In the past few days, I've had a couple of difficult conversations with people I love deeply. In both instances, it was clear that the chasm created by differences in class (and class intertwined with race) are not fully bridgeable. I grew up in an upper-middle-class academic family. Except for a brief period during graduate school, where I scraped by on a teaching assistant’s salary or through temp jobs, my class and educational status have remained stable throughout my life. I am now 59. This stability means I can afford certain luxuries—taking an Uber to a dinner at a nice restaurant, joining a gym, planning overseas travel, or even accepting a low-paying job—without having to consider what I might need to sacrifice in return. For me, budgeting is more a moral exercise than a survival tool.

Yet, my work, relationships, and values are deeply rooted in social justice, aligning me with those who have far fewer resources. I have built my identity around being a generous, empathetic person eager to help others.

Here are a few vignettes:

One: why self improvement is a false flag.  I wrote before that self improvement is a turning away from self, that it confirms and reconfirms a brokenness at the core and is built upon shame and loathing. Self improvement  licks a wound of unworthiness.  We strive to make ourselves better to arm against being seen in our vulnerabilities.  So then the core wound becomes more and more despised.  Self improvement is tied deeply to individualism.  It is a belief that our brokenness cannot be held by others or by our truer self.  This is why family systems work is so important because it calls beloved the parts in us that have been despised.  What is critical is the practices of deep love of our parts because without that we end up in a self-defeating relationship where we are despising the parts of us that most need attending, that most need love.  There is no way through but through and the only way through is to befriend the parts of us that are broken. 

Two:  Why working in collectives matters

People say it all the time: it’s all about relationships. Whether you’re steeped in movement organizing, moving to a new town, or doing corporate sales, relationships are given mantra status—as the secret ingredient to meaningful, effective work.

What we’ve experienced in our work with Healing the Roots is something different. Yes, the five of us have become deep friends, but our relationship moves at a different pace than friendship—one shaped more by focused attention than by social closeness.