Thanks for your patience. Things will be jumbly here for a bit while I build our August Family Toolkit!
Significant Dates & Events in August
Monthly Explorations for August
[Image: Cover slide from ‘Brave Space Storytime: Navigating our obstacles with children’s stories’]
Join the Center for Cognitive Diversity for a discussion with Ashia Ray of Raising Luminaries on how incorporate trauma-informed practices into story time.
A recording of Saturday,November 13, 2021 guest lecture with Ashia Ray of Raising Luminaries and April Brown of the Center for Cognitive Diversity.
We can’t shut off the 60-second auto-advance. To access screen-reader, braille support, and to view the slides without auto-advance, view on Google Slides. With the exception of Zoom icons on slide 2 and a QR code that leads to the padlet below, all images on the slides are decorative.
[She/her] April is a parent, educator, child advocator, and coach for the Center of Cognitive Diversity supporting educators in shifting from a compliance-based model of education to one of liberation and place-based experiences. April is a co-founder of the Student Ignition Society, a growing community of educators developing social-justice-oriented practices in early childhood education.
[They/She] Ashia is a multiracial Autistic disability rights educator and the Head Custodian of Raising Luminaries, founder of Books for Littles, and co-founder of the Student Ignition Society. They are an Autistic mom born and raised on the traditional lands of the Wampanoag and Massachusett people, currently homeschooling a 7- and 9-year-old.
Join the Center for Cognitive Diversity to become a Trauma Informed Specialist.
[Image: Cover slide from ‘4 Ways to Fight Ableism with Kids Books’]
Join the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network [AWN] for a discussion with Ashia Ray of Raising Luminaries on how to discuss disability justice with young children.
A recording of Monday, September 30, 2021 webinar is privately available through the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network
We can’t shut off the 60-second auto-advance. To view the slides without auto-advance, view on Google Slides.
[She/They] Lei is an Autistic activist, wife and homeschooling mom. Lei is also the director and founder of the Ed Wiley Autism Acceptance Lending Library, which serves the communities of Stanwood & Camano Island, WA by lending books and materials that promote the ideas of autism acceptance, social justice, disability rights and neurodiversity.
[They/She] Ashia is a multiracial Autistic disability rights educator and the Head Custodian of Raising Luminaries, founder of Books for Littles, and co-founder of the Student Ignition Society. They are an Autistic mom born and raised on the traditional lands of the Wampanoag and Massachusett people, currently homeschooling a 7- and 9-year-old.
Support the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network with a financial donation and shop the AWN store.
Sharing this post on social media? Use this image description to make it accessible. [Image description: A mother and child snuggle and talk]
In this post: Calls to action single parents and accomplices who want to build a better world for single parent families
In March 2021, Bellamy S. of Revolutionary Humans and I hosted a virtual event on surviving single parenting in the midst of the hot mess that was 2020 and continues through 2021.
Bellamy and the awesome attendees who participated tapped into some badass acknowledgements and spectacular wisdom. Instead of letting it languish in that single moment in time, I want to make sure you have access to the tools and resources we discussed. Here’s how to access all that goodness.
I’m gonna resist the urge to be sneaky about it – so I’ll be blunt. I want single parents to get the resources they need to feel supported. I want family, friends, and community members to use these tools to become better accomplices. And I want all of you to support Revolutionary Humans by sharing their resources, joining the Revolutionary Humans community, and compensating Bellamy S. for the resources she provides for all. Our work is stronger when we partner with Revolutionary Humans, and you might find yourself feeling stronger in community with them, too.
While single parents of all genders, including single-non-parent caregivers, all deserve support, these resources skew heavily toward single mothers. Support looks different for everybody, but this is just what we know – we’re not equipped to swerve far out of the single mama lane. These are the tools we found most helpful given Bellamy’s life experience in parenting single, and in my experience being parented by a single mother.
Please do add comments with additional resources if you, as a single parent, have found solace or support so we can share all good things out.
Pick a call to action that feels accessible given your unique skills and abilities. Every step feels easier if you’re willing to just do the next thing, learn from it, and come back for more.
Share what worked for you in the spaces where people listen to you – the tools that help you raise kinder and more courageous kiddos, and which actions helped the single parents in your community survive and thrive.
