Face Everything And Rise
A word of caution - and why I do it anyway
“Being in community is dancing between needs and fears.” - Austin Willacy
A word of caution here. Jamming, building healing communities, co-creating liberating and loving cultures, is not easy. There is such a craving for connection on one level, and such a fear of it at the same time. Maybe because of past wounds with our families, maybe because of historic and systemic inequities, maybe because of the rugged individualism that is promoted in consumer cultures, maybe all of the above and more. There is a fear of relying on and needing each other, because what will happen if I start trusting and needing someone, and then I turn around and they are not there? It is so very vulnerable.
The old song from Erasure keeps running through my head. “I love to hate you, I love to hate you... Love and hate what a beautiful combination, sending shivers up and down my spine.”
As babies, there is fairly complete dependence; we need others literally to survive. As children, there are celebrations for our independence: our first steps, our first words, potty training, going to school, our first overnight away from home. And yet, usually, at the same time, that independence means beginning to keep things to oneself – our inner feelings, our ouches and hurts, our freaky-deekiness and ‘abnormalities’. Growing up can mean hiding more, masking more. It is not that we feel any less. It is that often we learn to suppress the feelings and show more of our reactions to the outside world, which usually take the form of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Some of these forms of masking are socially acceptable in our diverse contexts; others are not.
No matter what, all that practice at masking then makes it so hard to build community. Because if my true authenticity hasn't come out with my peers and/or my family, then I don't know what it is, much less where it is wanted and accepted. If I can't be myself in my current relationships, it makes it that much harder for me to reach out and connect with new people, much less deepen with existing ones. (And it makes it that much easier to be sold things to fill the void, but that’s another story.)
Sitting with this paradox of wanting to be in and with community, and also being afraid of it at the same time — the dance between need and fear that Austin described — I realize that it is so normal. And also so invisible. How does it help to understand the inevitability of conflicts and fear in community, so that when they come – which they always will – instead of feeling vindicated or broken – “I told you that trusting people was stupid!” – we might be able to choose something more like, “Oh, there you are again, old friend. What can I learn from you this time?”
As a Jammer once shared with me – there are two kinds of FEAR: Fuck Everything And Run – or Face Everything And Rise. Doing this kind of work, I realized both come up, and what it takes to move from the first kind of fear, to the second one, is part and parcel of the journey.
Nariman, a beloved friend and co-facilitator from Egypt, asked me to talk about the betrayals in my work with community-building — how they have happened and how I worked with them. I have been thinking about it since she asked. Shortly after, I heard on a TV show, “You can only be betrayed by people you trust.” And I realized that was the key.
I have felt betrayed for sure — never by community members or participants in the Jams, always by something a teammate did (or didn’t do). One time it was a team member who withheld a true part of his experiences which diminished the knowledge of the team and how/whether we could take on a challenging participant — which ultimately had a dramatic impact on the group and broke up the entire Jam. Another time, a teammate was upset with me about how we were co-facilitating, but didn’t share it with me directly, and rather talked about me negatively with other participants behind my back — which was revealed in the review of the evaluations. Still another time, I was in a vulnerable state and a long-standing teammate dropped her role as my ‘secret angel’, which left me feeling unloved and abandoned — especially when her identity as the angel was revealed. I definitely wanted to Fuck Everything And Run in those moments — and even now, my body holds those memories, and pain lights up in my chest, my gut, the tear ducts in my eyes.
In each of those examples, and others, I felt betrayed because I had given my full trust to that friend/teammate, and it had been broken because they had done something far out of my understanding of our relationship, and/or how I would treat them if the tables were turned. Those were moments I wanted to abandon all of this work, to give up fully, because what was the point if something like this could happen to me?
Ultimately, what brought me back from the brink, each time, was community. I received support from other people, other teammates, other friends, who saw me and who saw the other person, and were willing to hold both of us in our pain/hurt and see it through together. It was the slow and steady work of revealing our vulnerabilities, listening to each other, seeing each other, and coming out the other side — with love, care, and renewed trust, having worked through the conflict together. In most cases, it took a fair amount of time, the willingness to unfreeze ourselves and each other, and to forgive, that made it possible to move through.
It doesn’t always happen though. Not every betrayal and breakdown ultimately led to a breakthrough and trust regeneration. Sometimes, the other person or people weren’t willing to come back to the table and work it out. Sometimes, we could only get as far as we could — which was to acknowledge the situation, not make it as far as re-strengthening the relationship. Sometimes, we could work together again and be friends. Sometimes, we couldn’t.
And still. I keep at it anyway. Because I know the universe is wide and long and bends towards love and justice, as Martin Luther King, Jr., once said. Because I never know when something will come around and crack open the wall, inside of me, and/or inside of the other person. Because, I ask myself, if not this, then what? What else is there to do besides weave into the web of interdependence in this lifetime?
All of us who have been impacted by these systems of separation – and we all have, to varying degrees and dimensions – have healing to give and receive. The good news is that this learning, unlearning and uplearning can be done in and with community. I want to keep exploring the ways of being and doing that can support this journey, that have picked me up when my heart was broken and I was rubbed raw. With this support, tools, and practices, I got up again, and if you want, you can too.
Once we come to understand that conflict and community go hand and hand – that joy and pain is like sunshine and rain – we can dance the dance of needs and fear; we can Face Everything and Rise, together.
Or, at the very least, we can dance to Erasure.