An Antidote to Isolation
(written in January 2022)
This morning, walking around Jamaica Pond as the frigid wind whipped off the ice, smiling to bundled passersby, I was thinking about isolation. Boston winter can be plenty isolating on its own, but add a pandemic and all of its attendant losses, including the loss of our ability to safely be together physically, and the isolation compounds. Anyone else with me, feeling the weight of loneliness this season in particular?
The thing is, what I’m learning from my role as a faculty member for Racial Rec is that white supremacy culture is the foundation for so much of our isolation. We long to be real with each other, and white supremacy culture urges us to avoid conflict. We long to risk vulnerability with each other, and white supremacy culture pressures us to appear like we have it all together or, for real ancestral safety reasons, to protect our hearts and bodies. Racism makes isolation and estrangement seem like the normal order of things, particularly in cross-race relationships, no matter how much our humanness and our longing recognizes that there’s something vital missing.
“Racism makes isolation and estrangement seem like the normal order of things, particularly in cross-race relationships, no matter how much our humanness and our longing recognizes that there’s something vital missing.”
That’s why I’ve started to think of our “I Get You Now” activity as an antidote to isolation. In “I Get You Now,” each person works with one other person for ten minutes to identify and “work” something about their partner that they would like to understand better. If someone has been showing up consistently late, “I Get You Now” is a time to lovingly call them in and wonder together where that’s coming from. It’s also a time to get to know people better in a loving one-on-one setting where mutual self-reflection and vulnerability are centered. Some rounds, young people choose their own partners because there’s something they want to work on with someone specific, and some rounds it’s more serendipitous. Connections happen across different identities and also with people who share multiple identities. In each conversation, adrienne maree brown’s principle of Emergent Strategy guides us: “there is a conversation that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.”
Throughout my years as a teacher, I often thought about how vulnerable we ask students to be on a daily basis. Risk being wrong in public. Risk making a mistake that others think is stupid. Risk other people misunderstanding you or treating you unfairly. Risk allowing yourself to grow. Risk learning, period! While teachers do their very best to create classrooms where young people can take healthy risks, I’m sure we all have an experience of getting hurt at school. It’s a high risk environment, and it’s not always able to be safe.
That’s what moves me so much about witnessing these young people risking multiple rounds of “I Get You Now.” It is deeply vulnerable to make yourself available for a conversation about who you are and how you show up. It requires great risk, and great capacity to receive feedback, trusting that it comes with love. It flies in the face of the ways that white supremacy culture tries to separate us, urging us to avoid conflict, gossip behind people’s backs rather than working with them directly, write people off. And also, we know that that vulnerability, and the ability to trust that others will call us into relationship, accountability, and authenticity, is the only pathway to true intimacy, true connection, true community, and strong relationship.
“We know that that vulnerability, and the ability to trust that others will call us into relationship, accountability, and authenticity, is the only pathway to true intimacy, true connection, true community, and strong relationship.”
Sometimes the conversations need to be ongoing, spiraling deeper over time. But most often, the young people came back from their pairings glowing. “I totally get her now,” they say, and, “I learned so much about myself through that process.” This past week, one young person shared, “I feel so close to the people I’ve paired with, and less with the people I haven’t yet. I want to do this with everyone.”
In these isolating months of another pandemic winter, compounding the isolation that white supremacy culture creates, I continue to feel deeply hopeful when I witness what’s happening at Racial Rec. Deep connection, vulnerability, accountability, listening and speaking from the heart, relationships founded on the trust that we can call each other in, back into integrity and back into belonging. I wish that medicine, that antidote to isolation, for the whole world.