Raising Luminaries(RL) & Books for Littles (BFL) is free and accessible for readers who can’t afford a paywall. Posts may contain affiliate links, which allow me to earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Check out the full affiliate disclosure along with the RL statement of accountability.
Single parenting in a post-apocalyptic hellscape
*Locked post: This is a temporary placeholder link accessible for Raising Luminaries members, until this video is accessible from the Revolutionary Humans website.
Mother and daughter exit apartment with their therapy dog
Bedtime stories with a parent and two kids. Photo by Katherine Hanlon on Unsplash
Answering ‘How can I help’ worksheet preview via Revolutionary Humans
Moving away from toxic independence to vulnerable interdependence is cool in theory, but hard to practice in real life. Get started with these worksheets created by Revolutionary Humans.*
*These are placeholder links until there’s a product or activity page on the RH website for these. Until these are available on the RH site for purchase, please contribute what you can to the RevHum Tip Jar if you found these helpful.
A mother and child embrace. Photo by Eye for Ebony on Unsplash
[Image: Instagram post via Revolutionary Humans: Text reads “I am not weak, and I always need help” excerpted from the Single Parenting in a Post-Apocalyptic Hellscape event discussion.]
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Support the #FreeBlackMamas initiative & the Free Black Mamas Fellowship, we can support caregivers and children targeted by racist policing, unnecessary incarceration, and family separation that disproportionately affects single Black mothers and their families.
“Essie Justice Group’s 2018 report, Because She’s Powerful, found that nearly 70 percent of women with incarcerated loved ones are their family’s head of household and sole income earner. Additionally, the number of women incarcerated went from 8,000 people in 1970 to nearly 110,000 in 2014—and nearly two-thirds of incarcerated women are Black. “ …Read more
Anti-Racism For Beginners 203
You can create an anti-racist family manifesto in 15 minutes! And it would be spectacular! In fact – our partner-in-cahoots, Revolutionary Humans has a quick & easy manifesto cut-out kit you can print & enjoy with your family!
Unfortunately our family can’t process stuff that quickly. So for those who need to think slow and dig deep, this series of kid-friendly actions is designed to take less than 20-minutes per day. Or if you have kids who can focus for long stretches at a time, an intensive 2-4 hour chunk all in one go.
Coordinated in partnership with Wee The People, Revolutionary Humans, The Philly Children’s Movement, MassArt’s Center For Art And Community Partnerships, and Raising Luminaries.
In anti-racism work, we tend to look outward about what we can do, about who is affected – and often forget to look inward.
Note for kids with communication challenges – if kids are overwhelmed with processing inner thoughts into outward language, use declarative language, and let them know they are welcome to add their reflections when they are ready to talk.
Which could be days, weeks, or never. We’re aiming to have kids process these thoughts internally, not to have them come up with perfect answers.
Today, we’re going to give kids another simple art project. But first, grown-ups, let’s cover some basics before we dive deeper into this conversation.
So even though white folks created white supremacy, our entire community maintains it. As targets of anti-Blackness, we’ve placed the onus of dismantling racism on Black people to solve. Does that sound fair? Does that even make any damn sense?
As the primary beneficiaries of white supremacy, as the recipients of power, as the folks with the least barriers in the way – it’s a white person’s responsibility to end it.
Why should white folks end it? Many white folks have told me they’re fighting white supremacy to help people of color. NO! We don’t need saviors. Do it for white folks. White supremacy is a lie that separates European descendants from the rest of humanity. It’s a lie that says white folks have to exploit people of color to survive.
Supremacy divides us, and being separated and disconnected from each other hurts. In dismantling white supremacy, we’re not trying to drag white folks down (as if we all live on an imaginary staircase, which is a terrible place to live) – we’re trying to come back home, to find each other. White folks – fight white supremacy in service to your own liberation.
We benefit from anti-Blackness. We leverage colorism & racism against Black folks to paddle our way toward the bait of white acceptance. We are targets of white supremacy, and white supremacy stands on the footing of anti-Blackness. Shoving Black people down to gain a foothold just strengthens white supremacy!
