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Discussion Guide No. 2

from our second meeting in February 2021

**We also discussed a section from Ibram X. Kendi's How to be an Antiracist. There is no permission to reprint that here.


YFM Winter 2021 Anti-racism Discussion Group

Session No.2: Strategies of the H.E.A.R.T. ~ Express Yourself


READ from Say the Wrong Thing Express Yourself: Share from the Heart

It’s hard to pull any quotes or even to write any queries about the essay “From my Son; To my Son.” Read it twice or three times or four - however many times it takes to sense for a moment what it means to be a young Black man in this world and what it means to be a Black mother.


REFLECT on Dr. Kemp’s Strategies of the H.E.A.R.T.

H: Hold space for transformation. Practice unconditional acceptance of what is and who is.

E: Express yourself. Share from the heart.

A: Act with intention. Take action even if it is imperfect.

R: Reflect on yourself. Cultivate self-awareness.

T: Trust the process. Let yourself and others be uncomfortable. Be gentle with yourself as you grow.


WATCH Padriag O Tuama’s TED talk: “Imagining Peace”

Some quotes from Padraig’s talk:

  • “Stories and questions and lives lived well with imagination can open up the spaciousness about what it means to be human.”

  • A quote from Anais Nin: “We do not tell stories as they are. We tell stories as we are.”

  • “Stories are bigger than us and if we can tell them well we might just find ourselves being saved into something that doesn’t exist yet, but can be imagined now and can lead us well.”

  • “It is in the shelter of stories that people live, and in the shadow of stories that we live.”

  • “We have to find ways where our stories can be imaginative enough, broad enough, spacious enough, open to the possibility of creating curiosity and relationships where currently there are none. Open to the possibility of trust in the capacity to ask a good question or when you’re confused to say, ‘I’ve never met someone like you, tell me more about you.’”

  • “In a world that is so interested in being comforted by the damp blanket of bad stories, we need stories of belonging that move us toward each other, not from each other...We need ways of navigating our differences that deepen our curiosity, our friendship, our capacity to disagree, that deepen the argument of being alive. This is the work of peace and imagination.”

 

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