anything that is “racist” or “sexist”.  The culture of Banya’s organization is one where power is coveted, and individual members of the organization are in constant competition with others for more power and/or to utilize the power they do have in ways that support this way of being rooted in domination.  

Starting to notice how power is held by you, by others, and by the organization in which you work can support a clearer understanding of the dynamics at play.  Some questions and resources to guide you in this exploration could be: 

• What is the nature of power at this organization?  How is power held here?
• What is my own relationship to power?  
• What power do I have from my place of identity (race, gender, class, etc.)?  In what ways has oppression tried to marginalize me from my power? 
• What are the impacts of the way power is negotiated at this organization on the people who work there?  
• These resources are excellent: 
  • ** We originally were exposed to this work through Just Associates’ report, “Making Change Happen: Power, Concepts for Revisioning Power for Justice, Equality and Peace” which is linked below.  Brene Brown has also taken this work and condensed it to a very accessible resource.
  • Link to Just Associates: https://www.justassociates.org/sites/justassociates.org/files/mch3_2011_final_0.pdf

My favorite definition of social justice is from the faculty at the Social Justice Education Program at University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  It reads, 

Goal: Full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs.  Social justice includes a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure.

Process: The process for attaining the goal of social justice, should also be democratic and participatory, inclusive and affirming of human agency and human capacities for working collaboratively to create change.

It actually is not a singular, simple definition, but rather one that takes times to process and understand at multiple levels.  Every time I share this definition with a group that I am facilitating I seem to think a new way about it.  Or find myself realizing that it has so much depth than I thought the 101 times I have looked at it before this moment.  The many ways that I dissect and strive to understand that definition is not what this post is about.  Maybe I'll dig into that another time.

I share the definition today to reflect on the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the quote image above.  Dr. King delivered these words as part of a Christmas eve sermon referring to the Vietnam War in 1967 only months before his assassination.  A more complete quote reads,
 
And the leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace. What is the problem? They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.
--Martin Luther King, Jr., "A Christmas Sermon on Peace," The Trumpet of Conscience, 24 December 1967

I read this quote this morning as part of a devotional on this 2021 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Day and I immediately thought about that definition of social justice that I shared above.  Just as Dr. King preached, the means by which we strive toward the goal of social justice matters.  As the definition states, the process matters.   How we do anything is just important as what we are trying to arrive at.  It is a basic logic problem.  If you are striving for a socially just world or a racially just organization or an anti-ableist experience or an all gender celebratory experience - it is impossible to arrive at the goal without practicing in all ways of being (within your awareness) the very thing that you want to see happen or goal you are reaching for.  And as your awareness grows, you practice from that state of awareness.  Then from the next state of awareness.  But we must practice.  

The world we want, a socially just world, will be like a can that is continually kicked down the road with our every action and thought that is not with the intention and thoughtfulness of being socially just.  And what's even cooler about striving for the process of social justice as we work toward the goal is that the process will lead us toward our own healing, our own alignment to our core values, and our own connection and alignment to our worth...which is at the very foundation of the change we seek. 

Get clear about how you are going after social justice...because the means matters.

The Commission on Presidential Debates (https://www.debates.org) is a non-profit organizational body run by a board of directors.  After looking up some members of their board, I decided to send one of them an email (seriously!) and this is what it said:​

Hello Ms. Hernandez,
This is a bit of a shot in the dark, but I just wanted to give a try at a possibility for influence.  I looked up the Commission on Presidential Debates and read a little about the organization and the governing board and thought that I would reach out to you.  Who knows if you’ll receive this, or read it, or take it into consideration, but I thought I would try.

I really love the thought that our country gives candidates an opportunity stand up, state their beliefs and potentially defend mistruths that might be in the public belief system - but what our debates have become in the Presidential realm are far from that.   And it didn’t just start with the mockery of a debate that we saw this week.  Candidates have long talked over one another, interrupted each other and ignored the moderator.  We know if these debates were in a true debate competition, the candidates - both of them - would have been disqualified and escorted out of the building.  

