Flexability | A purposeful walk to freedom

I reached a very personal and physical turning point the other day. It got me thinking about the limits we place on ourselves, out of habit and fear.

I am recovering from a knee replacement that I had in October. It has been terrifying and exhilarating. The moment of truth came when I found myself volunteering to walk a distance I was unsure of to pick up chocolates for a dinner party.

I’d never have done that before the op – my bad knee wouldn’t have let me. I live in New York. You can find yourself walking quite far quite quickly.

Off I went, despite my brain emitting warnings: “You don’t know how far it is!” “What if you end up tired?” “You’ll be sore tomorrow.” I set off, despite the internal shouting. I got those chocolates, and I wasn’t sore the next day.

My brain took a leap towards “rewiring” itself to my new, liberated reality.

I lived with a damaged knee for more than 40 years – it was a college injury – and my brain is used to me not being able to walk long distances without a heavy knee brace. Now that my knee has been replaced, I am not sure of my limits. But with each physical step that I take, it is learning my body’s new capabilities.

That made me think of my diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) teaching, where I often see how years of being viewed as the odd one out for whatever reason (or reasons) – gender expression, race, social class and so on – has “wired” an individual’s brain. To protect that person from the harm that others’ lack of openness to DEI can inflict, their brain often imposes limits on their behavior.

While there is work that society needs to do to create spaces that feel safe for people who are too often excluded, there is also a “rewiring” that only those individuals can do. As a woman and as a member of the LGBTQI+ community, I am one of this group. My once-injured knee has taught me a physical lesson that translates into a mental one – so many of the situations in which we think we can’t do something are illusionary.

All of us in this community need to take time to stop and reflect on where we are placing unwarranted limitations on ourselves. And I absolutely do not want to trivialize all the trauma from the hate and even the unintentional verbal, behavioral or environmental slights suffered by people who are othered in any way.

That does not mean there is not personal work to be done too. We can and must take greater and greater agency for ourselves. That is, after all, liberation. Only when we feel we have the power to act according to our principles, and to voice them forthrightly, are we truly free. No one can give that agency to us; we must take it.

We must do the personal work required to let go of the trauma and step forward, fully free, into the world.

We must push ourselves to say “I can” in situations where our lizard brain – that part of us that is so focused on scanning the horizon for threats and keeping us in a safe zone – is yelling about the lions, tigers and bears out there.

It is scary. I know that only too well. What’s more, sometimes these metaphorical lions, tigers and bears are in the arena, but it is only in seizing our agency that we will become powerful enough to defeat those scary, metaphorical wild animals.