Changing the Conversation

This is a poem I come back to over and over again. I found it years ago, and every time I look at it, it seems to resonate in new ways.

After some days of supporting clients, it’s the “immense responsibility and very little authority” that catches me. After other days, it’s about “resounding triumphs and devastating failures.” And still other days, it’s about “always be[ing] frustrated.”

My frustration is sometimes directed at the systems. Why are they so complicated? Why do they set people up to fail? Why don’t they support people the way they should?

Sometimes, quite honestly, my frustration is directed at the people with whom I am working. Why did she go back to her abusive partner? Why did he spend his $10,000 settlement in a month? Why did he pay his phone bill, but not his rent? Why did she use again?

I have been an HIV Prevention provider for over 25 years. I consider myself a Harm Reduction Provider/Harm Reductionist—a title I am very proud to claim—though it wasn’t always this way. I first heard about Harm Reduction in the mid-1990s through a program doing needle exchange in the low-income, community of color where I worked and lived. As I saw White men coming into a Black neighborhood handing out needles, I had many concerns. I thought their message was: “Go ahead, destroy your lives and your community, just don’t get the rest of us infected!” I also couldn’t understand why our cries for more treatment were being met with more needles. Since then, I have learned just how wrong I was about the intentions of needle exchange programs and the underlying philosophy of Harm Reduction.

When I posted this drawing on Twitter just before New Year’s Eve, it was almost too much for me to bear. Should I really post this silly scan for all 900 of my Twitter geeks to see? Many people were sharing what 2015 meant to them, including resolutions that they will likely drop by March and superlatives about the previous year’s experiences. For me, I had to post this tweet because it was true. Coloring saved my life.

I thought I had lost my creativity and fluidity at moments during 2015—that somehow things had gotten crushed inside. Working in the recovery field as a survivor of a parent struggling with addiction has called attention to my own trauma history. It has also meant that work has come home with me and barged through my office door. I have struggled with self-worth constantly, even well into my 30s and well into my career. Adjusting to my family’s ups and downs, I was uprooted physically from my support network when I moved to the Pacific Northwest six months ago. The unfamiliarity helped to dislodge me.

The United States faces a deeply troublesome, maddeningly persistent racial gap in income and wealth -- a gap that is growing, not shrinking. According to McKernan and colleagues at the Urban Institute, the income ratio between whites and blacks is approximately 2:1, a number that has remained essentially unchanged over the past three decades. More troublesome is the 6:1 wealth ratio between whites and blacks. This suggests that white privilege dominates and results in greater financial prosperity for whites, while leaving black families and individuals out of the nation's economic growth and recovery.