Tara Brach

or abandoning accountability, personally or collectively, rather realizing who we are beyond a victim self empowers us, it enlarges us, it frees us to respond to suffering and injustice with greater wisdom and courage.

So I have found that in the moments, and I've seen this in myself and others, that we actually get it at how contracted and small we are when we're in victim consciousness, how much it diminishes our perspective.

We realize, okay, it doesn't have to be this way.

And that's actually very motivating.

Some years back, I facilitated a commitment ceremony for a gay couple, and this was a few years before marriage was legalized.

We met before, and one of the partners was sharing how her life had been, for how many years she had felt subjected to the bias of her employees or colleagues.

for how many years she had been feeling hijacked by the attempts to legalize gay marriage and then the blocks to it.

And she said, I feel like my whole body, my whole life has been on this roller coaster that I've been helpless in the face of this bias and hatred.

And then she said, and now I'm realizing...

I give my power away every day.

I give my power away every day."

And she had tears and we talked more and there was some very wise place in her that was intuiting, I am more than the victim.

I don't have to live like this.

So actually she built it into her vows in the ceremony, this explicit commitment not to identify as a victim of sexism, of anti-gay sentiment.

She said, I will feel the pain, the hurt, the disappointment, the fears, but not surrender my power.

And she built that into how that would free her heart to live from wholeness both in her world, serving her world, and also with her partner.

Okay, so what helps us wake up from victim identity?

And it starts with recognizing, oh, okay, I'm caught right now in victim identity.

This is the first noble truth.

Whatever is going on, okay, there's suffering going on.