Practicing Accountability: How We Love Vulnerably + Keep Growing Together
practicing accountability
how we love vulnerably + keep growing together
If there is any word that has grown in me in recent weeks, one which has come to define my process and my practice, it is accountability. With all of the experiences I have witnessed in the world lately – both in my personal life and in our greater societies and communities as a whole – it seems to me that accountability is what we are needing most and simultaneously, the thing we are most afraid of.
What has us so afraid to be known? To be seen and heard and felt – to allow others to witness the fullness of our truths? What do we think resides there, in the dark?
to be vulnerable.
One of the things I see most in the work I do is how very much people are wanting to let their truths free, and what a painful process it is for them to try to hold it in.
Someone moving from laughter into uncontrollable tears during our first tarot reading together, when they were first convinced they didn’t have anything to say. Someone trembling in their chair as they stumble through wording a secret they’ve never shared, years of pain shaking their way out with every movement and every syllable. Someone saying “I just wish this person knew how much I cared, what I’m really feeling” and someone astonished at my suggestion of simply telling the truth as it was. Someone crying gently beside me on the bus, after I plainly asked what more they wanted from the world, from their relationships, from life; we had just met minutes before, and it seemed that no one had held space for this question before with them. As if no one had said “I want to see you, all of you” and they could not imagine someone might.
I have known each of these people and each time I meet another, I see how desperately tired they are from holding in things that cannot be forever held. The burden of carrying something we know is not whole and true. And yet, what I also see is how easily we return to the pattern of hiding ourselves.
we must be without fear – or beyond it.
From what I have learned of witnessing others, I believe that we hide ourselves (and hide from ourselves) when we are afraid that what we will see is ugly. When we suspect that there is something truly wrong with us, that there is some inherent bad that others will eventually discover and which makes us undeserving.
But truly, I do not believe in “good” or “bad”, and certainly not in good or bad people – what I have seen in the world is something more difficult to name than either of those absolutes, something which is more grey, more uncomfortable, and more honest than “good and bad”. What I have seen is that there are simply people who make decisions, constantly asked to make a simple and finite choice out of complicated and infinite information.
The truth is that we are naturally impatient and fearful and selectively-imaginative animals, and so if we are both uncertain and suspecting that the truth will be “bad”, we would rather just resign ourselves to concluding the worst – at least then we are comforted by some certainty.
But this is dishonest. And if we want the truth, we must be willing to sit with all of its complexities. To name the things that inspire joy and the things that inspire fear, the things we hope for most as well as the things that we know and which disappoint us, the things we fantasise and dream about alongside the things we are disgusted by. To know that each of these things is woven into the others, inseparable and itchy and irritating – we must wear these truths anyway. To know that the truth is something which is constantly changing its shape, and that we must be for ever vigilant if we are to witness it in part or in whole.
we must be willing.
We must be willing to actually talk with those we care about, and those we are uncertain about. We must be willing to ask if they lied. We must be willing to ask if we lied. We must be willing to ask what lying held together and what it tore apart. We must be willing to acknowledge we can be both abused and abusing; that we are often creative enough to play both roles while only identifying with one. We must be willing to say when we are not ready to witness and hold a truth, while also admitting that there will never be a perfect time. We must be willing to double check. We must be willing to check why we are doing it in the first place. We must be willing to fight and willing to rest. We must be willing to say “I don’t know”, and to know we don’t always need to know. We must be willing to say when we need to know. We must be willing to say “there is no more time”. We must be willing to distinguish “you are not enough” and “this is not enough”. We must be willing to let there be silence, when everything in our bodies says we must undo the quiet. We must be willing to undo the silence, when everything in our bodies says we must not do anything at all.
We must be able to remain in a place of discomfort, with the ability to work from there anyway; to not need to understand in order to do.
We must believe that we are inherently worthy of that labor. We must believe that part of our truth is right and whole and aligned – and with time, learn that all of it is right simply because it is part of our truth (though it may not be what we choose to honor). That we are not just imagining to imagine; not just telling ourselves these things are true to comfort us, but choosing to believe them, deeply. To wake up in the morning and say: I am worthy. I am deserving. I am everything I desire to be, and many things beyond.
To say it for all the times no one else told us we were; to say it for all the times someone told us otherwise.
And if we believe that there is beauty and right in all of what we are, then we will hold each other accountable because we want to help each other blossom into the fullest of ourselves; we will practice honesty and vulnerability because we know that to do otherwise is to decide for others that they are unworthy or incapable of growing into their fullness. We hold others accountable because we know they deserve to thrive.
we must be willing to ask each other to blossom;
and to hold each other when we just need rain.
