HOW TO KEEP GOING
(poems and ideas)
how to take the first step on a long journey
first of all
smile
about
what there is
to
smile
about
when moving forward
do not worry
about
feeling lost
there is
a compass
inside of you
if you are listening
it will
tell you
which way to go
Be good to as
many people
as possible.
In January of 2017, my friend Mia invited me to her grandfather’s birthday in New Jersey. His name is Gene, and it was his hundredth birthday.
As soon as I walked into the party, I was overwhelmed by how much joy and life was in the room. There were grandkids and great-grandkids, pasta and cannoli, laughing and dancing, and even my mother—who is honestly never one to miss a good party—flew in from Louisiana for the celebration.
If you have ever met anyone who has reached a hundred years old, then you know that when you are around them, you can’t help but feel like you are in the presence of a miracle. I looked over at Gene toward the end of the night and found myself in awe as I thought about all that he had seen and lived through in his lifetime. As I did the math, I realized that he grew up during the Great Depression, fought in WWII, and had lived through everything from the struggle for worker’s rights, to the women’s liberation movement, the civil rights movement, a man on the moon, the Vietnam War, and the election of the first black president of the United States, all while sustaining his sixty-six-year marriage to his wife, Maria, who passed in 2014.
Now, right around the time of Gene’s birthday, the narrative that America was more divided than ever before was sweeping the nation. It had begun to feel like the only thing anyone could talk about. So, with his life experience in mind, I walked over to Gene, and I asked him if he had any advice during this current time. He looked up for a moment, sat back in his chair, looked back at me, smiled, and said, “Yes. Be good to as many people as possible.”
I absorbed those words for a while as I looked around the room at the hundreds of people, many of whom had flown thousands of miles to be there, who had gathered from all walks of life to celebrate him. I realized that Gene had not just given me great advice; he had shared with me the first step every single one of us is capable of taking if we want to have a real, wholehearted impact on the world around us:
Be good to as many people as possible.
going somewhere or going nowhere
hate
is a shortcut
love
is the long way
but it is
the only road
that will actually
get you anywhere
go the distance, beloved
something new
your pain made you do that
my pain made me do this
your pain made you hate
my pain made me judge
we get better and better at fighting (each other)
we get better and better at hiding (our feelings)
tell me something
if the old saying is true
and
hurt people hurt people
then
what do
healed people do?
I can’t be sure
but
I bet
they heal people
I’m ready
are
you?
We all have pain in our lives and our family lineage. My pain might make me think one way or vote one way on a particular issue; your pain might make you do the opposite. We get so busy doing what my friend Kate calls “shoulding all over each other.” (You know what I mean by that—“You should think this” or “You should be doing this” or “You shouldn’t be doing that.”) We don’t take a breath to ask ourselves, what in someone’s life experience has influenced their way of moving through the world? What has each of us not healed from yet?
I often hear people say that to resolve our disagreements we need to have “hard conversations.” While I don’t disagree entirely with that, I do wonder how much more effective our confrontations would be if we focused more on having healing conversations.
One day, I was listening to an episode of the podcast On Being with Krista Tippett, and her guest was John Lewis, the civil rights leader and congressman, and a personal hero of mine. There was one thing in particular that he said that really moved me. He was discussing the spiritual and psychological exercises that he and other nonviolent activists would use in the face of the violent racism that they were up against in the 1960s. He said,
“We, from time to time, would discuss if you see someone attacking you, beating you, spitting on you, you have to think of that person—years ago, that person was an innocent child, innocent little baby. And so what happened? Something go wrong? Did the environment? Did someone teach that person to hate, to abuse others? So you try to appeal to the goodness of every human being. And you don’t give up. You never give up on anyone.”
When we confront others on our differing views, are we rooting for their healing, or are we focusing on ourselves being right and them being wrong? Are we bringing our most healed self to conflict? The self that is focused on a just and peaceful outcome? Are we speaking to people in a way that believes in their ability to change, or in a way that merely shames their position?
