by LaShawn | Jun 8, 2021 | Relational Spaces - Community, Uncategorized
Have you ever had to hold a smile and a conversation during active racism?
When it’s the only location where you can buy the thing you need to buy because you aren’t knowledgeable enough to go to Amazon and get it on your own, you have to hold a smile and a conversation about the “nicest colored lady” that was helped across the street into Walmart by the person who owns the supplies you’re purchasing.
“No… no it wasn’t. How much is my total? Cool, thank you. I’ll be back tomorrow with the sample.”
Now, of course, there was actual human interaction. I know that the human I was talking to had a life history and a story and real concerns and saw me, in that moment, as a real person too. We shared stories. We high fived. We laughed. They educated me based on their expertise. They are, like I am, a multi-dimensional person.
However, I also knew that this was not the time to correct their language. It wasn’t the time to tell them a history lesson. It wasn’t a time to say “did you know what you said is racist?” I just wanted to buy the stuff that I needed to buy and go home and do what I needed to do.
But I had to hold a smile and a conversation during the racism. And I have to go back tomorrow because it’s the only place I can go to buy what I need to buy and do what I need to do.
This is just one example, of many, of racial battle fatigue. It’s the routine, really boring, daily living experiences that we all just want to have as uneventfully as possible that are interrupted by racist actions that Black folks have to ignore and “grow a thick skin” because how dare we mention it and “play the race card” in a conversation with a stranger?
In these moments, we seem to fail at remembering that when racism entered the discussion, the card was already played.
by LaShawn | Jun 14, 2020 | Uncategorized
One thing I’ve focused on in these online conversations across difference is engagement vs investment.
Lots of us are so invested in an outcome that it’s impacting our abilities to healthily and strategically engage. This is why I offer consulting to help people do the engagement work effectively because of how invested they are in their relationships.
A dear friend inboxed me to let me know I didn’t need to invest my time responding to a racist performance in her comments and I said,
I’m not investing, I’m engaging.
A dear friend inboxed me to let me know I didn’t need to invest my time responding to a racist performance in her comments and I said, I’m not investing, I’m engaging. There is a good, healthy difference.
I was asked yesterday if I felt an urgency in these moments before this window of opportunity for race relations on the backs of Black Lives closes, and I said “no. I do not feel a sense of urgency.” I said this because I come from a culture of marathoners in this race for justice. When this window closes, I’m still doing the work.
I have watched my mother’s tireless work with the local police departments – and so many scores of white people – all the while deeply supporting the safety and growth of Black Students. This is, and has always been, and will always be a marathon, not a sprint.
Books will give you knowledge. Read them.
Actions will give you stamina. Take them.
Stamina will give you growth. Stay focused.
Invest in you, then engage with others. Hold the line.
Do justice.
Love mercy.
Amen.
by LaShawn | May 28, 2020 | Uncategorized
I initially wrote this post after I shared a social media post about a white supremacist protest in Farmington, New Mexico.
I looked at the photo of the people gathered in the protest and I wondered if people they knew – family, friends, etc – saw them in the picture and agreed with them or felt embarrassed to know them. I wondered what I would do if I saw one of my friends in a protest photo like that, but then I laughed to myself as I remembered that my kids’ father was a huge Bundy Ranch supporter, when that was happening and traveled to the ranch as demonstration of his commitment to liberty. I wonder how long it will be until I see my kid’s father in a photo of a protest that goes viral on social media?
As I walked my way through these thoughts, I wondered about those of us hitting the share button. I think we can get into a bit of a routine – see injustice, hit share, consider ourselves aware and allies in solidarity with the cause and then move on to our memes and the rest of our day.
I was a bit tired of hitting the share button and I saw many people adding their own verbiage to their post-sharing, urging friends/family to stand up against this type of demonstration and to speak out when they see it.
But that’s all we say, really.
We say “go do it!” and we cheer ourselves & others on when it happens, but it usually happens on social media comments where it easily devolves into posturing and blocking. So much for changing hearts and minds.
So I tapped into my relational self and thought about the work truly needed to change the tide with people like this in your neighborhood or family. It’s something that takes deep relational, interpersonal work. In the classroom, I tell my students that we facilitate change at about three levels: raise awareness, provide education, & create interventions.
We can all raise awareness with the share button.
We can provide links for education.
But it’s our relationships that make the interventions whether interpersonally or structurally (if we have the access to resources and power to leverage them for structural change).
Let’s say you share a post or a link on social media to raise awareness about oppression as manifested through some type of “-ism” – you hope that it’s the magic post for change, right?
You have a few folks in mind who you’re constantly hoping will change some of their harmful views about specific populations when they see one of your many posts. Maybe one day, they’ll read it and the light switch for justice will flip!
So far, no luck.
So you keep posting. They’ve engaged a post here or there with their views and maybe you’ve gotten into it with them or you’ve had friends and others in your circle, connected to that person or not, engage them as well. They haven’t seen the light, yet, but they’ve stopped engaging because their fragility is higher than their stamina.
You get it.
So at this point, you have a few choices, depending on that person and their relationship with you as well as your own fragility and stamina that day.
