Do Better

by Rachel Ricketts

  THE ROLE OF RIGHTEOUS RAGE

  “Rage” is not a word most of us are comfortable with, especially not in spiritual circles. We usually connote anger and all related emotions as deviant and destructive, but our anger is a vital part of our emotional well-being. Anger tells us when a boundary’s been crossed or an injustice suffered. And rage, an intensified form of anger, does precisely the same. Though rage is often perceived as inherently uncontrollable and violent, that understanding is yet another tool of white supremacy. And with good reason! The rage we witness under white supremacy most often is violent and uncontrolled—and manipulative. Most of us have succumbed to an unchecked form of rage at some point or another—I most certainly have and it ain’t pretty. I have wielded my rage abusively through shaming, condescension, and coercion. It’s not a rage I’m proud of nor promote, and certainly not the rage I’m proposing (obviously). I’m talking about a rage that includes love and compassion. For ourselves and others. Righteous rage is motivated by, and results in, deeper connection as opposed to desire for domination. It demands discernment. It is forceful anger that is asserted when a grave harm has transpired and it commands accountability. Accountability seeks to remedy harm, restore trust, and reestablish severed bonds. Righteous rage is infused by and with Spirit. This kind of rage is a reflection of our mental, emotional, and spiritual vitality.

  Feeling intensified anger can actually be a sign of your health. For example, if you feel rage in response to being abused, your rage is an indication that you care about yourself and your well-being; it is calling you into action to ensure you are not subject to such maltreatment in the future. Rage, like anger, can be channeled and transmuted for good. It is at the core of many of the most notorious social movements of our time. Righteous rage can, and very often has, changed the world for the better. Marsha P. Johnson channeled her rage into coordinating the Stonewall uprising to uphold gay rights. Martin Luther King Jr., fueled by his anger at the poverty and plight of Black Americans, mobilized millions into creating more equity for all. Angela Davis’s outrage at the social and political inequalities of women helped solidify the feminist movement. Indeed, without anger we may never have had the likes of the LGBTTQIA+, civil rights, or women’s movements. It is important to note how the rage of the oppressed is particularly demonized and policed by white supremacy. For example, Black rage channeled in support of Black liberation very often requires civil disobedience as a means to combat the overwhelmingly oppressive systems of state-sanctioned brutality (like Minneapolis and Portland being set ablaze after George Floyd’s murder). Black folx who took to the streets during this civil uprising were named thugs and terrorists, with many non-Black folx calling for strictly “peaceful protest.” But, as anti-oppression educator McKensie Mack says, “That rage is not about control and dominance, that rage is about fatigue. That rage is rooted in being on the receiving end of global white supremacist murder and abuse for centuries.”5 This too is righteous. And revolutionary.

  Righteous rage is a powerful vehicle to propel personal and collective change because it inherently contains additional inertia. The potency of our rage is exactly what is required to help propel us to take on the challenging inner and outer work required to commit to racial justice. To accept and incite the changes needed to keep promises to ourselves as well as to others, and to call on ourselves and others to dismantle the oppressive status quo systems as they currently exist. The changes required to bring about racial justice are not meager. They are lofty, robust, and all-encompassing. Rage is one of the most powerful tools to get us there but only when channeled effectively. It requires unlearning the powerful ways of white supremacy we have all consumed and, instead, finding the capacity and tolerance to hold compassion alongside our rage. No. Easy. Ask.

  At first, tapping into your rage may seem an insurmountable task. After all, you’ve likely been conditioned to avoid anger and rage for the majority of your life (I was!). This is especially true for those socialized as women and femmes. And doubly so if you are a Black woman+ living under the constant threat of being labeled angry simply for breathing. Still, what is undoubtedly more of a challenge is learning how to hold your rage and compassion in the same breath. Righteous rage beckons both. It holds space for the harms that have been trespassed on you and/or the most marginalized and motivates you to hold those causing such harm to account, and it asks you to hold space for the perfectly imperfect humxnity in others, including yourself. Not because you need to skip into some superhumxn state of forgiveness toward those who have been oppressive (or anybody!), but because activating your righteous rage is ultimately about healing, and healing requires our full and complete selves. This is where your spiritual self gets kicked into high gear!