White supremacy divides people of color to weaken us. Supremacy tears us from our white friends, our Black friends, and even our fellow people of color. It rips us from the people we love, without our consent.
The only way to heal our family is to acknowledge our complicity in anti-Blackness, and take action to unite as one people who want to be free – together.
The central pillar of white supremacy is this made-up identity of whiteness. Folks who were rich, powerful, and greedy to stay that way created the definition of whiteness. They drove power to whiteness, decided who had access a white identity, and chose who to use as fuel in elevating white power. And then they sold marginalized white folks and non-Black people of color lie that we could earn our way to equal power if we behaved, worked hard, and examined Blackness as the root of racism.
White people have a very, very serious problem… and they should start thinking about what they can do about it.
We live in an imperfect world – where all of us have different barriers and access to power due to our racial identities. That means we all must take on different responsibilities.
As an Asian person, it’s outside my lane to suggest actions for Black families. So let’s amplify our Black-founded coalition partners Revolutionary Humans & Wee The People as they curate affirmations, opportunities to rest, resist, learn, take action, and affirm the identity of Black children amidst the constant weight of surviving in an anti-Black society.
Meanwhile – us non-Black folks should be using the tools at our disposal to end anti-Blackness.
While the kids do their art-thing, discuss:
*Black anti-racism educators! Center the voices and follow the directions of targeted folks when doing accomplice work. Listen, believe, and honor requests, but don’t just ask your Black friend to guide you – just because they’re Black doesn’t mean they want (or are equipped to) to take on the labor or anti-racism education. As an Asian person – I’m following the lead of Wee The People in our #FamilySummer4BlackLives initiative.
Today – we’re talking with our kids who they are, so in following activities we can identify what resources we have available, and how to use these resources to dismantle racism.
If you haven’t already started talking with your kids about your family’s racial identity, visit Raising The Resistance‘s Discussion Guide For Families: Race, Ethnicity, Nationality & Indigenaity to understand the identities within your family.
Do we believe that Black lives matter? Do we believe that punitive justice targets Black people? Do we believe in defunding the police? Do we believe the school to prison pipeline targets vulnerable kids? Do we believe in abolition?
Name it. Own it.
For more ideas to create your family’s activist identity, check out Revolutionary Humans’ self-affirming cutout set -(and join me in supporting this RH on Patreon so Bellamy can keep creating activist resources for young kids.)
Now that our families are able to affirm who we are, we’re ready to start resourcing – identifying the tools, abilities, and power we have accessible to us in the face of a crisis.
This helps our kids understand why activism isn’t a one-size-fits all check-box of steps. The action we take hinges on what is within our control to mitigate and prevent harm – to ourselves, and to others.
Get creative with this. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that a library card, an autistic hyperfocus on picture books, and two opinionated children who refuse to suffer mediocre books could be weaponized as tools to fight the kyriarchy, but here we are.
We’ve acknowledged who we are, and we’ve also discovered what we have – the unique resources we have available.
Now it’s time to brainstorm actions – what are you capable of doing with the power you have today?
Stay tuned on the Family Summer 4 Black Lives facebook page – we’re currently working on ways to lead non-Black POC & white folks to doing work examining complicity whiteness, while Black families are invited to rest and receive.
Our current plan is to raise funds to purchase copies of Zetta Elliott’s A Place Inside of Me: A poem to heal the heart, and with the direction of Wee The People & Zetta herself, direct it to Black kids navigating trauma, healing, and grief under the weight of living while Black in America.
Following the inspiration from Revolutionary Humans’ Family Summer 4 Black Lives templte prompts, go chalk the walk with your family manifesto. Be sure to support her hard work!
Map it in a chart, scrawl it out in text, draw a mural – let your kids fly with your the affirmations and promises of your new family manifesto.
*Note for our literal-minded friends, it might be a good idea to list a frequency or conditions for your action. Activist burnout is real, and folks of color with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to it. Showing up for 2 city council meetings per year, instead of all city council meetings, is much better than burning out and showing up for none.
Leave a comment – what action is your family taking this summer?
Not on social media? Join us for our FREE summer-long virtual event. Each month, families with young kids will gather for one at-home* collaborative action. SPREAD THE WORD on Facebook and Instagram using the tags #FamilySummer4BlackLives.
