This is a bit of a tricky reminder to myself, because some of the most hopeless moments in my life have been ones where I recognize that a pattern is happening but I don’t have any idea how to do anything differently. The more deeply worn in a pattern is, the harder it is to find the hidden paths out of it. But then, some of the most vibrant and joyful times in my life have been ones where I’ve suddenly stumbled across or been shown ways to deviate from a course that seemed inevitable–and when I feel immobilized by feelings of powerlessness or uncertainty, sometimes the only thing that can lift me out of that inertia is a reminder that any tiny movement can lead to other movements.

no part of the web exists outside the rest; every knot untangled leads to more untangling

Everything that has ever been gained has been gained through imperfect processes, because there is no other kind of process. My process of learning to unravel the perspectives, reactions, and ways of moving through the world that white supremacy has woven into my body will be imperfect; I’m always going to be discovering more blind spots, and making more mistakes, and finding more room for growth and movement and adaptation. The inevitability of imperfection seems alright to me as long as I can see imperfection for what it is: in movement, unfinished. Imperfections become dangerous when we trick ourselves into believing that we’re finished–when we think we’ve landed somewhere perfect. 

It feels likely to me that I will only be capable of helping to reshape the external world to the extent that I am able to reshape my internal world—that when I give space to both sides of the work, there is less debris being scattered from my blind spots, for me and others to trip over