Seeing with soft eyes: Personal healing for social justice

I had been mad at the world for a while..

The more information I had about it the angrier I became. Everywhere I looked I’d see the source of my hurt - blatant injustice, discrimination, objectification, oppression. No element of society untouched by this pervasive force.

Why can’t everyone else see this? Why are we not all revolting?? Being awake to it all was dizzying.

I remember sitting on a bus, watching billboards go by, seeing one example of it after the next.

As the dagger-filled anger continued to boil within me, my inner wisdom stepped forward and encouraged me to soften my eyes. “You won’t last if you don’t.”

I sighed.

But how do I soften my eyes when all I see is this hurt? How do I remain present with the reality of our grossly unequal world without being angry?

The 2016 election results gave me my answer.

I, like many of my peers, was flabbergasted and rocked by the outcome.

My anger and hurt consumed me in such a way that the only tool I knew how to use - my ability to communicate - wasn’t even available to me. I couldn’t talk to my loved ones about it; I couldn’t have healthy, safe conversations. I was at a loss with my back against the wall, and that’s when I knew what I had to do..

Get my ass back into therapy.

For I saw all along that my anger and hurt about the abuse and injustice in the world was directly connected to my own personal experiences of abuse and injustice in my life. I knew that I had such a visceral connection to the terrible things I saw outside of me because of the foundational wounds that lived inside me.

I realized I couldn’t fight the system anymore. Not like I used to. I had to take a different approach, and that approach began with me.

For my wounds and trauma had locked my eyes into a gaze that could only see ignorant, abusive patterns. I couldn’t see the love, I couldn’t see the humanity, I couldn’t see the goodness; and therefore I couldn’t teach from a place of love, I couldn’t educate on behalf of humanity, I couldn’t communicate to the goodness.

I’ve now arrived at a new leg of my journey with it all, and am being confronted by my younger self embodied outside of me. Within the last year certain relationships have come into my life that are inviting me to deepen my compassion, healing and sense of self.

Within these relationships, personal/collective traumas related to abuse and injustice are trying to play themselves out with me; are trying to find a representation to project our shared story of injustice on to; my white body serving as the representation of perpetrator, our relationships as outlets for the trauma. It’s been my chosen task to figure out how to ensure that these projections do not lead to more trauma. Even in the face of pain, confusion and hurt, take steps to ensure that this outlet leads to healing.

It hasn’t been easy. There is so much tenderness, rawness and pain that’s wrapped up in these collective wounds of oppression. So much so that there are times that I get lost in it; believing I deserve to be punished on some level. It’s in those moments that I return to my sense of self; I more firmly root down in knowing my heart and knowing the efforts that I take on behalf of personal and collective healing. I reaffirm my lifelong commitment to uncover my cultural blindspots and address how I contribute to the reinforcement of racism and inequality. I show up to using every opportunity to deconstruct the old power paradigm and reconstruct a new one.

In response to my trauma’s impulse to defend, argue and prove myself, I’m brought back to my own inner guidance’s suggestion to see with soft eyes. I send compassion to the projected stories that are trying to find a home in my field. I see you and I feel you, but do not identify with you; not in the way you’re asking me to. There will always be more work to be done in my journey towards embodying social justice. Me absorbing toxic beliefs about who I am because of my skin color is not one of them.

Hi, I’m Liz Moyer Benferhat. Writer, facilitator, coach, and development practitioner dedicated to the subtle interplay between how inner transformation feeds the outer transformation we need in the world. Welcome 🌿