Follow & collaborate with our coalition: Wee the People, Revolutionary Humans, MassArt’s Center for Art and Community Partnerships, the Philly Children’s Movement, and Raising Luminaries as we create a 2020 Summer of Action to support anti-racist families in building a better future together.
Follow the Family Summer 4 Black Lives Facebook page for updates on social media, or visit the Raising Luminaries #FamilySummer4BlackLives main page for the full summer schedule.
These events have been Coordinated by Wee The People, Revolutionary Humans, The Philly Children’s Movement, MassArt’s Center For Art And Community Partnerships, and Raising Luminaries.
These family actions are designed to take less than an hour each day, and are primarily created for non-Black and white families.
Today – we’re setting expectations and our intentions for this summer.
Today’s action is designed for non-Black people of color & white families, while Black families rest, resist, and celebrate with Wee The People’s Chalk The Walk Playlist & Reading List.
Today’s action is designed for non-Black people of color & white families, while Black families rest, resist, and celebrate with Wee The People’s Chalk The Walk Playlist & Reading List.
Today’s action is designed to be affirming for Black families and the first step in public advocacy for families of color & white families. Whether Black families choose to keep this poem as an affirmation, or choose to self-advocate with them is up to them. Non-Black families should be mindful of how to proceed with these poems, without heading into saviorism.
Black families may choose to display their poems at home as an affirmation, or share this poem in solidarity with others. For non-Black families, however, this step mandatory.
Via Wee The People:
Content
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Leave a comment – how are these actions impacting your family?
Follow the Family Summer 4 Black Lives Facebook page for updates.
Coordinated by Wee The People, Revolutionary Humans, The Philly Children’s Movement, MassArt’s Center For Art And Community Partnerships, and Raising Luminaries.
This family-action is designed to take less than an hour each day for a 7-day week.
This was a struggle for us to fit into one week – with the 24/7 care of two young kids balancing their disabilities and mine, in a pandemic, with both me and my partner sprinting to cover our full time jobs and outside activism on top of that. HOWEVER – as a mixed Asian/white American family, we answered the call. Black families have to do all that same stuff we do, plus more – with the added fear of being targeted and killed just for existing while Black.
Non-Black families of color & white folks: Pace yourselves as needed but do the work and block off some time in your calendar.
Black families have already been forced to have these discussions. Today is the day for non-Black families of color & white families to do some work:
[Video description: Read aloud of ‘Something Happened In Our Town’]
Kids will have big feelings as we talk through current events, yesterday’s read aloud, and as we continue the conversations of our Family Talking Points. Now is the time to show them that affirmations of love can turn to commitment for change – and that commitment has a potential for big change.
Recognizing, acknowledging, and showing our kids how movements are made and sustained by Black women is a basic starting point for recognizing this labor & countering anti-Blackness.
Follow Francie & Tanya of Wee The People’s lead, and watch Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza, co-founders of the BLM global network,
[Video description: Video interview with Patrice Cullors on the origin of BLM as a love letter.]
Start gathering materials from your community to assemble your love letters!
If you’re using magazines or catalogues to make a collage – take a moment to talk with kids about
[Image: Crafty supplies to make love letters. Image courtesy of Elena White of MassArt’s Center for Art & Community Partnerships]
This one is for non-Black families of color & white families – today is when we break and grow so that Black families can take a day to heal.
Let’s not cultivate a nebulous idea of all Black families hurting in the epicenter of Minneapolis as a monolith. It’s vitally important that our kids see – that we see – that each and every Black life matters. Each and every voice counts. Each of these people are individuals, and they’re all hurting in unique ways, in need of love directed to them as people – not as a teeming mass.
So we must read the voices of real Minneapolis families. We must listen and bear witness. Today – we listen while the people of Minneapolis speak.
We can’t afford to look away. Wee The People have collected the stories of Minneapolis families living with the daily impacts of racism. You’ll have to paraphrase – but take the time to discuss these experiences with your kids.
