The Challenge
My amazing business coach invited us to a 5-day Share The Love Challenge. This was perfect timing as I’ve been working on a series of posts that will highlight a list of resources that have helped my understanding about race EMERGE.
When I was 30, I studied to become a labor doula. I connected deeply with the supportive role a doula holds as life emerges…and not just the infant that is literally emerging from the womb but also the woman who emerges into a new season of her own living.
My work here is similar. When white people engage this labor – this learning, growing, wrestling, facing, acting, breathing, screaming, grieving, reclaiming work that reveals how race impacts us, something new emerges. If we want to call forth that newness, wholeness, deeply human, unwilling-to-stand-by-on-our-watch way of living – we will notice we are no longer who we thought we are or would be. We find that not only did we birth something new but we also became something new.
We Emerge
I invite you to come on this emerging journey. If you have experienced all of these resources, then just know this series may not be for you. Try to remember your journey out of the womb and all of the years it’s taken to emerge into the person you are today and send love (and a little grit) to those who are just seeing these resources for the first time.
It’s day one, my friends, and I’m going to highlight some of my favorite ways to learn aurally.
Podcasts
I have a few podcasts that I have loved, binged, and listened to on repeat…
Intersectionality Matters with Kimberle Crenshaw (Favorite episode: #4 The Anatomy of an Apology)
Buried Truths with Hank Klibanoff (Favorite episode: All of Season #1)
15 Minute History (Favorite episode: #120 Slave-Owning Women in the Antebellum U.S.)
Code Switch by National Public Radio (Favorite episode: Is This What It Means To Be White, Nov 5 2019)
Audiobooks
Early in my journey, I struggled to take in the information if it was delivered aurally. I realized it was a weak area for me – unable to take notes or use my favorite highlighter to cement the words into my brain. What I experience listening to books now is a sensory experience. I allow myself to get lost in intonation, inflection, cadence…the story as it’s told by way of the sounds made and heard through the body. I especially love hearing the author read their story. Here are a few of my absolute favorites…
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School by Bev Sellars
Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas
When They Call You A Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele
Survival Math by Mitchell S. Jackson
Aural learning connects us to something deep within our cells – an ancestral experience of aural ways of knowing and passing that knowing to those around us.
Even as your journey emerges into new levels, I encourage all of you to never stop learning aurally.
