What shocked us the most when we are working with communities who historically have been underserved and marginalized is (1) how kind these people are, and (2) how unkindly they allow the world to treat them. They don’t know that they deserve to be treated kindly in return. It is as if one-sided empathy and forgiveness are engineered into the abused to survive the abusive treatment. Overjustification, apologies, and forgiveness are tools that some people have been taught to do relentlessly at the expense of their own sanity for the comfort of the dominant one.
Against popular notions of love, this booklet urges us to…
STOP
- blaming ourself for a moment
- forgiving the other person
- justifying for their misdeeds
- spiritual bypassing our pains
START
- admitting that we were hurt
- validating our own reality
- placing accountability where it’s due
- truth-speaking about our experiences
Learning about Narcissism and On a macro level, by questioning who benefits from how we currently understand "love", I hope "love" widens to include the marginalized.