“…in [the] experience of loving [others], I feel caught up in something greater than my own ego. In love, it’s not just me. And it’s not just them. An us is born. Love joins disparate parts into a single, transcendent whole.” – Michael Gungor

I’ve been caught off guard by my own grief over the last two weeks. Of course, part of it is straight empathy for an entire group of people in this great country who are treated as less than. But I have also been confronted by my own “otherness” with the emergence of memories of the 5-year old immigrant Rachel who suddenly moved from India to Canada and then California.

Since then, my entire life has been spent walking into spaces and almost never seeing someone who looks like me. That might not seem like a big deal if this isn’t part of your experience, but it’s lonely and isolating. With time, I grew accustomed to alongside the overt prejudice I’ve faced throughout my life. My body conditioned itself to simply tuck away and trap any sadness in the tissue of my being.

In this moment of history, it’s finally being released.

The pain of my experience is magnified with the grieving for a nation divided by politics instead of united over humanity.

I cry almost every morning during my meditations. I cry when I see the images and videos of protests in 750 cities across all 50 states and around the world (like this Haka dance).

I cry with and for a world coming together to fight for racial equality and justice. The fabric of our connectedness woven out of many colors and experiences

This tapestry of collective pain crying out to be heard in order to heal.

The only thing we can be sure of is that the status quo is not an option. Homeostasis is always easier, requiring little effort or discomfort. Stepping into an unknown future is the opposite – it requires blood and tears, uncomfortable conversations, confronting our implicit biases, and lots of risk.

We must not be discouraged if the change is slow coming. We must stay in action, vote our conscious, and demand better from policy makers and our local leaders now so that the next generation and the generation after that and the generation after that won’t be subject to the same inequity.

I have no false illusions about how long this could take, but I was reminded during this week’s Oprah special (Part 1 and Part 2) that before Brown vs the Board of Education, there was Emmet Till. Before the Voting Rights Act, there was Bloody Sunday.

So maybe Ahmaud and Breonna and George (and even Amy Cooper) are the new “before” as we grapple with the after. I certainly hope so.

[Photo: My grandparents, aunt and cousins with my mom and I at the airport when we left India to move to Canada. I’m the little girl in the green shirt on the right.]