Audacity to Change

My Dear Daughter ,

I have been reflecting on our discussion from last night. Sometimes it feels like life is not easy, it’s not fair and its not equal and that someone like you must work harder than your equals ?to be seen, heard, and understood. Though this may be the feeling right now, believe me, this world is also the habitat of some wonderful human beings who are working hard every day to help us understand and combat racial biases, modern forms of prejudices and the gender inequalities we face as a human community. I sometimes feel that ridding oneself of these biases completely may be impossible but becoming aware of them is the first step towards a peaceful living individually and collectively.

Why is this so hard? You asked me yesterday and I see the pain in your eyes, I have asked this myself so many times, as I have struggled through the biases that I observe and experience but have fallen short in my ability to quantify and express the full length and depth of the impact it creates at an individual and collective level. Because it is hard to explain an experience to someone who has never been there.

As an ethnic minority and a woman, you will have more opportunities to observe, understand, quantify, express, and combat these biases more as you will graduate out of school and enter the real world. I am not trying to scare you. I am simply preparing you, because if you know the mountain you are climbing, you can go fully prepared. Pause when you must. Lean on others when you can, enjoy every twist and turn of this landscape, doing so matures you, look for your predecessor’s foot print, for it can guide you, take a look at the scenery when you are tired, but remember never quit, because the ones who climbed the mountain before you have paved the path and you should do so for others who are behind you.

When I heard you speak with such passion last night, I was proud and pained. I was proud that you see the world with such clarity and committed to stay on and not give upon the possibility, pained because I have become so numb to some of the challenges you raised yesterday, it has stopped bothering me anymore. It left me thinking, have I accepted them as normal or have I intentionally numbed myself? ?Either way I know I am not fighting them anymore. ?It’s those things that we accept, without putting up a healthy fight are the ones that needs to be re-visited - ?should it be this way? Why so? Why not? What else? How else? I must say you planted a fresh sapling in my mind, I will let it sprout and grow to see what new beginnings it brings for me.

For every daughter like you and every underrepresented minority group that is trying hard to be seen, heard, and valued, here are my three cents.

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Compassion Starts at Home: Embrace your full self – if an experience is somehow trying to shrink you, take it as an opportunity to do the opposite, bring your higher self out – the self that is filled with compassion, forgiveness, curiosity to understand and commitment to not settle for anything lesser than what you deserve. As Gandhi said – In a gentle way, you can shake the world

?Don’t look for validation of your experience, it’s yours, its real. Simply because you cannot explain or quantify, it does not become unreal. ?Because the very thing that holds you back is often invisible, unexplainable, and nonquantifiable leaving you frustrated and confused. Embrace your experience fully, as you do, you will gain the ability to walk out of your own story and see the systemic roots , symptoms and consequences more clearly – what are you not responsible for? Yet are impacted by, because you are part of the larger living, breathing collective system. ?Knowing this difference takes the weight off your shoulder, it is not about YOU as an individual, when this clarity arrives so does the ability to see possibilities, challenge status quo, dream beyond the age-old , outdated boundaries and boldly return back to erase them .

Remember it did not start with you, but it can end with you. ?What ancestral pains you are carrying with you? What wounds and bruises were passed down to you? Slavery, poverty, social injustice, War – what forms part of your emotional experience today that you did not live through personally. How does that inform and influence your current day experiences? Knowing this allows us to be patient with ourselves, it allows time for proper healing, because one cannot work on things that are not in our awareness. With intentionality we can shift our experience and living. As Thich Nhat Hanh says “If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people”.

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Be prepared to shape the change by chipping away bit by bit as there were people before you on the same path, you are here now and it’s your turn and the next generation will follow , each making it easier for the other. Continue your journey with gratitude.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

- Martin Luther King Jr.