“Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
– James Baldwin
I return to this quote from American writer and activist James Baldwin often and share it at many of my trainings. I return to it because it encapsulates what I understand to be a core principle of conflict transformation and restorative work: that conflict has the potential to be generative and is often vital for forward movement, from the interpersonal level to the institutional. I return to it because I believe it wholeheartedly, and yet, I struggle to embody and practice it in my own life.
As a restorative practitioner, I would love to say that in the midst of conflict I always face it head on and see it as an opportunity for growth. But it can feel safer and easier to avoid the topic or simply accommodate whatever it seems others want.
This is not to say that there are never good reasons to avoid engaging in conflict or yielding to what others want; we constantly make choices weighing how important a conflict is, what capacity we have to put energy into it, and what risk may come with engaging further. But, as Baldwin expresses, we cannot expect to change the things that we cannot first face.
That’s why it’s a personal goal of mine to get more comfortable facing conflict courageously in my own life, as I support others to do the same. It’s a process I expect to take time and to come with setbacks and slip-ups. But I believe that to be true of any big change we attempt in our lives and is certainly not a reason to give up on the effort.
One strategy that’s helped me is taking space, some kind of pause, before engaging in a conflict or difficult conversation. This is not always be an option, but when it is, it can help calm the nervousness, racing thoughts, and other internal responses I tend to have in those moments. Sometimes that means taking quiet time to compose my thoughts and how I want to approach that conversation. Other times it means breathing more slowly and deeply, communicating to my body that I’m okay, that I don’t have to be afraid, that I do have the skills to move through conflict thoughtfully and productively. My experience has been that it’s much harder to access that voice without taking some kind of pause. Whether it’s this or something different, I invite you to reflect on the conditions that most allow you to face conflicts directly with an open mind and heart.
Baldwin’s quote also has tremendous implications for confronting harm at the institutional level. Many of us are engaged in activism and organizing to fight for changes to unjust systems locally and nationally. In addition to that work, I believe Baldwin’s quote calls on us to name harms within our own organizations, movements, workplaces, and other institutions to which we’re connected. Among other things, that means naming incidents or dynamics of racism, sexism, xenophobia, transphobia, ableism, and so on, when they occur in our spaces. In my mind, this is an act of love, that we care enough about those institutions to want them to change and we know that change can only come by facing oppressive dynamics. While that task is far from easy, it has the power to inspire vital transformation.