For many, the lifting of certain lockdown restrictions has meant a return to semi normality, and the conversation has shifted in the direction of equality and the battle for civil rights. Everyone seems to be talking about Black Lives Matter.

Equally true is that for those of us who are black, this is not new. I’ve been outraged hurt upset speechless numbed by the death of George Floyd; in mid conversation, I’ve found myself scratching my head (literally) and turning away from people, unable to make eye contact. After that sick footage emerged, I spent a few days alone in my bedroom/study, jotting down thoughts, trying to draw, reading psalms and searching for playlists, all in an attempt to relieve the heaviness, to lift a heart that had run out of ways to beat its way through such turmoil. Because George’s life, though far away from mine, was important to me. I hope it isn’t shallow to think of him as a brother, but as someone with four brothers, black men who have been harassed, bullied, overlooked, misunderstood, stereotyped, reduced, neglected and abused, I took it really personally, and started to grieve in spite of efforts to pull myself together and file it away as just another cruel episode in the shared story that is racism.

The grieving has been strange. For one I am doing it from afar. I didn’t know George. I won’t miss seeing his face, or feel the pain of his absence. And yet, I feel so sorry that he has lost his place in this world. His life, though a catalyst for world-wide action and awakening, deserved to be lived full, deserved to be rich and meaningful, deserved to be…long. It’s incredibly sad that so many black people live with the sense that their lives could be snuffed out for the smallest of missteps.  This is where anxiety comes in to rob everyday moments of their joy.

I write this as I read the news that there has been an attack in Reading, UK with three innocent victims. My stomach just flipped. I immediately think of those families who are about to be devastated. Three lives cut short because of someone’s perverse political agenda. I can’t cope with all this hate. There is no snappy ending to this post, no way to neatly wrap up these thoughts. Can we perhaps take a moment to think of these victims, along with all other victims of terrorist attacks, to think of the families suffering and those about to enter this horrid sentence? There is nothing else to do but lean in.

Photo by Mwangi Gatheca