What does it mean to continue this work after season one is completed?

Jenny shares some thoughts, feelings, and actions around our individual, collective and interrelated work.

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For a transcript of this episode and more, please visit our website, www.thespillway.org

Mentioned in this episode:

The Spillway Community Guidelines

1. Engage sequentially. The show is a serial not episodic. We do this so we can build relation and find common ground and context. 2. We stay in our own lane. The Spillway is about White people talking to (predominately) White people about White people and White culture. We're not out here to critique anyone's actions but our own. 3. Our combined fabric of destiny. (3a) As Dr. King said, our humanities are deeply interconnected to each other. Racism negatively impacts me, too. (3b) The Spillway is one mechanism within a larger framework needed to sustain racial equity and justice. We're not a one-stop shop. 4. No one right way to liberation. We all share the same goals, but not every method works for every person. If this doesn't work for you. That's okay. Maybe it works for someone else.

yeah, it's been an experience.

When Loran invited me to, to be a part of this, I said, "yes,"

without getting any specifics.

And I did that again, when they asked me to write the epilogue

and in both cases, I agonized.

Over everything I said, wrote, did.

And then I realized somewhere along the way, oh shit.

This isn't about me.

Not being the center of everything.

Freed me up to participate without fear and to let the creativity flow

without being hindered by my worry.

To, to something larger than myself.

And then as I wrote, it became clear that it is actually about

me and also everyone else.

And that's that paradox that emerges.

We are all important individually and not at all as individuals,

but in our larger humanity.

And that's a lot of what The Spillway does.

It opens up the paradox of being White in the US.

The duality of loving of living, of understanding the

world as both a perpetrator and a victim of White supremacy.

And it doesn't stop there.

It dives deep into the nuance of both states, the, the shared and

the individual, and differentiates them from the experiences of BIPOC

folks and dares to ask where do.

I stop.

And you begin?

Where do you stop?

And I begin?

And with the tenderness of a loving parent, Loran takes our hands and walks

us through how we have benefited from White supremacy and how that has hurt

us and how that has harmed others.

Specifically, the bipo community in the US.

Loran is my dearest friend and they are full of love.

Not the love of hallmark or Disney, the love that shows up.

The love that dedicates their life to showing up often for people.

They will never know.

The love that, again, dives deep into the hard end of things, swimming to

the bottom to unplug that filter at the source, no matter how long they

have to hold their breath to do it.

And their continued love for me in that same way is why I'm here.

Because of their love for me and my love for them.

And in the process, my own heart has been changed and challenged and charged

with the energy of their mission.

There's, I mean, still so much work to do.

And without Loran's help, I would not have known where to put my feet to even start.

They asked me to write a poem because really at my heart I'm

a poet, which I mostly ignore because poetry says, "Hey look!

Tender spot.

Let's poke it.

Let's examine it."

And I don't wanna most of the time, but for Loran's love, I'll I'll do it.

I'll show up.

There are a lot of people here.

Bodies breathing blinking, grabbing, asking, leaning, waiting for coffee,

for tea, for muffins for napkins, take

them and go and leave and step out and hurry and trip and glide away.

There's not one human body, the same as any other human

body twirling about this space.

And yet, and yet we all breathe the same air each other's

air in and out here you go.

Have some of this.

Wow.

Wow.

Wow.

We have all tasted each other's blood.

And if we go back and back and back and back before any of us knew how

the world wanted us to hold life in dollars and coins and no touching,

please, we here in this shop.

We're all babies.

Filling our lungs with the air of those who came before, releasing it

for those who will come after living in our interconnectedness unaware of any

separateness reaching without hesitation for the softness of another human being.

We very literally breathe each other's air.

That's not something I made up and that's freeing and terrifying

because it means we are connected and responsible for one another.

So what do we do?

We grab our talents, our hobbies, and desires and turn that toward collective

liberation and we do it in community.

And if you are White, which if you are listening to this, my assumption is

that you are and feel afraid, ashamed, guilty, angry, whatever, plug into other

White people and share those feelings.

Cry with those White people.

Unpack with those White people, approach their feelings with curiosity.

Hold each other,

Check out The Spillway website and know that you are not alone and

that you can move forward and that when you fuck up, because you will,

you can always begin again, cancel culture, be damned.

This is important.

And it's not the responsibility of BIPOC folks.

If we really want to heal racism, White supremacy and patriarchy, we

have to name, explore, and work to heal our own collective Whiteness,

not show up on the doorstep of BIPOC people and ask them to show us the way.

Is it scary?

Absolutely.

Can we do it?

Can we dive into the deep end and follow each other to the

heart of where the work is?