P is for Privilege

“Woke,” someone recently wrote, is wrong-headed. This was not a MAGA screed. It was an eye-opening criticism of the past tense. Awakening is more like it. This speaks to the truth—and power—of the present participle, the -ing verb form that signals continuity, the ongoing nature of the act. The process.

I am in the process of awakening. It has been hard to awake to the notion of my privilege because growing up female did not imbue me with a sense of privilege. It was/ is about fighting for a place at the table, staying alert to danger, avoiding the male gaze, toeing the line between assertive and bitch. And now, as an old(er) female, whatever privilege I may have somehow gained by “achieving,” by playing by enough of the rules to stay under the radar, that privilege is frail and withered, like our toxic ageist stereotypes.

So, I am awakening, not woke. I am in the (life-long) process of understanding the privilege of my whiteness (thank you, Sterling), the privilege of my heterosexuality (thank you, Shelley), my CIS-genderedness (thank you, Jamie), my “appropriately sized” bodiness (thank you, Roxanne).

This morning, on my (almost daily) hike in the woods, I thought about another kind of privilege: the privilege of geography. This has been written and talked about in important ways: those who live in dangerous places and the privilege of those who inhabit safe(r) environments, those who live in food deserts and the privilege of those with access to healthy food and those. I understand the privilege of geography. I am awake to it on these walks in the woods: spotting the wildflowers, marveling at the profusion of trillia, breathing damp, foggy air, pounding all that needs to be pounded back to Pachamama, the silence, the uncomplicated-by-religion spirituality of it all.

I am overcome with privilege. I am delirious with privilege.