I don’t think your change of rules in the debate format will help - it actually might escalate things because when someone is shutdown (in this form of having their mic turned off) there is the potential of having someone feel like they have no voice which might trigger a reaction of yelling.  This update to the format actually is a continued mockery of what is trying to be accomplished - to have the individual represent themselves, speak about their beliefs, values and plan for the country, and perhaps show themselves as an embodiment of the kind of leader we want to represent us in this democracy.

We need to see more than people yelling and talking over one another. We need to see more than people be silenced at the whim of an outside party.  We need to see more than even the presentation, defense, and redirection that debates provide. We need the example of dialogue.  We need to see our leaders consider what their opponent offers as a thought, the consideration and connection to that thought, and the presentation of a new idea or a question.  Dialogue actually can be a model that helps people understand that the fractures that we are experiencing in our nation is not all that has to exist.  Having been trained in dialogue, I know that something else is possible.  There are many of us in the national that know that dialogue is a form of communication that transforms.  Debate just gives the appearance of a fixed mindset.  Dialogue offers the opportunity for curiosity and consideration - both of which is what is needed and what needs to be modeled.  We need to see that the person with positional power in this country is more than someone who can deliver a quick retort, but rather model reflection, the ability to change their mind and hold the reality of complex thought.  Even more than their platforms, these are the skills that I want to see - their platforms tell me little of their skill and only slightly more of their values.  I expect more and need the commission to expect more, as well. 

Again, who knows if you will read this, but I wanted to give it a try.  Please feel free to reach out if you have further thoughts or questions.

take good care, 
Tanya Williams

I’ve only been in one fist fight in my life.

It was with a boy named Levelle - I think he was in 5th grade and I was in grade 3.  Levelle and his younger sister rode the same school bus that my sister and I rode to a predominantly white elementary school 15.3 miles away from our poor and working class Black neighborhood in Houston, Texas.  When my sister and I got on the bus in the dark at 6:10 am, Levelle and his sister were already on, fast asleep in the uncomfortably stiff seats and we would often quickly join them in slumber.  As the bus rumbled around Houston picking up its miniature passengers, the light would rise outside and Levelle would come alive.  

Levelle was a bully.  When he awoke and more kids were on the bus, Levelle would ruthlessly (in my 8 year old eyes) taunt children, call them names, sit on them, fart in their face - it was disturbing and disgusting.  I was frustrated at watching this boy, morning after morning cause havoc.  Silently seething, I sat in my seat hoping not to be noticed and feeling at the same time completely powerless.  I’d watch from the seat that I often took towards the front of the bus - the quiet child hoping to stay out of the fray - but also wanting to hopefully avoid Levelle’s rath.  My sister, older - and I think bolder than me - sat towards the back of the bus and one day I saw her catch some of Levelle’s bullying.  I don’t remember what he did, I just knew I didn’t like it.  He might have even directed something  at me - but I don’t remember that part - I just knew he did something to my sister and that was not ok.  The seething became righteous anger and when Levelle stepped off that bus, when we arrived at school, I was right behind him wailing pounding fists upon his back.  If you’ve ever seen the movie “A Christmas Story” and the scene where Ralphie lets the bully have it - turn Ralphie into a too tall for her age, dark skinned, Black girl with pigtails and (Scut Farkus) into a slightly pudgy, Black boy child, often disheveled and ashy.  Before I knew what I was doing, I was letting my fury and rath out on this boy - who I now can reason was probably being bullied himself.…Levelle probably got the snickers, the ostracism, the othering as much, if not more than I did in our elementary school.  But in my rage, that didn’t matter.  I punched, kicked, and screamed my anger at him. I wanted him to stop.  I wanted him to never do anything he was doing - particularly picking on my sister - again.  I wanted to be rid of my feelings that were coursing though my body - the feelings of fear, anger, rage, disgust, powerlessness….I wanted them all out.  And I let them all out on this boy who stood their crying - probably shocked that he experienced a surprise attack from this meek, quiet, nobody of a kid who sat in the front of the bus.  Yes, he cried during that fight.  Never throwing a punch. Never shoving me. Never pushing back.  And somewhere in the midst of his tears, I found my own.  There was no triumph in that fight for me, only more fear.  I immediately became more afraid of being in trouble with my teacher.  I cried because those feelings of fear, rage, disgust and powerlessness were still there.  Tears well up in my eyes even now because I was raging on another human being.  

