Nikki Lee Health

Purging is part of my life now, as my husband and I prepare to downsize our living situation. After carrying around many, many bags and boxes of stuff from several households (3 of my own, my grandparents and inherited stuff) for all of my adult life, I am freeing my life by donating, selling, or throwing out stuff.

Yesterday, I discovered a leather box full of black and white photographs that my grandfather, Pappy, took when he worked for the Sinclair Oil Company in what was then Portuguese West Africa; today that is Angola. I discovered this postcard.  I think that photographs of that era, 1920-1924, were often printed on postcard stock. Pappy would have been 24 to 28 years old.

Here is the front:

Here is the back:

Pappy was the product of a culture of racism that dates back to the beginning of the Colonies, in the 1600s. I have a bill of sale for a 13-year old man, Ruben, in 1801, showing that an ancestor of ours purchased his life for $1,000, a fortune in those days.

I grew up in the energetics of a family, and a culture, that viewed people as objects; this is part of the air that I breathed. Women are less than full citizens; old people are less than full citizens; and people of color are less than full citizens. I grew up accepting this and never questioning my attitudes. . . .until the middle 70s, when I read Suzanne Arms’ great book, Immaculate Deception, and sought a pregnancy, labor, and delivery where I was an active participant who chose what was best for me and my baby. Since that time, I have spent my career working for  women’s rights to make their own best choices for their childbearing and mothering.

In the 90s, my racist attitudes were challenged by changes in society, and the courage of a woman of color who had the guts to slap me into the painful awareness of how much I had hurt her by what I had done.

Accepting people as fellow humans is one of the biggest challenges of my life. I struggle with this daily; because we are all wired to be suspicious of the “other”  and refusing to be ruled by those old messages takes constant awareness. Yet we are all one in our desires and needs.

However, I can learn to change. Just as I have learned to brush my teeth everyday to keep them healthy, I can learn to see the soul in the people I meet, and acknowledge their life to be as precious as my own. I can be honest. I can teach my students to engage in reflective practice.  I can take a breath, and pay attention, and help to box this evil and put it away forever.