EP 19: Social Justice Parenting For The Long Haul
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:00] NV: Sawadee ka, and welcome to the Come Back to Care podcast. I am your host, Nat Nadha Vikitsreth, a decolonized and licensed clinical psychotherapist, somatics and social justice practitioner, and founder of Come Back to Care. Adopt connector, norm agitator and lover of liberation.
If you're on a journey to transform your daily parenting into a social justice practice that nurtures your child's development and promotes intergenerational family healing, I am so glad that you're here. On this podcast, we explore how social justice, child development science, parenting, and family systems intersect with one another. If you've been looking for ways to align your parenting with a social justice values, you're in the right place. Together, we find our way back to our true home. We come back home to our body and the goodness within. We come back to our lineage and come back to care together. So come curious, and come as you are. Let's move at the speed of care, and let's do this.
[EPISODE]
Welcome to episode 19 of the Come Back to Care Podcast.
Summer is winding down and believe it or not so is Season 2 of the Come Back to Care Podcast. As we enjoy the remaining warm weather, I’d love to invite you to explore these questions together: how are we going to keep doing this liberation work together as a community of decolonized parents? What are the smallest daily practices we can do to play the long game of liberation? Since these are questions for the long haul, in this episode, you and I are going to frame these questions like we’re going on a road trip to liberation together. Like on any summer road trip, we have lots to unpack and lots to pack. So let’s do this.
The inner transformation we need for the societal change we’re re-imagining
When we think of social justice advocacy, we might think of concrete things like marching in the streets, contacting state senators to change policies, or going to book clubs to study the history of imperialism or the impact of racial capitalism. All of these actions are certainly needed. All of these actions also take a lot of time to bear fruit. Policy changes take time. Unlearning or decolonizing our minds from white capitalist patriarchal norms definitely requires many rounds of repetition. So how do we stay committed to the hard work of liberation… work that might not yield results until seven generations from now?
To keep planting the seeds of equity-- to play the long game of liberation -- I invite you to balance those concrete, external actions with some subtle inner work e. I’m talking about the inner work of healing that we do daily so we can show up as a person, a parent, and an advocate whose actions align with our values.
Grace Lee Boggs, a Chinese American civil rights and labor activist, offered us a timeless lesson, quote “We must transform ourselves to transform the world.” End quote. She also expanded on this lesson in a 2012 speech saying quote “We have to think not only about change in our institutions, but changes in ourselves.” End quote. (https://reimaginerpe.org/19-2/boggs)
Fast forward to 2022, adrienne maree brown expanded on Dr. Bogg’s teaching by writing quote “I am accountable for shifting massive systems, and one of the most important ways I can be accountable in the grandest sense is by being intentional and radical in how I behave, what I believe, and what I practice.” End quote. (https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2022/06/29/murmurations-healing-inner-accountability?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=YTW_20220701&utm_content=YTW_20220701+CID_5949f6b9fd6b054b1daf0a49f5d6dfa2&utm_source=CM&utm_term=adrienne%20maree%20browns%20latest%20Murmurations%20column%20for%20YES)
The inner transformation we’re cultivating needs to match the societal change we’re re-imagining.
Because even if we abolish prisons, what if our minds are still imprisoned in a tiny "good parenting" box defined by white capitalist patriarchy?
Even if we defund the police, what if our children still experience coercive violence when we tell them "Do what I say or I'll give you something to cry about"?
You and I both know there’s no map we can read to chart a course straight to liberation. But we can use our inner work as a compass to guide our daily behavior, values, and practice towards liberation.
It’s like we’re about to take a long and hard road trip to liberation and equity. To make the journey as joyful as possible we need to pack (and unpack) appropriately. We unpack or unlearn those outdated beliefs that keep holding us back. And we pack all the essentials with us. Of course, this preparation might mean it takes us longer to hit the road, but I don’t want us to go on this road trip without proper snacks, music playlists, and podcasts.
Why unpacking the old conditionings is essential
Without properly unpacking, without unlearning outdated conditioning like urgency, saviorism, and power-over, the road trip to liberation can feel like you’re driving in 100 degree weather with a broken air conditioner, making this already difficult journey even harder.
