“And” is my word of the year… AND it’s been coming up time and time again.

Okay okay, not my best pun.

The way it’s been coming up for me lately is observing any duality that exists within a person, system, and school of thought.

Patriarchy, racism, classism, and other oppression systems are built on hierarchies of either/or where one is better, superior, and preferable than the other and there is only room for one way.

When there are hierarchies and only one way it means there is control, limitation, shame, judgment, and power inequality; within systems and ourselves.

I’ve seen it in the recent historical romance novels I’ve been reading (set in the 1800s and just a pure delight) where women and men are supposed to marry within their class, the magical Harry Potter with purebloods over mudbloods, my life when it comes to patriarchy, and, of course, the undeniable (and rightly so) anti-racism movement that’s essentially acting against any systemic oppression of marginalized groups.

And it plays out within the person.

Once you see it, you see it everywhere, and you can’t unsee it.

Now, I have a bachelor’s in physical health and education, I minored in psych, and all the work I do online now was largely self-taught through books, podcasts, readings, courses, and life experiences. I haven’t really studied or spoke about social systems and politics since high school AND, as always, I’m also learning and looking at myself.

Because what I do, what I stand for, and how I operate is (deeply) personal it’s led me to the big picture.

There is no one without the other; there is no person without politics and politics without the person. The two are intrinsically intertwined and cannot be untangled such that when you try to change one you can’t help but impact the other.

As it’s become less scary for me to talk about sex and my scars, for example, it’s time I use my social capital to talk about other social issues for justice now.

When I think about evolving social systems and entrenched ideologies it often seems overwhelming and I don’t know where to begin. I wouldn’t even know what policy to write if I had the opportunity. I’m learning, always learning, and listening to people way more knowledgeable, intelligent, and wise than myself.

As we talk about acting against systemic racism, gender oppression, classism, any kind of oppression it’s important to recognize those are unidentifiable entities, no matter how much we personify them. It’s hard to see, fight, change, face them because they seem too large, overwhelmingly rooted, and therefore untouchable.

But these unidentifiable entities are living in systems and society we’ve created and are therefore living within us, because we’ve been born into this world. If we exorcise the racism/patriarchy/classism/any kind of oppression out of us, we will therefore exorcise the racism/patriarchy/classism/any kind of oppression out of the world. And vice versa — it goes both ways because they are intrinsically intertwined.

I believe liberated power as individuals demands freedom for the whole. Neither the individual or society exist in a vacuum. If we each take our power back and live free, the structures and world will have to change to reflect that. And as we evolve the structures and world as a whole, it means we all have a chance of being truly free as individuals.

Starting to take your power back and living free as a person could look like…

• Loving your body with stretch marks, scars, and imperfections no matter how much the beauty industries want you to hate it
• Buying local instead of from big businesses
• Not having sex when you don’t want to have sex OR having sex when you want sex
• Donating, signing petitions, contacting your representatives, rallying
• Having hard, uncomfortable, honest conversations with loved ones
• Telling your story, meeting shame with love, and writing your truth
• Leaving a job that makes rational sense and pays well to do what is calling to you

We don’t need everyone to stand for everything. But we do need each of us to stand for something because our personal patterns feed the big picture just as the big picture creates the personal patterns.

But it’ll take more conscious people AND policies to unbuild systems of oppression and create new stories of power.

As we do so — and stick with me here — I question, “What is true freedom?”*

We’re free enough now that we’re choosing constriction; conscious or not.

There’s no way — or at least I believe, I suppose — we can’t see what’s going on right now as more and more truths are coming to the surface and demand that we burn the way we’ve established and entrenched duality and hierarchies within society and build a new way of living.

We’re acting (or not acting) how we want on some level, however, there are thoughts, stories, barriers (systemic or in our mind) that are in our way.

And I think progress is slow, where we shouldn’t be so patient any longer, because we’re afraid of our own power.

Because it feels risky, too much, the damage we could do, how it could hurt people, how it would change things, how it could make us lose the love we want and that we get when we play our expected role, not rock the boat, and stay small.

Because we could actually be bigger than we ever thought possible, make more of an impact than they ever thought we could, and live a life beyond what our parents ever could’ve thought for us. And that kind of power, liberated power, is squashed from the people who hold it.

So it often takes a rock-bottom-breaking point-bad to catalyze us awakening to our power, fighting for something better, and choosing a new way.

Humans are experts in denial… until the truth smacks us in the face.

I want to challenge us to not wait for any more rock-bottom-breaking-point-bads. (Like I did.) What if we claim our power for good without waiting for bad, right now? Good and good multiplied.

Imagine if every single human got what’s inside of them, outside.

Imagine if every single human claims their liberated power.

Imagine if every single human really lives before dying.

Imagine how that would change the person and the politics.

That’s why I want you to want. Not only because that’s the only way you’ll experience the having, but because the wanting makes us come alive; with hunger, craving, longing, aching for something we can hope for, work towards, grow into, something we can create from our imagination, something more true and beautiful than what is.

People in power at the top fear collective power from below above all else.

Systemic change starts at the individual level, it starts with the most oppressed, it starts at the bottom, but it doesn’t stop there… it leads us all higher.

As Emma Goldman said, “People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.”

You’re intelligent. Now it’s time to be courageous.

Freedom is yours to take, make, claim, demand, voice, create.

Take it. Make it. Claim it. Demand it. Voice it. Create it.

Self-inflicted, socially-imposed, or structurally-made — chains deserve to be around no human’s ankles.

Deanne