My friend Celia felt terrible. While leading a group discussion, she accidentally used the wrong pronoun for one of the participants. She realized her mistake immediately, apologized, and continued facilitating the meeting. But she couldn’t stop replaying the moment in her mind, again and again. “If only I had slowed down a little! Why was I moving so fast? Does this meeting participant hate me now?”

On a text thread with me and one other friend, Celia expressed how awful she felt about the incident. We told her, “But it sounds like you handled it exactly right! You recognized your mistake, apologized, and moved on! And you’ll try to do better going forward. That’s all anyone is asking of us.”

“I know,” Celia said, “But I should know better.” 

It sounded to me like Celia was expecting herself to be perfect. I know a thing or two about this. But a line that I often repeat to myself (and to friends like Celia) is this: Perfectionism is a characteristic of White Supremacy Culture. This nugget of wisdom comes from a brilliant teacher named Tema Okun. You can learn more about it at whitesupremacyculture.info

Perfectionism can show up in how we treat our friends and family members and in how we run our organizations. While we might think we are just holding ourselves and others to a high standard, when perfectionism is running the show we are all expected to do everything exactly right and never make mistakes. But anyone who has ever spent time with a toddler knows it’s impossible to learn new things without falling down.

Making mistakes is literally how we learn to do anything and everything. Learning is messy! When we are brave enough to be a little messy in public, other people benefit. When we make mistakes and acknowledge them, we make ourselves vulnerable. This is an act of trust, and takes a lot more courage than hiding behind a veneer of professionalism. To be brave enough to make mistakes (and acknowledge them publicly instead of being defensive) is also a great act of self-care. Just like we wouldn’t shame or mock a small child who has made a mistake, we shouldn’t be cruel to ourselves when we mess up.

The dominant culture that we live inside values individualism, resource hoarding, and rigid hierarchies, where certain humans are valued more than others. What we are witnessing in our national politics, and in many parts of the world today, is a massive retrenchment of these racist and patriarchal values. 

But all around us we can also see the opposite way of being in the world. Here in Addison County we see people standing up for the rights of our undocumented neighbors. We see local farmers collaborating with the food hub to make healthy produce more available to families who need it. We see Jews, Christians, Muslims, and secular people alike refusing to look away from Palestinian suffering. We are affirming the rights of our trans community members to access healthcare. We understand that all of these struggles are connected, and we are coming together in our neighborhoods and our small towns to take care of one another.

Defeating fascism and authoritarianism is going to require levels of courage and solidarity that most of us are not ready for! We are learning as we go, and it’s a bumpy, messy ride. I am not perfect and neither are you. How cool is that?

Joanna Colwell is the founder and director of Otter Creek Yoga and the Yoga Equity Project. She lives in Ripton and is a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, Vermont-New Hampshire Chapter.