I had been planning to write a blog article this month, but given everything that has happened in the world, it feels a little bit hollow to make a post about communication in quarantine, or something similar. I don’t want to take up space online that could be better and more eloquently used by BIPOC people right now.
The murders of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Sean Reed, and countless others have knocked the wind out of me. At the same time, it’s been inspiring to see the tides of public opinion and government response begin to shift. A lot of our clients are contending with a lot of heavy emotions related to all of this.
Through the Woods Therapy Center stands with Black Lives Matter. As a culturally-affirming psychotherapy practice, we work with a lot of BIPOC clients. We’ve been honored to hold space for our Black clients and their allies as they process the flood of news stories.
If you’re looking for content right now, this list of anti-racism resources is a great place to start.
If you’re looking for a place to start doing the work of anti-racism, I also want to point you to the Harvard Implicit Bias test. (Specifically, I recommend the one called “Race IAT”.) The point of taking this test isn’t to make you feel guilty; it’s to give you a sense of your baseline so that you can hold yourself accountable. After you’ve done that, you might also consider reading Peggy McIntosh’s “Invisible Knapsack of Privilege” – a list of 50 invisible ways that she can walk through the world as a White woman without her skin color contributing to how she is perceived by others. When I read this in grad school, it was my first introduction to a lot of the invisible ways I experience racial privilege, and it started me on an extraordinary journey of peeling back those layers.