This Sunday was the second session of The Angry Intellectual: Channeling Rage for Transformation!   We are training ourselves to use the energy and insight of our anger to create transformative relationships, not to reproduce domination.  Here are some stones on our path.

Journeystones: 

After Audre Lorde’s “Journeystones I-X”

a quarry of clarity from the Angry Intellectuals

(or a can of stones to kick)

 

i can drop my need to be right all the time

i can drop my fear of seeming like a failure

drop my need to be liked

drop my need to fix things for other people

i can drop my tendency to bear it alone….

i can drop the need to always do more…sometimes i have already done (MORE THAN) enough.  capitalism kills.

i can drop my fear of being judged

i can stop faking the funk like any revolution has gone smoothly

i can drop the need to fit in completely. i’m different (in some ways) and it’s good.

and my shoes are cute

i can drop my hard rock need to seem like i can never be hurt

i can drop the fear of never being hurt…and suspecting that the present is simply the past in a new body, time, and person

which also must mean i have to drop a refusal to deal with past hurts

i can drop my expectations of other black women to be the perfect me i wish i was

i can drop my fear of seeming needy

i can drop my fear of being my mother

and me of being my father…

and me of being reactionary

i can drop my need to be right/to focus on just my hurt so that i can see that other’s actions are really out of fear

i can allow compassion, instead of pushing it away.

i can drop my shoulders and release the pent up tension. that’s not even a good warrior pose!

i can drop the teacher/academic/professional pose which hinders the possibilities of radical education

i can drop those standards of grace that were not mine/ours to begin with

i can drop those perfectionist tendencies….

i can drop the idea of speaking to anger or emotion as taking up too much space.

i can drop my fear that i’m taking up too much space.

i can drop my fear that my community won’t hold me.

i can drop my fast conclusions which foreclose the possibilities of allies

i can drop my fear of my own healing and give others permission to heal

i can drop my need to hide love. I feel deeply and I need to say it often.

i can drop my need to seem rational when I KNOW my feelings hold truth

i can drop my distrust of my body.  my body knows the truth!