Word Offerings
poetry with visual musings

As I live in a body that is literally attacking itself, it strikes me that autoimmune disease can be a metaphor for something happening in my own communities.

Primed by painful histories and experiences, our defense systems lose self tolerance. So fast and bolstered by fear, anger, and pain that we can stop differentiating between real threats and our own body.

The alarm system did not appear from nowhere. It was built through injury. Suspicion often begins as wisdom, and the body’s protectors are doing their duty as best they know how. 

I am not interested in narratives that frame our communities as overreacting when we are responding to harm. Immunosuppression can leave us vulnerable too. Accountability is necessary. Threats and harms are real. 

But when pain goes unresolved long enough, we can begin mistaking one another for the source of our suffering — turning on people who are also trying to survive the same conditions, and destroying the very ecosystem needed for our collective healing.

Illustration made while sitting with these thoughts.