Longing to Tell
It's so great to hear positive feedback from my pinay sisters across the country. I'm looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting to the good stuff. Just spent the last two days working with seventh graders in the
classroom, talking about healthy relationships and dating violence.
So I haven't had the opportunity to blog in a few days.
The kids are always teaching me something all the time and I think the continuing lesson for me is about learning to bear witness to the stuff that they bring to the table. I don't know if it's because I have the older manang look, but instead of wanting to talk about their own dating stuff, I often get youth wanting to tell me about the violence they witness at home with their parents instead. Ofcourse, there's all the mandated reporter stuff that I won't get into now-
But what I'm more interested in exploring is the personal work it takes to be an open field of love and acceptance to hear the stories. It's a sort of babaylan work, really, which I believe is distinct from social work and social services. To me, it's an energy exchange of witnessing and when one longs to tell, to me, it's about being ready to recieve, to be a channel to ground pain.
My stuff gets triggered sometimes-which tells me I've got lots of healing to do. More on this soon, I promise. But in the meantime, check out this book, Longing To Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy. It's Tricia Rose's recent book and there's a lot in there that feels like a good template or bouncing off point for discussions on pukengkeng liberation there. I'm also reading bell hook's Communion: The Female Search for Love and We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity.
While these texts exclusively deal with African American communities, because of our historical intersections as people of color, again, there is a lot in these works that can be used for comparision and exploration.
classroom, talking about healthy relationships and dating violence.
So I haven't had the opportunity to blog in a few days.
The kids are always teaching me something all the time and I think the continuing lesson for me is about learning to bear witness to the stuff that they bring to the table. I don't know if it's because I have the older manang look, but instead of wanting to talk about their own dating stuff, I often get youth wanting to tell me about the violence they witness at home with their parents instead. Ofcourse, there's all the mandated reporter stuff that I won't get into now-
But what I'm more interested in exploring is the personal work it takes to be an open field of love and acceptance to hear the stories. It's a sort of babaylan work, really, which I believe is distinct from social work and social services. To me, it's an energy exchange of witnessing and when one longs to tell, to me, it's about being ready to recieve, to be a channel to ground pain.
My stuff gets triggered sometimes-which tells me I've got lots of healing to do. More on this soon, I promise. But in the meantime, check out this book, Longing To Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy. It's Tricia Rose's recent book and there's a lot in there that feels like a good template or bouncing off point for discussions on pukengkeng liberation there. I'm also reading bell hook's Communion: The Female Search for Love and We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity.
While these texts exclusively deal with African American communities, because of our historical intersections as people of color, again, there is a lot in these works that can be used for comparision and exploration.
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