To publish a piece like this right now in the midst of what our country is going through might have my motives feel unclear.  And I actually don’t know what my motives are other than to share some thinking.  I heard the word “rebellion” a couple of times during some zoom calls I had yesterday.  It's a good word for what we are seeing on the news and experiencing in our cities.  People are resisting and acting in defiance to an authority, control, or tradition.  People are raging against the bully.  The bully this time is white supremacy….always trailed by its minions racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ableism, xenophobia, religious oppression, sizism and their tools of destruction - militarism, colonialism, capitalism, misogny, and shame.  Sometimes the minions get to be front and center - propped up by white supremacy, but the beliefs of supremacy are always at play.

White supremacy is the bully.  And we each are being run/directed/ordered by this bully.

Much like I didn’t really understand or know Levelle, most of us don’t really understand or know white supremacy.  Heck, most of us really don’t even know or understand racism.  Yes. They are different. What we know is reaction.  What we know is fear.  What we know is shame.  What we know is story.  What we know is over-thinking.  What we know is paralyzation at doing the wrong thing.  What we know is being stunned into silence.  What we know is powerlessness.  What we know is the internalization of lies about ourselves and others that look like us.  What we know is pain.  We think we know white supremacy because we’ve experienced it or we know how to form the words on our lips.  That’s not knowing something - that being in relationship to it.  I’m in relationship to the tomatoes that I have growing in my windowsill, but I have no idea how their growth works, why the growth happens, why their leaves look one way when the seed first emerges from the ground, and another way two weeks later.  I have no idea why the fruit of the seed blooms first as a flower, then turns into something edible.  Your guess is as good as mine about why the stalks of a tomato bush are hairy.  I am infinitely curious about where the origin of the seed that these plants are growing from started.  To know something, you gotta get up all into its grill.  To know something you’ve got to let it reveal itself to you.  To know something you’ve got to dig deeply, get curious about it -  let it wrestle you to the ground, then turn around and wrestle it to the ground.  You’ve got to study it not by just reading about it from a distance, but by asking it to come visit and getting practiced at telling it when it is time to leave.  

I’m on a first name basis with white supremacy.  And not just because I have a lot of white people in my life.  I’m on a first name basis because it freaking snuck into my existence early, early…probably even during the first breath of my life and it refuses to leave.  I’m on a first name basis with white supremacy because I’ve noticed it in myself - yes, even as a Black person and work constantly at seeing how it tries to use me.    I’m on a first name basis with white supremacy because I stared it down and said “you’re unwelcome here”, but I know its my responsibility to get up and get it out.  Daily.  Moment by moment.  Conversation by conversation.  Policy by policy.  Thought by thought.
​
Rebellion is absolutely necessary.  And the rebellion against an energy outside of yourself is only a part of the truth of change.  The rebellion has to occur inside as well.  What are the ways that I allowed myself to be used by white supremacy?  What are the conversations that I have failed or were too afraid to have?   What are the thoughts that I think that I just shove down rather than get out and examine for fear that it will be too painful to heal?  What are the ways that white supremacy has hijacked my thoughts?  My time?  My feelings?  My perspective on what is beautiful? My opinions? My energy?  My opinions about my body?  What I choose to watch on a screen?  It has hijacked ALL of that (and so much more) and because we’re too afraid to look and really know it - we throw our hands up and instead choose to know fear, pain, powerlessness and hopelessness.

You’ll notice that I haven’t at all talked about who my audience for this piece is.  Because it's for all of us.  Because it’s for me.  Find your place in it.  What are the questions you need to ask?  What are the conversations you need to start?  If you know me, you know the exploration and emergence is a constant and it’s because I want my liberation more than I want anything in the world.  And it's not a liberation from any one thing - and not liberation to any one thing.  I want liberation.  I want to think for myself.  I want to feel for myself.  I want to act for myself.  I want a connection to the All That Is that is not gunked up by systems and struggles that actually have nothing to do with my true nature.  White supremacy confuses people about my true nature.  And it confuses me about my own and others’ true nature, also.  I want free.  I desire to be free.  I can be free.  I will be free.  I am free.  Even if for a moment.

