We pursue visibility often. The need to know that someone or someones have given us a nod of approval, read our words, liked our photos, has reviewed our work. But if visibility is driven by something at its foundation, that foundation I feel must be hate. Whether that hatred is about hating who you are and needing to know others feel differently, or hating what someone has said or has thought about you and you feel the need to change it, it is still a medium of deficit.
A few months ago I wrote about black women being the daughters of Hagar, and how long before we may know it, God has seen us. And that visibility is one of love. How then can I pursue the changes that are driven by love? The changes that are rooted not in opposition to any ideas or the need to have that change recognized, but simply because I love myself enough to want it and to do it. It begins, again, with decathexis. Finding the things and the people that I am willing to let go of to give myself the room and energy in my life for the new. Because love is patient, love is kind, love is the gentle fall of leaves on trees making room for the spring. Love gives the energy necessary to change.
So what have I done differently in the name of self-love? I am learning to wake up to sunrises over my city, instead of the violence of the news. (It will be there later. It is always there still later.) I am purposefully crafting spaces that help me reflect and heal, and gives others the room to do so as well. (Because loving myself more gives me the energy to continue loving others.) And I am resisting the voice of despair, and instead listening to the whispers of “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
Odelia Younge 