Are you ready for some awkwardness? Oh, good! I have lots to spare. 

Since I don’t usually talk or post publicly about white-body supremacy, racism, and racialized trauma, I promise that I am going to be clunky about it. 

George Floyd was murdered a couple miles from my house in my beloved city of Minneapolis. We all know that his murder wasn’t the first one like it, nor the last. But this time more people are paying attention and more people are talking about it. Protesting about it. Acting about it.

Lots of people have been talking about and working on this for lots of years. It is long past time that I join them in their work to identify, name, and dismantle systems of racism and white-body supremacy.

Ugh. I keep starting and stopping, writing and deleting. I feel awkward and my gut feels tight. I’m going to keep going. Maybe I’ll make a list. I like lists.

1. Systems of racism and white-body supremacy have got to go. Now.
   
2. It feels scary and strange to notice and name that my chest feels tight and my breathing gets shallow when I let in the truth. The truth of our country’s racist foundation, of my complicity-by-silence, of the ways in which Black, Indigenous, and People of Color/Culture are harassed, harmed, and outright killed in the maintaining of status quo.
   
3. I don’t really want to admit how much I don’t know. (Hint: it’s a lot. A lot a lot.)
   
4. I super don’t want to admit that I spent a most of my life floating in a cloud of privilege and not really digging in to dismantle the system of white-body supremacy.
   
5. It hurts to learn about how much advantage white-body supremacy affords me.
   
6. It hurts to accept how much this system really, really hurts BIPOC. Every. Single. Day.
   
7. I don’t know how to dismantle racism and white-body supremacy.
   
8. I am not sure what I should be doing or what the best path forward is.
   
9. Nine seems like a good number of things for a list.

So here’s the thing…

Since 2016 I have been meeting weekly with a wonderful group of middle-aged white women to talk about white-body supremacy, systemic racism, and our own relationships with them. In our group, we’re working to raise our consciousness, heal our own racialized trauma, and be more present in the work to dismantle the system of white-body supremacy.

This work has been and is heartbreaking, overwhelming, hopeful, healing, scary work, and it has become clear to me that I wouldn’t or couldn’t do this work without community. I need other people for support and for accountability. I think we all need community to do this work.

Our group wants to use our years of practice & learning to help anyone who is interested in starting their own embodied anti-racist practice group group. We aren’t experts and don’t have the answers, but we are so happy to share our experiences with you.

If you would like help starting your own embodied anti-racist practice group, please fill out this form. https://forms.gle/8dvyzrw8y7JmWH52A