I'm gonna tell my fellow white Americans, if you're trying to decolonize, or want to decolonize, and are overwhelmed, start somewhere. Start with something you feel like you can do, and start gently questioning everything else, and planning the next step.
Lifestyle changes are stressful and a lot of work. Impossible to do all at once. But it's better to do some than none, especially if it's a journey towards doing more.
Each step, I find ways that whiteness holds me back, sucks me dry, and has isolated me from nature and my own humanity.
Much of this is mental. Whiteness is a cult. Almost twenty years ago I thought, "Now that I'm learning about cults, I wonder if larger society is also a cult?... someday I'm gonna tackle that."
Whiteness/capitalism *is* that cult. That's the supporting doctrinal structure of the whole package I call Abuse Culture.
Whiteness isn't a skin color, it's an ideology, a system of power. Unpacking your whiteness is deconditioning from abuse culture. It's freeing to dump cult manipulation pressures like dependency, elitism, and demand for purity. If you've done this process for religious trauma, it's only another step to do so for society's cult doctrines.
And with that comes behavior. That cycle you're in with the job and debt? Start planning a way out. It seems impossible — it might even be — but maybe it's not if you're willing to do things you believe are impossible, but that billions in the Global South prove *is* possible. Because they have no other choice. But you do.
There, right there, that resistance you feel? Maybe defensiveness? Fear? That's whiteness. And whiteness isn't you. It's a construct that adheres your ego to power's puppet strings.
I also thought it would be impossible to leave Mormonism, but here I am, 25 years later. Now I'm looking to leave the colonial indoctrination behind, too, and as many of my harmful behaviors as I can... one at a time.