Stretching Into a Collective "We"
Notes from stretching into community and wisdom from Hala Alyan and adrienne maree brown
It is late at night and sleep eludes me. I turn to my side and trace my husband’s tiger stripes underneath my fingertips, a remnant of broadening and lengthening very quickly in his teenage years before settling into his full height. The markings bear witness to a period of rapid growth.
At five feet I am a full foot shorter than him, and I do not know the sensation of being in physical pain as your limbs lengthen and your body changes form.
In the past few weeks though, I have felt my emotional and spiritual self stretching and shedding old ideas and beliefs that no longer fit. My heart is expanding, and growth is painful.1
In my somatics practice we are encouraged to practice centering in four dimensions. In the dimension of length you straighten without straining and connect to your inherent dignity. In the dimension of width you broaden the edges of yourself and connect to community and collective purpose. In the dimension of depth you increase your awareness of the front and back of your heart and connect to your lineages past and present. In the final dimension you centre in your declaration of what and who you care about and what you long for in this world.
Out of these different dimensions, recently I have been thinking a lot about the dimension of width. When focusing on this dimension you take up space, broadening your entire body from your cheeks, your chest, your thighs as you stretch into community and collective purpose. This practice teaches you to maintain your individual “I” within the collective “we” and test how porous or opaque you want your boundaries to be.
I used to think that my “we” was primarily racialized folks. This past month has changed that. I am no longer interested in projects and questions focused on diversity. Yes power and privilege is something we all need to reckon with and yes whiteness as a system harms us all, but representation within broken systems does not advance our collective freedom. As racialized leaders refuse to respond to public demands for a ceasefire in Gaza and as our collective freedoms crumble as people of all identities are punished and silenced for speaking out, we are all learning in real-time that deep equity skills and intersectional analysis are not a birthright. Using our power wisely requires self-vigilance and collective practice.
The “we” I am most interested in nowadays is a community of truth. Often truth-tellers are racialized people (consider which US lawmakers have called for a ceasefire for example), and lived experience matters deeply, but the past few weeks have been a reminder that collective liberation is a justice project that needs us all. My social media feeds are full of humbling reminders that amidst the devastation and destruction, people of all backgrounds are striving to unlearn inherited narratives, to bear witness to truth and to advocate for justice even if it means holding themselves to account. This community of people inspires and moves me every day. I want to be part of this community of truth.
Being a truth-teller however, requires a great deal of individual and collective work.
I’m in a somatics program right now with teacher Staci Haines in which she shared recently that when we are stuck in a trauma response our survival reactions remain caught in our soma - a Greek word used to describe “our living organism in all its wholeness.” Our soma includes “our sensations, our emotions, our internal narratives, relational stances, actions and absence of action” (Staci Haines 2023). Processing that trauma allows us more response choices and enables us to take in current information rather than being stuck in a protective trauma response.
Several months ago during a related multi-day somatics training in California I had a chance to process some of my own trauma. On one of the last days of the course, we did a practice called “allyship” in groups of four. When it was our turn within the group, the other participants followed our instructions of how we wanted them to take shape around us and what we wanted them to say. Despite witnessing this practice in person and online, and feeling profoundly moved each time, I felt skeptical that the experience would “work” on me. I find it difficult to tune into my body, to become present to my own sensations. Chronic pain has made this even harder.
I was partnered with three white women. When it was my turn I experimented with different positions: the other participants in front of me and me facing their backs, the other participants in front of me with me turned away to have my back to them, or all of us standing in a line together. Every time, my soma rejected the formation and we quickly changed positions.
And then I stood in front of the others, us making a triangle of sorts, and instantly and inexplicably, my tears began to flow. We stood there for what felt like a long time, tears pouring down my cheeks as I felt the fullness of that moment and felt my grief. We made adjustments and tried different things: adding touch, taking away touch, adding speech, and standing in silence, but for the most part we remained in our triangle. That alone was the shape that felt like allyship.
Prior to that moment, having my leadership accepted by white women had been a rare experience. If anything, it has been a fight. The practice made me realize that despite the positive relationships I have with dear friends and colleagues, over the course of my life thus far, I have experienced tremendous harm at the hands of white women/girls (I am not alone in this, the relationship between white women and women of colour is a well documented one). Certain harms at particular vulnerable periods of my life still reside in my soma. That practice was an opportunity to release some of that stuck reaction so that I can act and live from a more regulated place.
