He had been thinking a lot about race over the past several months.
He’s a White man with two children: a 20-year-old biological son who is White, and an 18-year-old adopted daughter who is Black.
“Until recently, it was easy in our family, with our one Black child, to believe she had the same status in society. What’s happened over the past six months has made me realize that isn’t true and there’s nothing I can do to change it. It’s incredibly painful. I have been considering getting a Black Lives Matter tattoo on my arm. I really want to have something about where I stand on my skin, like her...something I can’t take away. As a White person, I’m scared to identify myself with a movement. That’s also why I want to do it. I’m not a person who broadcasts my opinions, but this isn’t a political opinion. It’s who I am.”
“This has been weighing on my heart and mind so heavily. I’m also struggling at work because I don’t get a clear message we’re committed to anti-racism work. As much as I love my job, I can only work for the VA if we’re taking an active stance and doing our part," he said.
Listener Poet Jenny Hegland
Veterans' Affairs Center for Development & Civic Engagement
August 2020
Skin
It is heart-wrenching to realize
I cannot protect my Black child from hate
or the present-day harm of history.
It is gut-wrenching to feel
the racist attitudes surfacing in the culture,
and within myself.
I am wrestling with what to do.
The weight is unwieldy;
the fear generations deep.
I can go to marches,
put signs in the yard,
but it’s not enough.
I need to have some skin in the game,
like her,
something that can never be taken away--
not to showcase an opinion or a stance,
but to reveal who I am
as a father.
She wanted to help people feel comfortable and transform the shame around colon issues. "I want to talk about things that matter, the things people don't want to discuss. I want to help them feel okay talking about it."
When we met, she was coming off a stretch of nine 14-hour shifts. She was tired but in good spirits.
She reflected on how her resilience was born from moments of shared mirth amid life's trying chapters.
“Life is complex and dirty, but digging in is important to me,” she said. “Maybe if more of us understood history, we could understand each other better.”
We are expected to research, contribute to scholarship, earn grants – all on our own time.
We are expected to research, contribute to scholarship, earn grants – all on our own time.
Every day, I try to see through the patient lens, and I ask: what can we do to change this broken system?
She was very proud of her daughter and has hopes for “a bright future that’s as pain free as possible”
“I’m trying to focus on doing little things to make people feel better during everything that’s going on in the world,” she told me.
“It’s hard to see others struggle,” she said. “How can I help with their struggle without struggling myself?”
"I'd tell her it's OK to be loud...it's OK to challenge and to bring all of you into these spaces where no one looks like you..."
“I'm continuously questioning: did I do it right?" she said. "I’ve always done a good amount of second-guessing, but I’m re-learning how to show up differently.”
“It’s weird,” she said. “This is one of the biggest accomplishments of my life, but it doesn’t feel like it.”
"It changed me; It changed the way I look at life," said this woman about her profound experience during her pregnancy.
“It’s been more challenging than normal lately,” she said. “I’m only one person. It's a struggle for me to say no, but I can’t do everything that’s being asked of me right now.”
"I've been processing how to make the most of the small amount of life we have to live," said this physician.
"I've been processing how to make the most of the small amount of life we have to live," said this physician.
“I like feeling small,” he told me. “Nature has always made me feel small.” He described the sense of wonder that feeling gave him.
“I feel like I have decision fatigue,” she told me. It was normal for her to make many choices at work, but COVID had dramatically increased the number of medical decisions she had to make at home.
“I know ‘vibe’ is kind of a nonspecific term, but I think about people’s vibes all the time,” he said.“ Sometimes you come into a room and it’s just off.
This physician discussed being the only one in his practice network with expertise in patients with a specific type of chronic pain.
“Our constituents are uniquely affected by the pandemic,” they said. This poemee was an educational psychologist who spoke about how much they missed working in person with med students, healthcare staff, and medical educators.