I don’t know what became of Levelle and his sister.  I don’t even remember what happened the next day - whether he continued his torment or his bullying continued on, but I know I somehow went about seeking my peace and my power in other ways.  And I’ve been seeking it ever since.

​I don’t know if you felt it today, but the world shifted.  While I wrote social justice curriculum from my bed (there are many ways to be an activist!), while nursing a cold and watching the livestream of Women’s March, the air became thicker with the model of coalition building, collaboration, courage, strength and purpose.  The earth shifted on its axis with the weight of togetherness, clarity of our collective power of a need for change.  As we feel the joy of our successes, and our abundance of numbers – we have to recognize that there were millions that were not present with us. 
 
It is the millions that don’t understand and don’t grasp why we marched. It’s the millions that still felt the exclusion of one of the most inclusive movements I’ve noticed in my lifetime. They too felt the shift, and are afraid.  We cannot leave them behind.  Some of them supported DJT. Some of them were so disenfranchised that they went about their lives watching football, binge watching tv, or even worse, they spent the time alone. Many have said all of our liberation is tied to each of our liberation.  If that is true, which I know it is, we cannot leave them behind.  Inclusion requires that we practice a few things in this shifted world for it to actually be permanent and get stronger.
 
The maintenance of this shifted world requires a SECOND BY SECOND PRACTICE of love. Yes, I said practice.  Every single thing we do - is a practice.  The breath I just took was a practice for my next breath to be deeper and more present.  My staying home today was a practice of doing self-care in a more present way the next time I am worn down and sick.  If we hold our love as a practice, we know that we are always growing, getting better, and moving towards excellence rather than perfection. We know that sometimes we won’t be able to love as deeply as we want or show compassion at every turn.  But we’ll know we have another chance at practice. Excellence doesn’t have an end, perfection does.  Excellence is a practice.  Therefore let our love for those inside our communities, that marched with us AND those that we didn’t see today or that outright ignored or challenged us, also be a practice of love.
 
The survival of this shifted axis requires that we all become teachers and learners.  That we understand a conversation with everyone has a value, and is a place of education…and patience.  As I wrote these words today for the curriculum I am soon to turn in,
 
“Very simply, diversity is about difference, inclusion is about voice, equity is about understanding differing needs and supplying differing resources in ways that are equitable and that get people to what they need to succeed.  Social justice is about so much more. It is about the creation of a society where all feel safe, supported, heard, and seen.  It is about rights, resources, the elimination of structural and cultural barriers, physical and psychological safety.  And the process of getting to that society, must be done in safe, supported, equitable, physically, verbally and visually inclusive ways. That is why each of these terms and concepts must be understood separately and together…”
 
I realized that there are SO MANY that have no comprehension of what any of that means.  They wouldn’t understand psychological safety because it’s not in a reality that they live.  They don’t understand diversity, because it does not exist in a human form around them (I say human because the natural world gives us diversity every day.  Our consciousness is often closed off to it.)   It’s not that they don’t care, they just haven’t had the conversation(s) that helps them understand.  But too often, we give up.  We’re not curious to what someone who might not think like us will be able to offer us.  We have not trained ourselves to practice patience, then body awareness (to note when we are triggered and when it’s time for us to walk away from the conversation), and then to hand the conversation to the next educator they will run into.  I do not suggest that each of us give ourselves away to ignorance or listen to abuse, but rather I suggest that we realize engagement – listening, learning, and educating (in that order) – requires patience and presence.
 
