Revisiting the first Thriving for Equity blog

Bridge in Chicago, near where this work began

Since only a few of you were with me back at the beginning of this blog, I thought I’d share a minimally-edited version of the very first post I wrote—so you can get a sense of where this work started for me and the perspective I’m coming from.

It’s so strange to realize that I wrote this just a month before Donald Trump was elected president the first time around. What a time we are living in.

It’s also interesting to see that I described Thriving for Equity as an “experiment” then. I was just starting to test out the possibility that one could BOTH thrive personally AND work effectively and courageously for equity and justice in the world.

Now, after almost a decade of walking this path—both on my own and with clients—I’m still in the experiment (because these times are certainly a new testing ground) AND 100% convinced that Thriving for Equity is a transformative way to live.

It works better than the path of perpetual shame, guilt, suffering, and sacrifice because it honors who we are as individual humans living in bodies.

It works, I believe, because we are made to live in interdependent communities in which all members thrive.

It works because, as much as our increasingly polarized world wants us to believe everything is either/or, the magic is in the both/and.

Imagine that it’s October 6, 2016 . . .

Welcome! So glad you're here! This is the first post in my Thriving Thursdays blog. I’d love to hear what you think!

I don’t remember exactly how it all started.

I know that as a white, middle-class sophomore in high school, my favorite poem became Langston Hughes’s “Theme for English B.”

I know that before that, as a shy 10-year-old military “brat” living at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, I became fascinated by a set of cassette tapes about Martin Luther King. I remember that the school librarian seemed to think my interest was strange.

I remember how uncomfortable I felt when, at age 15, I moved to a new school in the southern United States where, for the first time in my life, I was one of only three white students in a class full of African Americans. (Life of white privilege—anyone? I was used to being "normal," i.e., in the majority and not standing out in any way.) 

I remember my discomfort, but I don’t remember questioning why it was that this school was so much less challenging academically than the one I had attended the previous year in a different state—one that was in the Midwestern North and had very few African American students.

Those questions would come later.

At the time, though, I knew that it would be unlikely for me to succeed in college if I stayed there, given my comparison of the curriculum and teaching quality there and what it had been like at my previous school.

Despite my parents' general preference for public schools, I transferred out to a private Catholic school after one semester.

But the experience stayed with me.

I was brought up in a loving, conservative, evangelical Christian household where I was taught that service to the less fortunate was expected. “To whom much has been given, much is required.”

I went off to a conservative evangelical college, somewhat resistant to total servanthood—God seemed to have been a bit of a killjoy in relation to life in high school, and I kinda wished I could have had a bit more fun before being saved from hell. 

But still, I had a profound sense of moral responsibility, and perhaps some resignation, about my role. I didn’t want to go to Africa to “save the world.” But I figured God would probably drag me there kicking and screaming because it was what I least wanted to do and what I most feared. God seemed to work like that, despite all the “God is love” teachings I received.

And note also that it was always Africa that came to mind as the place where people were in need of saving—not Europe or Australia, or any other place inhabited mostly by white people who, through colonization, had become wealthy by taking resources from people living in brown and Black bodies.

I just knew I was better off than a lot of people, and “to whom much has been given, much is required.” You get the idea.

I didn’t actually go to Africa until decades later (and when I did, it was a great joy—but that’s another story). Initially, I found an even scarier place to go—“THE INNER CITY.”

For many people, scary is being out of the city, not in it. But in my world, cities were places to be feared and avoided—places filled with crime and poverty—but they perfectly fit the bill for an emerging “white savior.”

So I started by tutoring a few kids in “the projects” one night a week. Then I applied for a summer of “urban ministry.” 

As I remember it, I actually stated in the application process that my main reason for applying for the summer program was to face my FEAR OF THE CITY, a fear that caused me to avoid it.

My father’s words echoed in my ear: “You be the boss of Fear, don’t let Fear be the boss of you.”

I didn’t want to be controlled by Fear—even if my father himself, along with the U.S. media and multiple other sources, no doubt—had contributed to my generally negative view of “the City.” (And to my father's credit, he didn't try to stop me from going.)

Flash forward three years or so, and I was moving into Chicago to teach at the Good News Educational Workshop—a small private school that paid its teachers very little in order to provide a warm, safe, highly creative educational environment for very low tuition.

The images that come to mind when I think of my first year teaching are of chaos, failure, and many, many tears.

After having received stellar grades when I student-taught in a predominantly middle-class suburb, I was clearly not prepared. I pretty much cried all the way home each day, then curled up in a ball in my bed until I could force myself to get up and plan for the next day—all the while chastising myself for having trouble staying within my $15/week grocery budget and for feeling sorry for myself because I couldn't afford new clothes.

After all, so many people around me had much less.

In the midst of yuppie culture at its highest point, I was committed to being “downwardly mobile…

I was going to sacrifice everything and save the world. But here’s the thing: I couldn’t do it.

All those messages I believed about how I should sacrifice and serve, all the shame I felt about the riches and privileges I had and have—they didn’t help me to do what I longed to do: to make a difference, to bring healing and justice, to relieve suffering, to make the world a better place.

They also didn't help me to recognize the strengths of my students and their communities.

It wasn't my job to be their savior, but it would take me awhile to figure that out.

Several years later, I tried a different form of sacrifice. I left work I loved to do the stay-at-home mom thing—also highly regarded in my cultural context, also a role in which perpetual sacrifice is glorified. Same problem. I couldn't do that either. At least not with joy.

I was too emotionally fragile, too inclined toward depression, perhaps too SELFISH to do what a REALLY GOOD person would do.

As it turned out, these failures were gifts, because they forced me to look for new ways to live... and I've found some. That’s why I’m here.

I haven't given up on making a positive difference in the world.

I just no longer believe that one has to STRIVE and STRUGGLE all the time, or just barely SURVIVE, in order to bring more equity into the world.

In fact, for me at least, none of those options is even possible.

I’m pretty sure I would have committed suicide—literally—if I’d stayed on those paths. So in this next chapter of my life, I’m experimenting with THRIVING FOR EQUITY.

If this sounds good to you too, join me here on Thursdays. If you want more, watch for announcements about my coaching programs.

Looking forward to connecting,

Deb