Healing conversations are not often easy, but that does not mean they have to be hard conversations. For me, the difference between the two interactions is usually the energy we embody. When our intention is to have a hard conversation, we are generally very harsh and inflexible. But when our intention is to have a healing conversation, our energy is generally a little softer and less judgmental. If we focus on healing, our humanity and hope for the other will always remain intact. Our internal pain often wants to dictate our thoughts, words, and actions, but we always have the power to put the healed spaces within us in charge of our lives, actions, and words instead.
feast on it
your healing
is on its way
to you
have you made
room for
its arrival?
turn on the lights
turn up the music
let it know
that you are home
that you are ready for
your new day
that you believe
your new day belongs
to you
you deserve your healing. feast on it.
A few weeks before I finished this book, my friend DeRay walked into my writing room and saw a Post-it note stuck to the bottom of my computer. It read, “Silence is not the answer to your pain.” He immediately commented that he felt the note needed to go into this book.
Now, if you have ever been on a tight deadline to finish something, then you know that the last thing you are looking for is someone to tell you to start trying to add more than you planned.
So even though my “suggestion box” wasn’t exactly open, I asked him why he felt it was important to include in this text. He said,
“I used to think that silence would help the pain go away, that speaking about pain might actually make it worse. But it took me a while to realize that silence doesn’t usually help us understand the things that hurt us. Silence, if anything, often makes them hurt more.”
When I was growing up in Louisiana, my brother and I endured so much racism. We were often the only kids of color in all-white spaces, es
pecially during our high school years. I can’t tell you how many times people who were supposed to be our friends made racist comments, cruel jokes, or said the N-word.
I am often asked why I feel that it is important to speak out and use my voice. My answer is always the same: I speak up because I know the pain of being silent.
I remained silent in the face of these hurtful words during my girlhood because I didn’t have the language, tools, or courage to speak up. I lived in so much fear that the racist jokes or name-calling would be pointed at me one day, that I spent years hiding in my silence. Too often, as children, teenagers, and even as adults, if we feel outnumbered, or that there is no one to hear us, we feel that speaking up is a privilege that we do not have the ability to access.
As I grew out of my girlhood and into my womanhood, I knew I needed to develop a practice of cultivating the courage to express myself and speak up when I felt like something was wrong. My first step in doing this was expressing myself more in the spaces where I felt safe. This started with the circle of girlfriends that I met when I moved to New York City. As I spoke up more around my friends, I began to feel less afraid to express myself in a meeting or in public spaces.
I realized that the only way that I could heal the pain of years of being silent was to be silent no more. I still get scared and nervous when I speak out, especially in front of large groups of people, but whenever I do, I close my eyes for a moment and repeat this mantra: “Silence is not the answer to your pain.”
I believe that we make the world safer when we speak up. I believe that bravery is contagious and others speak up when we speak up. And perhaps most important, I believe that every time we speak up, we tell the world who we are instead of letting the world tell us who we should be. As I was writing this, I saw a tweet that my friend Katie reposted one day from Melissa McEwan that captured this sentiment perfectly—
“My friend Maud once said, ‘There are times when we must speak, not because you are going to change the other person, but because if you don’t speak, they have changed you.’ ”
Silence doesn’t change the world. It changes us. It shrinks us. It takes our stories and feelings away from us and buries them alive.
Unearth what is buried within you. Free yourself in this way.
only once
everything is a habit
fear
bravery
loving good
loving badly
speaking up
staying silent
giving
taking
opening up
shutting down
gratitude
ingratitude
building
destroying
doing things kindly
doing things unkindly
which of these habits
are worthy
of this life you will most definitely get to live only once
how much do you love yours?
I asked her
how she practiced forgiveness?
she looked at me, confused by the question
and said
how much do you love your freedom?
speechless
I stared back at her
she moved in closer to me,
and said,
I love my freedom way too much to live in the prison of non-forgiveness. How much do you love yours?
how much do you love your freedom?
how much do you love yours?