This is ongoing, lifelong work, and supports the broader work I am trying to do nowadays to become a better vessel of change. Lately I keep returning to a question gifted by Staci Haines that asks: “Who do you need to be to meet the challenges of this moment?” Sitting in the discomfort of that question has revealed a wide gap between who I am and who I need to be. And so I am trying to practice generosity, open-mindedness, compassion, self-acceptance. I am striving to work on my own “stuff” and become a more rigorous, committed, reflective person, aware of my own entanglements and complicities, and striving to untangle rather than deny. I want to see and understand how all struggles, all oppressions are connected everywhere and live from a more honest place.
The scale and site of my practice ground changes every day. A couple of weeks ago it was the laundry detergent aisle at the grocery store when I felt deep disappointment over the realization that I had to stop purchasing detergent pods full of plastics and switch to the environmentally sound detergent strips my husband uses. Making this switch necessitated examining and acknowledging the feeling of scarcity that emerges when I use simpler products. I had to admit that despite the lack of packaging, I do not like bulk bin products. I had to open myself up to receiving advice because I do not like being told what to do. I had to stretch.
Another day the practice ground was plans about travel. I had to let go of ideas of visiting places I’ve wanted to see that no longer feel ethical to travel to, consider websites/booking softwares I use for travel, and reflect on the kind of accommodation I want to stay at. I had to think about the kind of impact I want to create or avoid creating when I travel and I had to evaluate my intentions for travelling and leisure. This conversation involved surfacing ideas of “deserving”, comparison, and the beliefs and experiences about money that underpin my travel experiences.
Every day offers multiple moments just like this.
These conversations are painful but expand my understanding of my own desires, my beliefs about my needs and wants, what I truly need and what I can go without, and my frameworks of how I earn and spend. These conversations help me stretch into the collective “we” and help me become more truthful to the kind of person I want to be.
Till next time,
Shagufta
To Read
How to Keep Going
I loved this essay by
about how to remain sustainable in the work of liberation. My favourite takeaway was the advice to have different definitions of success for your justice work at differen timescales. The whole article is a valuable read.On Brave Community
This article came across my feed from adrienne maree brown, and is a wonderful read.
From Sara Ahmed, this article is about the feeling of unease and unsettledness that we are collectively experiencing.
To Do
If you’re in Canada, sign this petition in the House of Commons right now that calls for a ceasefire.
To Watch
Ta-Nehisi Coates on Palestine
From Democracy Now, this interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates is a must watch.
Endurance with Hala Alyan and adrienne maree brown. (IG Live)
Takeaways: (mistakes in notetaking my own)
Hala Alyan: There is a lot of guilt in this moment. When the guilt comes up, it’s allowed to be there. Nobody has ever successfully vanquished a feeling. Nobody has ever waged a battle on emotion and won. How we resist painful experiences leads to more contractions.
Both things can be dialectically present. That we are privileged to be able to have these conversations of care, and at the same time, if we do not care for ourselves we will not be able to show up for the things we care about. Self care rooted in individualism can lead to capitalism, numbing, turning away. The end of that journey is something that feels good or less of something that feels bad. It’s more of something that feels easier. That is where that framework takes you.
Collectivist care is about radical self care. Audre Lorde did a lot of writing about that. First part is important and can look similar to individual care. Nobody else is in exactly your body, your particular situation, your positionality, your space and will know your needs exactly more than you. And so you need to be doing the things you need to do to feel replenished.
And then the question is: We are doing this care to what end?
A: To be alive and of more service (to your life and to the lives of others). To be of service to the people and places that are important to us. Collectivist care has a purpose that is more than just diminished distress.
adrienne maree brown: There is a sense that if you use your whole life force up, maybe it’ll work. If I run ragged maybe it translates to less people dying.
The way I approach movement work is that you have to find your long term commitment. So I know what I am on earth to do. It is to contribute to justice and liberation. Great suffering, great harm, great devastation that everyone has to look at is an opening for the whole species to say: “Do we mean anything of what we say? About no apartheid, of never again - do we mean any of that?” Because here is this practice ground. Now once I find commitment, I’m going to do this my whole life. There is a way then that I sleep at night and hydrate. Because this (my self) is the vessel from which my justice work will happen for my whole life.
Grace Lee Boggs lived to be 100 years old. She rested, she swam, she spoke justice into every space she was in. She was consistent.
Hala Alyan: Having a consistent self politic is one of the most self-caring things you can develop.
Hala Alyan: And changing mind is a powerful thing. We all have inherited narratives. We all have a responsibility to interrogate them.
adrienne maree brown: I am trying to get in alignment with life moving toward life because that is the best thing for our global health.
Hala Alyan: This has been a humbling moment of allyship, solidarity.
