Reframing Privilege

Over the past few weeks, I’ve found myself sitting in the midst of waves of aggressive slander designed with the explicit intent of questioning my integrity, my character, and the work I’m devoted to.

I understand this person is deeply hurting and is doing the only thing they know how to do within their own capacity, which is to project that pain outward in a desperate attempt to be heard.

I’ve noticed the instinct, at times, to brace. To tighten. To prepare a defense. There’s a subtle contraction that can move through the body when you feel misunderstood or misrepresented — a pulling inward, a desire to correct the narrative, to be seen clearly.

And yet, what I keep returning to is something much quieter.

A breath.

A slowing down.

A willingness to stay.

Because beneath the noise of accusation or projection, there is something deeper asking to be met — not just in others, but in myself.

Part of what has been spoken toward me is the idea that in naming systems of harm — patriarchy, colonization, the ongoing impact these structures have — I must be operating from shame. That somehow this orientation comes from guilt, from self-rejection, from an unresolved relationship to my own identity as a white man.

And in a way, I understand where that assumption comes from.

There was a time when shame did move through me in a very real way. A heaviness in the chest. A collapsing inward. A sense of disorientation as I began to more fully take in the realities of what has been done — historically, systemically, relationally — through lineages that I am a part of.

I know firsthand what it is to be gaslit, abused, and forced into states of helplessness… The terror, panic, and sleepless nights of self-rumination and deprivation that ensue.

The waves of grief. Anger. Confusion. Self-abandonment and self-gaslighting.

But what I’ve come to learn, both personally and through the lens of somatic work, is that these experiences are not problems to be eradicated. They are signals of making contact with ostracized, abandoned, and "exiled" parts of myself. These moments where the body is registering something meaningful, deeply hurting, and scared within my own psyche and nervous system.

The question was never whether those sensations and emotions would arise.

The question was whether I would turn away from them… or develop the capacity to stay.

Staying is not passive.

It’s not a resignation. It’s not collapsing. Although that can and will happen from a place of self-protection. This is not about judging ourselves when these automatic responses come online to protect ourselves from fully encountering and reliving the same survival energy that first sent us into feeling like our whole world was collapsing.

And, this is a practice of actively growing our capacity, embodying the process of remaining present with what is uncomfortable without immediately discharging it — onto others, into defensiveness, or into denial.

I’ve watched, in myself and in the broader field, how quickly the nervous system can mobilize when these conversations emerge. There is a speed to it. A reflex.

A tightening of the jaw.
A quickening of thought.
An urgency to be right.
To correct.
To defend.
To withdraw.

None of this is inherently wrong. These are deeply intelligent survival responses — the body doing what it knows how to do when something feels threatening.

But when we are fully inside of those responses, something essential gets lost.

We lose the ability to be in relationship with what is actually here.

And what is here is rarely simple.

I carry multiple stories in my body.

There are threads of ancestry (specifically my Irish roots) that have known oppression, displacement, and survival — and the majority of those threads have participated in systems that have caused harm, both overtly and subtly.

There is a difference I’ve come to feel — not just understand — between shame and responsibility.

Shame has a very particular texture in the body. It pulls everything inward. It narrows perception. It creates a sense that something is fundamentally wrong and that the safest thing to do is disappear, hide, or protect. It also makes everything about ME, as opposed to addressing the systems that are actually at the root of the problem.

Responsibility feels different.

It has weight, but it also has direction.

It doesn’t ask me to collapse. It asks me to orient. To stay connected enough to myself that I can also stay connected to others. To acknowledge impact without making myself the center of the story.

To be influenced, but not overtaken.

This is not something I do perfectly. There are moments where I feel the pull into defensiveness. Moments where my system wants to justify, to explain, to prove.

And those moments have become part of the practice.

Not something to eliminate, but something to notice.

“Ah, there’s the contraction.”
“Ah, there’s the urgency.”
“Ah, there’s the part of me that wants to be seen a certain way.”

And then, gently, a return.

Back to breath.
Back to sensation.
Back to the relational field that exists beyond my own internal narrative.

There’s an idea that integrity means neutrality. That to be “in integrity” is to remain detached, to not take a stance, to stay above the complexity.

But in my experience, that kind of neutrality often comes at the cost of presence.

It can become a subtle form of leaving the room — not physically, but somatically. A stepping back from the tension that is required to hold difficult truths.

For me, integrity feels much more like participation.

Not reactive participation, not performative participation — but grounded, aware, embodied participation.

The willingness to be in the conversation, to be shaped by it, to be challenged by it, while also staying connected to a deeper center.

I don’t experience allyship as something I can claim or arrive at.

It feels more like a muscle. A capacity that is built over time.

The capacity to listen without immediately organizing a response.
To receive feedback without collapsing into self-protection.
To stay present when something lands uncomfortably, without rushing to resolve it.

This capacity is intimately tied to the nervous system.

Because without regulation, without the ability to stay within a window where presence is possible, these conversations become overwhelming. And when they become overwhelming, we revert to what is familiar — defense, avoidance, polarization.

So much of the work I do, and the work I’m speaking to here, is about expanding that window.

Not just individually, but collectively.

So that we can stay in conversations that matter.
So that we can hold more than one perspective at a time.
So that we can feel without being flooded, and respond without needing to dominate or disappear.

I’m not interested in presenting myself as someone who has this all figured out.

I am in process.

I am learning.

I am refining my awareness, my language, my capacity to stay.

And I am committed to continuing — even when it’s uncomfortable, even when I’m misunderstood, even when parts of me would prefer to step away.

Because the work, as I understand it, is not about being comfortable.

It’s about being present enough to participate in something larger than myself.

And that requires, again and again, the same simple but demanding act:

To stay.