Because these old habits are so sticky that they hijack our decisions, especially when we have the best intentions.
For example, in parenting we want to raise our children to be anti-racist, liberation-minded, and community-oriented. But we’re conditioned by urgency to solve the most complex issues like racism, gender violence, and class oppression with the most convenient solutions. Urgency leaves us scrambling to find anti-racism scripts, where someone else tells us what to say to our kids about racism before we ourselves get super clear on where we stand and why. Or we download an app to learn about "mindful" stress-reduction techniques just so that we can reduce stress long enough to go back to capitalism the following day. Or we’d rather find a parenting coach to tell us what to do instead of learning how to listen to our inner voice and trust our own expertise.
Alright if thoughts like “ugh, I should have known this” or “why didn’t I do better” and feelings like you’re not good enough are bubbling up, please know that these conditionings that are guiding your behaviors and mine are in the water we’re swimming in. It’s not personal; it’s structural. It’s not personal; it’s historical. That means we’re not defective to paraphrase Resmaa Menakem (https://www.resmaa.com/about) And our responsibility is to actively unlearn these conditionings. Thank you for staying in your discomfort together long enough to put these conditionings in their contexts.
When we choose a solution that’s easy and convenient, we are acting according to conditioning that tells us to independently perform parenting by the good parenting standards written by systemic oppression instead of interdependently practicing parenting that’s aligned with our values in a community.
It’s like trying to use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house. Audre Lorde wrote quote “For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change." End quote. (https://bookshop.org/books/sister-outsider-essays-and-speeches-9781799984474/9780143134442?gclid=Cj0KCQjwgO2XBhCaARIsANrW2X1Sy77k9BIptxTJXGMxG3wKkD03A2SFRALn7-KQJJrN1Xxm_JQITGQaAnTbEALw_wcB)
I’m not saying that what you’re doing is terrible. Not at all. Please do what you must to get through the day in one piece. I respect and honor your survival. And I’m also here to remind you that survival is not all of who you are. You decide and discern when it’s safe enough for you to put that armor of protection down- yes to put down that fight, flight, freeze, people please- even 10 percent of that. So that you can connect with yourself, your child, the land, and your ancestors. When you’re supported in a community, your body knows that your nervous system is spacious enough to hold both protection and connection where you can survive and also thrive.
I’m saying that parenting is hard.
Parenting's harder when parents lack structural support such as paid parental leave and universal childcare.
Parenting's hardest when parents shoulder the responsibilities of child rearing alone while their inner child and internalized oppression wounds are bleeding.
So unpacking as a decolonized parent means doing the inner work of inner child & internalized oppression wound healing to integrate fragmented parts of yourself. Then, you can show up as the parent you want to be…most of the time.
One item to unpack: socially constructed labels
One item to unpack and unlearn is your socially constructed label based on things like race, class, gender, and ability.
To come home to who you really are, you need to break free from what the oppressors tell you who you should be…when it’s safe.
As a human gendered as trans, I used to believe that my only purpose was to pass as a cis woman all day every day. If you are a member of the global majority —i.e. someone whose skin color is different than the white supremacist, patriarchal quote unquote “standard” -- , knowing how to change your tone of voice, your appearance, and your accent to appear less threatening to the bodies racialized as white is critical to our survival. But surviving isn’t the same as living, let alone living fully. Cis passing, to me, is a privilege and a protection from transphobia but for me to live fully I want to bloom beyond the gender binary. I want to make art, rest, feed my squirrel Nom Chompsky, facilitate political education, and teach child development to my graduate students. (https://www.them.us/story/living-stealth-as-trans-visibility-passing-essay)
I want to be Nat Vikitsreth not that trans Asian immigrant Nat.
These scripts or identities have us believe that we were born this way. I think I was born kind, passionate, hopeful, a little weird, and full of love. But my fullness gets fragmented and divided into different social categories like race, class, and gender just to fit within the bounds of the imagination of white capitalism. Both you and I are so much more than what these socially-constructed labels reduce us to be. Even when you have to perform these scripts to pay bills and put food on the table, knowing that you’re trying to play the game to survive and that there’s nothing wrong with you…that’s liberation too. We can both protect ourselves from systemic oppression and connect with our inner essence.
