Why Is Being Tender With Ourselves And Each Other Abolition Work?

“When our communities lean into values that honor ourselves, each other, and the natural world around us, we see that punishment culture only deepens harm.”

                       - bell hooks

Growing up in my house, in Richmond Va, which used to be the seat of the Confederacy, there was a lot of punishment. Sometimes it was physical, sometimes it was harsh words, sometimes it was no words. Often it was isolation from friends and having fun, I grew up internalizing and then externalizing some of these forms of punishment. One of my favorite forms was the withdrawal of my attention, of my presence. My second favorite form of punishment was revenge and sometimes I was just plain violent. I say favorite as a joke, because in the end I always felt worse after meting out punishment than I did before, which began a vicious circle that started and ended with me wondering what was wrong with me. I learned to punish myself with destructive self talk and the constant fear I was not good, or good enough. Until the day came when I decided I didn’t have the right to feelings if I couldn’t control them. Until I saw my anger as a danger to myself and others. Until I started to see myself as bad, as weird as undeserving. Until I was as hard on others as I was on myself.

When I began to soften, it was with the help of chosen family, good friends and a good therapist. It was going to workshops full of black women, where we were invited to cry, without wiping away our tears. It was seeing fat dykes “letting it all hang out, for all to see. It was being on the front lines with a bunch of weirdos and queerdos, as cops tried to hurt us and punish us for being eligible to them and daring to fight back and to act up, for being sexy and sweet in the face of social ostracization For daring to live in a world that wanted us dead. And lord have mercy, the cops wanted to punish me for being Black, fat, queer and angry.

I came to see that my work in this brutal world was to create spaces where people could bring their whole selves. Spaces that allowed people to tell their stories, spaces that allowed us to lay our weapons down. While I was no longer putting my body and freedom on the line, I was still an activist, an activist for love and care, for joy and desire and the right for all of us to exist in the ways we need and want.. I came to understand if we want to create a different world, we have to be different. If we want to get rid of all systems of oppression and domination, it has to start with us. We have to understand how we support and internalize those systems and how they shape what we believe about ourselves and each other.

So I wonder, if we can be more tender with ourselves, if we can be more forgiving and understanding of the stories we all carry inside us, of the histories forced upon us, if we could extend more grace to those who have been othered, dehumanized and locked away. My hope is, if we can stop punishing ourselves for just being human, can we also imagine something beyond carceral systems that do nothing more that perpetuate harm and nothing to heal individuals or communities? Maybe the first step is to get rid of the judge inside of us, to heal our own wounds, to see ourselves as worthy.

I work with individuals and organizations to create change, to shift ideas and to help us all imagine the world we want, need and desire. I use deep listening, dreaming, and conversation along with  my years of experience working with a plurality of people in their best moments and their worst. I believe the act of creation saves lives and helps us see pathways to a just and better world. Let’s see what we can create together.

We Can Dream Together

In 2012 I became a certified mediator, it had been a dream of mine for a while, but it was financially out of reach. Community Boards, the longest-running nonprofit conflict resolution and restorative justice center in the US made my dream come true by providing me with a scholarship to participate in their mediation training. 

Last week, it felt like a circle had been completed, Queering Dreams had the pleasure of dreaming with Community Boards. Much of the work they do is volunteer-based. The leadership at Community Boards wanted to offer their volunteers the gift of dreaming in community, where they could experience feeling held, and take the time to think deeply about their own wants, needs, and desires.  

We at Queering Dreams appreciate the work and the mission of Community Boards and we know how difficult it can be to hold space for folks who are in conflict with one another. We also know how important it is because we understand for our dreams of abolition to become reality, we need other pathways to resolve and, maybe, even transform conflict. We believe conflict can strengthen our relations and expand our abilities to live, love, and build outside of the prerogatives of the status quo instead of being a source of punishment and shame. 

Dreaming together in community is a space of discovery, and remembering, a space of creation and connection, and quite often a space of joy. Our dreaming session with Community Boards was all that and more. Queerly Complex (aka Jason Wyman) actually got to reconnect with an old friend who they hadn’t seen in over 15 years. 

We are intentional about creating time and space for such things. We all got to witness the real warmth and delight of their fond memories and the love and care that remained. As always, it was heart expanding to watch people discover or remember what it feels like to be invited to be vulnerable and to feel safe enough to let themselves be. 

In our time together, there were tears and laughter. We shared our disappointments and our hopes and dreams for the future. Some of us got to let go of old stories about ourselves while experiencing the power of being open-hearted to and with ourselves and each other. It was a lovely two hours we got to spend co-creating a space of intimacy, vulnerability, and belonging with comrades who are also doing the hard and necessary work of trying to make a better world.

As the co-founders of Queering Dreams, Queerly Complex and I believe the world is in a place of transformation. We know individuals and organizations alike are experiencing a great deal of upheaval as we decide who and what we want to be while we create something new, something better. We also know many of us are dealing with fear, isolation, and burnout and are struggling to make or even imagine the changes we need for ourselves and for our organizations. 

Like everyone else, there are many things we are unsure of as we try to navigate these chaotic times, but there are some things we are very sure of: 

Dreaming in community and sharing our dreams creates more connection, more camaraderie, and tenderness towards ourselves and for each other. 

How do we know that? Queerly Complex and I have been dreaming in community and with individuals now for over 6yrs, and the one thing we hear over and over again is how much folks need and desire the space and time to dream. Time and time again we have heard what a relief it has been for people to be able to lay their armor down and to just be and to feel safe enough and held enough to do that in community.

Like Community Boards, you can bring dreaming to your organization, group, or community, contact me here or at crystalmason.net If you would like to dream to gain clarity for an art project or to think about next steps, you can also reach out to me. Bring dreaming to your organization or small business or group at QC/CM Consulting