Heal THYSELF While Healing Others
Psychologist Amos Wilson and Social Worker Joy Degruy both made valuable contributions to Black consciousness and liberation. While both made contributions in various areas, perhaps the most underappreciated has involved the concepts of societally-inflicted pain and our need to individually and collectively heal. Wilson's book on Black Violence and Degruy's book on the Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome describe in vivid detail how the United States has historically mistreated and exploited Black people, and how this oppression has manifested in pain that we have in many cases, inflicted upon those in our own families and communities.
Their scholarship falls right in line with brother Malcolm's call for Black people to "Wake up, Clean up, and Stand up!" The concept of cleaning up indicates the need for us to identify and eliminate our own self-defeating behavior and thinking that compromises efforts toward empowering and liberating ourselves. As we challenge the enemy's oppression, we must also challenge ways we mistreat and exploit ourselves. This external-internal dynamic has implications for Black parenting and leadership as well.
Any efforts to heal our communities without seriously healing ourselves will inevitably be undermined. On one level, we simply cannot offer others what we ourselves don't have. Secondly, the hypocrisy and contradictions involved in attempting to do so will result in conflicted, compromised leadership our people will eventually distrust. Lastly, this type of leadership will not be as productive or effective as it could have been with more integrity.
Hypothetically speaking:
How can we advocate for victims experiencing a particular form of mistreatment if we ourselves participate in that very form of mistreatment ourselves?
How can we adequately compel our people to empower their families when our own immediate families are toxic, unproductive, and highly dysfunctional, we ourselves are part of that dysfunction, and we take no course of action to break the cycle?
How do we teach others what we ourselves haven't taken the time to adequately understand?
How can other people trust and emulate our leadership when we are chronically late to or absent from our own meetings and events, or fail to perform our organizational duties?
How can we empower our people to know who they are or to heal themselves when we have not determined who we truly are and have not healed (or seriously attempted to heal) from the bitterness and pain of the traumas we've experienced?
How do we encourage our people to work together, when we participate in cliques whose members only support or entertain ideas from members of our clique? Or, we stop working with good people due to hearsay or because of another person's experience with them?
In raising these questions, I am not suggesting that I am perfect, nor am I suggesting that other community leaders be. The point here is that leadership should have basic integrity. If we don't really believe an idea, we shouldn't advocate it. We should not teach what we don't practice or seriously try to embody. If pain and trauma have made us insecure or caused us to feel inadequate and ugly, get help. If we got involved in leadership because we need the attention or adoration of others, if we crave being on the media, being desired by others, or receiving praise, but ARE NOT COMMITTED to actually educating and empowering people, consider other more relevant options. Try entertainment or the hospitality industry. Manage a club. Work at a bar. Be a model. Register for an online dating service. Act. But leave leadership and community empowerment alone if you're not serious about the responsibilities involved. Leaders are made not by the inconsistent work they do in public, but by the consistent work they do when no one's watching or praising them. Study, thinking, planning, organizing, raising money. Building relationships with other leaders. Stepping back sometimes and giving others space to shine. Taking principled but sometimes unpopular positions. Speaking out against injustice. Making our homes a reflection of the ideas we speak and applaud.
Bullshit can sometimes get you to the top, but it will never keep you there. Do the real work, and reap the real reward. Fakers and frauds will eventually be exposed by the community, and that fall will be hard and shameful. Let sincere people who - though imperfect - are willing to do the hard internal and external work required, advocate for our people. Our people deserve and need nothing less....
There is no shame in being violated or mistreated by others. Many of our people endured tragedy, sought and received healing, and went on to become phenomenal community leaders/activists. But it is irresponsible to use leadership simply as a vehicle for one's personal self-esteem or as a pulpit to release or resolve personal bitterness and trauma. Those efforts require serious self evaluation and perhaps more formal therapy/counseling. We cannot fight against practices we engage in. We cannot heal others when we ignore our own damage. We cannot fight for things when our behavior, priorities and practices are diametrically opposed to that which we fight for......We must heal ourselves as we heal others.
