actual photo of me, by me. and yes, that is a goodie bag with donald duck on it to my right.
Why This Journey? | My Story (Thusfar)
My name is Joy Bronson, and Love|Balms is my living journey.
I am a calling and vocation coach who focuses in ritual and emergent design. I’m on an intentional journey of healing towards wholeness and fulfilled life—not just back to where I was “before things went wrong.”
Not wrong solely in the sense of the harm and abuse to which I’ve been subjected. But also wrong in the sense that, at some point, because I’m human, I began harming fellow human beings as well.
It turns out that, sometimes, I’m the asshole.
The question of my life journey is: What would it look like to be intentional not about being a “good” person,” or simply demanding justice from one another—but to my Self practice, become, and live the loving justice that I wish to experience and receive?
It turns out that answering this question—becoming the beloved human being that I desire to be, that I was putting off on others to be—means I have some transformation to engage:
some confessing of and apologies for my own harm doing;
forgiveness where I have the strength, because I have been forgiven;
some loving us as best as I’m able even when I think we’re being the worst, because love may require healthy distance and separation, but it doesn’t just up and quit.
We all have a journey to healing, wholeness, and living our belovedness in mutual thriving--and we can support one another along thre way.
I have spent my life since childhood processing two significant experiences and how they are pregnant with abuse of relational ethics and power dynamics:
Growing up as #6 of 7 siblings in a emotionally, relationally, and physically abusive family in which the shit rolled very speedily downhill. And I love these humans and they love me deeply. We just didn’t know how (and are still learning) to love our Selves and together well; and
Growing up and existing as black, impoverished, and female in predominantly white, middle class/wealthy, and male-centered spaces (neighborhood, schools, work) in the US. The majority of my friends, co-workers, bosses, support systems, and mentors are white. And our personal relationships even with a desire for great love are distanced still by historical and still-present dynamics of oppression. I grew up recognizing that I was considered an exception to the rules of how many of my white folks project onto BIPOC—and that’s just not healthy or popping for any of us.
In both instances, I still and for much of my life will continue to process how our relational interactions often were and still at times are antithetical to our professed “Christian” beliefs and teachings, and negatively impact our ability to be in meaningful and thriving (whole and holy) relationship with one another. They were (and at times still are) violent emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually, even as we were seeking to love with one another.
These experiences made me especially interested in relational ethics and power dynamics, and how in our society we are generally taught to move and function in spaces first to establish a sense of our own belonging, but often and quickly move towards substantiating our space in the upper echelons of a relational hierarchy.
In short: Rather than learning to stand together, support one another, many of us end up standing on others to elevate our selves in the spaces whose dynamics allow us—and even encourage us—to do so.
This is unfortunately a reality of human history: Many who experience significant harm or abuse practice harm or abuse in some form or another against someone who holds less power of privilege than do we. Our societal, communal, familial, and personal interactions and relationships are unfortunately built and molded out of these practices—far more dominance than love and mutuality. All of this, again, antithetical to the basic premise of “love your neighbor as yourselves” and “love one another as I have loved you.”
And so my journey in healing and transformation has led me to begin to acknowledge and address the ways in which I myself perpetuate these unhealthy dynamics in my life—intentionally, unintentionally, and even unavoidably.
I cannot erase that, even as a black woman who grew up economically poor in the U.S., I still possess the privileged and systemically oppressive identities of a highly educated, cisheteronormative, Christian, U.S. citizen. I have to be as responsible for the powers, privileges, and histories of these identities as I would request a white person, male-identifying person, and/or wealthy person be responsible for theirs.
I am moving beyond the idea that the most important work is “someone else’s,” and accepting that the most important work for me, personally, is the only work that I control—my own. I will always invite and advocate that we each and all do our particular work, make our particular journey. I am so thankful for those with whom I can hold mutual accountability. But only I can do me, and only you can do you. So—I have to do this work in me.
I had this sudden revelation watching Netflix one evening: If everyone else in the world did their work tomorrow, and I did none of mine, then I am the reason that unhealth and unlove that we can heal remains in the world. Which means: I’m responsible for some of the unhealth and unlove today—however small I at times like to believe or portray my own mess is “in comparison” to others.
What if I can do my work while calling one another into theirs? What if I must do mine in order to call one another into their work well? To genuinely understand the work so that the call is genuinely about healing and transformation, and not quick, inadequate “fixes?” So we can walk as well together as we’re able?
I am in the journey of learning to hold room for my Self with one another—not only to receive us each as God-gifted, regardless of where we stand in relationship with one another, but also to be grounded in the truth that this means that our lenses and gifts compel us to experience, interpret, and understand differently. To have the peace and humility—to live the wisdom—to not simply know, but also believe and live: This is okay. Because it is.
So: How do we go forward in this reality in which healing, wholeness, and mutual belovedness mean making room for the whole...of all of us...together? (Equity as: “Everyone can access resources and support, and develop as they need to uniquely thrive in mutual and collective belovedness.)
How do we recognize when are we are no longer called to engage or work directly together, and still be respectful of the journeys to which each of us is called?
To recognize mutuality then means this includes—even at an extreme distance, and that it takes the time it takes if it’s ever accomplished—when we cause(d), yet desire to transform from, significant and extensive harmdoing? Because we all cause some level of harm, and God (and many of our grannies) don’t give up on any of us, even when we need to step away from one another?
To seek our point of mutual respect for and encouragement of uniqueness that we each and all best flourish and thrive as part of God’s creation?
Most importantly: How do we do this well?
Welcome to Love|Balms—my lived journey in exploring these questions.