Systems of oppression function best when we are isolated, the antidote, the medicine, for the systems we are fighting against is community.
-Cynthia J. Zapata
Women for Political Change hosted the Young Women's Initiative YWI Network Launch on Saturday, January 25th, and invited me to perform poems. I am an alumnus of the Young Women's Initiative, but I will write about that journey in a different post.
My set was short, but in between each poem, I created a narrative arc to tie it back to the event's theme of "intentionality." This word has a certain buzz to it, and when I thought of what I wanted to say to a room of young people whose gender identities bump up against structures daily, I knew that I wanted to reiterate the power of community.
Dr. Faith G. Harper writes this in her book titled This is Your Brain on Anxiety:
"Human beings are hardwired to connect. We get better in healthy relationships and crave interdependence not independence. "We are the products of all sorts of fuckedupedness. If your word is disrupted on a regular basis because of who you are, what you look like, and where you live, you lack privilege in those areas. And lacking privilege makes you far more susceptible to mental health issues and less likely to receive appropriate treatment for them."
Loneliness is a type of bodily hunger that is attempting to tell us something. When we hunger, many of us seek out food. However, when we feel lonely, we don't always know what to do or who to turn to, and ignoring this need can only cause more internal damage.
In the United States, toxic individualism is uplifted and celebrated. It is easier to blame others for their misfortune if you believe they aren't trying hard enough to succeed.
As I've tended to wounds of mine, I've dived deeper around the research on interdependence and attachment theory. Interdependence is much like a muscle; you learn to use it best when you work to rely on others. To become interdependent, one has to trust that someone will be there.
The trust part of this equation is one I am still learning to understand because to trust; I must also believe I am worthy of having my needs met.
So as someone who has experienced interpersonal-violence, systemic-violence and also carries generational trauma, finding myself worthy feels awkward and uncomfortable. The word "worthy" is difficult enough to say out loud, but to feel it and to understand its truth feels much like putting on something that doesn't fit right.
When I think of how difficult it is to wear "worthy" and sit with its weight in my chest, I'm angered. So much has happened to make me, and us, feel like we must fight to feel this, but how is that possible if worthiness is an intrinsic part of who we are?
We have been untaught our worthiness through different stories and narratives. Sometimes the story is a caregiver who neglected us. Sometimes the narrative is the education system failing us. Either way, we are still the authors of our lives. We know our truth, we are worthy now.
I imagine a world in which we are so profoundly unafraid. Unafraid of who we are and able to ask for what is rightfully ours.
Imagine with me. There is power in numbers.