Racial Healing and Wholeness:

Day 1 of 28 Prompts for Journaling, Meditation and Conversation.

Welcome

Seriously, welcome. I receive you.

Thank you for signing up, and joining me, for this exclusive opportunity to do a deep dive into your own personal racial healing. What an amazing way to honor February as Black History Month!

Over the next 28 days, you will receive a writing prompt each day via email.

The short description and paragraph will prompt you to explore your inner landscape as it relates to race and racism. This is an opportunity to open ourselves up to heal and learn and embrace more of who we really are. I will walk alongside you on this journey.

I hope, we briefly share, in the comments, our responses to the prompts while being mindful that we are a community of participants. This way, it is a conversation and not an isolated journey.

Today, I will lay the groundwork for our racial healing and wholeness and lay out important foundations for the purposes of establishing shared language.

Foundations for Racial Wholeness

1. I prefer to be "pro" something, rather than "anti" something. Therefore, I generally prefer to use the term "racially whole" or "racial wholeness," rather than "Anti-Racist." These prompts will direct us to racial wholeness through healing. Some might describe this as “anti-racism” work.

2. Racial healing work will shift your very core and will expand your identity. You must WANT to transform and grow towards racial wholeness. This is more of an "expansion of your personhood," rather than "total change." Embrace expansion and transformation.

3. These prompts are for every human being regardless of skin color or culture. Do not be surprised if I break down the question into different forms to consider the varied experiences of people responding.

4. I use the language of the "Global Majority" to describe non-white people as I do not want to center white skinned people. Often, others may use the term, "BIPOC." This is a racial reference.

5. As I am the United States, when I speak of "African Americans," I am specifically referring to Black people whose ancestors were enslaved people from Africa.

6. When I use the term "Black" people, I am referring to Black culture globally and, out of respect, I capitalize "B." I am not referring to a color, as the people called "Black" come in many, many different shades, but because of our ancestry, culture, and history, which has been long dismissed and disrespected. It helps to recognize the full humanity of Black people. We are people, not a color.

7. "Blackness" is the term given to the experience and expression of the socio-political identity that black people hold globally. It is in most popular use in the African American community (Urban Dictionary.) A Black person will say "my blackness" with pride.

8. I use the term "white" to describe white-skinned peoples. This is a racial reference. I do not capitalize "w" in white as this refers to a color only and not a culture.

9. When I use the term "whiteness," I am speaking of the dominant culture of Western civilization of the United States and Europe. It speaks to the domination of that culture as the global norm, and it is not a compliment. This is a cultural reference. I would not expect a white skinned person to say "my whiteness" with pride.

10. Self-compassion is your necessary and constant companion on this journey. It is what helps us integrate the parts of ourselves damaged by racism and reclaim our dignity. Kristen Neff says "Self-compassion is extending compassion to yourself in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering."  It is composed of three main elements – self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. Please refer to this article to learn more.

Approach towards Racial Wholeness

To uproot racism, we must embrace a mind, heart, and hands approach:

• The approach of the mind is the educational piece. Learning facts, knowledge, speaking the truth about history and listening to the stories of those most affected by racism is how we change the larger narrative. We must increase our knowledge of the damaging effects of whiteness and the value of blackness to the history and our world today.

• The approach of the heart, what I call "heart work," is where the spiritual dimension resides for this work. This is inclusive of your motivations, values, beliefs, emotions, programming, morality, your hopes, intentions, as well as your lived experiences. We must live an examined life to develop the necessary awareness to change our very identities.

• The approach of the hands are your actions, for which you embrace accountability towards those impacted by racism the most. There must be a change in our behaviors to become racially whole.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important." Yet, policies, movements, changed laws, lawsuits, protests and even body cams on the police have not resolved the issue of racism as we cannot legislate hatred away. We need all these things for accountability, and it does move the needle somewhat, but it is not enough.

To uproot racism, we must look within, inward, be honest with ourselves, and dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and put another there,* (language from the Global Charter for Compassion.)

I believe that racism is fundamentally a spiritual problem and thus requires a spirituality encompassing approach to work towards racial wholeness. The process of dethroning ourselves from the center of our universe may be awkward and feel unnatural but it can be done. It is a spiritual task. It is the necessary “heart work.”

My understanding of spirituality, for the purposes of this work, is inclusive of all faiths and religions, as well as those who subscribe to no religion, unknowingness, a belief in no spiritual dimension to life, and those who do not care about spirituality. Again, our “heart work” approach is our motivations, values, beliefs, emotions, programming, morality, our hopes, intentions, as well as our lived experiences.

Prompt

What values, beliefs, spiritual concepts and ideologies are foundational for your “heart work” in your desire for your racial healing and wholeness? Write them out so you can revisit them throughout the next 28 days.