A note about this shitty first draft….
2020.
That felt like a full sentence. I have been reflecting more recently on the difficult work of holding simultaneously things that feel at odds with each other. Joy and Pain. Hope and Faithlessness. Death, and new life. I almost daily think about the incredibly powerful prayer shared by Sikh-American civil rights advocate Valarie Kaur in Washington on Dec. 31, 2016. I can’t help but have tears well up in my eyes as soon as she begins, and pour out at exactly 4 minutes and 28 seconds in. “And so the mother in me asks, what if . . . what if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb but the darkness of the womb. What if our America is not dead but a country that is waiting to be born. What if the story of America is one long labor.”
Labor.
That also feels like a full sentence. In this year, I became a new mom again. After a spontaneous and incredibly short 4 and a half hour labor (3 hours of which I denied being in labor at all), I gave birth to 4 pound 2 ounce baby Luci at a tender 32 weeks, technically two months early. Luci, it turned out, was completely healthy, as was I. She just decided it was time. That labor (even without any kind of pain medicine and in the barbaric legs-in-stirrups position American hospitals force women to labor in) was measurably less painful than the labor of birthing this book has been.
Luci and I spent exactly a month in the NICU - nothing was wrong, she just needed some time to be able to do things on her own. Important things. Necessary things. Things like breathing, and swallowing, and eating . . . and pooping. That is how I feel about this book. I wish I could keep it in the safety of my body, letting it grow and strengthen. But it has decided that it’s time. So here it is. But it needs help to stand on its own. And that is where you come in.
I’m sharing this in a very, very unfinished place because it, and I, need help.
As the nurses kept telling me between my wails the morning of June 28th. Breathe . . . and push.
Let’s labor.
For the book as a whole, there are two ways in which you can help nurture its entry into the world:
If you’d like to make a copy of this google doc and make comments throughout and share it with me, I would greatly appreciate it! Please share with justdesignbook@equitymeetsdesign.com
If you have overarching thoughts on the structure, purpose, organization, tone, etc., please shoot an email to justdesignbook@equitymeetsdesign.com
If there is a particular passage, section, chapter in which you have expertise (any kind of expertise: lived, theoretical, practical, academic, etc.), I am looking for both examples and illustrations (they can be your own experiences or stories you’ve heard/read/seen elsewhere) and to be pushed on my assumptions, have blind spots identified, have the narrative complicated - if you are open to doing one or both, please email me at justdesignbook@equitymeetsdesign.com
I’d love to just talk to you about your experiences and examples, where I’m getting it wrong, or where it’s incomplete.
I'm also open to and looking for collaborators and co-authors for chapters/sections of the book.