So to unpack and leave behind these scripts that are keeping you small or stuck in survival, I invite you to- when it’s safe and you’re supported in a community…to shed layers and labels society assigns to you They’re certainly your life’s assignments. I invite you to question the status quo. I invite you to ask “who’s raising my child? My own values? Or my in-laws’? Or Capitalism’s? Or white supremacy’s?”
By asking these questions, you slow down to remember that surviving systemic and intergenerational oppression isn’t all of who you are. You also remember that you’re not failing as a parent. You’re in a system that fails you.
When you pause, slow down, and reflect on who’s raising your child, you tune out the voices of the oppressors to hear your inner voices. You can let the clarity of those inner voices guide you to re-align your parenting action with your values.
That’s how we’re re-imagining parenting to be deeply decolonized & intentionally intergenerational. And leaving behind a legacy of compassion and liberation for the next 7 generations… together
In-Out-N-ThroughTM Invitation
If you're a social justice curious and conscious parent who's ready to:
+ Stop erasing yourself only to contort, conform, and perform a "good parent" script written by capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy.
+ Or who’s ready to re-parent your inner child and heal your old-but-still-raw childhood wounds.
So that you show up fully as the parent you know you can be and pass down a legacy of compassion and liberation for your child...
So that you can practice social justice through your daily parenting while promoting your child's development...
So that you can heal your inner child and honor your ancestors while raising your child with equity and liberation in mind...
I'd love to invite you to join the In-Out-N-Through™ Program. An online 6-week, cohort-based Parenting and Re-Parenting program to explore both your inner child and internalized oppression wounds. Please visit comebacktocare.com/learn for more information and registration. It's comebacktocare.com/learn.
Alright, back to the episode…
The inner transformation: The skills we’re cultivating/packing for this road trip to liberation
Now that we’ve covered what we need to unpack, unlearn, and let go to make this road trip to liberation as joyful as we can, let’s look at some of the things we might want to pack. These essential items are the skills we cultivate from the inner work of inner child and internalized oppression wound healing.
The two skills I’d love to invite you to pack on our “Summer 2022 road trip to liberation” are first, mothering (gender inclusive) as an act of solidarity and second, befriending uncertainty and discomfort.
Packing mothering not martyring.
Mothering in this case means the act of giving care, and that includes giving care to yourself too. It’s gender inclusive. It’s the opposite of martyring which systemic oppression conditions us to do where we erase and sacrifice ourselves in the hustle of parenting. So, we can wear it as a badge of honor that says I’m a good parent because I give my child my all…my humanity and my sense of self included.
Since the 1880s, parents have been disempowered and disenfranchised by the quote unquote experts like doctors in white coats. So fast forward to now, we’re so well-trained to disregard our own inner voice and our own authority and instead seek out experts on social media to tell us what to do or say to our children. If you’d like to hear more about this historical context, I’ll leave a link to Episode 6 in the show notes for you. (https://www.comebacktocare.com/episode-6)
This conditioning from white supremacy and colonialism trains us to value science more than our own experience…when in fact both are needed. Then capitalism exploits this conditioning even further when it tries to re-package parenting solutions into products called gentle parenting, conscious parenting, brain-based parenting, attachment parenting and even decolonized parenting. I’m not knocking any of these parenting camps at all (even though I’m feeling a little sassy today). I’m just keeping it real and cute by saying that while evidence-based information is important, please don’t discount your own observation and expertise. Paying attention to your own experience will guide you to implement all those evidence-based strategies in your own ways that fit with your culture, your style, and your child’s development.
To say it differently, white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism have been training parents to practice martyring not mothering. To be the parent you know you want to be and to practice social justice in your daily parenting, this internalized oppression wound is one of the most important things to heal. So you can get off your knees and stand in your power.
