It's been awhile since I last wrote. I could give several excuses reasons: Too busy. Not sure what to say or if people will want to hear it. Do we really need another white male voice?

It’s this last one that I have grappled with over the last few years. Being the only white male on our team, we joke that as a cis-gender, straight, white male, I am the diversity on the team. I enjoy the humor of it and sometimes wrestle with that reality. I often thought that stifling my voice so others could speak was a form of promoting diversity.

However, I am learning a better way. Stifling one voice to lift up another isn’t the way. Instead, it's creating space for all voices to be heard. Making room is different than hiding. Making room is generative and creative. Hiding is reactive and fear-based. Making room draws closer. Hiding creates separation and distance.

In the creation of space and being present to my voice, I can also learn to still my voice to listen to other voices – to find connection, to understand, to be in community. And, being in community is messy, and I am learning it requires the practice of owning one’s own voice and listening for the other voices in the space, particularly the voices who come from different experiences than mine. Creating space for variety, for difference, for curiosity, and for understanding.

Over the last several months, our team has been genuinely wrestling with how we live this out. Particularly as it relates to what it means to practice equity and be an anti-racist organization. We want these to be more than two dimensional concepts, ideas, or words. We want them to be 3-dimensional and tangible – some that is lived and experienced.

So, we created (and continue to create) space for these conversations in the community of our team. And our conversations lead to practices that we seek to live out in our work together and with clients. And so, I appreciate that we seek to be creative and generative rather than dismissive and diminutive in our work. We are not (and never will be) perfect in this work. But perfection isn’t the goal –growth, learning, and authentic being is. Because when we do that, we make these ideas become real through action, through practices. And to this committed practicing in community, I am delighted to add my voice; at the table together, on the journey together and generating and creating together.