You’ve made your regular awareness raising post. You’ve linked to different articles for education in the comments. You say your regular “dear universe please change this persons heart, amen” prayer and you hope it reaches a person that you think needs it.
And you’re probably right. They do need it. What you might not be thinking is that they may need some deep work in real time while in direct relationship with you.
You check in with yourself and your emotional reserves and decide you’ve got the energy to open the door to conversation in the spirit of connection. You grab the social media link you just posted and prepare to send it to them.
You might say:
“Hey [insert friend/family member here] have you seen this? What do you think about it? I don’t know that we’ve ever had this type of conversation before (we’ve interacted on social media and I don’t think it’s been great – to be honest, but because you are someone I value, I’m wondering about your views and how you came to them. Not just on this issue, but many – I’m just starting with this one.”
They might reply “Well I see your social media posts so I don’t think we’ll agree and I don’t really want to bring politics into our relationship.”
You might say, “You know what, I get that. I think we might not agree sometimes. Have you ever wanted to reach out and talk to me about why I believe the way I do? I think we get worried that it will cause damage to our relationship, so we don’t reach out. I have shared this on social media generally, but I have been thinking about a lot of things recently and so I wanted to reach out to you personally if you’d be willing to talk about it. I don’t think we need to come to a complete understanding in one conversation but I hope we have the kind of relationship that we can get there over time. I think at our core we all want the same things. I really want to try because I hate to think about losing people I care about when we have big tension around current events. Thanks for considering my offer & please know that if you ever see something on my social media that you don’t understand why I believe as I do, I hope you’ll reach out to me to gain understanding too. I have a few ideas for how we can engage, but I’ll wait to hear from you.”
It’s not a magic wand but it is a beginning.
Every moment is another opportunity for a beginning intentionally rooted in connection. You’ll need support in the process. I’m willing to work with you as you work with your loved ones. Let’s set up some time to talk. Email me at info@drlashawn.com or get on my schedule for a discovery call to see what we can create together to support you in this work.
by LaShawn | Jan 19, 2020 | Relational Spaces - Family, Relational Spaces - Friends, The Bookworm Therapist
This post contains affiliate links and is going to reference the experience of sexual assault.
It includes a reference to an article discussing surviving and attempting to hold a person accountable for sexual assault.
“I just kind of froze like a deer in headlights, just frozen. I knew it was happening. I could feel it,” she added. “I remember trying to fix my eyes on a spot on the wall and just trying to avoid seeing his face as he was assaulting me, just waiting for it to be over.”
In my experiences, both personally & professionally, this quote embodies the most common psychoemotional experience of assault.
So many people permit or perform sexual activity in order to survive sexual assault.
So many people permit or perform sexual activity in order to survive sexual assault. This is why we cannot blame victims for surviving assault because of the fact that sex happened. Once we understand that sex is sometimes the only way to survive assault, we can stop blaming people for doing what was necessary to survive the moments.
Why didn’t s/he/they fight back? Fighting back is a response you grow into over time. It is rarely the first response in each situation where assault happens.
It’s called “fight, flight or freeze” for a reason. Many freeze. Many flee psychologically (ie disassociate). Few of us fight the first time. If only the first time was the only time. Usually it is not and so we start learning to fight.
Once people start fighting, we then see victim blaming by focusing on the fighting back/self defense and not the assault necessitating self defense.
Believe victims.
Understand that sex can be a survival tactic.
Fighting isn’t always the first available response.
Support survivors.
Hold abusers accountable.
If you want to start to understand the reasons why it is best to address abuse with abusers – read Lundy Bancroft’s book. It’s a game changer!
by LaShawn | Dec 6, 2019 | Identity Growth and Change, Relational Spaces, Relational Spaces - Family, The Bookworm Therapist, The Divorced Therapist
Nobody’s Ready for Marriage
One of my favorite relationship books is “Passionate Marriage” by Dr David Schnarch because of this quote: “Nobody’s ready for marriage. Marriage is what makes you ready for marriage.” It’s in the introduction of the book.
I started reading it a little before I got divorced because I didn’t want to get divorced.
I started reading it a little before I got divorced because I didn’t want to get divorced.
As a therapist, we tend to think we have the skills to avoid marital calamities like divorce.
In my relationship, we had survived unemployment, underemployment & grad school, we could survive infidelity, right?
We could have, if we’d gotten help, if we really wanted to change ourselves and change our relationship to meet both of our needs.
That discussion is a post for another day.
Passionate Marriage was a beginning of more awareness building for me. It was a text that did a lot to me and for me. (Books are why I affectionately call myself the Bookworm Therapist. I believe that I can’t be the only person to go through what I’m going through and someone somewhere else has probably gone through it and ideally writte a book, article, song or poem about it. At least I hope for it with crossed fingers and toes, because the alternative is unsettling to say the least!)
Primarily, it was one of the important first steps I really needed in the continued development of my self and identity as a person. It made me become the wife in my relationship instead of the therapist I’d been operating as for the past 12 years in being connected to the kid’s dad (TKD).
It’s a book primarily about differentiation of self and within relationships. It’s become one of the books I reference in couples work & recommend when working in the family relational space generally.
I’ll share some of my favorite phrases, pages & takeaways in future posts.
