On Decolonizing Our Hearts and Bodies as a White Herbalist
"The body, not the thinking brain, is where we experience most of our pain, pleasure, and joy, and where we process most of what happens to us. It is also where we do most of our healing including our emotional and psychological healing. And it is where we experience resilience and a sense of flow."
-Resmaa Menakam, BIPOC Healer and Activist, Minneapolis, MN
Plants allow us to do the inner work of anti-racism
(along with the outer work of supporting BIPOC schools and businesses).
On Decolonizing Our Hearts and Bodies as a White Herbalist:
August 2019
Katherine Elmer
I am a cis gendered, able-bodied, demisexual, white woman of European* descent. I grew up in situational poverty with parents who had college degrees and a middle-class upbringing. I identify as a “seer” and “truth teller”. A medicine woman not only for a body but for our culture that is in the throes of a transition, a rebirth. Resistance creates suffering; surrender engenders deep learning and healing- often laced with some discomfort as we grow into new ways of being in the world. But how do I “see” and speak “truth” in these spaces I inhabit that are, by design, hiding the truth from me and resisting the truth on my lips and heart? How do I remove my consent (if it counts as consent when I was never asked) to these structures catering to my so-called “white fragility” borne out of the assumption that I am somehow too fragile for truth and somehow and entitled to comfort simply due to the color of my skin, and the education level of my parents, to name a few automatic passes into the intersectional world of “privilege”? This time- some call it “the great turning”, the apocalypse, “rapture”- and collective unveiling of the truth- feels in alignment with my inner hunger to be unplugged from the matrix and released from my blissful ignorance. How do we nurture ourselves in this gestation time for humanity so that we may find rich soil in the darkness of this womb space and emerge resilient and hopeful in the new day/season which awaits us? I feel a call to the outer work of shaking off the paternalistic “protective” shackles of patriarchal white supremacy culture that decided FOR me that I was too fragile for the truth and usher in a new culture of whiteness that is rich with deep self knowing but mostly listening. And I feel a parallel and equally fierce call to decolonize myself by digging deep into the shadows of my own psyche to uncover buried/ ignored/shamed parts of myself and welcome them forward for healing.
Divide and Conquer: Fragmentation as Colonization
Honoring, welcoming and celebrating diversity and the intersecting social identities in our communities starts within. We cannot fully foster and participate in an inclusive environment for others when parts of ourselves are hidden or unwelcome. The practice of awakening to and embracing the diverse community within cultivates a foundation of greater harmony with diversity outside of us. The journey towards deeper self-acceptance is a path to liberating ourselves and others from the oppressive constructs of theocracy, militarism, capitalism, white supremacy culture, and patriarchy (to name a few).” Radical self-acceptance and self love!!
Forgotten and Buried Indigenous Cultural Identity
The extent to which we are able to love this world has to do with how capable we are to love ourselves. All the ways we keep separating ourselves by judging ourselves and others, by not forgiving ourselves or another, or where we are not present are indications that we do not love ourselves. Presence is the doorway to gratitude that is the doorway to love and connection.
- Katja Esser, Winter Solstice Intentions 2019
Lately I feel resistant to labeling my geographic, and particularly my cultural, ancestry as “European”. It feels like another attempt to uniformly and politically group humans under a particular identity as a veiled attempt at masking the false revisionist history of theocratic imperialism that colonized and murdered my ancestors. The same history that launched the domino effect of worldwide ancestral trauma and wounding that we are only beginning to unpack today (Sherri Mitchell, 2019). I claim Celtic and Nordic ancestral bloodlines. My blood sings with excitement at the timbre of the word “Freya” on my lips, my heart expands with a sense of belonging at the sound of the beat of an animal skin drum around a fire, and my skin tingles with recognition when I imagine standing in a circle of tall stones. I am leaning into this awakening of my indigenous European heritage which sings louder and clearer in my body than my mind, as it has been largely erased from my conscious cultural memory. I am not the only one seeking to remember.