Questioning Who I Think I Am

Each year since 2014, I have chosen one word to be my theme for the year. In 2016, I also had themes for each moon cycle. The last moon cycle word, which will be in effect until the next new moon, is sisterhood.

This weekend, I attended my sorority reunion brunch. I have never gone before. My time in a sorority was strange. I rushed the fall of my sophomore year, was put on academic probation, brought my grades up, activated that spring and was immediately made an alumni because I got married. I never lived in the house. I don’t really remember any of the songs and I certainly did not remember any of the secrets until someone reminded me of them at brunch.

To a certain degree, I feel like I do not belong in a room where I should very much belong. The women in my sorority are amazing women. The lack of belonging is not in them, it is in me. More on that later.

So, Saturday night, a bunch of ladies got together for dinner and drinks and dancing prior to the brunch on Sunday. As I am a local to the area of the brunch, they asked me where to go dancing.

I had been to a club that was close to the bar we were at a couple times. They played top 40 music and people definitely danced, although not until after 11 p.m. So we headed there. We walk in. We are some of the only white people in the club. And there is no top 40 either. It’s hip hop.

Now, to hear my sisters tell it is a varying storytelling theme of huh, that’s interesting to a comical version where everyone turns and looks at us, confused. I think that everyone I was with that night was not only comfortable in their own skin, but also comfortable being the only white girls in the club. But, I don’t know for sure. And as comfortable as I am in my own skin, the DJ did not have to create a shout-out for us (seriously, where my white girls at? Really?). But nonetheless.

So I am dancing. Like non-stop. On the sidelines, at the bar, whatever. I love to dance. And eventually I am like, I totally want to dance on the dance floor. So I take a sister out with me.

Here’s something you have to understand. I see color. I see color the way an artist sees paint. Color blind, for me, is bullshit. Part of my constitution as a person is that very artist who takes in color and shades of skin as reflections of culture and the container through which a story is told. There are times when I have a little twinge in my soul that I wish I was born a black woman. Black girl magic is a thing. Like really. But I am a white girl. And I was so damn comfortable in that club. Just dancing my white, ally ass off.

So, out to the dance floor. My sister and I. And this beautiful black girl dances over and joins our group. I don’t know at first if she is actually flirting with us or just incredibly friendly, but I love that she was joining us.

Eventually my sorority sister leaves the dance floor. I am now, so far as I can tell, the only white girl on the dance floor. But all around me, women are coming over and dancing with shouts of hey and great smiles.

I have read lots and lots of stories about how feminism is failing us all because it puts a divide between women along racial lines. Even the fact that I was in a club and happily taken aback by the fact that a woman of color danced beside me welcomingly might be proof of that.

I so desperately want to type sister of color. But my own whiteness, whether it is conditioned by being an American or growing up privileged or having this inner conflict where I feel like my magic cannot be as great as that of a black woman, tells me that I am not allowed to do that. Maybe that’s where feminism fails us. It still keeps us in boxes where a win for a white woman is not a win for a woman of color and we end up progressing, but divided. Our true power is in our own womanhood - and that has no color, even through my eyes.

Sisterhood does not do that. Sisterhood brings you into its fold and embraces you for who you are right now. Sisterhood gives you solidarity and hope. Sisterhood stays with your drunk ass at a fraternity party and makes sure that you do not sleep with the guy that you will cry over in the morning. And sisterhood shakes her beautiful ass, flashes a gorgeous smile and heys you across a dance floor. Sisterhood sees your diversity as a gift and your womanhood as a welcome mat to invite friendship.

Back to the feeling of not belonging. I stood in circle for a sorority ritual Sunday morning with nearly all white women. And I beat the hell out of myself in my mind. I know why the room filled with my sorority sisters was mostly all white. I know how segregated the Greek system is in college. Hell, they are different systems all together. Beating myself up has to do with being conflicted about wanting to make that different. Greek systems are different because cultures are different. Not that we cannot bridge the gap, not that there are not people who walk between worlds, if you will.

It’s even more profound for me because I nearly rushed Alpha Kappa Alpha. My freshmen year in college, I was at a small school and my suite mate was AKA and invited me to a step event. I was in their show. If I had stayed at that school, I think my sorority experience would have been incredibly different.

There is a part of me that wonders why when I got to Northern Illinois University, I chose to do the "traditional" thing - to rush the Panhellenic council and not join the black sorority I would have rushed had I stayed at that first college. Did I decide I was too white? Did I lose the woman of color who was my translator between two worlds and feel too uncomfortable to go back to that? Why couldn't I, didn't I, don’t I see myself as the one who walks between worlds?

It's something I am fully willing to sit with. I want to understand my own motivations when it comes to diversity. I want to know why I felt so comfortable in a club, but surprised when sisterhood crossed color lines and invited me in. I want to understand why standing in a circle with almost 120 of the most amazing women, who are diverse in career and family and religion and political views and probably every thing but color (save for one) bothers me. I want to understand why all of this weighs on my mind, but my one of my best friends, my soul sister, is a woman of color.

When I rushed my sophomore year in college, in the end I was faced with a choice. Two sororities remained on the table. And while the one I chose had one of my favorite colors as its color, had a unicorn as its mascot and I loved unicorns and raised money for Cystic Fibrosis, which is close to my heart, it was maybe the motto that let me know where I belonged: Esse Quam Videri - to be rather than to seem to be.

I hope my sorority sisters who read this piece understand that my examining myself is exactly what our motto says. I want to be. I want to embrace who I am at the heart of who I am and ask myself the really tough questions. Anything else would be seeming to be. And would go against who I was back in 93 and who I still am today. It would not honor who I am, we are as Delta Phi Epsilon.

When I am comfortable in my own skin, I feel like I belong. By the end of the brunch on Sunday, I felt like I belonged in that room. And there were sisters with whom I knew I belonged before that moment. But it's a process to be rather than to seem to be. And when you embrace the questions you have to ask yourself, you arrive in a place where you are sure in your heart. It's where I was way back then and it was where I had to get back to on Sunday.

It's where I was on the dance floor Saturday night. Where we were. We dove in to BEing sisters -- the ones who were in my own sorority and the ones I had never met before. No one was seeming to be anything. We just were. And it was glorious.

I need to be ok when I see things like a black woman being inviting on a dance floor as surprising realizing, that as progressive as I am, I am not fully who I want to be yet.

And I need to be brave, vulnerable. Back then, in college, maybe it was as simple as being willing to go out bare-faced, no make-up, no mask to hide our faces from the world. This was rarely a challenge for me, I go without make-up all the time. But now, as adults in this world as we find it, it's about be-ing willing to stand up for what is right, perhaps especially when we stand alone. It's about knowing it is ok to be wrong. It is about saying outloud what is really going on when no one else is brave enough to speak their own truth. This isn't just about color. This is about anything. When one person finds their voice, they give permission to others to do the same.

My time with the word sisterhood is over in less than 10 days. I think I have already seen its work in my heart. I don't know what my next moon-cycle word is yet. My word of the month for January is breakthrough. I have and will continue to breakthrough into being.