"Lets humble ourselves and get ready for that world, if the police stations and prisons are gone tomorrow, can we sustain that world ?” - Rania El Mugammar (2022)
(Art by Rana Mehanny @_rourri 2022)
TW: mentions of suicidality and sexual violence
Sometimes I cry because the people who say they love my softness still weaponize their tears or traumas, because the people who say they learn from my softness still are so easily willing to villinaize others - to victimize themselves, and because the people who have the most access to my softness, still struggle to be soft with all of others and themselves. Sometimes I cry because we try so hard, and I'm sorry, for asking the world to try painfully softer, but I still invite the world to tear me apart and eat me alive, just so you can find the seeds of softness you buried deep inside you... I cry because sometimes it feels like no one is willing to kill their egos to save their souls until someone sacrifices theirs.
"If we don't have soils for transformation, then justice may not be possible yet;
We have to stop planting seeds in toxic soil and expecting them to grow..."
- Mia Mingus (March 2nd 2022)
I still believe that seeding softness starts from home. I believe that it starts from confronting ourselves in the comforts of repeating patterns, and/or allowing patterns to continue, as well as our own complicities in those patterns forming. I believe that softness is already within everyone, and that we all deserve rehabilitation and transformation in these cruel timelines of humanity. Most of us have been both the survivors and the harm doers throughout our journeys of surviving or navigating violent systems - even if it's harm done through reacting to harm/protecting ourselves from harm, it should be enough for us to realize that we are all capable of harming others or reopening and re-triggering old wounds or traumas... We may navigate conflicts the ways that have been helpful and productive in protection, but they can also distance ourselves from the possible soils and seeds of change, especially when many have developed skills such as isolation, silence, and distraction... I believe that we can change because I want to love us in whole, because I love us beyond survival...
However, as Mia Mingus reminds us: "transformative justice is grief work", as I still cry and want to die often when I continue to witness people who have the most access to my softness, struggle to be softer in reciprocity. As I feel doubts with my worth and my softness in question, "I'm afraid that if I die, everyone will be too tired to remember my name" (TASHA). I'm afraid that my friends will be too busy to cry, and that my family will be too far to ask why. I'm afraid that when I die, we won't have time or space to hold each other through... Perhaps I lean too much into suffering, but I hate and love how y’all can still choose pleasure, in a world where joy is not promised. Will the world care for joy if it’s not pleasurable ? Do y’all only like the power of loving but not willing to sacrifice your egos to love beyond ones' needs or desires ? Will you still choose love even if it’s not convenient nor easy, and not affirming or validating of your choices ? I know it’s hard even for me, thus I try to be softer everyday - only to live in a world so traumatized that we’re insensitive, while I’m too sensitive and a hypocrite, but I still try to love and care even if I’m powerless, or exhaustingly hopeless - only to witness how self-loving and how not forgiving we really can be... I'm afraid that some of y’all think accountability is accepting the ways we can be violent without choosing to be soft...
And sometimes I don’t know if I can sustain my breath in this city anymore, as everyday it feels like I’m holding my breath just to wake up. I don’t know how to stay softer when everyone is too tired or bitter. I’m so deeply hurt by the lack of care as
we painfully carry the lack of capacity... I dream widely of the possibilities to our healing in seeding softness, in speaking softer, and even in soft silence, I seed for healing. I dream of embracing all that have hurt us, I dream of loving, loving, and loving until we all live... I will hurt and dream until we love and live, as I still ache to
how we prioritize self-care over community sacrifice, how we isolate and hurt others to make boundaries, how we feel so unsafe to practice interdependence, to learn accountability, to believe in transformative justice... I say, let's seed for justice by first
transforming ourselves. Let’s unlearn to hold space for grieve while sharing joy; let’s not distract ourselves with pleasure, but root for the pleasure that we all deserve.
"I am often struck by the dangerous narcissism fostered by spiritual rhetoric that pays so much attention to individual self-improvement and so little to the practice of love within the context of community..."
