Holding Myself Here
This is not an easy post to write, and it is not an easy decision to make. For a long time, my work, my relationships, and the community I’ve built have not just been things I do, but are deeply integrated and inseparable from how I understand myself, how I stay accountable, and how I show up in the world. There is deep purpose in that. There is connection, responsibility, and a kind of love that is rooted in action. Which is why stepping away, even temporarily, feels complicated.
Accountability has always mattered to me. Being present, being engaged, and contributing to something larger than myself are values I hold closely. And the truth is, it would be easier in some ways to keep going. To keep showing up in the ways I always have. To not disrupt the rhythm of what I’ve built with all of you. But there’s another truth I can’t ignore: Right now, staying the course would come at the cost of my health and ultimately, my life.
So I am making a different choice. I am choosing to step back, to focus on healing, and ultimately to save my own life literally. That choice carries grief. It means loosening my grip on roles and routines that have given me meaning. It means trusting that the relationships I care about can hold this pause. It means sitting with the discomfort of not being as available, as productive, or as present as I want to be. It also asks me to stay grounded in the values that shaped this work in the first place.
Part of what has guided me, especially in anti-racist community and practice, is the understanding that accountability is not just about showing up externally. It is also about honesty, sustainability, and refusing to push ourselves past the point where we can no longer act with integrity. I am leaning into the understanding that this is not about abandoning responsibility. It is about tending to the conditions that make responsibility possible. Because stepping away is not the same as disappearing, it is an act of preservation. It is an act of faith. Stepping back is a commitment to returning, not just at the same capacity, but with deeper strength, clarity, and alignment. Physically, I need rest and care; emotionally, I need space, and spiritually, I need reconnection. I want to come back to this work, to these relationships, to this community--not depleted, but renewed. Not surviving, but truly living.
If you’ve followed my writing or walked alongside me in any way, please know this: your presence has mattered, and it still does. This is not a goodbye. God willing, it is a pause with intention. As I step back, I also want to name that I am continuing to learn from and lean on the voices of others doing this work, especially those who remind me that accountability and care are not in opposition, but deeply connected. I’ll be including a piece from Karen Fleshman in the resources below, as her perspective has been one of many helping me hold this decision with both responsibility and compassion. In her essay “We Are Not the Grandchildren of the Witches You Burned,” she names the importance of white women releasing narratives of innocence and instead meeting accountability with clarity, humility, and sustained action.
If there is anything I hope you take from this, it’s this:
Sometimes the most accountable thing we can do is to tell the truth about our limits.
Sometimes the most responsible choice is to step back before everything breaks.
Sometimes choosing yourself is not a retreat--it is the only way forward.
Thank you for holding space for me as I make this decision.
It is my deepest desire to return.
Alive. Healed and Stronger.
See you on the journey,
Robin
PISAB: Undoing Racism and Community Organizing Workshops: https://pisab.org/
PISAB Bread For The City - Undoing Racism Workshop: District of Columbia, Washington, DC, May 29-31, 2026 This in-person workshop occurs from May 29 from 9am-5pm, May 30 from 9am-5pm, and May 31 from 9am to 1pm. Attendance on all three days are required.
Register here: https://givebutter.com/Breadforthecityinpersonregional
Center for the Study of White American Culture: https://cswac.org/
Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski, Ph.D.
Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Tawwab
The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor
My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakam
Karen Fleshman - “We Are Not the Granddaughters of the Witches You Couldn't Burn” - A direct and grounding call for white women to release false narratives of victimhood and take responsibility with honesty and clarity.
Links referenced in the above newsletter:
Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference by Audre Lorde
Insights into the U.S. Maternal Mortality Crisis: An International Comparison
Racial Disparities in Maternal and Infant Health: Current Status and Key Issues
Dr. Eleanor Jenga, "You Are Not, In Fact, the Granddaughter of the Witches They Couldn't Burn"
Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch on the witch hunts as the violent foundation of capitalism and the policing of women's bodies.
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider essential essays, including "Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference," where Audre Lorde calls upon women to learn how to relate across difference as equals.
Angela Davis, Women, Race and Class analyzes relations between Black and white women from slavery to the book's publication in 1981.
Dr. Stephanie Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slaveowners in the American South documents the brutality white women inflicted on the people they enslaved and how the laws of marriage, property, wills, trusts and estates and slavery were all tied together.
Dr. Ana Malaika Tubbs, Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From Us describes how the Founding Fathers set this country up to benefit them and extract from every body else.
Saira Rao and Regina Jackson, White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better required reading for the project this newsletter is asking of you.
Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Path To Healing Our Hearts And Bodies We all carry intergenerational trauma in our bodies from centuries of racist violence. This book guides us to heal.