My platform here is not grand by any means, but my purpose has always lied within reaching at least one person who resonates with my words. If I can accomplish that, then I consider my ongoing mission of providing a voice to others who struggle similarly to myself successful. Just because the scale of the audience I reach now isn’t “big” by most standards, doesn’t mean I can sit by and excuse myself from participating in the events affecting those around me. I am not apart from this world or these cities, where families are being torn apart unjustly; where innocent people are being gunned down in the streets by masked strangers claiming they offer constitutional protection in the name of the law.

I am also no longer a part of the environment I grew up in, where advocating for myself and my needs resulted in a lack of emotional safety in my most vulnerable state.

With all the power I hold now, despite the fear rooted deep inside threatening to strangle my voice, I will put an end to my silence.

Being in the States right now is a terrifying existence…we relentlessly hear about horrible, wretched things happening every hour. My day is filled with the non-stop onslaught of news sources informing me of where the next instance of injustice is taking place. Though I am not directly in the cities that are the epicenter of the attacks, I am close enough to one in particular for it to hit home. For the purposes of this post, I will only offer that I reside somewhere along the West Coast of the U.S., but will go no further.

Within driving distance of where hundreds of thousands march together in the streets to share in their outrage, I could personally go and watch them use their constitutional rights as they were intended. I have felt the pull many of us feel when watching the videos online of protestors in the streets fighting back against the entities that call themselves our protectors.

I feel the call to action that urges me to stand up with my community. Tears run down my cheeks as I listen to the classmates of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, before his return, talk about how they miss their friend and wish for him to come home soon. My heart aches every day for the families of those whose lives were ripped away from them in the cold streets: Renée Good, Alex Peretti, and countless others. My mind repeats their names endlessly throughout the days.

I witness people courageously running up to the front lines of protests, willingly subjecting themselves to the full effects of the tear gas, to throw back the canisters that were wrongfully launched in the first place. This is their way to fight back; this is their protest. This is their voice.

I feel a voice in me that wants to come out, too. An inner fight that is gaining momentum day-by-day, urging me to scream. To march. To fight. To throw back canisters. To chant alongside my brothers and sisters as we brave the harsh conditions of the Winter weather together. To do something.

But there is an inner war that is also raging inside: a war of divided attention. My body and soul are desperate for my focus to be on the events happening around me, but the state of the economy, my financial situation, and my emotional well-being demand my attention elsewhere as well – on me. And I am struggling because of this war within.

It’s exhausting and feels selfish to focus on myself and my needs in a time like this, but it’s also unavoidable. To try to put it numerically, as I cannot think of another form of explanation that would best represent the struggle, my current personal situation requires at least 75% of my attention to resolve. But so would participating in this great movement in the way it deserves, it seems.

I cannot give 75% of myself to two different things at once – I barely have enough energy to give it to one. “But I must try,” I tell myself, because I can’t imagine not participating at all. Against the pleading of my family who wish I would not put myself in danger or call attention to myself to those whom I would be opposing, I will not stand by and do nothing.

But I do not have enough time to protest, which admittedly, feels like a cop-out. I would only have time on the weekends to march with my community. But my weekends right now, I must save for lists of “to-dos” that are imperative and time-sensitive for me. I could take time off work to march during the week; I could have participated in the national shutdown of businesses and schools on the 31^st, but I can’t afford to miss a day’s worth of wages. “You could use your PTO to make up for the day off work,” some have said. And they’re right. But as a major life change is occurring for me soon that will require me to possibly take off substantial time from work already, it seems tumultuous and borderline irresponsible to make that choice to use PTO now when it’s not necessary.

Then again, all my personal issues feel so small in comparison to what’s happening out in the streets. And I feel small for willingly putting aside my feelings of what’s happening out there so I can focus on what’s going on in my life. I feel weak for being stressed about my things when others are experiencing loss of life, freedom, and identity. Then, I feel empowered to march again; to help in any way I can. To not care about my personal life for the time being. I feel that inner voice rising once more, before I feel my body and mind shoving it back down, pushing it further into the recesses of my being. Then I freeze, because these two parts of me are tearing me in half between two states of being. Right as I make the decision to move in one way or another, the other side of me surfaces and throws off the momentum to act once more.

I am stuck.

Maybe you know this feeling; maybe you’re feeling it too.

Maybe we are stuck together, and like me, you’re also wondering what the right move for you is.

The only way I know how to move forward is to move in understanding.

So, I’m going to tell you why I’m stuck, because maybe it will help both of us.

Often in my childhood, I heard the phrase, “You need to learn to advocate for yourself more.” Ironic, since most of the time it was my mother telling me this, despite being one half of the pair who created an environment where it was unsafe to do so. I know it was said with love; I know it was repeated from somewhere deep inside of her that just wanted to see her babies grow up to be strong, independent people. She said this to me time and time again, hoping one day the words would sink in and take root in my mind as her actions in our physical world created a space to negate the very lessons they tried to impart on us.