[Image: Photo of a young child holding a cardboard protest sign bearing #GeorgeFloyd. Photo by Gabe Pierce on Unsplash]
Below, you will find eight words inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Keeping in mind the discussions and feelings you’ve cultivated together as a family this week, we’re inviting kids to write a poem of any length that includes all eight words. Once you create your protest poem please share it with us – we are building a movement and we want your words to inspire others to speak out and stand up for what is fair and just!
How to share your poem:
[Text description: Poetry prompt from above. Image courtesy of Revolutionary Humans. Poem exercise developed by CACP/sparc!’s first Teaching Artist in Residence, Lewis Morris. ]
Another opportunity for Black families to rest for resistance and non-Black families to catch up and use our privilege to call in our own..
Non-Black families: It’s time to use your social power.
[Text description: We Dance. We Mobilize: A day of rest and calling in. Give + Live. Image courtesy of Revolutionary Humans. ]
Over the last seven days, your family has had an opportunity to learn, to reflect, to talk, to cry, and to grow. Now we breathe in all this pain, this hurt, and this need to do something. And we get started on the first of many actions in the fight against anti-Blackness.
Grab the materials you’ve been gathering all week (or your digital art app of choice) and get to work! Pour out your affirmations, your hopes, dreams, and most of all – your love.
We will virtually “deliver” your cards to the people of Minneapolis via Juxtaposition Arts and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Send us your photos/videos, city/town, kid ages, and a few words of reflection about your family action by:
[Text description: Love letter to Families of Minneapolis. “We stand with you. We will continue to fight for JUSTICE, TRANSFORMATION + LIBERATION.” A Collage of photos of Black models, actors, and artists are shaped into a heart in the center. Image courtesy of Elena White of CACP. ]
Stay tuned – we’ll be checking in (and updating this post) to gather your reflections and see how this action has impacted your family. We’ll be here to offer support, answer your questions, and provide resources for next month’s #FamilySummer4BlackLives action.
What they will remember is – through all the pain and hardship and death – they did something good. They had a hand in changing the world for the better.
Join us for our FREE summer-long virtual initiative. Each month, families with young kids will gather for one at-home* collaborative action.
We’ll provide the resources and tools you need, and you never have to leave home to participate. From virtual watch parties, reflection prompts, family guided discussion supports, and more. Events will be social-distance safe, easy for overwhelmed caregivers to coordinate, and neurodiverse, and sensory-friendly.
By the end of this summer, families who are feeling lost and overwhelmed talking about the racial injustice in the world will affirm: WE ARE AN ANTI-RACIST FAMILY AND WE ARE TAKING ACTION.
*We’ve got a packed calendar of events, but families who are overextended, managing disabilities, and who can’t make the action dates are welcome to participate at a slower pace. Adjust your schedule as needed – but for non-Black families of color & white families, do the work and block off some time in your calendar.
In addition to these things contributing to expanding inequity, this stuff messes with us.
Not just socially, but on an individual, emotional level. So I’ve been paying attention to these pings and bloops of “whoa that doesn’t sit right.” when they pop up.
Things that make me feel messed up and disoriented:
But most of these things – I have to do*. Because there’s a social contract we’ve got to adhere to if we want to be a part of the group. Answer emails in a socially acceptable time frame. Look people in the eye. Say ‘yes’ to things. Don’t flap your hands. Do organized, deep work, but quickly. Produce content like tomatoes grow in summer, but all year round, and make it juicy.
To do otherwise is a breech in our social contract. You know that social pain is real pain? Like – tylenol helps with social pain, it’s that physical. So it makes sense that we do these things. It makes sense that we’re afraid to stop doing things that uphold that social contract.
But what if our social norms are, at the root, fundamentally messed up? What if some of them need to be demolished?
*What if I don’t really have to do them? What if it’s my responsibility to not do them so we can set a path for a healthier, more sustainable way to be a person in this holy year-of-our-robot-vacuum-
In that book Powwow Summer, that I mentioned above, we learn about how life is a cycle, like the seasons. Birth is spring when new life pops up. Summer is childhood, a busy time of learning and doing and growing. Autumn is adulthood, when we harvest and support. Maybe a little death. A bit of decomposition to feed the earth. And winter is elderhood, where we share our knowledge and wisdom and rest, followed by death, then spring, repeat.
