Let me start by saying that I have only recently discovered Rachel Ricketts and don’t know her personally.
https://www.rachelricketts.com/
That said in the last two weeks I have spent an almost absurd amount of time on her website. I came across her IG shortly after people started protesting the murder of George Floyd by police in MN. I will admit that at first I didn’t hit the follow button. I was uncomfortable. But as I delved deeper, her name kept coming up.
So I went back, I hit the follow button and started to scroll through. I watched her “Read FIRST” highlight… and once again felt uncomfortable, so I saw that for what it was (white fragility and exceptionalism) and I kept going.
It’s been a few weeks now and I feel like I have come a long way. Now I’m nowhere near the end (psst, that’s cause there isn’t one) and I’m nowhere near where I need to be. I own that I will mess up. I will and have hurt people. I know that intentions don’t matter in that space, I still hurt people. I also know that I have to work through all that and still jump in and do the work. The reality is that if I don’t try to educate myself, listen, and amplify the voices of POC, if I don’t try to use my privilege to reverberate their message into the spaces I will be heard and they might not be… if I don’t do anything. That is SO, SO much worse.
I started by reading some of the essays and articles that she has included on her resource page. It made a difference and got me thinking. I made a commitment that until 2021 I will read something along those lines 5 days a week. I started donating and set up monthly contributions. I purchased from POC and ordered books to educate myself further. Then I took Rachel’s 101 Webinar (and plan on taking 102 this weekend). It was really brilliant, it was uncomfortable, honest, and ugly…. but it flipped a switch inside my head.
I’m not even sure exactly what the switch was, but in the days following I have been able to have two really important and needed conversations with my mixed boyfriend. I was able to make space for his emotions surrounding everything going on right now, in a way that I hadn’t before… this perhaps has been the single most important thing. I can’t imagine what this is like for him, I can’t even describe how it feels to finally really have these conversations. But it’s changed this experience for the both of us.
I was able to recognize just how problematic the crime dramas I used to really love watching are. I fought the urge to ask POC to help me and to answer my questions. I read, meditated, and did 101 a second time. Like I said before I still have a LONG way to go. But I’ve noticed a change in myself. And so I guess this is me saying thank you, and also suggesting that everyone else I know please visit her website or the website of another BIWOC social justice educator and start doing the work.
Lastly, a week ago Monday, the anniversary of my dad’s death, and the first day I really ‘took off’ to address my own stuff…. I was looking through my favorite grief podcast ‘Grief out Loud.’ And there was an interview from a few years ago with none-other than Rachel. I listened to that, which was eloquent and well done.
The podcast mentioned a grief focused blog that Rachel had. I’m not sure that that is still up, but on her website I was able to find some great things she’s written, including something she wrote on her moms second Death-I-versary…. which really opened my heart and tear ducts.
In that moment, it was exactly what I needed.
So whether you found my blog through the activism and anti-racism posts, or through the letter I wrote that Monday to my dad. Or maybe none of those things…. I think that Rachel has something you need to hear. And I definitely want to say ‘thank you’ to her.
Coffee & Conundrums 