The Overwhelm is Real:

A Note to White Bodied Folks Waking Up

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re not alone.

If you look around your community, your family, or even within yourself, and feel a crushing weight of despair, you are not crazy.

If you feel a deep, isolating loneliness when you see the machinery of white supremacy humming along smoothly in everyday life (in a casual comment, a voting pattern, a policy decision, the way people just "walk around as if nothing's happening") your feelings are valid.

Let's name it. It is the profound disorientation of waking up. It is the pain of seeing a system that has always been there, one that you were taught was normal. And it is exhausting.

The Two-Headed Monster

For many of us, this awakening feels like a battle on two fronts.

First, there is the external monster. The enormous, historic system of white supremacy and capitalism that feels too big to fight. It’s in the structures, the institutions, and the social fabric of our towns. It’s easy to see it as a monster because its impacts are monstrous. It’s easy to see demons in those who uphold it, especially when their actions or votes dehumanize people you love.

And then, there is the internal monster. The slow, sickening realization of the white supremacy within ourselves. The biases, the conditioned responses, the ways we’ve benefited from and participated in the system without even knowing it. This internal work is grueling. It can feel like you’re constantly failing, and it’s easy to lose hope.

In response, a natural, human reaction is to shut down. To dehumanize the people who dehumanize others. To want to withdraw completely. To not support their businesses, not attend their events, to build a wall between you and them.

The Radical, Self-Preserving Act of Seeing Humanity

But then, for your own sake, you might find yourself trying something that feels even harder: wondering about their humanity.

You might ask, as I have: How did they get this way? How were they raised? What trauma did they endure? What losses? What hardships?

This is not about making excuses. It is not about forgiveness or absolution. This is a radical act of self-preservation.

Dehumanization is a toxin. When we dehumanize the dehumanizer, we are still poisoning our own spirits. To wonder about the hurt, fear, and trauma that often underlies intolerance is to break the cycle. It is to refuse to let their hatred become your hatred. It allows us to see the system itself as the enemy, rather than getting trapped in an endless, exhausting war with its individual symptoms.

The Profound Loneliness of Seeing

Perhaps the most isolating part is when the people closest to you (family, friends, neighbors) don’t see what you see. When you express your “big feelings” about the world and are met with defensiveness, dismissal, or are made to feel as if you are the problem for naming the problem.

This loneliness is real. To be demonized for mentioning the demon is a special kind of gaslighting. It makes you feel crazy. It makes you want to retreat.

Anchoring Our Feelings in Reality

As we sit with these valid and overwhelming feelings, we must also anchor ourselves in a crucial truth. While these feelings may be new to us, the reality of white supremacy is not.

Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities have been living with the devastating, life-threatening fallout of this system for centuries. They have not had the privilege of looking away, of feeling overwhelmed and then shutting down. Our current awakening is to a reality they have always known.

This acknowledgment is not meant to dismiss our pain, but to contextualize it. It is a call to responsibility. Our grief, our anger, and our isolation are not endpoints. They are fuel.

What Do We Do With This?

So, what do we do with these big, valid, and lonely feelings?

We build. We build spaces like EAGER.

We find or create spaces, specifically for white bodied folks, to do this work without further harming people of color. We talk, we stumble, we learn, and we unlearn. We turn our guilt into responsibility, our grief into action, and our isolation into solidarity.

We hold the tension. We hold the tension between seeing humanity and demanding accountability. We hold the tension between protecting our own spirits and refusing to give up on the world.

Your feelings are valid. Your overwhelm is a sign that you are paying attention. Your loneliness is evidence that you believe in a deeper, more connected way of living.

Don't let the weight of it all paralyze you. Let it ground you. Let it be the foundation for a commitment to the long, difficult, and necessary work of liberation, for everyone.

This is not a comfort that soothes you back to sleep. It’s a comfort that says, "I see your pain. Now, let's get to work."

www.joinEAGER.com

Photo by Modest M: https://www.pexels.com/photo/classic-store-post-signage-on-street-sidewalk-photo-13360900/