The world is on fire. Of course you’re not okay.

To be a professional changemaker is to be constantly holding the duality of helplessness and hopefulness at the same time.

I’m feeling it hard today.

One month ago today, we kicked off the #FutureOfDEI summit. It was a monumental effort, an extraordinary output and a life changing experience being seen, heard and held in a growing community of changemakers.

One week from today is Juneteenth, and our ceremonious opening of the 4th Edition of The Reparations Race.

Today should be a celebration. Today should be about honoring milestones and progress towards a liberated future, doing my individual part while empowering others to do theirs.

Instead of being able to be present with these hard-fought milestones, my head is pounding and my heart is heavy.

Instead of being able to complete the most mundane of tasks, I float from day to night to day again, wondering why we’re doing this work at all.

I am grieving the state of the world.

I am enraged at how human life is being disregarded over arbitrary borders and fabricated hierarchies.

I am so desperately exhausted of being overworked and underfunded, as so many multiply-marginalized founders are.

And like so many of you, I sometimes wonder if life would be easier if I didn’t care about anyone by myself. Abstractly. In a detached way. But I do wonder.

I have learned that for me, the month of June is a time of seasonal transition in which I must learn how to be held. How to be guided. How to follow. How to surrender.

In some seasons, I am the protagonist. In others, I am a passenger.

This one is the latter, because if I deplete myself trying to keep up with every single cause that needs urgent attention, I won’t be able to fully show up for any of them.

If you are where I am, let this be a sign.

You must learn how to be still.

To be silent.

Silence is not always complicity.

Sometimes, its regeneration.

Recalibration.

Revelation.

Recommitment.

It’s in that silence that some of the most groundbreaking ideas that have changed the course of society have arisen.

Learn how to be still.

It’s truly the only practice that is keeping me together right now.

We WILL celebrate the Reparations Race.