I have had a few small and interesting moments of feeling misunderstood in the past week and they have left me with a question of “what is this reaction all about?” I experience this clenching in my chest, my eyes feel teary, I want to defend myself, I want to run away…no…disappear…
With each of these experiences, I have been able to stop anything from moving forward and watch my response as it surfaces. I am able to integrate Internal Family Systems (IFS) into my curiosity with myself and discover a young part who is afraid of being exiled from the group because I haven’t held the status quo. This is both my personal young story and the story of queerness and embodied work in community. I realize that the young part can be cared for rather easily with a recalibration to the current space and people I am with. The queer part is terrified because of cancel culture.
My experience with the intersection of queerness and cancel culture began in my 20’s when I didn’t feel “queer enough” because I had been married to a man and had a child. I was aware of the people who wouldn’t accept me. I had some gold star lesbians tell me they would never date me because they had learned their lesson with “straight girls”. I didn’t have much in common with my peers because I was a young, single, parent. I compensated by staying up to date with pop culture and going out as often as I could so I seemed “cool”. I was exhausted and lonely.
Fast forward to organizing work…the way that fellow organizers would police each others actions, words, presence…I was disregulated most of the time and desperately trying to figure out how to be a part of things while also not loosing my internal footing. I failed, a lot. I ostracized good people in my life and I found that I was not in integrity with myself and my community when I would watch, or worse, join a cancellation campaign.
Now, I am in a different stage of development. I have been cancelled by different groups for different reasons. My actions were not innocent. I did harm, I didn't listen to myself and I let a lot of my own boundaries fall to try to keep others happy. I was so afraid of the outcome that inevitably happened anyway.
Here are a few of my take aways:
If I am wavering in my sense of self or belonging it is time to sit back, disengage from the rhetoric and get curious with myself.
If I can name what is coming up for me, do it with a trusted source who is able to hold nuance and a balance of perspectives.
reflect, reflect, reflect…What is familiar? What is the fear? What story am I telling myself? What narrative am I clinging to? as I start to get clarity in these ways…
Surrender. Can I drop? Let go? Stop? Sit back? What do I need to put down?
From here, I usually have clarity of my asks or my pivots. Often times, it is something I need to do internally. Sometimes, it is a community or relational effort.
I still sit with the fear of being cast out of the groups I am a part of. I am still being pushed out and moving away from groups I care about. I am learning and fumbling. I try to always fail forward. Always remembering that I will fail and others will fail me. With that knowledge in hand I ask “How do I want to do this with love and relational being at the center?”
I would enjoy hearing about how you have experienced or created ways of change with failure, love, and relationality all held central.