Dear Friend Who Supported Me

Hello friends,

I couldn’t publish this at the time, but I wrote it after an experience of racism from a white leader at my last company. It shows both how racism can affect people AND how important support is.

Dear friend who supported me,

You didn’t know it at the time, but you provided a necessary lifeline at a point where I thought I might drown from the pain of the racism I’d faced. It had been a hard few days. After the original incident I began to wonder if I was right to see it that way. After all, taken on its own, it didn’t look so bad. But those who knew the backstory and the culture reassured me that my initial reaction was right.

What I did not anticipate - how could I have - was that this particular incident would take me back to a time in my childhood where I felt less than safe.

A time that was turbulent, unsettled.

A time where we’d left the place I called home and moved to somewhere new where I didn’t feel I fitted in.

A time when I could not be open about my home life, and where I never knew what chaos would await me.

Though I shut away many of the feelings related to that, I know now that it was traumatic, and that the incident of racism reawakened some of that trauma.

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