Taking a side

If I'm being truly honest, I don't want to take sides.

I've always been this way.  I want to see everyone have a fair chance.  It's more important to me that two people in an argument feel heard rather than one "win" the argument.  I feel badly for the team that lost against my team (unless they're playing the Cubs...the Cubs deserve a good season). 

I like seeing others get along and I believe that God created this world to be diverse and beautiful in it's diversity.  I was created to be optimistic, idealistic, and to see the good in others.  It breaks my heart to see evil and I hate division.  I would have thrived in the 60s/70s and would have worn that flower headdress proudly...but no drugs please.

The division people are taking on social media is heartbreaking.  I am tearing up now as I write.  The fact that race is still a systemic issue in our country angers me.  I am getting hotheaded as I write.   The fact that police men and women who have sworn to protect lives are both taking lives and having their lives be taken is devastating.  I feel defeated as I write.

I don't want to take sides.

But to sit in my own world and not say something and to not stand up for something feels wrong to me too.  Just the fact that I have that option speaks loudly to the systemic issue of race and my own white privilege.  I am so grateful to the loving and patient friends I have from other race and ethnic backgrounds and for how they have shown me and highlighted what it means to have white privilege.  I want to use this privilege for good.  I want to help.  I want to be there and say, "I grieve for you too.  This hurts."  I hate the thought that I'm privileged just because I was born as a white female.  Or that I'm privileged because I'm straight.  I am so grateful for my friends of other sexual orientations and gender experiences who have answered my questions to help me understand.  I won't ever fully understand what it feels like to be in any of those positions, but I want you to know that I want to help.  I want to support.  I want to be the flower-child that I am and also to stand up for what is right.  I want to walk the middle path.

I don't want to take sides.

I am literally crying as I write this post.  I feel so overwhelmed by the amount of division and arguments I have seen on social media.  I support the Black Lives Matter movement and I am glad that issues of diversity have not stopped moving in my heart since I left Chicago.  I don't want to be apathetic.  I want to help make change.  I want to be in support of making systemic racial change in our society.  I want to inform those in my community what white privilege is and how their statements of "all lives matter" is insulting and insensitive.  But this does not mean that I'm against cops or that I think they are all misinformed and lack good judgement.  So why does it feel this way?

I don't want to take sides.

A while ago, I read an article by a black basketball player who struggled with anxiety.  He wrote an article on how the perpetual trauma that both race communities and authority communities experience and how this triggers unnecessary violence.  This helped me take a side.  Our system is broken.  As a mental health professional, I understand trauma.  I understand how when you've been trained from a systemic perspective to mistrust a people group based on history of events, it is easy to have a quick trigger.  If both groups are traumatized and have been trained in systemic trauma, it would be impossible to react calmly and with a clear mind.  I see this in my trauma clients all the time.  The reaction is one out of defense.  But the reaction results in violence and incites hate and anger and mistrust, thus continuing the problem and widening the gap of understanding between communities.

I am on a side.

I am on the side of working to fix this problem.  I am on the side of speaking up in my small community about white privilege and how to use it for good.  I am on the side of Black Lives Matter and becoming more educated about the movement by listening to my black brothers and sisters.  I am on the side of getting the right mental health support for our communities.  I am on the side of working to fix the stigma of getting mental health support in the police community.  I am on the side of decreasing fear and reducing trauma reactions. 

I understand the fact that I have the privilege to choose to ignore race division in our society is white privilege.  I choose not to ignore it. 

This is my side.