Warrior Women and Internalized Oppression

When I think of creating another world, I think about my sisters that I collaborate with in social justice every day. The women on the frontlines used both as weapons of war and declaring war. Women Warriors are everyday women, women like me and you. The problem is that as change makers, we often , are too from the very community that we are fighting for and with. We experience first hand the injustice , the poverty, the abuse and the neglect of our people. The challenge is that there is no one taking care of us, no one taking care of the activist, the organizers that do it day in and day out. If we the front liners, the warriors don’t take a good look at ourselves and see how we have internalized the very oppression that we are fighting then we will replicate this same world all over again.

Warrior Women, we are dying, we are social activist on the front lines transforming the world with a bag pack full of fear , guilt, shame, loneliness, resentment and anger that is killing us. We often feel powerless in the mist of war and we have mastered so many ways of dealing and surviving that we go home to do the very things that we are supporting our communities’ not to do. So, how many of us drink, self mutilate, eat, sleep , don’t eat, don’t sleep, have unsafe sex, are in abusive relationships, are the abusers, violent, or get violated. What and how do we heal from what we see or hear, or what we live through as we do the work?

We are dying from various dis-eases such as depression, chronic stress, anxiety disorders, drug use, illness, abusive relationships, self mutilation, disordered eating, smoking, STD’s/ hiv/AIDS, alcoholism, cancer, obesity.

For the past ten years I have provided trainings and organized healing circles for women activists and organizers , locally, nationally and internationally. Every first Saturday of the month I Organize a healing circle , in the South Bronx for 25 women. We walk through hard issues like power & oppression and Internalized oppression. and use our spirituality to support each other in breaking the pattern of individualism, isolation, guilt and self-blame and dis-ease.

Pulse Wire can take this to yet another level, I see a space called the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Altar”, a place where we bridge spirituality, culture and social justice. A virtual online altar , a place of power created by women all over the world, that has affirmations, candles, rituals, healing stories. Where on those days we feel like giving up we go to this place and share, ask for empathy and support, pray, sing , celebrate, cry and laugh through video together. A place we can hold each other accountable for our ways of being, the dreams we want to make come true, and the sisterhood we want to build in the process.