There is not a single
conversation that
kindness cannot make
infinitely better
Interestingly, the people who often inspire me the most are not those who agree with me, but those who disagree with me with kindness. It is the people who refuse to let me be their enemy just because we have a different perspective or point of view.
Every single one of us has the power to be kind from the beginning of a conversation until the end. Kindness does not mean that we act fake or that we let people walk all over us; it just means that we never allow for any person or situation to turn us into a version of ourselves that we are not proud of.
During the tough moments, when your head is hot, and your patience is almost completely tapped out, try to ask yourself:
Can I be kind through this?
Can I be kind all the way through this?
From beginning to end?
When we are having trouble showing decency and respect to others it is usually a sign that we need to ask ourselves questions like:
What is actually triggering this unkindness in me?
Why do I feel like it is not possible for me to express my thoughts or feelings in a way that is kind?
Leading with kindness requires us to work on ourselves and understand that we are responsible for our actions, our reactions, and our inaction. It requires us to spend time getting to know what within us stands in the way of us embodying kindness as we move through the world. It requires us to recognize that no one can force us to act a certain way. How we behave is always on us. Regardless of the other person’s behavior, it is still our choice.
Can you remain kind even in the presence of hate? (Especially because it is those who are doing the hating who really need the healing power of kindness in their lives.)
The phrase “Kill them with kindness” seems to continue to be passed to every generation, but it’s a phrase, I have to say, I never really liked. Kindness does not kill people; kindness reminds people just how vibrant life can be. Kindness reminds people that a life well lived is bigger than one particular moment, argument, or disagreement. Kindness reminds people of the best of who we are and who we can be to each other. Give that gift. I promise you, it is a gift that goes a lot further than you could possibly imagine.
inevitabilities
it will get messy (your life)
it will break (your heart)
but
oh, the joy
of all you learn
and the power
you gain
when you figure out
how to clean it up
and make your
heart whole
again
& again
& again & again
know the difference
and if
you have
come
a
long way—
rest
don’t stop
as the saying goes,
“you didn’t come this far,
just to come this far.”
we were happy
there is a poem by Hafiz hanging in my house that reads,
ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.
it breaks my heart a little every time I look at it.
it makes me think about who we were when we were young
before things
started getting
explained to us.
things like
gender, race, religion, and sexuality.
things like
fear, rejection, and shame.
before that we were happy
because we hadn’t been taught (yet)
not to accept others.
we were happy
because we hadn’t been taught (yet)
not to accept ourselves.
every
day
I work to get back to that place
the place where there are no walls between you and me.
the place where
vulnerability is real and beautiful.
the place where
I am happy and you are happy too.
I hear it calling our names.
How to stay connected
to your soul:
When something happens in the
world that is wrong, don’t try
to move on with your life like
it is right. The voice within you
that sa
ys, “This is not okay” is a
direct call from the basic
goodness of your spirit. Pick it
up. Every time. Pick it up. and
stay on the line until you
figure out how to help.
Dr. King said,
“Love is the most durable power in the world.”
I believe that to be true. And what is so incredible about this power is that it is a completely democratized power. It is available to every single one of us no matter who we are, where we come from, or what we have been through.
That’s all.
does the sea ever say
does the sea ever say
“I am not the ocean”
and would the river
ever
discriminate
against even
a single
rain drop?
does the pond ever consider the lake
to be anything less
than kin?
and do you think the stream
would ever dream
of feeling inferior to the channel
or the channel ever
regard the stream in any other way
than magnificent in its soothing beauty?
no
it is people who have decided
to categorize themselves
away from each other,
create beliefs to pin themselves
against each other,
and construct hierarchies
in pursuit of
dominance over each other’s bodies
all of this
in the name of power
water of course
sighs at these strategies
for
water
knows the true power
of falling
from heaven
and
owning more earth
than
land ever will