We’re really good at not dealing with the thing that needs dealing with.
We’re masterful at cancelling people, blaming people, giving people the silent treatment or just blocking and locking people off (made easier by social media), so we can pretend we’ve gotten over something (or someone) when we really haven’t. We’re really well practiced at putting up bullshit appearances, sweeping things under the dusty, disintegrating rug and thinking just because we can’t see the thing (or the person) anymore - we don’t have to deal with it.
What we aren’t so well practiced at, is both asking for or even demonstrating accountability. At witnessing the harm we cause others and taking responsibility for our part in it.
We really aren’t well practiced at role modelling repair. And my God, do we need to practice repair if we want to usher in a new way of being in relationship with one another - interpersonally and communally. Relationships that are more connected and a lot more honest.
Lack of accountability and lack of repair has been role modelled and normalised for too long. It’s dysfunctional.
I see lack of repair regularly demonstrated in families, I see it replicated in friendships, I see it in the workplace, I see it in institutions, like the government. People are unskilled at it because so many conflate responsibility with blame or being “bad”. It means we grow up to be adults who are more invested in defending one’s position, than addressing the harm caused and it is getting us absolutely nowhere.
So it got me thinking. What is repair?
REPAIR: to restore to a sound or healthy state, to make good and compensate for.
If repair is to restore to a sound or healthy state, then boy when it comes to repair are we unhealthy and in urgent need of healing.
I mean, what does repair even feel like?
Such a rare thing for a Black woman to experience.
And then it made we wonder - how do we heal in the absence of repair?
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