The new breathable air will require the release of fear. Know that I speak to myself as much as I speak to anyone as I type these words.  Every word about fear that I speak at any workshop or keynote is as much for my own ears, as it is for yours.  Yesterday, as sat waiting to fly to Creating Change in Philly to facilitate a workshop, I was in Chicago O’Hare Airport listening to and watching people cheer as DJT delivered his inauguration address.  Fear snuck up right beside me and started to envelope me in its dangerous gaze. For a second, it felt comfortable – like an old friend that I had sat with many times in my life.  A familiar embrace.  And then I remembered that this new breathable air is not about familiar.  It is not about the strange, and lulled lullaby of fear.  It’s about our hearts beating faster.  It’s about feeling the blood moving through our body in a different way.  And it is about Life. Not about the survival of the status quo, which survives on fear and oppression, but it is about our living and breathing and staring down fear in the many forms that it chooses to show up.  To practice staring it down mentally and physically every day.  I think that’s what Eleanor Roosevelt (and many others) were trying to instruct us on when they said, “Do one thing everyday that scares you.”  She was helping us to practice staring fear in its face and remind to remind it who is boss.
 
I commit to not leaving my sisters, brothers, and others who were not conscious to the reason for this global change today behind.  I will not leave them to be confused about why their lives feel different.  Because their lives will most definitely feel different.  I know the shift shook some people awake.  The movement ignited some flames in the spirits of warriors that are ready to erupt. Some people who were even present to the shift don’t even know that yet that they were awoken in a different way.  They won’t realize it until they get to work on Monday and they don’t respond to the status quo in a spirit of fear.  Or they show up differently asking for respect and honor in their relationships when they arrive back home.  But I ask us…all of us… to bring those that were not present, not aware, not conscious, and even not ready…I ask that we bring them gently along with grace and courage.  They are not our enemies.

“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All (people) are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...
This is the inter-related structure of reality.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

Every time I finish a LeaderShape Institute session, as part of my closing remarks, I share the above quote. I share the quote with the students that I am working with because it has been a guiding beacon for my life since I read it over 20 years ago when preparing for a civil rights tour across the Southern U.S. as a graduate student. It reminds me on a daily basis that I am both connected to everyone and everything else and also responsible for my own being and doing. I share this today because I think sometimes we get so overtaken with our doing, that we forget about our being.

Yesterday, while attending Heart and Soul Center of Light, a church that my partner and I attend when I am in the Bay, we learned about the map of consciousness that (from my very baseline understanding) says that our expression of being vibrates on different energy levels. The higher level of vibration that we all exist at, the better for all of us and for each of us individually. (Again, this is my very simplistic read on a much deeper concept that I will do a much deeper dive on soon.) For example, when we are in a shame space or expressing shame, our energy or being is vibrating at a 20, where if we are expressing love or feeling love, we are vibrating at a level of 500. I was surprised to learn that from the perspective of this theory that courage vibrates at a very neutral level. Courage is what we profess and encourage in our fights for Justice. It is what we ask of ourselves as we stand up against injustice and the everyday acts that support the systems of oppression that keep the status quo in place. What struck me even deeper was that in our struggles for social justice, Joy, which exists at a higher vibration, is so rarely talked about or embraced.

When thinking about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the many photos that we see of him, we see him courageously standing in front of hundreds of thousands of people at the March on Washington or leading a march across Edmund Pettus Bridge. I think those images sometimes distances us from what is possible from each of us in the fight for justice. We see a man with a powerful voice and think, “that could never be me”, so we think our small thing that we are able to do to create change or that interruption of a racist or ableist policy or ageist or transphobic practice will never be enough.

I want to offer a different view of Dr. King this year – one that also sought out the higher vibration of joy, in addition to the courage that he showed. There are not enough images in circulation – like these of him playing pool, laughing with Sammy Davis, Jr. and Harry Belafonte, or just being a dad – that remind us that his joy seeking, his higher vibration probably fueled those moments of courage. Where we might wonder if we can muster our courage, joy seeking actually might be a way to find it. On this MLK Day 2017, I ask us to tap into the joy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and to tap into our own joy as a way of lifting up his memory. Seek joy, not in the absence of analysis, action, or courage, but right alongside those three ways of being in a fight for justice. My joy can fuel your joy, and vice versa. And it might just fuel the destruction of the status quo.

