I've Always Been Compared To You

My IG stories have been full of thoughts on Sinead’s passing. I found a safety and peace within her existence that few will ever understand. I didn’t shave my head because of her, but she was the first white woman I saw as a child who had done it, and I thought she was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen when the Nothing Compares To You video hit MTV. Back when MTV was only a music video station. I wasn’t even 10 years old. At 18, I shaved it off and from that day forward Sinead was my celebrity look-a-like. Lucky me!

Y’all remember when she painted the?Public Enemy?logo on her head for the Grammy’s to support the inclusion of Rap Music as a genre? Such a boss.

And that time she did an A cappella version of Bob Marley's WAR on SNL and ripped up a picture of the Pope to call out Colonialism and the Catholic Church for child abuse and pedophilia, years before the church and the Pope issued a public apology for these abuses. Decades before discussions about colonial abuses were casual conversations. We never did apologize to her for being right about all of that or how she was treated for speaking the truth.

It has always been the biggest compliment to me to be associated with one of the bravest advocates against systemic abuse to favor the quest of creativity, soul, compassion, and heart. Her radio hits barely scratch the surface of her heartfelt, spiritual creativity. Spotify doesn't even carry some of her best albums including Theology. Where she went on her musical journey embraces her time becoming a Catholic Priest as she embraced her enemy only to disavow the church to convert to Islam, a religion founded on love as the core philosophy.

Everything she created after she left the bindings of corporate greed and expectation was the embodiment of her grace in the face of constant hate, shame, and adversity <cough> FROM WHITE PEOPLE. I find it interesting that white culture saw these moves as destroying her career, while she often spoke of them as defining her career. She understood that every dollar she kept out of some rich white man's pocket because she spoke the truth was a dollar worth losing and she was willing to take her power back.

Everyone needs to be mindful of that fact that it was Whiteness, Colonialism, Patriarchy, Capitalism, Materialism and their inherent cultured violence that she fought against. And it was White People who hated her for it. It was White People who were afraid of her. It was White People who shamed her out of existence and it was?#BIPOC?People who truly celebrated her. I can relate.

I never had many people to look up to growing up. Not a ton of spiritual non-binary activists to be a hero for me… I had no representation BECAUSE I AM REPRESENTATION. I had Sinead. I know some of her pain, because it runs deep and is very real, I’ve felt it too. Staying true to yourself in the midst of that storm can and will often cost you everything if you’re doing it right. True allyship for white people has a price, and Sinead absolutely paid it in full with interest.

Using your platform to say your piece while keeping abusive forces from profiting off your power, in order to keep your heart in tact to create for truth and soul, is how you take your fucking power back from a white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy. It's a choice to live in alignment with yourself, and her music reflected this on every album as she continued to choose her heart.

How many people out there you know living that life and taking up that space? How many people walk away from contracts, piss off their key institutions, refuse recognition, risk their career viability, or walk away entirely to create independently just to make a point and live in alignment with their values?

We love to elevate these people as long as it serves us. We celebrate these unicorns as long as it makes us look good to align with their audacity for cultural relevance. We idolize the humanness they express as we seek to find our own. We identify ourselves with their courage and honesty from the safety of our couches and headphones. But when the moment the Truth they stood for all along confronts our perceived reality, oh how quick we are to demonize them. How quickly the stories we tell about them begin to circle. How quickly they become the villain in the story we created about them while they consciously lived their truth and knew what they were doing. And how quick we are to blame them for showing us to ourselves.

Instead of bringing our humility to them while they are alive to experience the power, love and grace we've known them for all along, we let them suffer in silence. We watch them struggle and make judgements about them and the mental illness that results from all this noise, while safely stationed at our keyboards over the internet. And we wait until they die to truly see them for who they were and what they meant to us.

Oh to be loved, feared, hated, envied, celebrated, torn down, abused, abandoned, and adored beyond measure all at the same time. Imagine being a focus for all the love and vitriol the world can show you.

It takes a certain kinda person to shine that bright.?

Dear Shuhada' Sadaqat, may you find the peace you deserve and your passing carries you to infinite grace & cosmic love. In my heart, YOU ARE LOVE INCARNATE. My gratitude for the peace and reflection you brought me.?#rip #sineadoconnor #ShuhadaSadaqat