  Oftentimes our rage is very much connected to or spawned from love. If you do not have love for a person, situation, or system, then it is unlikely you will feel the intensified anger that is rage when that person, situation, or system—be it a friend, foe, or the collective—does you (or is done) dirty. In the words of homegirl Solange, “You got the right to be mad.”6 When you can tap into your rage while also maintaining compassion for yourself and others, it helps you better tolerate, and therefore utilize, the intensity of emotions you are feeling. Especially when those emotions are mixed. For example, if a white friend says something racist, I will likely feel rage but I’m also still likely to feel affection, because, after all, that person is my friend. If I want to be best equipped to employ my righteous rage, then it is helpful for me to accept that I can possess both rage and compassion in the same instance. If I have feelings of rage because of my friend’s actions but I also feel compassion for them and I don’t know how to tolerate both, I am more likely to self-censor my rage and instead attack or shame myself for feeling rage, because that is easier on my nervous system than tolerating my mixed emotions. The end result is: (a) disconnection from my friend because I’m not empowered to employ my righteous rage and hold them to account, (b) my friend’s harmful actions going unaddressed, and (c) mental duress caused by self-criticism, shame, and other painful forms of self-attack deriving from an inability to hold both my rage and compassion at once. Not a cute look.

  I can have compassion for you and rage against you or your actions. Our compassion does not negate our rage and our rage need not negate our compassion. It’s not easy to tolerate both emotions at once, but expanding our capacity to tolerate our discomfort is part of our commitment to Spiritual Activism. I can want nothing to do with you and wish you well. Or forgive you and still tell you to fuck off (energetically or otherwise). I can express the harms you’ve inflicted and the anger I feel as a result while still honoring your full self and acknowledging your pain, sadness, and remorse. When we fail to hold space for the full spectrum of our mixed and multifaceted emotions, we rob ourselves of the full expression of our humxnity, as well as the humxnity of others, and we may cause ourselves harm by turning our rage inward rather than transmuting it into much-needed change. A fail on all accounts.

  So lean into that righteous rage and compassionate anger. Spiritual Activism is a loving and challenging call to embrace our righteous rage, to know when that rage is righteous rather than violent, and to move in and from heart-centered action. It is a call to align with Spirit in order to do the deep inner work that precipitates any external or collective shift. And to motivate ourselves into being the change we wish to become. Spiritual Activism is an active opportunity to observe and accept yourself and your role in perpetuating white supremacy for what it is, so you can get to work on making the change necessary to stop causing harm and start helping the revolution.

  Spiritual Soulcare Offering/Call to Action

  Connecting with Our Righteous Rage

  Find a quiet space, take a deep breath, and ask yourself the following:

  Where does rage live in my body?

  What does my rage want to do (or what has my rage wanted to do)?

  If my rage could talk, what wou
ld it say?

  Journal, draw, voice note, or otherwise record your answers however feels best.

  THERE IS NO “RIGHT” WAY TO EXPRESS OUR RAGE, ESPECIALLY FOR THOSE SUBJECTED TO CENTURIES OF MURDER AND ENSLAVEMENT. WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF FEELING RAGE, TRY EXPLORING THE FOLLOWING:

  1) Acknowledge your rage and surrender to its existence.

  2) Get curious about any other emotion that may live beneath or beside the rage (for example, sadness or grief).

  3) Practice tending to your rage. For example: Journal answers to the above and burn them (safely please!).

  Punch into a pillow—and keep punching until you feel your rage has done what it needs to do.

  Take a time-out to reflect or take three deep breaths.

  Scream at the top of your lungs in your shower, car, or room with music on blast (my personal fave).

