by Lazzuly Mello, MFT Associate

C'EST LA CRISE!

We are afraid of the world we live in. We are afraid of the inhumanity that exists within each and every one of us. Dr. Gonzalez said it right, "we are all racist here." So put aside your fears and take a journey with me.

Another horror today: a bombing in Gaza, indigenous children dying at the border, young black boys and girls incarcerated, annihilated, a (not so) quiet genocide of all things black and brown and red and yellow and queer and non binary and different.

Fascism rising across the globe.
Bolsonaro in bed with Netanyahu.
Extermination of our Palestinian brothers, our indigenous sisters, our land being ripped apart right before our eyes.
A president elect who is both hated and revered, and though it is said he is our shadow, I beg to differ. He is your mirror, he is our mirror.

It's not so much that we are in la crise but that we have been haunted by la crise since the beginning.

Let's say you're an African woman, living, raising children, breathing, creating.
The white man comes and tells you that you are wretched, takes from you a humanity you did not know you needed to survive, your body is intact but you soon discover that your soul is gone.
Your body is taken as an object.
You are sold into a slave trade.
You make your way across the middle passage, haunted by the ghosts of all those who did not make it.
And those who attempted to but couldn't.
And those that jumped into the ocean because that great spirit of Yemaya would take them far away from this madness that did not resemble life.
By the time you make it to America you are dead.
Forced to work the land, to bow your head, to swallow your dignity.
You find your drum, you communicate with your kin, they take that away too.
C'est la crise!

The European conquest of the Americas, the ripping apart of the land, of the people, of the spirit.
Words such as barbaric and primitive placed upon a whole peoples
sacred sites destroyed
mothers torn apart from daughters and sons
and sons and fathers who hate their daughters and mothers.
C'est la crise!

Boarding schools, Wounded Knee massacre, manifest destiny, lies, deceit... C'est la crise!

Your parents flee their countries to survive, and if the voyage did not kill them, if the loss of their beloved land did not split their spirit in two or three pieces, the humiliation and alienation is deadly enough. C'est la crise!

Inhabited by the dark and the light, and all things in between; a soup of contradiction. A moment in time when profit is worth more than dignity and sanity is no longer wholly, but truly hole-y.
Each of us full of holes; punctured and punctuated by the wounds of history,
           inhabited by the spectres of the past and the demons of today.
           Our demons, the demon we see when we look in the mirror.
           C'est la crise!

it is not enough to talk or think about la crise
we must excavate the hate, interrogate all the pieces inside of us that refuse to reckon with history
our complicity, denial and rejection of all difference
then maybe we can begin the difficult work of sitting with an Other and seeing their humanity.

Enfin, cela a toujours été la crise.