We did not grow up in a safe environment. We had food on the table, a roof over our heads, and beds to sleep in. But that’s where the safety ended. This time, I am not here to argue whether it was their fault or not, but rather to provide context for this struggle I now find myself in.

Growing up in our household, we learned some things early on that became natural law:

1. If they so happened to oppose what my parents thought we should be feeling, what we were allowed to openly express, our emotions did not truly matter.
2. Reaching out to speak up for each other when we thought our siblings were being wronged only caused more harm and trouble for ourselves and often made our siblings’ situations worse.
3. The only way to stay safe in a place where emotional safety was unavailable was to fly under the radar and try everything in your power to go undetected; to make yourself unnoticeable.

We could spend all day divulging the effects of living like this as a child and explaining the kind of adult this could produce, but I have already spent time on that in other posts, and now is not the time to further elaborate upon those ideas.

I bring this up because it reflects upon and gives insight into the origin of a concept I spoke of earlier – the act of freezing.

I can explain in every possible way why I cannot and do not have time to physically protest, but I know the true root of why I can’t: my nervous system remembers a time when speaking out was so unsafe, it tried to sabotage the potential to ever do so again with trauma. The other reasons I presented earlier for not protesting are also valid. If you were to know the situation I am in, you would understand why they do, in fact, contradict my desire to participate. But they are only gilded explanations, you see, for the truth that lies beneath it all.

In all honesty, I could find it easy to make up some reason not to protest, whether I was in my current situation or not. And that’s the part of me I don’t want to face; that’s the part of me that makes me feel small, weak. Cowardly. The part of me that remembers what standing up against those who have authority over me once meant is weakening my resolve to fight back now by cleverly covering it up with tangible, real-world reasoning of why I can’t. The war happening inside of me is between that version of me and the growth I’ve made throughout these years.

My trauma has left marks on me that are exquisitely good at hiding, so much so that even I forget they’re there at all.

I think my earlier reasons for not joining in on the marches and the protests are all valid and are not to be dismissed or shrunken in weight. I also believe this new perspective has validity, too.

Sometimes the guilt I feel on the matter is entirely mine; the echo of a childhood that taught me speaking up is dangerous. But other times, that guilt is mirrored back to me in the real world by external forces: by people who are protesting in the streets, by those who see physical action as the only meaningful form of contribution, by voices that question the validity of my struggle to balance my personal life with the world’s outrage. It’s as if the inner war I carry has been projected outward, reinforcing and emphasizing every ounce of external pushback I receive for not acting yet. And suddenly my hesitation is no longer just an internal force I’m struggling with – it’s scrutinized, judged, and questioned by the world around me.

Then I get defensive… then I feel small again.

I have been stuck in this endless back and forth while I wrestle to find where I fit into it all. In the middle of my searching, I came across a video of a woman talking about precisely this subject. She started her video by explaining how movements, such as the one our nation is currently undergoing, need a variety of roles played in order to survive. She, too, had felt the pressure of others in her life who told her that she needs to protest; that there’s no other way. Like me, she is not in a position in her life that allows her to go and march alongside protestors, losing out on wages.

Expressing her frustration with that mindset, she elaborated on how dangerous that could be to maintaining the necessary presence that keeps movements alive. They’re like ecosystems, she said, requiring multiple parts doing their jobs that all contribute to the whole. It was made clear that, yes, protestors are obviously important. It was then added with firmness that not everyone is meant to be a protestor and that the increasing pressure on those not actively protesting could actually prevent them from helping at all.

There are many roles to play in these situations. Some of them are more obvious than others, but just because one role may be quieter or hidden in the background does not deem it unnecessary or of less importance. I listened to her outline how some people are meant to be informers, others are to provide support for the protestors, and some are meant to be financial contributors to the cause. Every word she spoke felt like a beam of light through the fog of the indecision in my mind. A quiet moment in the war between my two selves. At the end, one truth surrounding the center of my dilemma emerged: Shame shuts down participation; safety sustains it.

Maybe this is my purpose – maybe this is the role I must play.

Let this be my voice for the cause, reaching out to those who are stuck and unsure of what to do.

You are not alone. I feel you, and I know this is a terrible, never-ending pressure on you.

I see you and the struggle you’re experiencing.

If you don’t feel protesting is for you, that’s okay. It will always be okay, because there are many forms of helping that may match you better. Don’t let your inner guilt consume you because one way of helping doesn’t suit you. Don’t let the external world shame you into doing something that doesn’t feel aligned to you and how you are truly meant to help.

I encourage you to look up ideas of micro activism – there are many more options to protest than you may think.

Whether it’s helping organize events, gathering resources for them, signing petitions online, or contributing financially, no matter how small the donation, we all have our own roles to play. And though I was confused about what mine was initially, that doesn’t mean I can stand by and use my conflict as an excuse to remain silent and still. I will move in the ways I feel are right for me; the ways I know I can make a difference.

Above all, I will put an end to my own silence, however that may be.