Last weekend, I sat in on a workshop entitled “‘Shamanism” and Cultural Appropriation: Indigenous Perspectives.” This was a workshop discussing the use of the word shaman, as well as its tools by non-native people. I attended this workshop as I have been tremendously affected by the lens of shamanism in understanding and working with my food/body struggles on deeper levels. Yet as a white person, I’ve always been sensitive to that which I am swimming in when using or attending any kind of training on this subject.

During this particular panel, the intensity of feelings was almost unbearable in the room–so much pain and lack of understanding about this word. I felt myself struggling, as I feel so very called to this path and using its tools, but don’t quite know how as a white person, to honor this and also be in right relation. My work with Ancestral Healing has been helpful, yet the ache in my heart is still so strong around it all.

I started realizing that some of the chapters in my memoir directly reference my use of these tools, and that I neglected to mention what tribes the tools I used originated from, neglected to give respect. I realized I am pretty indebted to these paths and that actually the core message of my book-that an eating disorder might be a “call to initiation”-was resting on this wisdom.

I feel the “shamanic” and/or animist path has helped me re-vision my struggles with depression, with being in an ill body, but I know my awareness rides on the back of privilege. I know that is where a lot of my “unexplained” grief stems from, where symptoms in my body point to, even if I cannot completely vocalize it clearly, even if I feel so crazy and confused around all of it. I feel somehow that the deathly pull towards starving and restriction has relation to the unhealed woundings and ghosts of the traumas of existence. I wrote this poem to try to explain the complexity of what I feel, trying to also respect, and am wondering if it might belong in my acknowledgments section.

MY PRIVILEGE

To the first peoples of Switzerland, who were colonized

To the first peoples of Germany, who were colonized

To the first peoples of Scandinavia, who were colonized

To the first peoples of Lithuania, who were colonized

To the first peoples of the Netherlands, who were colonized

To the first peoples of British Isles, who were colonized

To the first peoples of the Americas, who were colonized

To the first peoples of The Great Utah Basin, who were colonized

To the first peoples of the West Coast of the Americas, where I stand, who were colonized

To the first plant, animal and living beings, who were colonized

To the meat, vegetable, herb, tree, crops, who were colonized

To the plots of land that will never see the sun under concrete, colonized

To the trauma, disconnection and forgetting that lives on in my bones, blood and gut, colonized

To the sicknesses that are trying to help me see

May I find a way to understand

May I find a way to respect

May I find a way to honor

May I find a way to clear

May I find a way to remember

These hands

These white hands, open

These blue eyes, open

This raw, beating heart, open
Aching

To all who have been a part of me

To all who have suffered

And to all I am a part of

May we find a way

To remember

Our privilege

This privilege

This Body

This Earth

May we find a way