I dunno about you folks who live in places without four seasons, but this feels fundamentally right to me. It feels comforting.
Contrast that the the production schedule we maintain to survive in a capitalist society. New clothing styles each season (why?). New homework assignments (exhausting). New holiday decorations (ugh). New recipes to try! (no.) Annual reports! Weekly library visits! Monthly website posts! Twice-daily social media posts, on each channel (gah.)
You don’t really plan it that way. It just happens. New things happen, don’t wanna miss out. (Or worse – have your kids miss out!) Pick up a new thing – squeeeeze it into your schedule. Repeat.
I live in New England, where the four seasons punch you right in the face. We have pumpkin spice chunky sweaters, blazing humid summers, like three days of the most gorgeous spring, and WINTER THAT WANTS TO MURDER YOU.
But we don’t really have winter. Or even autumn. Because like I’m doing now on this gray and rainy day, I’m locked inside. I’m shivering my ass off, a tiny space heater under my desk, wearing a beanie and a blanket on top of my panda pajamas.
But I’m not doing autumn. I’m doing summer. I’m producing, producing, producing. Yesterday I finished Racism pt 2, and now I’m writing this. And when I’m done, I won’t even pause for a moment to grab another mug of tea.
I’ll change windows on my screen, and do spring – investigating new topics, researching, starting Racism pt. 3, responding to emails as if I don’t ever sleep, and I’ll stop every 10 minutes to compulsively check Facebook, just in case something neat happened.
Nothing neat ever happens on Facebook. But that little red notification icon suggests that one day it might.
We can band-aid this with vacation days, sick days, and weekends (which I don’t take, because I don’t have a boss who can force me to). We can duct tape things by installing blocking software on our browsers (which I do, but it doesn’t stop me from forgetting and checking just in case the blocking software glitches and I get to see Matt Flynn’ (from second grade)’s lunch today! But I must do it now. Can’t wait five minutes. I must check for his lunch noooooow! (I don’t even care! WHY AM I DOING THIS.)
Urgency. Urgency that we discussed in the Trauma Stewardship series in the Luminary Braintrust. Urgency that they discuss in that White Supremacy Culture pdf from above.
Urgency that drives us to do do do do, in seeking to destroy the kyriarchy, which really just makes it stronger.
I think perhaps 2020 is the time when we should demolish these false senses of urgency. When we break some shit and make things messy and explore – what does it mean to sit down for a minute…or a season? What does a real human winter look like?
I’m that weird bridge generation at the start of the millenials, where I entered high school without cell phones being a thing, and graduated when cell phones were a thing. We were never taught to sit still. We were never taught that some things (other than bell bottoms) go out of season.
I genuinely don’t know what winter even means. The idea of winter terrifies me.
If I touch winter…I could break it.
Or rather, I could break that social contract that keeps me supported within human society.
and then…it wouldn’t be pretty anymore. We could lose all of the members I’ve ushered along over the past four years. We could lose all of our patreon supporters. We could lose the whole mission.
and then I would be sad.
But then I remember – I don’t really care that much about pretty. I don’t care about making this financially sustainable – or making this project sustainable at all.
Books for Littles has always had a planned self-destruct button built in. We are so close to the original mission – getting families reading mostly books featuring not just characters with marginalized identities, but honoring those stories without whitewashing them.
SO CLOSE. In four years, we’ve come so far. Not single-highhandedly, there are lots of organizations pushing toward the same goal as us – but the publishing industry is changing, and it’s partly because of our members. Give yourselves a pat on the back for that.
I’ve always thought it’s…unethical to recommend books that you don’t test out with kids. BFL focuses on books for kids ages 0-7. I’ve been hoping, that like folks who make a living trying to cure cancer – we will make that finish like and then be out of a job.
What joy it would be, for my skills to be obsolete!
And then there is time. Q is already seven, itching to expand to books beyond BFL’s scope. R2 is five, and has never been into screening books the way his brother is.
We’ve got maybe two years left before I have to figure something out. Whether we expand the scope of ages (hesitant to do, targeting that age range to prevent implicit bias is POWERFUL), pass the baton to someone with younger kids (anyone out there capable of matching this hustle?), or expanding – which is why we have this whole ‘Raising Luminaries’ umbrella for BFL thing going on, which you might have noticed over the past couple years.
