The comeback to writing

It is nine years since you started this blog and man, so much has happened since you were 19 years old. You graduated from college with experiences in Thailand, the Dominican Republic, India, Turkey that shaped your life. You finished medical school and began a career as an emergency medicine physician. You've nurtured friendships with people that have become leaders in their field of medicine and law, CNN embeds and writers for popular TV shows, charge nurses in hospitals across the country. You have watched your friends become spouses and parents, we've also grieved the loss of our parents and grandparents together. You met your life's partner and together, took a chance in moving to Ohio for training.

Since moving to Ohio, your eyes have been open to real life, every day racism and white supremacy. Within the first few months of moving here, you encountered every day folk wearing confederate flag tee shirts and caps at the gas stations, taken care of patients proudly showing swastika tattoos on their chest, had Costco members greet you with "Konichiwa" and "Ni hao," and even had a young girl mock you in a Columbus mall where she ran up to you, pulled her eyes slant and chanted "Ching chong ching chong." Ahh for the first time in your life, you were in the presence and discomfort of a white-majority that not only wore their racism on their sleeve but in fact even celebrated it. Who could forget the KKK rally in downtown Dayton your intern year? This served as a jarring reminder that terrorist groups can show their hate in broad daylight where you live.

But the start of this blog isn't about magnifying your own discomfort. In fact your discomfort pales in comparison to the daily experience of your Black brothers and sisters. In light of George Floyd's videotaped murder by cops and the hundreds, nay THOUSANDS, of Black people who have died at the hands of a government funded gang, you're called to action. Action to make it a life long fight against police brutality in our communities and to call out the racist micro aggressions you encounter in daily life. You've seen the video footage spilling over in abundance from twitter with police inciting violence in protests, shooting citizens at point place with "rubber filled" bullets that cause devastating injuries, pulling down masks and spraying young teenagers with peppers spray, launching tear gas into cornered crowds, pushing down unarmed elderly men and walking past his ears bleeding. Do not forget these images that have filled you with so much hate for the system that has allowed this to continue and anger towards the people who just. Can't. Empathize. Because they see others as less than, inferior, dehumanized by labeling a criminal, an outcast, a danger to their existence.

We've donated, we've supported Black businesses, we've nervously dialed government offices and angrily typed emails, we've made signs, screamed our lungs out in marches, we've exhausted the list of things people say we can do but still it's not enough and we want to do more. We've listened to podcasts, watched the documentaries, ordered the books and want to educate ourselves. So here I am. This blog is my own reflection to the the resources I have. I don't want to passively consume content. These posts may very well just end up just being notes of things I'm learning for the first time, reflections to my own racist tendencies that I'm wrestling with, annotations of books I'm working through or highlights from podcasts that speak for themselves. I don't want this learning phase to be passive because we're only two weeks into the fight and I already know it's a personally transformative place I'm in. I recognize it from the way traveling, religion, food ethics, and environmentalism changed the core of who I am. If you're here to follow and entertain discourse, correction, sharing of resources, please join me. If you're here to argue, open minds are welcome. What I will not tolerate is hate and belittling.