Recalibration

I am ashamed to share that last week broke me. Between the racial atrocities, the continued disgusting behavior of not-my-President, and seeing all manner of dumb ass, selfish pandemic related behavior, for the first time that I can remember since the 2016 election, I felt hopeless.

This is unusual for me. Normally I'm a person who digs deep in the hard moments to figure out the next step. Normally I'm a person who uses my platform to curate resources and encourage others to take a small step. Normally I'm a person who leans in hard to empathy to try to understand others.

But I got so painfully stuck. So after a few days of being a tremendously foul person to my family, I decided to take a few days offline. I decided to stop my Embrace 2020 daily photo series (a super trivial matter in the big picture, but significant personally since I'm not someone who doesn't finish what I start). I took time to clear my head.

It's worth pointing out that even as a woman of color, I'm well aware that it's a privilege to take time to clear my head...to step away. Yet it was necessary. Because ultimately I was able to pull myself out of the doom spiral quicker and recalibrate. I'm someone who looks for symbolism so I took Jon and my return to the tennis courts this morning as a touchpoint to normalcy, which includes the Christine Koh who is ready to roll up her sleeves and do the work. I'm urging you to do the work with me; what is happening right now is 8000% not normal or OK and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US bears a human responsibility here.

To start please read recent perspective and resource blog posts by Luvvie Ajayi Jones and Karen Walrond. And follow Feed Our Democracy for actions, resources, and news. And Jeannine Harvey and Jill Krause and Gabrielle Blair who are incredible points of inspiration for what it means to do the work as white women (among many other gifts).

Finally, it is OK to fall apart. But we need to eventually pick ourselves and keep going.