So now seems not only like a good time with experimenting with demolishing and rebuilding something different, but it also seems like the ethical thing to do. Because we’re so close to the finish line and progress for each generation means moving that finish line.
[Image description: Mary Walker from the book ‘Mary Wears What She Wants’ by Keith Negley. Mary holds her fists on her hips, elbows akimbo, and frowns with angry eyebrows.]
Kids are in bed, let’s finish our March recap on anger.
In the months leading up to March, I spent a lot of time thinking about anger – particularly through the lens of women’s history month and feminism. It was going to be a website collection.
(And then life happened, and now its still stuck here in rough draft form: Destigmatizing Anger in Women. )
I conveniently happen to be a lady person who has feelings sometimes. So I did an experiment! Through March, I refused to push away or tamp down my anger. I owned it. I rolled around with it. I gave myself to be abrupt and honest about my feelings when people got rude.
It was helpful – my anger became a tool for clarity, a sharp blade to cut through the bullshit.
I always police my tone with people who want to defer their responsibility on to me. This month, I let a bit of my anger take out into the world as a warning flare to back off and quit poking me.
When I was six, I had my first overt bully. My mom told me to make unblinking eye contact with the girl who towered over me, slowly advance until our chests touched, and growl, “Whatchoo goin’ do ‘bout it?”
Which thinking back, must have been fucking adorable. But somehow it scared the shit out of people twice my size and it got me out of lots of dangerous situations.
My mother – who had been attacked from a young age by both people she loved and strangers on the street, who had been chased and pinned down, strangled, and abandoned, who had seen the inhumanity in people with power against those with less, exuded a constant cloud of fury about the injustice in the world.
This was the air I breathed, this is embedded in my tissue. I don’t get sad. I get angry. Anger is my comfort food.
Mom explained to me that over the course of my life, I would be attacked, at any moment, unprovoked. She taught me to to never sit with my back to the door. She also trained me to fight and leave my opponents choking on their own blood. To make a public example of my attackers so there would be no second wave.
So it makes me chuckle a bit, when readers call me aggressive because I make demands for basic human dignity and respect. Oh, honey. You you’ll know when I’m being aggressive because there will be holes in the drywall and my teeth will be embedded in your jugular.
So what I’m saying is, The Ray femininity isn’t a sad wilting daisy waiting to be saved. Anger is interwoven with our identity as women.
But there’s a caveat – some of us can’t afford to own and exude our anger. For all women – our justifiable anger is passed off as PMS, hysteria, nagging. We’re gaslit into submission, showing our emotions means our concerns aren’t taken seriously.
My mother is white, her anger is the stuff of power and super-hero movies. I am Asian, and there are consequences for showing my anger, playing into stereotypes of dragon ladies and yellow peril. Neither one of us, however, has to fear the stereotype of the Native Savage, or the Angry Black Woman.
So I’ve learned to keep my anger silent, hidden behind a relaxed facial expression. I couch my angry responses in ‘I’ statements, in calls for collaboration that put the burden on me to do the heavy lifting.
This is only necessary so long as we refuse to share our anger on a collective level. Separately, our anger eats away at is, bitter and resentful.
But what if…what if we could teach our kids how to amass the big feelings, the fury of injustice, and use it as fuel for a generational wave of change?
And what would it take to model healthy, powerful, change-making anger for them?
Unlike sadness, anger requires a sense of expectation, even entitlement. Anger comes from expecting control, and having it yanked away. Anger is a side-effect of ownership and agency.
Sadness has a place. Just yesterday, grief took me out at the knees. Picking pebbles from the dirt above my daughter’s grave – I accept that sadness. I am powerless to reverse or make her death okay. Sadness is this heavy fog that sits with us. It does not kick us into gear. Sadness is about the things we are not obligated to try and change.
This month, we got flooded with articles of attacks on young Black boys, disabled people, Muslims praying in a sacred safe space. These events don’t make me sad. They make me ANGRY. Not just that they exist – but that this month is no different from any other.
