Deep abiding grief

I’ve been experiencing a huge wave of grief lately.

Some of it is personal, some of it is systemic.

It’s painful, this deep and abiding grief.

I’ve been reflecting on how to be Asian American is to live with a deep and intergenerational grief, at least that is what I see in myself and in the Asian American narrative (my own narrative complicated by also being British Asian).

This is so much loss - loss of culture, of language, of home country, of ancestors, of identity.

The project of white supremacy tells us that aligning with whiteness is the best path to safety and success.

And yet to align with whiteness is to self-erase and self-negate.

If I disappear entirely, I will be safe.

But at what cost?

Measuring outcomes and results is important, we preach this all the time. But looking only at outcomes, for example academic achievement or socio-economic status, hides the cost.

At what cost, these outcomes?

I’ve also been reflecting on how to be a mother of small children in a pandemic is to live with a deep and abiding grief. To have had covid (even if mild or asymptomatic) is to live with a deep and abiding grief. To be a woman, especially a woman of color, is to live with a deep and abiding grief.

And to do DEI work is to deliberately and intentionally put ourselves in harm’s way, to open ourselves up to even more grief every day. Sometimes it feels like a project of sheer illogic, against all reason.

Why would we do this to ourselves?

And then I think about how to grieve is to love.

And how to love ourselves is a radical act.

And even though the goal isn’t love, the action of it is.

So even though to do DEI work is to put ourselves in harm’s way, it is also to do the opposite of what we were taught - the opposite of aligning with whiteness as a system that is dehumanizing to all of us, including white people.

To do DEI work is to grieve but it’s also to heal.

Banner photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

Self-coaching for DEI Advocates and Leaders

Join me for a free weekly email series and check-in on co-creating real and lasting shifts towards diversity, equity, inclusion and antiracism at your company or organization. Sign up here.