Umoja: Unity
The presence of community has been the most prominent part of my journey this year. Due to trauma, I had always perceived myself as a loner or on my own without any emotional or mental support. It was hard for me to see myself relying on another person to be there for me emotionally and mentally. Through therapy, I have been able to learn that it is okay to exist in community with others and its okay to let my guard down in order to accept love just as much as I give it. I spent this year working on myself in therapy and reading Bell Hooks in an attempt to become a better man for myself. I did not expect the emotional and mental shift that would ultimately lead me to community. I have learned to be more vocal about my love for the people around me and I have started to chisel away at the hard exterior that I would use in order to make others believe I was always okay. With this hard exterior, I wasn’t allowing myself to exist nor live in community. I wasn’t allowing myself to be trusting of the people who I have chosen to unify with. I was just there: one foot in and one foot out.
Through my fear of losing people, I wouldn’t attach to anyone too much. I was always preparing myself for a departure: consistently thinking about the ending of a relationship (familiar, platonic, and romantic) instead of being present and existing in community. I was missing out on the beauty of what I was surrounded by because my trauma caused me to believe that endings are always painful, violent, and sudden. How could anyone enjoy the presence of being with others if the end is inevitable? I pushed myself to be in a state of vulnerability knowing that the possibility of being disappointed was present but not allowing it to take away the joy that came with being vulnerable. By embracing community, I felt more seen and felt more heard. I felt understood by my family (both biological and chosen). The reason for this shift, I believe, was because I started to allow myself to be seen and heard. I began to practice trust with my community and kept myself in a state of vulnerability even when it was uncomfortable.
My tribe unified around me, called me randomly, texted me to tell me they love me, set up safe meet ups in person, and overall were the most beautiful supports I could have asked for. There were times when I would be sitting in my room with my thoughts, not being the kindest to myself at all, and I would receive a random call from one of my close friends. Not knowing that I was just beating myself up for mistakes or not feeling like enough, they would speak to me in such a restorative way. It was like we were in sync: like they knew I needed a call and needed a conversation to get me out of my own head. Simultaneously, I was practicing how to be kinder to myself through therapy and reading Bell Hook’s The Will to Change. I was crying into the pages of the book, seeing myself, and loving myself out of all the insecurities caused by my experiences that led me to believe I wasn’t deserving of the love people were trying to give me. I couldn’t fully unify with them because I wasn’t able to see how deserving I was of unity and community yet. Once I embraced love toward myself, I began to embrace love from others. I realized that my true self, the self that is able to see myself outside of my trauma, is a radiant loving person who is excited when in the midst of my community: when I am able to unify with others.
This system that we as Black people from all intersections are forced to navigate through is so detrimental to our mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. It is so important for me, as a Black man to humanize myself and be around others that see me as human. In the past I would get in my intellectual bag and break down the historical foundation of a particular structure in this racist white supremacist capitalistic sexist homophobic system. As much as that would draw the attention to pro-Black and intellectually astute colleagues and peers or shake the room for “well meaning” white liberals distancing themselves from their white family members, it wasn’t speaking to the deep emotional and spiritual part of the experience. Me unifying with my Black self, so I can unify with my very Black tribe, created a space where we could see each other and love one another unconditionally in a system that has layers of conditions in order to meet the requirement of simply being seen as deserving. I see myself as deserving of unity and community. I see myself as deserving of the love and support that comes with it, thus I am able to share that love and support with my tribe.
My mentor once told me that the love is the most radical tool and not until I read Audre Lorde and Bell Hooks did I understand what he was saying. To unify in love, especially as Black people, is a radical shift that allows us to see each other genuinely. If we continue to unify in love like we have been generationally, I believe the possibilities for us are endless. We already unify through culture (music, food, adverse experiences, joyful experiences, etc) so for us to dig deeper and use love as vehicle to connect emotionally would open up ways for us to further empathize with each other’s experiences from all intersections of our Blackness. As a straight cis Black man, I take on the responsibility of unpacking the crap I was taught from a young age because we cannot unify without unpacking the harmful teachings of capitalism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia within our community. I also take on the responsibility to build community with other Black men in efforts to co-create healing spaces with them: to exist in love, unity, and community. We as Black people are deserving of this type of love, community, and safety. This system will never create it for us but that doesn’t mean we cannot continue to co-create it for one another.
