Post-Episode Musings: "May the Revolution Be Healing"

Check out the video at the end of this post for more of my reactions to the 'May the Revolution Be Healing' episode, which you can listen to in full on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Apologies for the video quality—my internet connection was not cooperating!

I recently facilitated a discussion on ‘Race, Gender, and Coloniality’. The (very awesome!) speaker I had invited to explore this topic, pointed to the tremendous contributions of Black womxn feminists to racial and gender justice movements globally. And then she said something that rattled me—she observed that so many of these Black feminist activists have died young, and many from cancer. She ventured to guess that stress was very possibly a contributing factor. I remember feeling my heart literally stop as I thought: “Holy shit, that could be me”. The more I thought about what she said, the more I began to realize how much the work we do as Black womxn to advocate for racial and gender justice can be lethal to our health and our very lives. First, consider the basic to-be-expected stress that comes with advancing racial and gender justice, and then consider the added risk factor of being Black and female while doing so. For me, it’s that extra layer of doing this work while subjecting ourselves—and being subjected to—all of the ‘misogynoirist’ tropes depicting us as super humanly resilient, impervious to pain, and invulnerable to the point of stoicism; tropes that literally deprive us of our humanity.

The work of advancing gender and racial justice is a true marathon, and lasting in this marathon—and emerging from it somewhat unscathed—requires that we have the choice to give into said humanity. Tapping into that humanity allows us to acknowledge the fatigue, the hurt, the exhaustion that comes with this work; it’s connected to allowing ourselves the grace to be flexible and pause—the sort of pause required for the rest and rejuvenation we need to continue the ‘revolution’ without letting the system deplete and, quite literally, kill us. It’s pretty twisted when you think of it: we’re barely surviving in a system that was intended to subjugate and kill us, but then our seemingly futile resistance against said system seems destined to kill us anyway. This brings me to a point Joi made during the episode when I asked her why ‘radical self-care’ is important for Black womxn, especially those engaged in this work. Her response was that we’d die otherwise. If no one cares for Black womxn and we aren’t caring for ourselves, then the resulting outcome is pretty obvious. This made me think about research on Black womxn and ‘weathering’, which has documented the harmful impacts of racism on maternal mortality among Black womxn. Then there’s the research on the actual physical and psychological harms of the Strong Black Woman and Black Super Woman stereotypes. I’m having flashbacks to a seriously racially toxic workplace in which my efforts to advance discussions on racial equity resulted in a severe amount of backlash from white colleagues which then manifested in relentless racial bullying from senior leadership. I think back to that experience and how much the SBW trope served me in terms of empowering me with the fortitude to ‘weather’ the racial bullying long enough to find another job and get the fuck out. Then again, there was also the expectation that I should be able to deal with that shit and still show up for my job. If I'm honest, that entire experience broke things in me I’ll probably never be able to 'fix'—I’m specifically referring to the physical outcomes of the stress I experienced. I still worry about the long-term physical effects of the psychological stress my body underwent—the constant headaches, the hip pain, the resurfacing of symptoms of my autoimmune condition which was supposed to be in full remission, the heart palpitations I experienced every single time I had to see the smug faces of my tormentors on a Zoom call; and finally reaching the point of choosing a medical alternative when I decided to start taking (for the first time in my entire life) medication to manage the chronic anxiety I was experiencing at the time. I worry about the years that entire experience shaved off of my life. I worry about long-term conditions like Alzheimer’s, and how much that experience might have contributed to my risk of developing some other conditions later in life.

One of the themes that has unintentionally emerged throughout the course of this season is that of rest for Black womxn. It surfaced pretty organically and I’m so glad it did because it served to validate the choice I have made to no longer waste my emotional and mental labor educating white people about this shit. I am on a mission to invest in myself, and pour into other Black womxn. I am learning the value of pausing in the ‘revolution’ and finding joy and pleasure for myself in the struggle, whether that be in the form of sleep, time with friends, sexual intimacy, reading etc. Joi’s mantra ‘May the Revolution Be Healing’, is about all of that. It challenges me to examine how I can continue to do this work that is so personal to me in a way that enriches and nourishes me, and protects and fosters my wellbeing. Her point about how “The system of oppression does not want us to be well. The system of oppression wants us sick, tired, exhausted, isolated, disconnected, desperate, and believing in scarcity” is spot on. In this sense, I see rest as truly necessary and inevitable for Black womxn—I believe it’s basically about whether we choose the rest for ourselves or are compelled to rest (think, landing yourself in bed or the hospital because you ignored your body too long or—worse yet—consider the rest of death).

I see rest as inevitable for Black womxn because reclaiming rest for ourselves is truly as, Audre Lorde put it, an act of “self-preservation”. It is an act of resistance. I see the connections to slavery and Black people’s inability to claim any sort of rest; I don’t just mean rest in sense of sleep, I mean rest on a much deeper level. Maybe the kind of rest that reminds us (and others) of our humanity, the kind of rest that gets us inspired to action, the kind of rest that has us pondering the system and our place within it.

We’ve all heard this quote from Audre Lorde so many times, but it bears repeating: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare.”

I wish you rest.