And the speaking will get easier and easier… And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you… And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking. — Audre Lorde
Do you know who Audre Lorde is? It occurs to me I should ask. I have a bad habit of assuming folks know what I know. Audre Lorde was a Black lesbian poet, author, essayist, and teacher. She was born in New York City of West Indian parents, went to Hunter College and Colombia University, and worked as a librarian in the New York public schools throughout the 1960s, publishing her first poetry collection in 1968.
I first encountered Audre in college, through her essay collection Sister Outsider, which remains an essential text on the nature and power of queer, Black feminist thought. Her memoir, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, published two years later was called a “biomythography” because it stretched the bounds of the form and presented an unprecedented narrative that was epic and fantastical in its scope. I also read Zami in college; it made me feel like my head was exploding just so my brain could get big enough to comprehend what she was offering.
I love me some Audre Lorde, is what I’m saying. But I came across the above quote and it gave me pause. Lorde is talking specifically about speaking truth, which is an aspect of integrity but not its entirety, so let me acknowledge that first. She’s not exactly talking about what I’m talking about here. But they are related, and I think her point can be expanded to encompass integrity generally.
I can’t entirely agree with her, though. I don’t honestly agree with her if we’re just talking about speaking truth either. It’s not that I don’t agree with where she ends up, but I think it’s important to stop about halfway through her statement and linger for awhile. It’s important to acknowledge that speaking truth and practicing integrity has a cost. And though Audre may never have missed the people she lost while paying that cost, I wouldn’t assume that’s true for everyone. It’s not true for me.
What do I mean by saying that practicing integrity has a cost?
Our modern, Western culture, though suffused with individualism, tends to discourage challenging the status quo. We are taught to be good citizens, good consumers, good soldiers. Though we may laud those people who push to change the hierarchical systems of human value that define who is good and, therefore, worthy of access to resources once they’re dead and gone (take Martin Luther King Jr., for instance), while they are alive we tend to decry their agitation, calling them troublemakers and instigators.
Most of us are not challenging the status quo at that level, but even at the mundane, individual level at which most of us function day-to-day we sense what may be waiting if we step out of line and ask, What the hell is going on here? Or if we simply step outside of established norms and say, That’s fine, but it doesn’t work for me. I’ll be over here doing something new and different.
If you doubt me, look at how our society is increasingly criminalizing trans people these days.
I’m not trans, nor do I exist outside of most of the norms of society. I went to college, work a full-time job, pay taxes, own a home, and had children within the context of a heterosexual marriage. I drive a car, eat meat, and watch a stupid amount of tv. I own a cell phone and participate in social media. Yet and still, I have always insisted that my life and dreams matter. I’ve spent years maintaining that divorce made me a better mother because it made me a part-time one. I’ve demanded the right to bodily autonomy and joy, chosen to be single, sexually active, and unashamed, and would happily live with my closest girlfriends and keep my lovers next door if I could.
I believe that every human being, even the truly violent and destructive ones, came into the world with something divine within them and deserve humane treatment and care. I also believe that anyone who has been violent or abusive to me should stay very, very far away from me, regardless of the nature of our relationship. Family doesn’t trump my freedom and safety.
Living into these beliefs and truths of my life has cost me relationships, access to resources, and stability. I have lost people, and it has hurt horribly. Some of them I don’t miss, it’s true. But some of them I still do, even though I know the loss was the right thing then and now. I have also lost people that maybe I shouldn’t have, except that I got sucked, in pursuit of practicing my integrity, into its near enemies. I was too rigid, too righteous. I lacked compassion and denied people mercy.
I don’t think practicing integrity and building a life around it is as tidy as Lorde suggests. In my experience, it’s a messy, complicated, mysterious, and sometimes stumbling journey. I love my life now, which is as true to me as its ever been and more so than I ever imagined it could be. I wouldn’t trade it. If I won the lottery I would just want more of every aspect of it, not to escape it into some other reality. But it wasn’t easy to get here and it continues to not be easy to maintain. I don’t think that means there’s something wrong, just that I’m trying to do something hard.
I’m trying to live without a map, to consider every twist and turn by listening to myself and not just following the established trail markings, and even with all of the love that I am lucky to have found and built, it is often lonely and confusing trying to determine which way to go next and what the next best step is.
If you also find the practice of your integrity hard sometimes, know that you’re not alone or doing it wrong. It’s just the nature of the beast, and exactly why I started this newsletter. So that we could keep each other company as we stumble along, sharing what works well and doesn’t, commiserating when we fail, and cheering each other on when we succeed.
A friend told me yesterday she’s always appreciated that I’m not out here promising rainbows and unicorns in recompense for practicing integrity. I’m not ever suggesting that practicing integrity makes things easy, though I would argue it often makes thing simpler. And it’s absolutely worth it, to me anyway, in part because it’s brought me into community with all of you.
Lately, Audre Lorde has been showing up every time I turn the page in the most thoughtful, contemplative ways.
Asha, I agree with you; there are most certainly people I have lost along the way that I will always miss terribly. An ex-sister-in-law who was the closest I'll ever have to an actual sister... still, perhaps to some degree, I have to think that she missed seeing who I was and why I mattered from the very start.
I love Audre Lorde! "A Litany for Survival" is one of my favorite poems.
What you write reminds me of a book I proofread many, many years ago called something like "Women and Evil." It was trying to look at and redefine evil from a feminist perspective. The basic idea was, are you serving an abstract principle, like truth, or are you serving people? While it's easy to critique that as "situational ethics," to me it feels like a higher form of integrity to think about how your actions, even your truth-telling, will affect others. That doesn't mean trying to please everyone, but really thinking about whether what you're thinking needs to be said, what the consequences of your actions will be.
Thanks for writing this thoughtful and nuanced piece!