Grief is a funny thing. The last two days I have learned a lot about its surprising, weird, loving, and uncontrollable nature. Prince’s death has let me grieve parts of my experience I didn’t even know I still needed to grieve. The tears come surprisingly – standing in front of the sink washing dishes and hearing a song that spoke to my being in a different way – watching a news report and seeing the death dash completed - dancing full out in my apartment hallway to “Lovesexy” and needing to dance my way to the box of tissues because I discover that tears are running down my face – and they are all welcome. It feels like a small price, and maybe even a reward that I don’t deserve. Heck, he did all the work. I get the gift of feeling my humanness deeper. I cry, I think, because I didn’t get to say thank you.

Prince’s death on Thursday has opened up a well of grief in me that is as much about me as it is him. It has been fascinating to observe and yet, difficult to experience. The baton passes between sadness at the absence of the memories that were yet to be made at his concerts and the immense gratitude for the blessing of his life - breathing words, sounds, and thoughts out into the world - to the very harsh grief of hard moments in my life that he accompanied me on – I feel like I lost a friend.

I never met him. I didn’t have to. That’s exactly what art is about. That’s what liberation is about. We are supposed to express what is in us because we have no other choice but to do so. The problem is most of us think we do have another choice. We choose “safety” and “comfort” – not realizing that we’ve chosen the harder, less colorful, dreary path. In liberation, others are supposed to observe our living and feel the breeze of the opening of a window or a door letting us know that there is more life to be lived, to be faced, to be embraced. He did that SO beautifully, with such grace, with such humor, with such panache, such boldness, such sexiness and with such love. He did it so well – he LIVED liberation so well – that it felt like he was here with me trying to instruct and open doors for my own liberation.
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Sometimes it was with a gentle hand – a breathy, deep or falsetto, compassionate voice and sometimes with a rougher hand in the form of that full-bodied, rich scream like in the song “Temptation” that I heard yell, “Let Go, Tanya!” He has been right here with me for these last 38 years creating and holding space for a little Black lesbian girl woman raised in a working class, Baptist household – wrestling with internalized racism, sexism, classism and homophobia. He held space for me – when I couldn’t inhabit it myself. He did it through
his music
his being
his Blackness
his style
his moving between worlds with such fluidity
his non-apology
his boldness
his ability to fill as space
his sexuality
his faith
and his ability to handle a guitar preciseness and rawness that it felt like it was an extension of his soul – I felt a kindredness with him…maybe because I wanted to be him.

My own fears, internalized hate, limiting voices…he seemed like he had none of it, so it gave me the opportunity to see that I could live outside of all that. I didn’t know how, but he had figured out how to – he lived it so clearly – it must be possible for me, too.
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I feel like my Teacher died. As if with his death, my Teacher had pushed me out of the nest, out of the classroom - telling me that he had no more activities to offer. But it feels like he left in the middle of a lesson. I wasn’t finished learning from his example, his words, his clarity – his example was so beautiful and powerful – maybe he knew that I had gotten lazy and comfortable and that I would have sat hanging on his every word for the rest of my life and never actually walked out of the classroom myself.

There he is teaching me even in death.

I have enough songs, videos, photos, memories…and I hope, the long talked about Vault that I pray gets released with care and presence when access is gained…to last me a lifetime. His physical being will now forever be absent but the kindness of genius is that it always leaves something beautiful behind. And I know his teaching presence will always be near.
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Prince, thanks to you, there is still a time when music is a spiritual healing for the body, soul, and mind. And that time is now. As I listen to your catalog in its completion, it’s like re-reading a book and finding a new meaning in its pages – seeing the ways that I have shifted that allow your lessons to go in deeper. I have gathered new keys that will help me continue to open doors and windows - my own and others. People have spoken of your quiet generosity – your philanthropy for causes, for people, for organizations – it wasn’t so quiet if we had listened closely. You left us with a treasure trove of music, you brought numerous artists both contemporary and elder on your vast stage and through your music room, and you offered an every day example of liberation to aspire to and fight for. And for that lesson, Teacher, I thank you.