I welcome the rain because I know what it nourishes, and I begin to find it beautiful, in itself. I am willing to dig my hands into the soil because I am either ready to plant or to harvest, and I know that neither means I am dirty. I reach deep into the dark as I seek that which grows; I reach for that which bears fruit even before it is seen, and I fall in love with the process of reaching. I reach into the soil knowing I am reaching into part of myself, and that it is not the whole. I do not ask it to be the whole, because I trust it will be in time if each part is aligned; I ask it to be what it is, and I make it my work to be precisely what I am.
When I challenge myself, it is an act of care. When I challenge others, it is an act of care. In both, I am saying that I believe the person to be worthy of consideration and effort and healing.
It is not often an act of love to allow others to fester; often, if we dig, we will find that when we feel inclined to do so, we are often more concerned with protecting our own roots. If we love each other, we grow our roots together.
if we love each other, we practice.
(a) If we love each other, we ask questions. We understand that trust is not faith, and that in any relationship where two (or more) people are devoting energy, investigating the truth is a collaborative practice. We understand that trust and questioning can exist alongside one another; we know that it always our place to call in, because we want others to know their truth and also work to heal what hurts they have furthered with others in the world. Especially among people of marginalised experiences, the personal is the political; interpersonal violences in any relationship are community violences, and must be responded to collectively. We communicate, and we act. We do not exceptionalise or excuse others’ violences, and we ask that they respond to each with fully acknowledging the past and precisely how it will be distinct in the future. We are forgiving but not tolerant or apologetic around the wrongs others craft, knowing that intention and consequence are not the same thing. We ask that others do these same things for us. We can say we are afraid and seeking assurance. We approach questions from a place of togetherness, with affirmations that we want to verify and seek what we already believe to be true of one another. We invite others to show us what’s in their truth; we validate that their experiences are meaningful and we open space to consider many ways that these experiences can be configured to form varying conclusions.
“I want to believe this is true, but am struggling to put the pieces together this way – can you show me how this comes together in your process?”
(b) If we love each other, we gift experiences of care. We do so without needing to understand; we gift care precisely because we care. What we gift to others is for others. We give without needing validation that our gift is worthy, and we prepare our gifts as meaningful whether another person is able to receive them or not (while acknowledging that we can leave a situation where our gifts are underappreciated). We make peace with the gift being received however it is before we place it in the world, with the option to frame it within intention. We love beyond our trauma, meaning we give that which we most desire to share with another, and we also give beyond that: we do not limit ourselves to only giving that which is personally meaningful to us.
“I want to give this to you because I know it will help you feel nourished, cared for, wanted, and thriving – even if it’s not something I would give to myself, I want you to experience it.”
(c) If we love each other, we can fight. We can be afraid, or exhausted, or angry and still choosing to lie down together. We are not quick to dispose of others, because we are not disposable; we also know we are not accountable for always teaching and guiding another, that that is a gift. We can say “I don’t believe that” without it meaning “I don’t believe you”, and let others know we think they are missing something – not because they are wrong, but because they can be mistaken. We can choose not to continue until we feel there is adequate change. We can refuse to respond. We can say “I need to be alone” when we need to process our experiences. We can also say “I want to be alone” when we feel unable to say “I want you to push me, because that feels like you care” – we can simply ask others to fight for us. We can speak over one another when we know how to listen, knowing that trauma often shouts over the rest of the voices in the room; we can do so gently. We can fight, and we can fight gently.
“I want to be here with you, but am struggling – help me come back.”
(d) If we love each other, we witness each other. We listen. We listen without waiting for our turn. We listen even when we don’t care; we learn how to care when it isn’t easy. We can seek to find beauty in everything another shares with us, and we do not use beauty as a prerequisite for care. We can say “you are not receiving what I am intending to share” when we feel unheard; we also know that we can learn about others from what they note in us. We honor the potential to be without boundaries, to tell a different story; we explore the potential to reclaim trauma not by building up walls or grasping power but by grasping gentleness; we become sharply aware of how to craft with others things which heal and protect, and honor the bliss in being witnessed fully and consensually. We reject violation by becoming something which cannot be violated. We allow space for those we love to craft something different with us, and we do not interpret our experiences solely through the lens of what something meant in the past. We allow our past shape and pattern to be something that was meaningful and which could be meaningful again, but which may simply not serve us now – we affirm to each other and to our selves that we exist in transformation.
“I want to witness you – all of you – and work to honor every piece that you share with me.”
(e) If we love each other, we exist together; not just near. We hold space in an intentional way, and what is “mine” becomes “ours” – not because it is owned or owed, but because we desire to build something novel together and we need all of our tools. We reserve the right to process more individually, but also the right to ask for things and to receive care. We reserve the right to ask that a gift be an exchange. We reserve the right to say thank you instead of sorry. We exist in a way that says “I am thankful you exist in this world, and near me” and we say so with our words, too. We weave our lives together within our choices each day – not because we have to, but because we know that dependence is a beautiful word and that we exist in an interconnected world already.
“I want to be with you – now and for as long as we can continue to find ways to nourish each other, we are together.”
Amani Michael
intuit.hue founder + guide
