I have been reflecting deeply on activism this week and how often that part of us is a response to a very deep, painful wound.
I found this beautiful image of Kintsugi the Japanese tradition of mending broken things with gold, not to hide but to honour them as part of our history. Oppression in all its manifestations has the potential to create wounded activists. Our wound might once have shown up as sadness, depression, an inability to speak, feeling helpless or powerless. Activism has the power to transform that wound into something positive and meaningful, to have agency, to have a voice. I know many inspirational activists. But attending to those wounds is hugely important. If we engage in processing, healing and finding compassion for ourselves we become more impactful and intentional in our activism. If we don't attend to those deep wounds all we have is a lot of competing loud voices, like the tower of Babel. Most importantly we can't hear what other oppressed people are saying. We can't extend our compassion to them if we haven't found it for ourselves first. If we are convinced ours is the greatest, deepest, longest lasting wound, that our pain is so great, how could anyone else possibly have endure the same. So we create hierarchies of oppression. We try to build community, we talk about the importance of collective activism. But we fail. And we fail because we can't build community, we can't have a sense of belonging until our compassion for self and other is authentic and unconditional.