Conclusion

Become the Change You Claim

Breathe. So here we are. Journeying through the pages of this book, you explored this Emotional Justice road-map, the love languages, and the unlearning.

This is all of our work to do—white, Black, Brown, Indigenous. The chapters reveal that our work is not the same. So you begin by asking, Where do I start?

You start where you are with what you have where you work, live, learn, and love. This is about building from a “right now, right where I am” space. This is not magic. It is the process of developing a practice, a racial healing practice of Emotional Justice.

Your trusty tool is the Emotional Justice template, and its three steps:

1. Work through your feelings

2. Reimagine your focus

3. Build the future

Emotional Justice is about community. You build one by first doing the work, and in doing the work, connection begins. That first connection is to parts of yourself that are unexplored, that feel uncomfortable, and where there is resistance. That’s the first feeling step we must all take and work through. Connection is not performance; it is action and accountability. It is developing your racial healing practice.

The Emotional Justice template is now your constant companion and guide as you step away from the pages and into your places of labor, learning, and loving. Your feelings might be all over the place; your focus too. That’s OK. It’s a lot. So let’s carve out a beginning for each of us, for all of us. Carry the template with you. It’s not so much a comfort or shield, but it offers a context.

Remember, doing your emotional work is not a one-and-done exercise. You’ll move between the parts of your world—your community, your place of work, your place of learning. You are not alone, but you may feel lonely at times. You will start and stop. You will come back to this work as you move through your world—that’s fine; practice happens that way. But return you must, we must. Know that it’s not a stroll but a sustained marathon of a power walk.

We cannot assign our racial healing to begin, emerge, and be done in a quarter 1 fiscal-year timeline. We would like to—we have often treated racial healing that way. But it is not how we speak Emotional Justice love languages.

This requires a long-game focus and ongoing engagement and commitment. What we have is a roadmap, ourselves, and one another. We have what we need. Let’s journey together.

Your Emotional Justice racial healing practice begins now.