We are all of us, together standing in the dark, waiting
to hear the heartbeat of a new beginning, waiting to
find our voice and become the people who our
ancestors promised we would become. ¹
Patty Krawec
Anishinaabe Reserve
Today, the earth makes a slight turn in time. The dawn is ripe with promise and resolve. This day I greet you with a heart full of fierce optimism, despite the conditions we face on the planet.
The world is struggling. At this moment, many may dance with their eyes shut, hearts closed to its pain. But imagine if we did not look away. This is not easy, especially for survivors who have been abused or neglected.
Today, I’d like to share with you an especially poignant story about Dawn Prince-Hughes, a trauma survivor and anthropologist who identifies as autistic. She had struggled all through her life to communicate and connect with people where she was ostracized and isolated. She had become involved with the daily life of gorillas, who in many ways mirrored the way she related to humans. During a very difficult time in her life, Dawn came to witness again and again that even in captivity, the gorillas had the capacity to empathize, even with the species that put them behind bars.
Congo was a captured silverback gorilla who had been abused as a baby and taken from his murdered mother. Yet from the bars of his pen, he could see that Dawn was falling apart, unable to articulate her suffering with anyone.
In her writings, Dawn describes her extraordinary experience with Congo.
"He rushed over and searched my face intently. My vision blurred, and tears spilled out of my eyes and dropped onto my clothes and the barrier between us. We looked at each other. He saw in me what I could never see in others. He moved toward me, put his massive shoulder against the window and motioned with his hand for me to lay my head there. Why should this animal, living in a prison of human making, care about my pain? It was the foundation of his inner dignity to care..."²
Having the inner dignity to care is the essence of compassion...
Imagine if you will, a possibility to create a space inside for fear, fury, and loss—holding compassion for the other, no matter which side one sits.
Imagine honoring the struggle and dignity of your own life and those you love, including those you do not understand or agree with. For a survivor, it may be a challenge to break out of the prison of one's familiar sense of safety to envision such a concept. This does not mean engaging in unsafe or toxic situations, but reckoning with a deeper understanding how and why humans do what they do.
Imagine not repeating what has been done to you, or to your ancestors. This is the power of standing your ground without retribution, activating the courageous work of change and possibility instead. Our own journey of recovery can lay the seeds that nourish the earth with new life for what lies ahead.
Yes. Imagine that.
Happy New Year 2024.
Mikele
1. Becoming Kin, An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future. Patti Krawec
2. Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism. Dawn Prince-Hughes, Ph.D