When We Turn ON Each Other Instead of Turning TO Each Other
What happens when harm comes from within the very movements that promise liberation
There’s a moment every equity practitioner eventually faces. When harm doesn’t come from an institution, but from inside the community itself. It’s disorienting. Painful. And, if we let it be, revealing.
Recently, I was included, without consent or context, in a mass email that targeted a group of equity practitioners by name. The message claimed to call out “harmful practices” in others’ work and assumptions of a failure to address the destruction and genocide of Gaza, while positioning the sender as the sole voice of integrity and truth.
My name and the name of Mending the Chasm were used to validate that framing, as if distant proximity to my work could lend credibility to an attack. It was an attempt to manufacture legitimacy through association, and it caused real harm.
The tone was condescending, self-righteous, and rooted in the illusion of moral purity, a posture we in this field must recognize as one of the most seductive traps of white supremacy culture. Public shaming. Perfectionism. Defensiveness. Scarcity. These are not tools of transformation; they are symptoms of unhealed pain. And, in the words of Audre Lorde:
“For the master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house.”
✴️ The Difference Between Clean and Dirty Pain
Resmaa Menakem teaches that clean pain is the pain we feel when we turn inward — when we face the hard truths about ourselves and metabolize them with courage and honesty. Dirty pain is the pain we project outward — when we avoid that internal work by blaming, shaming, or attacking others.
“Clean pain is pain that mends and can build your capacity for growth. It’s the pain you experience when you know exactly what you need to say or do; when you really, really don’t want to say or do it; and when you do it anyway. It’s also the pain you experience when you have no idea what to do; when you’re scared or worried about what might happen; and when you step forward into the unknown anyway, with honesty and vulnerability.”
Source: Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands
What I witnessed in that email was dirty pain masquerading as righteousness — a discharge of unprocessed fear and ego.
“Dirty pain is the pain of avoidance, blame and denial. When people respond from their most wounded parts, become cruel or violent, or physically or emotionally run away, they experience dirty pain. This has the effect of prolonging the experience of pain and of creating more of it for themselves and for others.
Choosing comfort is also a form of dirty pain.”
Source: Resmaa Menakem, Author of My Grandmother’s Hands
And I name this with compassion, because we all do it. Every one of us. The difference lies in whether we recognize it, pause, and choose a different path.
Knowing when to turn inward — when to face the demons that make us punch down or turn on our own people — is part of maturity in this work. Without that discernment, we confuse critique with care, and justice with domination.
⚖️ The Four Pillars of Integrity
At Mending the Chasm, our work rests on four interconnected pillars: accountability, resourcing, conflict transformation, and social capital.
Each could have led to a different outcome if they’d been practiced here.
1. Accountability — choosing reflection over reaction.
Accountability starts with self-inquiry: What in me is activated? What need am I trying to meet by going public?
Before naming harm in others, we must locate our own. Accountability requires slowing down, asking consent before invoking others’ names, and prioritizing impact over intention. The easy thing here was a mass email. The harder, more integrity rooted option was to facilitate a dialogue, for the purpose of finding common ground and potentially aligned action towards a common goal.
2. Resourcing — caring for the body and nervous system before taking action.
When we are dysregulated, we act from survival, not wisdom. A resourced practitioner might have paused to breathe, to ground, to reach out privately for peer support rather than blasting a community email. Regulation is not weakness; it’s what allows courage to be clean.
3. Conflict Transformation — moving from reaction to repair.
Instead of using conflict as a weapon, we can use it as a mirror. A transformative approach would have invited dialogue, curiosity, or facilitated dialogue. Conflict doesn’t have to be a battlefield; it can be a bridge.
4. Social Capital — earning the right to speak into a community.
We cannot claim solidarity without relationship. The sender and I have no relationship, personal, professional, or otherwise. They have not built the trust or social capital to reference my work, let alone use it as a shield. Relationship is earned through humility, consistency, and care, not public alignment or proximity to influence. They started from a place that assumed the worst of my practice, rather than the best of my practice.
🌱 The Work Beneath the Work
As adrienne maree brown reminds us,
“No one is special. Everyone is needed.”
Liberation isn’t about being right — it’s about being real.
Audre Lorde wrote,
“Without community there is no liberation... but community must not mean a shedding of our differences.”
If we can’t hold difference — especially when it’s uncomfortable — we become what we resist.
And Resmaa Menakem reminds us that healing isn’t about becoming our best selves; it’s about allowing our most wounded parts to be met with love.
🌼 Closing
I am not available for cycles of harm disguised as accountability. One of THE most important lessons I continue to learn in the interest of sustaining myself for the marathon that is equity and justice work is the importance of boundaries. To know I can choose the conditions and the contexts I respond to or don’t. No is a complete answer.
My energy is dedicated to building and resourcing spaces rooted in dignity, courage, and repair rather than reactivity, dirty pain, and domination
Liberation is not an identity.
It’s a daily practice that is rooted in beloved community.
And practice means we will fall short.
What matters is how and whether we return. To ourselves. To each other. To community.
With truth,
Leena
Mending the Chasm