A year ago as we walked through the park, I asked if he wanted to go by the East Precinct to see where the crowd had pushed barricades aside and marched through, before walking past our home.

Yeah mom.

But he stopped me at the mural on the boards (painted by @corinnescorner), the same one that caught his attention the other day.

That’s George mom, right? Is that his name below?
Yes, and it has lots of other names, names of lots of other People of Color who have been killed.
Read them mom.

So we sat down right there on the sidewalk while I read all the names out loud. The last one was also a Dean. We paused.

Mom, I sure wish that Dean hadn’t been killed. What are the candles and flowers for?
They are to say we know you should still be alive and we won’t forget you.
Mom, let’s bring a candle back tonight.

So we did.

A few days later he made his own version of a Black Lives Matter sign. We masked and joined the protest. All summer we kept walking through the park as tents came and went, as a community garden flourished, as cement blocks an entire story high were built up around the Precinct. We filled our bedside basket with children’s books about police killing Black people and Stolen Ones, and stories about people who don’t look like us. We talked about patterns. We watched ourselves be allowed to walk where others couldn’t, just because of our skin color and appearance.

And while we tried to stay alert, we also slid into the complacency our privilege allows. We let the anti-racism energy in our bubble start to wane. We put the sign on the back porch to become a token of our participation in a movement, the books found their way to the bottom of the basket, and we stopped talking for a while.

Then one evening in the late summer heat, distant voices shouting grew closer: Black Lives Matter…Indigenous Lives Matter. As the crowd marched past our gate, we grabbed the neglected sign and rushed out to the street to watch. We waved it as they passed and then we went back to our patio dinner.

Mom…why aren’t we marching?

I couldn’t think of a good reason. There wasn’t one. We urgently threw sandals on our feet, grabbed the sign once more, and ran back out the gate to catch up. We hurried five blocks as fast as we could until we stood at the back of the crowd as it moved purposefully north.

After that I made sure we kept talking. We kept reading. We noticed how much collective effort it takes for small changes to happen. We spent the year discussing death, whiteness, privilege, racism - mine and his and the racist systems that have existed for generations and generations, the systems we live within and benefit from and perpetuate daily with our ever-present complacency and fear and whatever else holds us back from change. It’s often hard and messy. We’re doing it anyway. And when we’ve done it a while and again get comfortable with what we know and understand, we find more ways to learn and unlearn.

In the spring I started bringing him along sometimes to the Black-led urban farm nearby. Every time we go we ask “how can we help today?” and then we do whatever is asked of us. Sometimes it’s fun and sometimes it’s not and we do whatever is needed regardless. We pull weeds and pick up trash. I do the back breaking labor of pulling blackberry roots from the earth and shoveling compost. In this space we quiet our own desires and let others lead. Last Saturday we got ourselves ready and out the door, but arrived to find a sign: Black Folks Only Today. He didn’t understand.

Why can’t we go in mom?
You remember how we talked this morning about what today is, Juneteenth?
Yeah mom.
Well, slavery caused a lot of harm. People who look like us decided they could own people who didn’t look like them. And once it was no longer ok to own people, the hurt didn’t stop. People who look like us excluded others from lots of things and still do. We keep that harm going when we don’t help change those patterns.
But mom, it’s not fair, why can’t we just all be there together, Black and white people?
I think I understand. You feel sad and a little hurt right now?
Yeah.
Well, that feeling you have, it’s important to pay attention to. This sign telling us to stay away isn’t wrong and it isn’t racism, but maybe what you are feeling can help you understand a little about what racism is and why it’s hurtful. For a long time, Black people couldn’t go to the same ice-cream shop as white people, they couldn’t go to the same schools. Do you think they might have felt sad and hurt and angry about that?
Yeah.
Today this farm is a healing and celebratory space for Black people. Today isn’t about you or me. We come here to help and today we are being asked to help by not being here. It’s important for us to listen to that, just like any other time we are here. We are going to respect the request and come back a different day.