So my first invitation is for you to replace self-sacrifice with solidarity. That means put your mask on first to honor your needs. It may look like locking yourself in the bathroom for 10 seconds to catch a breath and re-set your fight, flight, freeze, people please reactions. Or, you might reach out to your community for help with a school drop off and offer to make dinner for them that day. Once you’re more rooted in safety and you’re present, then you meet your child’s needs.
This way you show up for yourself first so you can show up for your child in solidarity instead of as a savior.
When white capitalist patriarchy tries to erase our authentic selves, choosing to stop erasing ourselves and sacrificing who we are in the process of parenting is a radical act of self-love.
In our decolonized parenting work together, radical self-love means reclaiming all parts of you that you had to shame away to blend in and belong. Because to wholeheartedly love your child, you reconnect with all parts of your inner child.
From this place of wholeness not fragmentation, you can hear your inner voice a bit clearer and meet your child’s needs in solidarity.
Packing befriending uncertainty
Now that you’ve packed your “mothering not martyring”, let’s pack our second item with us on this road trip to liberation. This second item is the skill of befriending uncertainty. Because when we don’t know what to do, we tend to react to the discomfort saying “what do I do? What do I do?” But when we react, we revert back to our old habits and conditioning to get rid of that discomfort as quickly as we can. We scramble to grab onto the most concrete solutions we find. Oftentimes, those solutions tend to be the same old convenient master’s tools.
One invitation to befriend uncertainty is to sit with the urgency and charge of “what do I do?” without doing anything… just yet. Pause long enough to open your parenting toolkit and see which tool is adaptive because the old reactions are probably outdated.
For example, it’s not about reading another anti-racist book to be a better ally. It’s about sitting with the discomfort of accidentally misusing someone’s pronoun long enough to let guilt drive you into action and accountability: the action of correcting your pronoun mistake and the accountability of remembering to ask how someone would like to identify next time instead of assuming. This pattern of turning guilt into action and accountability is certainly more adaptive than turning guilt into shame. Especially when we react to shame by reverting to the old conditioning of violence and domination by cancelling yourself. Sometimes it’s easier to shame, blame, and cancel yourself than to hold yourself in compassion and accountability so you can repair the rupture.
We can be in that discomfort of not knowing long enough to replace reaction with intention. We can break that cycle of react and revert. The tiny space between reacting and reverting to the old habits can get bigger and wider the more we practice giving ourselves a lot of grace in that discomfort. Just like there’s a space between your inhale and exhale, there’s a space between your activation and reaction. You have possibilities beyond the old habits and conditionings.
Summary
In closing, this road trip to liberation is long and messy. So we need to unpack what we need to unlearn and then pack the essential skills that will help us do this work together for the next seven generations.
We’ve unpacked our socially-constructed identities that tend to imprison us, keeping us locked into the scripts that white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism ask us to perform. Without breaking free from these scripts, we might go along with the scripts saying “oh this is what a good/nice/woke parent should do” without discerning if that’s actually aligned with our values.
We’ve also packed two skills with us which are the radical self-love that we need to stop sacrificing ourselves to raise our children, and the ability to befriend uncertainty. By parenting with radical self-love instead of self-sacrificing martyrdom, we put our mask on first so we can meet our child’s needs in solidarity. By learning to sit with discomfort with grace and befriend uncertainty, we can pick the most adaptive tool in our parenting toolkit instead of limiting our choices to the outdated habits and conditionings aka the master’s tools.
I’ll leave you with this medicine from Audre Lorde. It’s a part of Lorde’s commencement address in 1989 at Oberlin College quote: “Every day of your lives is practice in becoming the person you want to be. No instantaneous miracle is suddenly going to occur and make you brave and courageous and true. And every day that you sit back silent, refusing to use your power, terrible things are being done in our name.” end quote. (https://queerhistory.com/radical-graduation)
Next episode I’ll be back with a final episode of the season. We’ll digest and integrate what we’ve covered so far this season. I can’t believe Season 2 is almost a wrap. I can feel my gratitude running up and down my spine. Thank you so much for unpacking and packing for the road trip to liberation together in this episode.
As always, in solidarity and sass. Until next time, please take care.