Susan's Updates

"First, a little note about where I’m at in my journey:

I used to avoid books written by BIPOC authors because I was taught and stupidly believed that they weren’t written for me to read. I felt super ashamed for those thoughts (even though they were put there by the people that raised me) and this further delayed my foray into these incredible stories. Finally this year, I have begun to address these feelings and really dig into /why/ I feel this way (a combination of the few books by BIPOC authors I had read not fitting my taste and as previously mentioned- the community I was raised in insisted on a “stick to your own kind��/ white supremacy world view. [something I am actively working to eradicate from my brain.]) I decided that one of my goals for this year would be to read a book written by a BIPOC author every month. I can report that I have read well over the 12 book goal I set for myself.

I am so sad that I closed myself off to the inspiring, colorful, beautiful words of people that look different than me for so long. I am a firm believer now more than ever that the thing that will allow us to abolish racism and build empathy is to seek out stories created by people that look different from me. While I do have white privilege and cannot have the same experience as a BIPOC person, it further cements in my mind that aside from those (huge, important disadvantages/traumas etc) experiences, we are all humans that develop the same kinds of emotional wounds and fall in love and grieve and celebrate. There is much more that binds us than sets us apart.

Okay now to talk about the book.

This is truly such a beautiful, eerie, spiritual story about generational trauma and the pain it inflicts on every child it touches. While my struggles do not involve growing up on a reservation or forced to attend a school that insisted on abandonment of my entire identity along with general racism and other terrible things, it does involve a lot of hurt women that passed on that hurt to their daughters. The last hour of this book had me in tears. If you have any interest in reading this book, please, please do. It lost me for a minute in the middle, but just know that the pay off is massive and the story is so beautiful.

This healed me more in the 3 days I read it than like the last 3 years of therapy lol where my fellow mother wounded bbs at?

Also please don’t think I am patting myself on the back or thinking that I have solved racism. I still have SO much work to do. This is a life-long journey and even then, I will still probably die with some ignorant ideas. But this is really helping me to dig into these issues (both in regards to racism and my part in racism AND the traumas that I do share with these authors) and become a better person. Sentence by sentence."