Welcome to
The White Girl Project
Land Acknowledgement
I am living and working as a settler on the lands stolen from the people of the Clackamas, Chinook, Multnomah and other tribes. Many descendents of those killed or forced off their lands and relocated to the Grand Ronde reservation and other places in the 1800s are living and working in these communities today, many as part of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde.
Joining the Community
Most of the pages on this website are open only to folks who have joined the community (become members). There is no charge to become a member. The goal of limiting access to members of the community is to create space for people committed to interacting in ways that are rooted in curiosity, dialogue (not debate), continuous learning and what Nicole Lee calls “generous accountability.”
For me, this project is a step into radical vulnerability and curiosity. I want to hear the ways in which my experience and reflections resonate with other people's and also the ways in which they do not; the things I am helping illuminate, and the things I am missing; the places where I'm stuck in blind spots or destructive and limiting cultural norms, or where my words create harm, and also the places where I am helping build bridges or understandings. And I want that experience for everyone who is part of this community and chooses to share their own experiences, feelings and thoughts (which is not, of course, required - you are welcome to just read).
Please fill out the request to join the community if you are interested in being part of such a space, and can embrace as the goal to be learning from each others' experience and reflections and building authentic relationships as we all strive to allow deeper and more inclusive understandings to emerge.
In this first iteration, the community will mostly be built around discussion of the blog posts, but I expect other ways of interacting and sharing will evolve into being as this project moves forward.
Questions?
If you have questions, please reach out using my contact form. I'd be happy to talk with you about the project and the community.
“I didn’t write that essay because I felt certain, or wanted to explain, but rather for the opposite reason: I wrote because I was confused and trying to figure some things out.”
Nora Samaran framing her offering of the essay “The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture,” in Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture (pg 11)
This project is an outgrowth of my ongoing examination of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism and their related systems of privilege and oppression as they manifest in the world, in my communities, my inner circles, and my own history, body, perspectives, expectations, feelings, and ways of moving through the world.
It began with two different streams of inquiry.
One was an inquiry into my own life and identity; into the many experiences and factors that have shaped me, as a white, female, bisexual, cis-gender, marginally "middle class," college educated, mostly able-bodied, middle aged, not-thin person, who grew up in my particular family and communities, at particular times and places. This inquiry deepened as I began to understand the ways in which the body carries trauma (our own, our family's, our tribes'), and the ways our current cultural norms create ongoing trauma for all of us. (Thank you, Resmaa Menakem, Emily and Amelia Nagoski, and Peter Levine.)
The second was a deep inquiry into systemic oppression, and particularly white supremacy.
These streams have converged - are converging - into a dialogue between my history and legacy, my felt experience, and what I am reading, hearing and seeing as I focus my attention on systemic oppression and trauma, and how we heal and transform ourselves and our world.
I spent several years writing obsessively about all this in my notebooks, having conversations with friends, family and colleagues, reading, listening to podcasts, taking workshops, and co-creating a group with other white women to do this work, but telling myself I didn't have time to write about it in a way I could share. My life does not currently offer me the big blocks of time I would need to take my fragmented notes, reflections, drafts of poems, drawings of relationships, etc. and "turn them into final products." And, it seemed like hubris to assume that sharing my own experience of whiteness and femaleness would have important things to add to other people's learning.
But the desire to move this mostly internal conversation into a larger community kept growing more and more insistent. And I know that dialogue and feedback - generous accountability - is necessary for all of us who are committed to transforming the current toxic and trauma-rooted cultural norms and systems of oppression.
"My task here, as a marine mammal apprentice, opening myself to guidance from these advanced marine mammals, is to identify with, to see what happens when I rethink and refeel my own relations, possibilities, and practices inspired by the relations, possibilities and practices of advanced marine mammal life... I am mostly asking questions of myself and you in this text. We get to continue to consider what is possible from here (and here and here).
"Instead of proposing a predetermined set of instructions, these meditations open up a space for wondering together and asking questions towards a depth of engagement that is, yes, still emerging."
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (pgs 9-10)
Then I found, in rapid succession, three writers that offered me a way out of the stuck spot I'd put myself in - Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Nora Samaran, and adrienne maree brown. All three of these women state clearly the place they are writing from, and gave me a sense of where I might be able to stand as a writer in this time in my life -- rejecting the perfectionism and credentialism that are so much a part of white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist norms, and leaning into my felt knowledge that we all have contributions to make the work that needs to be done, and that the work I am doing has value beyond it's impact on me.
“Grace (Lee Boggs) articulated in what might be the most-used quote of my life: 'Transform yourself to transform the world.' This doesn't mean to get lost in the self, but rather to see our own lives and work and relationships as a front line, a first place we can practice justice, liberation, and alignment with each other and the planet."
adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy (pg 53)
So, with thanks to these three women, and to the people in my inner circle who keep insisting that I share this writing because they want to read it and they think others will too, I am taking one breath at a time and moving ahead with this project.
To end where this page began, I am not writing because I have answers to share, or because I am an “expert;” I am writing because I’m trying to figure some things out and because (a) writing helps me do that and (b) I want to be in dialogue with other people who are exploring the same, or related questions. I hope that if you have your own desires to do this work, and these things help you, that you'll join this community.
Tasha grinning, age five.
Sandy dune path to Lake Michigan, blue-grey sky and water.
Crescent moon in deep blue sky with branches
Tasha grinning, age five.
Joining the Community
If you want to see the rest of the pages on this site, and be able to read and comment on the blog posts, please see the information on Joining the Community in the sidebar above. You can then fill out the request to join the community. If you have questions after reading the sidebar, please contact me (below).