Turn up the volume

When the world gets loud...

I took my dog for our morning walk and for a change I went up to the old playing fields instead of our usual dander on the beach. It was pleasantly quiet but for the chitter of the finches in the hedge, the occasional call of a pheasant and the dim hum of distant traffic. The wheat fields are green, the hawthorn is bursting out in white flower, the wild roses are pink even as the yellow gorse has lost its vibrancy.

I find myself drawn more than ever to silence and solitude. I am living in a house with two other adults, three children and a dog. Like everyone else in the country, we’ve been in lock down since March, though we know we’re more fortunate than most in that my husband is easily able to work from home and so our income hasn’t been affected. 

I was optimistic at the beginning. I had visions of relaunching my coaching business, supervising my children’s schoolwork at the kitchen table, making wholesome meals and playing board games in the evenings. When lockdown started, everyone commented on how quiet it was; you could hear the birdsong again, there wasn’t as much traffic, we could even hear the sea at night when our windows were open. For me, I’d spent the previous year in an enforced circle of quiet as I underwent treatment for breast cancer. I was eager to get back into the maelstrom of life, back to the rough and tumble and what surprised me was that, in fact, my body had other thoughts entirely.

It has made it quite clear that I do not have the physical or emotional strength yet to do all the things, even as my mind is bursting with ideas and plans. It’s June now and the reality is, I don’t have the mental or physical energy to do everything and be everything to everyone. 

And just as the lockdown was being tentatively relaxed, a storm has erupted the world over and people are taking to the streets in protest, shouting for justice and crying out against the systemic racism that has led to too many Black people dying at the hands of law enforcement.

I felt overwhelmed by the news, by the noise on social media, by the sickening videos being circulated and as a white, middle-class, educated, financially secure, home-owning mother of three, who has just been through a harrowing year of cancer treatment there was a part of me that felt justified in turning the volume down, and cocooning myself in my little wild corner listening to birdsong and foraging for elderflower.

And then I thought of my friends Nandi, Anesu, Siobhán and Thabi, all Black women with African and West Indian heritage living in Ireland, north and south, who I knew had experienced racism first hand and didn’t have the option to turn away. They have lived within a system their entire lives that has treated them as second class citizens, that has subjected them to daily aggressions that wore them down to the bone. They have encountered ignorance, harassment, name calling, discrimination, belittling and if they pushed back on any of it, they most likely would have been dismissed as just another ‘angry black woman’, a trope that has silenced millions. 

Photo: Nandi Jola and Anesu Mtowa at the Black Lives Matter protest in Belfast

So I made the decision not to turn away and saying this, I’m not looking for applause or affirmation - although being a white, middle-aged, educated woman I’ve been conditioned to expect applause and affirmation for doing anything in the ballpark of ‘right and good’. As an Irish child growing up in the 80s, seeing TV adverts asking for donations for starving Africans, we were conditioned to believe that we were the saviours of the poor Black people. But no one told us that had White people not carved up the African continent, corralled Black people on to boats and made slaves of them, stretched out an imperial mindset of White Supremacy across the world Black people would not need saving. 

In fact, Black people still do not need saving. 

Black people need White people to sit down, shut up, listen, learn and then join them in dismantling centuries of oppression, genocide, brutality, as well as the underlying racist thinking that leads to countless acts of micro aggression and whittles away at the souls of my friends. 

So I’m turning up the volume on the voices of Black people known and unknown to me. I’m looking deep into my own unconscious biases and uncovering how racism has infected my thinking. It’s shitty and uncomfortable. I’m afraid of saying the wrong words and doing the wrong thing. I’m adept at the Dance of the Hand Wringing White Lady, I’ve practised it most of my adult life, but I can’t do that dance any more and, anyway, the music is awful. 

So here is The Whisper, my newsletter that will slip quietly into your inbox if you want it and which will hopefully amplify the voices of women we need to listen to.  Because the other thing Black people don’t need at the moment, is white people asking what they should do to act in solidarity and integrity.

I called my website Strut and Bellow, because I believed women needed to be encouraged to do just that; strut their stuff and bellow about their own achievements and gifts. I still believe this. But I also see that a lot of White Women being loud is maybe not what the world needs just now. I’m going to go looking for the Women of Colour whose voices we need to to listen to and share them with you. If this is not the kind of content you want to see, then feel free to unsubscribe but do ask yourself why you don’t want to see it. That in itself might be an imp

ortant step on your own journey to healing.  

Yours, quietly,

Melanie