I’m still learning how to be an effective ally in the pursuit of social justice. Part of this, for me, comes through figuring out how to best support other allies, how to effectively engage with them, even when they’re not as well-versed in the issues as I’ve become through many years of education. I often ask myself this: How can I balance meeting people where they’re at while also holding people responsible for their ignorant and harmful actions and beliefs? Is there a place for compassion and patience toward well-meaning allies, even when they unintentionally harm others?

What I want to focus on for this blog post is the phenomenon of what I’m calling “anxious allyship” — what it is, how it manifests in certain spaces, and what I do to prevent myself from both being an anxious ally and driving others into anxious ally behaviors via things like gatekeeping.

Read More

Be flexible in my narrative. When I say things like ‘I’m just an anxious person,’ or ‘I suck at confrontation,’ then I risk fixing onto this narrative rather than managing it in a healthy way. I become unwilling to recognize instances where I’m not anxious. I ignore opportunities for growth. Instead, I find it better to foster a flexible narrative. I know it’s important to acknowledge, normalize, and even embrace my identities, but I don’t want to mistake an aspect of my identity for my identity wholesale. I’m not my anxiety. Rather, I struggle with anxiety. I’m not Depression. Rather, depression has had a formative influence on my sense of self. This, too, goes for my social identities. Identities are real, and they have very real impacts on our world and our experience, but they are not everything. To paraphrase James Baldwin, identities are like garments that ought to be worn loosely so that our nakedness—and ability to change—can still be felt.

Read More

Well, here we are. Another year past. Each of us is simultaneously the oldest we’ve ever been, and the youngest we’ll ever be again. My bones a bit more brittle, a few thousand more heartbeats beat, a few thousand more breaths breathed. As I reflect on another year gone by, I am struck by the sheer amount of moments I got to experience. Many of the moments were profound, exciting, beautiful, horrible.

Read More

In a lot of respects, thanksgiving is pretty fucked up. If you’re like me, it can be easy to just think of it as a time of eccentric relatives, dry turkey, and gravy boats. But it’s not that easy for millions of others. For many Native Americans, for instance, thanksgiving’s a holiday marred by a history of genocidal imperialism. I think it’s important for us (white people in the U.S.) to acknowledge this side of thanksgiving; I think it’s important to introduce this history into our tradition of celebration. We should take it upon ourselves to learn the true and tragic aftermath of the (largely apocryphal) events of the first thanksgiving and we should do our best to discuss these events with our friends and family.

Read More