What sustains you? If you work in the EDI/DEIB space, I’d love to know: what keeps you motivated when the climate against “wokeness” is so hostile, and increasingly so?
For me personally, I’ve realised it comes down to two things: love and rage.
I experience the love as a deep sense of connection to marginalised communities; disabled people, queer people, and everyone else facing barriers built by systems of oppression and discrimination. I include myself in that as a disabled queer woman. I feel a kind of kinship and compassion with all of us doing our best to move through what can be a grindingly difficult daily life against considerable odds. It feels like love, or care, or recognition: I see you, I might know something of what you’re carrying, and I want to be part of changing things for all of us, in some way, however small.
The rage is the other half. It shows up in relation to the vast systems that overarch us all: sexism, racism, ableism, homo/bi/transphobia, classism, colonialism. These aren’t separate issues; they’re deeply interconnected, and together they affect billions of us. When I recognise how much harm they do, and how normalised that harm still is, something in me refuses to accept it as fixed. I think that refusal is partly rage, and it’s part of what keeps me showing up: in capacity-building work with community groups, in equipping managers and leaders with the skills to actually hear and include the diverse voices around them and make equitable decisions.
I feel that for me, love without anger can lose momentum or lead to feeling helpless. Rage without love can burn me out, but together, they keep me moving forward with a huge passion for this work.
So, genuinely: what about you? What sustains you when this work feels harder than it used to?
Thanks Bianca Jones CIPD for encouraging me to put this in writing.
