What shifts when I see myself in those who have wronged me or hurt others?

This initially felt like the opposite of what I try to do if someone says something hurtful. In that moment I remind myself that what they say reflects on them and what’s happening internally for them–that it isn’t about me at all, not really. They may be speaking out of pain I don’t know about. I can add this layer, of remembering a time when I’ve done that exact thing, and that will add empathy.

I’ve taken training on dignity-infused community engagement within the transportation realm with the Thrivance Group. It provides new perspectives on thinking about what it means to work in a trauma-informed way, to explicitly recognize the elements of dignity and create space for someone to express and define what it means to them to be treated with dignity. I hadn’t yet connected that with this kind of scenario but now I will–it isn’t just for community engagement, it’s for everyday interactions. https://thrivancegroup.com/dicemethod

Related, particularly with respect to those who hurt others whether explicitly or by staying comfortable within power structures that hurt others–I recently went through some training that I need to revisit to remind myself of some of the techniques we learned and practiced. This was the Barnraisers Project–highly recommended if you want to work on organizing in an explicitly anti-racist way as a white person https://www.barnraisersproject.org/. It embeds approaches that involve respecting everyone (meaning everyone, not just people who agree with me), and talking with people who are far apart from me on how US society treats people who have been racialized through generations of power deployed to protect systems of white supremacy.