Choose to Challenge: International Women’s Day + Women’s History Month
Today is International Women’s Day (#choosetochallenge #IWD2021) in the midst of Women’s History Month, which comes directly after Black History Month here in the United States.
While all of history is both Black and Women’s (we’d literally have none of it without us), we appreciate any opportunity to stand with and for and alongside Black people and Women. To this end, this International Women’s Day, the invitation is to #choosetochallenge, trusting that when we challenge ourselves and the systems that try to keep us down, change will come.
What do you choose to challenge? What do you choose to change?
Our choices include:
Buying Black, Indigenous, Women of Color’s books, workshops, leadership trainings, etc. Instead of going to white women for all the things, we choose to listen and learn from BIPOC women, paying them for their labor and honoring their voices, their expertise, their wisdom. Our current reads and follows include:
Do Better by Rachel Ricketts
I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
Native by Kaitlin B. Curtice
Christy Pruitt Haynes + Our Truths
Also check out our Black History Month post with more great follows and resources here.
2. Listening to this conversation between Austin Channing Brown and Rachel Ricketts on why white women are not called to be antiracism educators (and so much more).
3. Supporting the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act
As mental health professionals, we see the harmful, traumatic effects of racism, white supremacy, sexism, heterosexism, and patriarchy time and time again in our sessions. There are myriad ways to support BIPOC women. We challenge you to choose one and begin/continue your work to uproot and unravel, confront and understand.
Transformation begins with personal choice and practice, with intentionality and commitment, but it never ends there. Because when we transform, our transformation can’t help but billow up and out into the world, changing it, too.