And so we left. Sometimes we have to stop doing damage before we can do anything else.

These are imperfect conversations and actions. None of what we said or did in the last year is enough. We have so much more to unlearn, so much more to learn, so much more to not do, so much more to do. Sometimes it might feel like we’re breaking, but we can stand to be broken open. We need to be broken open, so that we remember our humanity and stop the harm we do every day by participating in systems of oppression.

I am deeply grateful for the people and resources guiding me as a white parent of a white child. These are just a few of them:

Support Black Farms and Farmers
Black Farmers Collective @blackfarmerscollective
Soul Fire Farm @soulfirefarm

Classes and Resources
Holistic Resistance @holistic_resistance
Marching In Your Living Room

Books
So You Want to Talk About Race? by Ijeoma Oluo @ijeomaoluo
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
I’m Still Here by Austin Channing Brown @austinchanning
Me and White Supremacy by Layla F Saad @laylafsaad
I’m Judging You by Luvvie Ajayi Jones @luvvie
My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem @resmaamenakem

Kids Books
The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson
Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena
All Are Welcome by Suzanne Kaufman
Something Happened In Our Town by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard
The Youngest Marcher by Cynthia Levinson
The Stolen Ones by Marcia Tate Arunga

Podcasts
Hope and Hard Pills @theandrehenry
Nice White Parents @nytimes
On Being with Eula Biss @onbeing
On Being with Resmaa Menakem @onbeing

From an Ayurvedic perspective, autumn is a season of expansiveness and movement. Think of those blustery days with leaves dancing every which way. Traditionally, we counter these qualities with the opposite to find balance. We ground and stabalize so we remain healthy and vibrant with the swirling, chaotic energy around us. I'll address this next, but for today, I'm curious about exploring what this season is about and what it could mean to to bring a sense of fall's Ayurvedic elements into your life.

I think a lot about space - how it affects interaction, how we design space, how we hold space. Lately I've been engaging with how we move through claustrophobia in our lives, those times we feel like we can't breathe.

We don't have to go to a yoga class or roll out our mat at home to get space. I haven't been able to get up the last two week for my early morning practice between breastfeeding my son and his wake up time. When I do get up, I have an hour or two for a cup of tea while I write and read, then sit for a few minutes of meditation, do some sun salutations and possibly head to the gym. Instead, if I choose sleep, it's right into the kitchen to make his breakfast while I drink my tea standing up. Last week I paid attention to how cluttered my head feels and the effects of my body from rushing from the moment my eyes open. This week I still haven't been able to roll out of bed before my son and his dad. So I'm experimenting with how to bring the expansive quality of autumn into my compressed morning. This practice is pretty simple - I try and pay attention to what I'm doing as I make my tea, stir the pot of hot cereal, empty the dishwasher. If I slow down just a bit, my morning opens up.

I'm also considering how to hold space as a parent. For as rushed as I can feel trying to cram in as much as possible when I have another adult around to help with my toddler, when he and I are alone together everything can slow down to the point of insane boredom. And then I'm tempted to try and do other things while also keeping an eye on my little climber. Inevitably this leads to some sort of accident and bruise/bump/cut followed by tears. So actually, being with this little person is a lot like teaching. My role is to be present with him, to offer suggestions for creative play while letting him explore with his own intentions, and to help him stay physically safe. I've noticed that when I interact with him like this, he surprises me. Yes, he still wants to climb onto everything and treat my bed like a trampoline and do pull-ups from the toilet paper holder. And it turns out that he also wants to sit in my lap and read A LOT of books. I experience his sweet and rambunctious nature more intensely and learn more about what makes him tick.

Beyond parenthood, what does it look like to hold space for other people in our lives? For one thing, we could put down our phones and devices to engage with other people in the room or at the table, even if it's uninteresting. That moment might pass and we could discover something beyond boredom. See what happens in your world if you simplify your practice by engaging intentionally with your world.