How Can Racism Stop You From Your Soul's Calling - A Podcast Interview!

I was a guest on the Full Heart Free Voice Podcast with Emma Basu & Caitlin Bosshart a few weeks ago. This was a really significant interview for me because Emma asked me about the impact of race on your soul’s calling. This is question that shockingly, I’ve rarely been asked.

And I had to think about this.

And look at things that I try to avoid.

And share parts of my story that are painful, that hurt.

I said things that even surprised me in this interview! I’m sharing this with you because you’re on my email list and I’m so happy you’ve stuck with me this year and are still subscribing!

I was taught for all my life, not to make waves, to fit in to be accepted. The underlying assumption was that I didn’t belong – not in England, where I was born, not in Canada where I grew up, not in Jamaica where my parents were born.

And just because I ignored or repressed the pain I felt at not belonging, doesn’t mean that it didn’t exist. You’ve just rarely heard me talk about it like I do in this interview.

And while this is hard to say and may be hard to hear, it’s clean pain, because it’s exposing the myth of race as Resmaa Menakem decribes it, in his powerful work “My Grandmother’s Hands – Racialized Trauma and the Pathways to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies”. Dirty pain – usually chosen out of fear, is silence and avoidance of racism – like saying “I don’t see colour.” That avoidance invariably prolongs the pain – because you can’t deal with what you don’t acknowledge.

For the second half of this year of Covid-19, I’ve been considering what my truest role is in anti-racism.

Racism tries to eliminate or obscure the humanity of anyone who isn’t in the preferred group. And the construct of race as a divider of people began in the 1600’s. Racism tries to make you believe that you don’t belong, that you are defective, that you are “less than”.

And you’re not.

I’ve had the incredible realization that my soul’s calling is the diametric opposite of racism. My soul’s calling is to help you see and claim your beauty!

No wonder I hated my work in Human Rights and Employment Equity years ago. My work in the world is not to adjudicate wrongs, it is to proclaim beauty. Until I started working through Resmaa Menakem’s powerful work, I didn’t realize that my soul’s calling IS MY ANTI-RACISM WORK!

I don’t have to be an advocate. I don’t have to be a freedom fighter. I don’t have to “call out” privileged white women on-line. I don’t have to be anything that I’m not. And because I don’t do, that doesn’t mean that I’m not doing my part in anti-racism.

I need to do what I was born to do – help people to see and claim their beauty, their genius – and get my work out to more Black, Indigenous, and women of colour, as well as white women.

So here's what I've come to believe....your soul's calling work is also your anti-racism work!

And I have a dream.

I dream of a world where everyone has unlocked and claim their beauty and their dazzling brilliance – no matter WHAT it is, and that’s what we build our lives around.

....Imagine if we were all doing what we were meant to do?

....Imagine if we were all being who we were meant to be?

....Imagine how interconnected and interdependent we’d all truly be?

....Imagine how everyone would belong?

....Imagine if we stopped living under the illusions of who we were taught to be, based on our race, our gender, our wealth, our culture, or our religion?

....Imagine if we blasted through everything that was blocking us to being the truth of who we really are?

Unapologetically. Unflinchingly.

Can you imagine the beauty that would flood this world?

Can you imagine how we’d never question our belonging and our interconnectedness?

And specifically for you Black women – can you imagine what it would be like to reclaim ALL of who we are…..and be that…unflinchingly?

You can access the podcast HERE.

Sending you so much love at the end of 2020! Big love,

Bev