Black lives Matter: what affects one subset of our population, affects all of us.

I’ve been taking the time to have open eyes and ears to all that is going on right now pertaining to racial inequality and the cases of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, David McAtee, and Tony McDade, and others.

I’ve been listening, absorbing, sharing perspectives of POC.

I understand that the lens that I’ve been looking at life through as a white woman is starkly different than that of a black man. I see white privilege, I see the tendrils of systemic racism that still exist in our country.

Here’s something that is extremely prevalent in my mind.

When the same uncomfortable scenarios circle back around in our life, we have a tendency to shove them away, be annoyed that they are still presenting themselves to us.

I’ve been working on this a lot lately with different scenarios in my life — when my money struggles present themselves again, when I feel my old self trying to claw her thoughts back into mine, when I drop into victimhood…

I find myself saying “I thought I dealt with you already” and creating more and more frustration and resistance..

Then my mentors remind me that when the same patterns come up in our lives, it’s actually an opportunity to do a deeper healing, to extract the lessons, to face that which we weren’t ready to face before, to clear deeper rooted blocks.

On a macro-scale, this is what I feel like we are dealing with in our world right now in terms of the issue of racism.

I see many many people say:

“This again? We’ve dealt with this already in our history, we’ve given blacks equal privileges to whites, we’ve given them an advantage in getting into colleges, police brutality happens more to whites than blacks, etc.”

It’s in our faces again because it’s not healed, it’s not acknowledged, there are still lessons to learn. POC are telling us just that.

This is an invitation for all of us to recognize that what affects one subset of our population, affects all of us.

I subscribe to the belief that on a consciousness level, we all have a huge part to play in working as a functioning collective. I subscribe to the belief that on a wider scale, we are all one.

I believe this is our invitation to dig deeper, confront the uncomfortable, listen to other perspectives without judgement, extract the lessons.

Not to shove our opinions down each others’ throats, to make this a Replublicans vs Democrats, to spiritually bypass the lived experiences of those who are speaking up…

Just my two cents

— Coral Lee

If this is something that you’re resonating with, I wanted to include a few resources that have I have been referring to in looking closer at these current events.

If you don’t believe that racial inequality still exists in this day and age, I would encourage you to read this inspirational yet confronting story that went viral on Facebook this week.

I believe we’ve reached a point in history where it’s one thing to not be racist yourself, but actually what we are called to do is to learn how to be an Anti-Racist. If you want to see a compilation of resources (audio, visual & written), then click here. Also, I’m putting together a book club for others who want to start digging into this work (reply back if you want more info on this!)

If you’re wondering how to talk to your kids in a constructive (but not perpetuating) manner,these resources have been suggested to me.

I haven’t been so quiet over on social media. To see some of the content I have been sharing, the discussions that have been taking place, etc, head over to my facebook page.

I wanted to leave you with one last image that really has stood out to me over the last couple weeks.