Safe Spaces

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the importance of safe spaces. I didn’t grow up with any semblance of normalcy and I’ve never neatly fit into any of the boxes society has created for us. While that is actually a great thing, it has mostly felt awful. I’m still trying to untangle why that is, but the simplest answer is that society creates those boxes and categories for their own safety. It’s easier.

If we can say this always equals that then we don’t have to adjust for or even see the individual.

It's easy to say you’re a Black woman so I know you’ll look like this, behave like this, and think like this. When you wrap that up in a nice little bow, you can dismiss the truth about our differing realities.

The truth is, nothing and no one is that simple. For all our similarities as humans, whether we share the same race, ethnicity, gender, financial status, ability level, sexual orientation, age, etc., we are all different. That sounds as obvious as it is, yet we don’t account for it in significant ways in the workplace and in other areas of life. Our differences have been used to divide us for so long that sometimes it can feel like we’re too far apart to ever find common ground.

It feels like we’re so focused on pointing out our differences and similarities in ways that feel forced, we’ve forgotten how to just be.

Of course, it’s hard to just be when you don’t feel safe being anything, with anyone, anywhere.

We need more safe spaces.

Safety and security is a basic human need. Unfortunately, too many of us didn’t experience safety as children and many of us don’t feel safe as adults. Sometimes that feeling of safety is ripped away and sometimes it slowly erodes over time. However our feeling of safety is lost, the impact is the same.

For all our talk about our differences, we don’t have enough conversations about a story most of us would rather forget.

Most of us are the walking wounded. The wounds are gaping sores, raw, painful and obvious, yet invisible. We know they are there because of how they show up: perfectionism, self-deprecating humor, insecurity, bullying, quick temper, poor decision-making, needing to be liked, responses that don’t fit the situation, suicidal tendencies, depression, anxiety, lack of self-care, substance abuse, overeating, under-eating, trying to control situations and people, etc. The list is extensive, and we all know someone who displays at least one of these traits. It’s very likely that we display at least one of these traits ourselves.

We talk about the impact of those behaviors constantly. What we don’t talk about is the why behind it.

As with creating boxes and categories to neatly place people in, it is much easier to talk about what people do rather than why they do it.

When we talk about the why, then we have to deal with the realities of not only their why, but our own. The why that so many of us are talking about without addressing? Trauma.

Trauma is real and it’s time to talk about how we got here and what we’re going to do about it. It’s times to be intentional about creating safe spaces to talk about our realities, to talk about our scars, to heal from them, to love ourselves, to love others, to feel seen, to feel heard, to feel valued, to feel free to just be whoever, whatever, wherever, whenever.

It’s time to be intentional about creating safe spaces where all of us feel free.

In the Safe Spaces series, we will be exploring trauma, healing, hope, and what each of us can do to create safe spaces for ourselves and each other.