Right now, I don’t want to write about something else, and I don’t want to write in a way that isn’t useful, and I don’t totally know how to write in a way that is useful. But I have to keep writing.
I am committed to becoming an ally. I have been spending a lot of time these past few days considering how serious a commitment that is. The more I have read (which is still so very little in the grand scheme of things), the more I have confirmed my suspicions that it will demand a lot of me. And the more I have, simultaneously, confirmed my suspicions that it is imperative.
At the weekend, I watched a video by Preston Smiles where he said something along the lines of “until we’re all safe, none of us are”. It’s not an unfamiliar sentiment. But something about the context of it clicked for me and it’s been reverberating in my mind and compelling me to make the pledge “until we’re all safe, I’ll stand.”
I don’t have a choice. If I don’t follow through on this I’ll be failing myself and forfeiting my integrity, and at this point in my life that is not a fucking option.
Until we’re all safe, I’ll stand.
I don’t know what that will look like – I still have so much to learn – but I’ll figure it out.