  4) Connect with your ancestors. Sometimes our rage is compounded by the rage our ancestors felt or the feelings we hold because of what they did or endured (especially for Black and Indigenous folx). Honor that, and them.

  5) If it feels available to you (and it may not), sense if you also feel love, compassion, or other conflicting feelings for the person or situation. If so, let yourself hold space for both (it’s a mindfuck, so just try it out).

  6) Focus on connection rather than domination.

  7) Tap into your inner child to explore what boundary has been crossed, injustice inflicted, or need requires attention. Observe what your rage and loving compassion (for yourself and others and particularly the most marginalized) want to do about it and act from that place.

  TEN

  Intersectional Spirituality

  Never learn your ancestral ways from those that benefit from your ancestor’s pain.

  —GLORIA LUCAS, NALGONA POSITIVITY PRIDE

  Spiritual Activism offers insight and wisdom about ourselves and others while arming us with an embodied presence to confront our racial shadows and better withstand our discomfort—all of which are critical in order to achieve racial justice. Still, simply being spiritual or partaking in spiritual practices is not enough. How we tap into Spirit—whom we invite into our shared spiritual spaces and for whose benefit—is all part of the racial justice effort. Many spiritual wellness offerings that were primarily created by and for communities of color have been co-opted by whiteness. Many BI&PoC and other oppressed folx have been excluded from supposedly spiritual spaces using practices created by our ancestors. There is an epidemic of wellness platforms and influencers inflicting harm on BI&PoC and other marginalized folx and refusing to foster respectful relationships with people and offerings from cultures that are not their own. Spirituality and wellness are more mainstream than ever before, but they have also become bigger sources of segregation and suffering rather than communion and healing. What we need is an intersectional form of spirituality.

  Intersectional spirituality* is a means to aid us in invoking a multifaceted approach to wellness that promotes culturally informed, racially sensitive, and non-appropriative spiritual teachings and practices as the path forward for healing the collective divide. It provides a framework for embracing spiritual and wellness practices as a way to unpack our privileges, help heal our hearts, and dismantle white supremacy while also acknowledging the ways some of those practices have been and continue to be used to do the exact opposite. To engage in intersectional spirituality is to practice spiritual wellness in a way that honors the impact of those practices not only on our own lives but on the lives of others, particularly the communities from which the practices and offerings originated—including the ways in which spirituality and wellness have resulted in their oppression. Specifically for white people whose ancestors have a long history of violence against the communities who created today’s most popular wellness practices. Intersectional spirituality helps us to examine how harm arises and the complex nuances inherent in partaking in practices that can both build up and break down the oppressive systems we seek to stop. Together we’ll explore how the wellness industry and its spiritual foundations have bolstered white supremacy and how we can better utilize spiritual wellness as a means to eradicate, rather than enforce, global systems of oppression.

  WHY “WEALTH & HELLNESS”?

  The first time I heard the phrase “wealth and hellness,” it was a slip of someone’s tongue. The host of a feminist gathering accidentally swapped the “h” and the “w” when referring to the health and wellness industry and the room filled with resonant laughter. Though many of us turn to health, wellness, and spirituality as a means to improve our well-being and connect with the collective, there is much about these industries causing harm and degrading the very things we seek. They lead to a culture of “hellness,” especially for the oppressed folx they exclude, while creating great wealth for all those who cultivate them, often cis, white, non-disabled, and otherwise privileged folx. The global wellness market is valued at over $4 trillion1 and has become entirely subsumed with colonialist and capitalist forces. Consequently, it is no surprise that the majority of the industry is inaccessible and harmful to communities of color.

