This weekend I learned something I realized I needed to learn in a new way: I can begin again.

This came up while leading a women’s embodiment retreat in California (Sacred Feminine Retreat in Ojai, for those of you who want to join us sometime), in a conversation about race and the body between the white women and the women of color who were at the retreat. I had a many chances to ask and talk directly to the group about race over the weekend, and out of fear I didn’t. I didn’t want to do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, and unknowingly add to the problem of women of color feeling misunderstood or marginalized.

But my fear kept me silent, and that silence is part of the problem: it meant that the thing that needed to be named didn’t get named. It perpetuated the silencing of the experiences and voices that were most needed in a conversation about women’s bodies.

What one of the women speaking up about living as a marginalized woman/body said so moved me. She said, “as white women your fear in trying to dismantle racism and your privilege is uncomfortable and it keeps you silent. If you’re trying to name the problem, to change a system, and you use the wrong language or do it in the wrong way, you will be corrected and it will feel uncomfortable, but that is an important part of the learning- we as women of color are always uncomfortable in the spaces of others, and we have survived being uncomfortable and corrected. So to get a taste of our daily experiences, and to not perpetuated the problem, you need to speak up. And if you do It wanna wrong, learn and try again”.

While it’s one thing to deny or be ignorant to ongoing racism and marginalization of people groups, it is another to know there is a problem and do nothing out of fear, discomfort. My own fears that only impact me are mine to deal with when I’m ready. But when my fears reinforce a cycle of marginalization, silencing, and colonization- I need to feel the fear and move with it and through it. Because for me as a white woman the worst thing that will happen is discomfort or the end of relationship, far from what happens for people of color if we don’t: more beatings, more rapes and more murders. White men and women, we need to speak up. Let’s educate ourselves and use our voices. And when we make mistakes we will learn from them and begin again.