At Roosevelt High School,
we attend to racism and mental health issues, but mostly we don’t know how to
talk to each other around such things. But if we can’t address the trauma and
shame at the fault lines of such issues, we will nourish, in our silence or
helpless outrage, continued harm. We have to be able to witness, to listen, to
share our most vulnerable stories, to operate from our deepest humanity, and to
do that, we have to approach each other with humility and love, treating each
other’s stories as tenderly as our proffered hearts.
Dear seniors, my advice
to you is therefore about not-silence. It’s about love. If we are silent about wounds
we bear from an unjust and ignorant world, abuse continues; if we are silent for
fear of offending or appearing unjust or ignorant, we haven’t helped. Privilege,
allow people their anger. Just listen. Pain, give room for allies to respond in
ignorance. Make room for each other’s stories and pain, and, most of all, love,
which, when it’s offered across trauma and difference, is a shy and fragile
thing.
When you are ready to
tell your story, when you are ready to listen, do so with deepest generosity
and humility. I do think we can heal.
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