  To me wellness means peace, vitality, and safety in an emotional, spiritual, psychological, mental, and physical way. Wellness is a full-body, comprehensive, 360-degree state of being in alignment with your highest and best self. It is an inherently spiritual act. But wellness isn’t possible for the majority of us when much of the modern-day wellness industry is created by and for rich, young, white, hetero, thin, cis, non-disabled women, to the exclusion and harm of everyone else. There are systemic barriers to wellness for most people on the planet due to oppression rooted in race, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, ability, and more. Barriers that have been strategically set in place both intentionally and otherwise. But impact trumps intention. Take, for example, in 2019, when Yoga Journal invited Nicole Cardoza, a Black woman, to be featured on its cover—an invitation only a few other Black women had received since the magazine’s inception in 1975—then rescinded that invite. Instead, the editors asked their online community to vote between Nicole’s cover and a cover with a white woman. As Nicole shares, “They were worried that my image wouldn’t sell, and they wanted the data to prove it.”2 Earlier that year yoga culture advocate Susanna Barkataki publicly shared how Yoga Journal had an opportunity to showcase herself and four other Desi women on its June cover—you know, women whose ancestors actually created yoga.3 Instead the editors chose a white woman holding mala beads. For a cover that actually refers to articles by Susanna and others on “honoring the roots of yoga.” Fucking appalling. Sort of like when Lululemon, the most problematic yoga company on the planet, hosted a “Worth 100” panel for International Women’s Day with predominantly white, non-disabled, thin, young, upper-middle-class women. I guess they’re the only ones Lululemon deems worth a damn. In my personal experience, the company has made that clear many times over.

  In addition to being racist, anti-Black, ableist, and fatphobic, wellness is also mired in heteropatriarchy. Spiritual subservience and manipulation, key elements of toxic masculinity, promote the notion that we are not our own healers. But we are. You are your own guru. Nobody knows you, your mind, or your body better than you. The purpose of spirituality is to teach you how to access your own innate healing power, not rely on powers outside of you for constant support.

  On the whole, wellness today is classist, racist, ableist, homophobic, fatphobic, transphobic, ageist, and otherwise overwhelmingly oppressive. It is an agent of injustice. But true wellness should not be for a select few. It is our birthright. Each and every one of us. The current culture of wealth and hellness contradicts everything wellness is truly about it. It is a hierarchy enforcing insidious beliefs about who has the right to wellness and, more important, who does not. It’s entirely unsurprising then that so many BI&WoC and other marginalized folx are unwelcome in the modern-day wealth and hellness industry, be it personally or professionally.

  WE
LLNESS SO WHITE

  I have always felt like an outsider in the wealth and hellness industry because it neither speaks to nor includes me. Until two hot minutes ago, Black women+ have rarely been represented in spiritual or wellness images, marketing efforts, or leadership, and any act of noninclusion is in and of itself an action. A telling one. One of the biggest ways wellness excludes all BI&WoC is by failing to create inclusive, equitable, and sufficiently safe spaces. Despite my intimate involvement in wellness, there are very few wellness spaces I feel sufficiently safe to enter as a Black woman. Most people aren’t doing their racial justice work, so they are ill-equipped to create authentic healing spaces. Most of my spiritual wellness occurs at home or in spaces solely for BI&PoC, which are very rare spaces to find. I do this because I’ve had so many violent experiences in wellness spaces with white women. It doesn’t matter that I was introduced to yoga and meditation when I was eight or started frequenting a naturopath at eleven; the white-washed world of wellness treats me as an outsider. I am perceived as less knowledgeable, less abundant, and less worthy of care. From spiritual mediums who criticized my suicidal ideations as “unspiritual” to spiritual development courses demanding I call and apologize to my abusers, I have faced harm in a wide range of wellness spaces. And it’s not just me. Many of my clients are white women in wellness, and the stories they share about the racist actions of their white staff or colleagues are distressing. Stories of front desk staff asking Black women walking in if they were trying to find the women’s shelter downstairs (i.e., you don’t belong here) or of white yoga teachers refusing to meet the gaze of the sole Indigenous woman in class. In my experience, there is no wellness practice that has treated BI&WoC with more disdain or discrimination than yoga. Cis white women teaching yoga to be precise.