I pay attention when I feel sadness versus anger. When pity shows up in my gut. When I feel hopeless, when I feel gloom. Pity, sadness – it comes along with a sense of looking down from up high toward a victim – that person separate from ‘me’ (even if I’m looking at right-here-me as a victim from another hypothetical timeline where my daughter is still alive.) That is a form of superiority. Pity is a ‘too bad for THEM.’
Like this bullshit:
“I pray and hope that by the time my toddlers are in school, this won’t be necessary.”
This was a comment on our post about talking to kids about shootings. Beyond voting for politicians not backed by the NRA, this person has no plans to take responsibility or change things in the two years before their toddlers enter kindergarten.
I find comments like this INFURIATING. Fuck prayers and hopes and waiting. And I was like… well fuck. Was I not clear? I mean I DID point out in the article that thoughts and prayers aren’t getting it done. But you know what? I SUSPECT that this person didn’t even bother reading the article. It wasn’t this person’s problem, so they didn’t bother.
But this isn’t someone else’s problem to fix. It’s ours. Both mine, and theirs. Right now.
This parent justifies inaction in hopes some some faceless legislator will step up and do the work for them.
I get that being a parent (of twins, I’m guessing) is hard work. But this pity-party is condescending, and these comments aren’t just helpful – they do active damage.
For the thousands of people who see comments like this, it normalizes the behavior of staying passive, sending thoughts and prayers and passing responsibility to someone else. It models for our kids that sitting still and feeling sorry for our future-selves, waiting for someone else to get angry and get shit done, is acceptable.
Comments like this – they make it acceptable to see more things as something we can’t, and aren’t obligated to, change.
Attacks on people of color, on Muslims, on people on the other side of the world – we get sad when we see this as an attack on ‘others.’ (To be clear, I’m not trying to appropriate the impact of this violence. Victims of this violence and oppression and people within these groups face the day-to-day impact and trauma of it, whereas I just have big feeeelings.)
What I mean is – if we are truly including marginalized individuals as equals, as a part of our wider community, we are all humans in this together and we have an OBLIGATION to keep our people safe, to prevent these horrors. An attack on anyone’s children is an attack on OUR children.
If someone came after my child with violence, I would put a stop to it. I would use my fury like a laser to cut that cancerous bullshit OUT. I would not sit there crying, waiting for someone else to rescue them. So why aren’t more parents angry about mosque shootings, police brutality, and systemic injustice?
There is a good video about this – on perspective, judgement, and the choices we make to feel with people, instead of for them. It is here.
If the people under attack are our people (and they are). Get angry about attacks on our people. Do stuff about it. Call reps, vote, rally, sue gun manufacturers, draft legislation, collect and educate people, raise better humans, adjust your professional work to align with your values – there are ooodles and oooooodles of creative ways to use that fire to make change, and not one of them stops at ‘thoughts’ and clicking sad emoticons.
Hence the books. And raising kinder, braver kids who hopefully won’t grow up to kill and main and rape people. We are obligated to raise children who do not spew more malicious action into the world. We are obligated to raise children who recognize malicious action in their peers and nip it quick.
We are also obligated to show our anger, to talk to our kids about what makes us furious. We are responsible for modeling how to put that anger into a laser-beam of action.
Let our anger be the fertilizer that rears a new generation who hold themselves, and each other, responsible for the safekeeping of our people.
Fertilizer though – it smells. It burns. It’s explosive. We need anger-fertilizer-laser-beams, to burn away all the crap that doesn’t matter. We need it to kick us in the ass and keep us doing things that make us uncomfortable and scared.
Anger exposes our values – it clarifies what we believe is right, between what we deserve, and what isn’t acceptable. Anger is the fuel we use for courage to right things when they go wrong.
Get your hackles up, then go DO A THING. Read books full of angry women to your kids and learn more about how destigmatizing anger in women smashes the kyriarchy!
Check out the unpolished book list: Destigmatizing Anger in Women
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Raising Luminaries is founded & run by me, Ashia Ray – an Autistic, multiracial (Chinese/Irish) 2nd-generation settler raising two children alongside my partner on the homelands of the Wampanoag and Massachusett people. I support families and educators in raising the next generation of kind & courageous leaders, so we can all smash the kyriarchy together.
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