Our friend, Dani McClain, interviewed #metoo movement founder, Tarana Burke about how to support survivors when they are your own children. Continue here to read the full interview between Dani McClain and Tarana Burke, as she shares the shift she made in talking to her daughter about sexual violence and what was possible with that shift.
At Parenting for Liberation, we can relate to Tarana when she realized there was a misalignment in the way she was engaging young people in her work that wasn’t showing up in the way she was parenting her child. Just like, many Black parents, Tarana realized that she needed needed to make a shift in her parenting approach to match her practices in movement spaces:
The way that I was working with the young girls in my program was through writing exercises and these really intimate chats. But I wasn’t utilizing that at home, and it made me realize a bunch of things…. It needed a different kind of approach. The most important thing that came out of that for me was I shifted the way I asked the question.
Part of what was getting in Tarana’s way was her desire to protect her child:
Black mothers, women of color, I think even women from low-wealth communities—we’re so protective of our children, and we ask the questions out of sheer love and protection and just ignorance of what’s the best practice.
We at Parenting for Liberation know that all it takes is a knowing heart and openness to make that shift. We have the power to change our relationships and how we engage with our children, but first we must heal from our own fears.