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It wasn’t until last year, during a staff meeting outside in our parking lot as we tried to find some sense of togetherness during the COVID pandemic, did I realize the toll that years of racial equity work was taking on my mental and physical health. I was exhausted. But it wasn’t the exhaustion induced by the pandemic alone. For the first time, I was physically feeling the toll of racial equity on my health, and it frightened me. I heard a speaker at a philanthropy conference describe that for BILPOC (Black, Indigenous, Latinx and People of Color) staff working in the space of racial equity, the work can be experienced as the equivalent of walking around with a low-grade fever.
Recently my husband attended a business conference in Las Vegas, and he invited me to come along. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I had time or was all that interested in Sin City, but a friend encouraged me to go just to be with Jeff. She was right. I was reminded that investing time with your spouse or partner is always worth it.So, off to Vegas we flew.
2020 kicked us in the knees, leaving us a little shaky and rather vulnerable. Everything has changed. Uncommon times call for conscientious examination of who we are and our personal and professional core values.
Last week Staci Barfield and I participated in a webinar from Nonprofit HR about race and diversity practices in nonprofits.I am starting to realize that there are many inequities that I never see or think about because they don’t apply to me. I have many doors I can choose to walk through on any given day; therefore, I assume that those doors are open to everyone. False.
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