- bell hooks
Everyday I hate humanity more but aren’t I human ? Aren’t ourselves everything we first love and hate and fear ? Aren’t we still the possible abusers, predators, and bystanders before we learn to be an ally and witness of healing ? And If we can’t ally or seed for solidarity and softness to our hurt within, how can we ever show up fully in the communities we care about ? I softly hurt and I softly dream, I remember in love and I root for care… My softness no longer can sustain egos that perceive all conflicts as abuse while upholding the binaries of victimhood and harm, egos that weaponize politics as warful poetics, and egos that mistake my oceans as rain puddles - to serve their steps toward power. My softness is asking the world to feel deep and wide, to humble ourselves and get ready to hold multiple truths at once, to confront, challenge, and demolish the police in our heads. My softness is begging the world to kill its ego, as I offer my heart in tears and flames. May my softness continue to shape in relearning justice, in rehabilitating capacities for reparations, and in returning to loving reciprocity... Everyday I hope we choose to care more, to care less for profits and power and care more for people. I hope we consider others before we convenience ourselves. I hope we know how to give back, even if or when we take for survival. I hope people realize that I try to share my last meal, my last dollar, even my last strength of softness not because I don't know how to keep or desire, or that I don't know what it's like to not have enough, to not feel enough. I hope we know I believe in choosing love, every time...
“I think the way we invite people in is by building a culture of transformative justice and a culture of accountability. And by creating accountability in its truest sense, which means that it should be scary. Accountability will never become easy, but what if its not scary ? It will always be hard but it does not have to be scary. If we can build a culture like that, I think people will be more likely to be apart of an accountability process. I think again, the historical kind of context we are in, I think that a lot of people will not want to be part of these processes.” - Mia Mingus
When Mia reminds us to consider the historical contexts we're in, I come to understand that we still live in a systematically punitive society, where prison values and socio-political discipline are the reformed results from timelines of slavery on stolen lands... Of course, accountability through punishment has always been racist, ableist, and scary.
“My advice to people is to start small. Start building up accountability skills, that includes supporting supporting accountability or trying to have people be accountable to us. Start small and build up. Like the low hanging fruit, I do not mean that to say that it is easy. I mean it to say that we start with the smallest things than the bigger things that are the most hardest. Those folks may never be accountable. That is the thing about healing. Your healing should never depend on their accountability because they may never be accountable.” - Mia Mingus
It reminds me of the first ways I found myself in considering transformative justice a few years ago... The fact that I could never hold my rapists accountable, nor did I want to hold them accountable with the current systems of incarceration, I found myself painfully curious about prison abolition and transformative justice. I started humanizing "villains" in socio-political narratives by understanding just how easily consent is broken when our desires are policed or shamed, how easily our desires can cause harm, and how easily our desires are devalued amid the violences of colonial-capitalism. I started humanizing predators by holding our pleasures accountable...
“Listen, punishment is easier, I do not know if any of you all who have ever really done your own healing and dug deep into it, but it is hard. Just having someone punish you and give the consequences and that its over, verses people who are like we will not let you turn away from yourself, we will not let you turn away from your demons, you are going to deal with them and face that. That is some of the most serious stuff ever. It is a incredible difficult thing. People are like, TJ, it is just this soft type of justice. I am like, I do not know what you’re talking about but it is really hard to shift your behaviour- to transform.” - Mia Mingus
I’ve described my journeys of sexual, gendered, and spiritual self-discovery with archetypical stages: the butterfly, the mermaid, and now the flower - now back to the root, a cyclical return back to the cocoon of transformation... Towards justice I bury myself in ego-death, back into deep earth, I bury the butterfly in hopes of growing a garden. I dream to transform in blossom, for a softer Spring…
“We want to talk about violence and abuse but most of us do not even navigate conflict well, most of us do not even know how to tell our friend how they’ve hurt our feelings and navigate that conversation well. We have a lot of work to do. A lot of us do not know how to apologize well. There are some of the work that we can do, where we can start. And in that you can still be investing in your healing because that will also help. You can be handling conflict and be hurt inside, you can navigate it better (softer)…”
- Mia Mingus
Maybe justice is indeed not possible, where we still dream of soils ready for our transformation. Perhaps most of us are still potted houseplants, trapped from the consequences of colonial-capitalism, we still dream of the gardens we deserve. I’ve been trying to prepare and get ready, for the softer revolutions that’ll come, for us to generate new soils after tears shed, for a time to blossom together again… I continue to read, spiral, and research on plants for teachings of transformative justice, and I’m curious to changing dead or toxic soils. If compost or organic dead matter as fertilizer are needed, may it be our collective ego-deaths. May we grow and grief towards loving change and justice. May it be for healing our softer Spring…