Pushing myself to write more whilst the moment is here, but writing honestly and meaningfully requires getting through a lot of barriers and it feels like there is a lot of inner resistance right now. Resistance or just tiredness..? So hard to say… but at this stage, just trying to keep things moving, putting one word in front of another. Following on from my last post about Decentering Power, I wanted to share this drawing of my own experience of decentering dynamics (particularly given my recent experience of double caring during lockdown). With the outer world references in orbit.

Whilst I’m often trying to see and decenter my own privileges, there are some areas where I experience exclusion and experience non-voluntary decentering in a very palpable way. This blog post in particular tried to articulate how I felt I was losing myself and my practice during lockdown. In that sense, my struggle was to get back to my own center, to re-center… whilst also holding space for the ongoing decentering-of-privilege. I don’t know if/how people in the ‘decentering power universe’ have worked on co-existing centering and decentering, so let’s see. There is this book by bell hooks Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), but I’m not sure this refers to ‘center’ in the same way as my experience of (re)centering. Let’s see.

My brain cells and neural pathways feel like they are being pushed to the limit, but let’s give them a little rest and maybe they will bounce back for more. Sooner rather than later? Fingers crossed. There is work to do.