Out of my Comfort Zone: Meeting Our Discomfort to Support Collective Liberation

The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal asked a number of leaders in southeastern Michigan’s conscious living community to reflect upon times in their lives that they’ve left their comfort zones to venture out in new ways. In the distant past or much more recently, we asked, what did you do, what inspired you, did it change you, inside or outside, big or little? Did you attend a new class, take an adventurous trip, go skydiving, stretch beyond a long entrenched boundary, start a new relationship or end an old one, take a leap, retire, join the Peace Corps, go on a night trek in the wilderness, or just do something way out of the ordinary?

Leslie Blackburn (they, them) is a queer, white, omnisexual, polyamorous, ecosexual, kinky, genderqueer supporter for all beings to be authentically who they are. Their work blends Sacred Sexuality, Ancestral Healing, Grief & Emotional release, and Anti-Racism work to support collective liberation, self-awareness, vitality, empowerment, and joy. Leslie stewards the land at One Space: a private sanctuary, home, Temple and community space on 3.7 wooded acres in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For the past ten years, Leslie has been pouring their story and life’s work into their first book: Sacred Sexuality: Listening to Our Bodies, which is currently being edited in preparation for publication. Support this work and receive sneak peeks of the book by becoming a patron on her website LeslieBlackburn.com.

Meeting Our Discomfort to Support Collective Liberation

By Leslie Blackburn

The sun was warm and bright the day I met Dragonfly.

It happened fourteen years ago at a corporate picnic, back when I was an engineering manager with 15 years in the automotive industry. A dragonfly landed on me. It looked at me, cocking its head, flew away and back again, as if trying to get my attention. By the third time, it did. Something shifted that day. I’d been questioning, and this was my answer. It wasn’t long before I abandoned my corporate career and followed a path that led me to the Peruvian jungles, the pyramids in Egypt, new teachers and practices, and most importantly, to the temple of my own body. In so doing, I found my new work in the world as a sacred sexual healer.

The biggest part of this journey was inward. As I got in touch with my body and listened, I was able to unwind trauma from my past. In connecting deeply with myself, I found I was better able to connect deeply with others and share this path. Of course, along the way I bumped up against deep societal conditioning around gender and sexuality. All of this was an ongoing process of “stepping out of my comfort zone.” Unknown to me, the biggest was yet to come: waking up to my whiteness and racism at age 48.

Used to be, I associated the word “racism” with things like beatings, shootings, slavery, lynchings, and the KKK. I thought that since I wasn’t part of these things, I wasn’t racist. I thought I was one of the “good white people.” 

Then, through the sweet gift of a relationship and with help from some amazing beings who held me in a place of care with a willingness to help me see, I had an uncomfortable awakening: I realized that racism is in my body because of the culture I was born into and because of my ancestry. I started to see how racism shows up in my actions even when I don’t realize it.

As it happened, at the time I had also been exploring my genealogy. My people come from England, Germany, Scotland, the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland and perhaps others. In most cases they came to the USA eight to ten or more generations ago and settled in rural, agricultural northern Ohio. Huge parts of my lineage were part of colonization of this continent. 

This goes beyond mere historical fact. Whether or not I liked my family history, even if my family members weren’t a part of active violence, they were there during those eras and absorbed the violence, perhaps perpetuating more, perhaps numbing out and ignoring it as a way to cope. As a body-focused practitioner, I realized that the fallout of all the massacres and violence involved in conquering and colonization is present in me now, and in so many of us alive right now in North America. And I saw that by ignoring of all this, I was actually creating more harm.  

I also woke up to realize that my ignoring and my silence were a facet of my privilege, that because I walk in the world in a white body, I could ignore and shove aside uncomfortable things from a place of relative safety that people in black, brown, yellow, red, and olive-skinned bodies often never experience as they navigate this world.  

When I started to realize all of this, after my defensiveness around this started to crumble, I felt a huge, huge wave of guilt and shame. I didn’t want to face it or see it. I didn’t want to believe that racism is in me. Certainly, that can’t be true!             

It took time. I slowed down and listened. I observed my habits of thought and my body sensations in different situations. I also redirected my attention to teachers, influencers, healers, and artists of color in my social media feed. I began studying with folx experienced in unpacking racism from our bodies and started to really unwind the way my body carries white supremacy. By ‘white supremacy,’ I mean a construct created around colonization, centered on the idea that someone or something is innately and inherently better than someone or something else. This shows up in so many ways: power-over aggression, extraction, urgency, productivity: a constant inner dialog and way of being that insists we must compete and dominate and “be on top of.”

Read related article: Waking Up After 2020

I invite other white folx to look inside and to see this, too. This is going to create discomfort. That’s okay.

I want to care for us as we hear and listen to each other. Instead of bypassing awareness of the differences in our experiences due to racism, I wish for us to acknowledge them. Instead of thinking we’re not part of the problem, let’s gently bring awareness to the ways we continue to perpetuate both the external systems and the internal habits of thought and being that are so deeply engrained in our bodies that we don’t even see them. Let’s bring our awareness into the blind spots.  For example, if you are a white woman, have you ever clutched your purse or bag closer to you when walking by a man of color?  Or locked the car doors while driving by a man of color on the street?  Do you respond in the same way when you are near a white woman? A white man? An excellent resource for getting curious about many other examples, and what’s emerging in your own body is the book “My Grandmother’s Hands” by Resmaa Menakem.

I’m now seeking to co-create a culture of care where we can lean into our discomfort together and unwind these old stories from our bodies and be responsible for our actions. How do we do this together? Staying swallowed up with feelings of guilt is not the answer. We’ve had a huge rupture in the relational space of our shared human experience. That’s where the trauma happened. People killing people, people losing awareness of the interconnectedness of ourselves with one another and the planet, people forcing others into mistrust of their own bodies.

The way through is to find the support needed to stay in and continue to grow our awareness. Since the rupture happened in the relational space, the healing needs to happen in the relational space. In my own process I’ve identified four key foundations to feel safe again to be who we are, to make mistakes and still be loved, to relax and allow instead of brace for impact.

Repairing our relationships with:

•  Body

• Ancestors/Spirit

•  Community

• Nature/Earth

Where do we begin, and how can we contribute? There are many ways to begin addressing the problems of this pervasive and systemic dis-ease. Introspective self-work is a foundation for conscious relating, and vice versa. So, to heal racism systemically and socially, going inward with self is a great place to start. For example, healing our relationship with ourselves and our own bodies can support feeling safe to reach out for human support. Or perhaps the care of a trusted friend can help us feel safe in our own body. Or maybe establishing a felt connection with the land and nature brings some ease to remember our ancestors. It’s a nonlinear dance to rebuild, repair, and settle our nervous systems to be able to receive and open to our vitality and pleasure. And from this place we can move into deeper healing together.

My prayer for all people is to return to our compassion and wisdom as humans: to remember our interconnectedness, our accountability for our actions, and our responsibility for co-creating a culture of care for our bodies, ourselves, each other, nature, and the planet.

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