If you build foundational approach for yourself - that this is my direction, this is my north star, that my internal compass is always going to be oriented to this, that everyone is going to be liberated, this is going to be my guiding light, it does something in terms of clarity, steadiness, and rootedness that is a very beautiful thing.
adrienne maree brown: If you just got here, it’s not too late. Part of my care work, is that wherever and whenever you show up to justice work it’s not too late. You showed up against tremendous odds.
Hala Alyan: If grace and restoration not offered, people become afraid. If we don’t normalize changing mind. We really need to make it okay to have stances that we can later say, I was wrong.
adrienne maree brown: When we do that (the welcome, the normalization), the whole world changes. I don’t want to be part of right side of history, I want to be part of the right intervention. If I have to change to make that intervention I want to change. All of the offerings we are making are so small, we can’t throw ourselves away and we can’t throw anyone else away.
Ego part of me that shows up and says I will show up and stop this singlehandedly. If only I was the best leader in the world. That is part of empire. That is the little emperor within us. And so I have to say: calm down little emperor, you cannot know how to fix the world.
Hala Alyan: And that little emperor is welcome. There is a time and place for you and I will call on you when needed.
The idea of trying to run myself ragged, rooted in individualist narrative rooted in the idea of the little emperor.
The parts of our system are not verbal. Truly the greatest way to reset nervous system is to do something that we cannot also do when we are also in grave danger. (Settling breath and escaping sharks can’t happen at same time)
There is something in replenishment and something in humility. A lot of replenishment in thinking critically and precisely about witnessing. Something beautiful and honourable about the act of bearing witness. There is something to bringing oneself fully to another’s suffering within one’s capacity.
Question: How do I regulate myself and be able to bear witness to these things? Painful to bear witness. How to avoid compassionate fatigue? When bearing witness to images and videos that people are recording in English, then the next question is: How do I regulate myself to the best of my ability? How do I soothe my nervous system to the best of my ability and digest appropriately so I can show up in different ways?
Important to bear witness, particularly when community is facing erasure or narratives are facing distortion.
Bearing witness is a commitment to truth. I am going to seek truth. I am going to find it, listen to it, communicate it, immerse in it. Will bear witness when people ask you to.
adrienne maree brown: Even if you don’t change your mind right away, you have to contend with what you’ve seen. Have to ask myself what I’m witnessing and why. Bearing witness right now not because I don’t believe but because people are asking us to.
It’s important to recognize the power that you do have. Relationship is how most change happens.
I want to be a good witness. I want to accurately witness.
We forget the movements still build through heart to heart relationships that fundamentally get people to let go of what they grew up with and step onto the limb of something else.
You need to be well regulated to be in those conversations.
Hala Alyan: And everyone has different roles. There are people who it is not their role to regulate their nervous system and have those conversations. It’s the role of allies.
If I’m bearing witness with clarity, unflinching, then I want for you what I have. If i have ease, I want ease for you. If I have water, anesthesia, I want those things for you.
I want the things for you that bring me love joy connectedness.
We dehumanize people in other places and think they don’t need the same things we need. That though we would struggle with no electricity, they are okay.
adrienne maree brown: Everything i do well, I do because of endurance. That not showing up (ex: not swimming) is the anomaly.
Same thing with justice work, every day going to show up and take the action.
I fill my cup and have a lot of creative attention. The endurance is that I always going to show up for justice. The commitment for the rest of my life” I am going to show up for justice.
Hala Alyan: If you hold that foundationally, you don’t need to go back and forth. Because then you have committed to this thing as a practice, perspective as a value system, so naturally that’s where your attention is going to go
There are also a lot of books about attention economy. Attention is a commodity and pulling attention is often by design.
How we conserve and protect our ecosystem-our attention is part of that. Attention might be the most precious resource at a time when a community is facing erasure.
adrienne maree brown: If i can say that I am always going to be learning and expanding my heart, because work of colonization is to make it narrow.
We are not moving towards easier times. For that reason, stagger yourself. Think about how you need to restore. Want to encourage people to ask for help and have a squad and team around you.
Hala Alyan: Starting to feel the characteristics of burnout is such a good reminder to regroup. And if also if I need to step back, someone is going to step in.
adrienne maree brown: Just because you can’t do what everyone else is doing (ex: if you can’t walk far), do your part.
Ruckus Society: great resources about care inside of action.
I attended a lecture recently called the “Decolonizing the Future” with Vanessa Andreotti hosted by Futures4Europe. That lecture led me to an offering by the “Gesturing Toward Decolonial Futures” collective called “What is possible but currently unimaginable” that makes four urgent calls. Here is my response to some of those calls.
Salaams. What a great read. Jazak Allah khair for sharing your thoughts. May Allah Taala continue to shower His choicest blessing on you ameen