Rachel Ricketts - Do Better: Spiritual Activism for Fighting and Healing from White Supremacy

PRAISE FOR

Do Better is a clear, powerful, direct, wise, and extremely helpful treatise on how to combat and heal from the ubiquitous violence of white supremacy. Using a voice that is both passionate and compassionate, Rachel Ricketts instructs where necessary and soothes when neededbut never flinches from the urgency of the mission at hand. These pages are meant not merely to be read, but to be studied, workshopped, and put into daily practice. I would recommend Do Better to anybody who wishes to live a life of higher consciousness and humanity. She has offered up an exceedingly valuable resource to a tired, troubled (and all too often delusional) world. This is a book we all need.

Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love

Holy Healing! What Rachel Ricketts offers the world in Do Better is a healing balm for a society that has long needed a new perspective and approach to an ancient problem that has been ignored, denied, unaddressed, and unhealed. Do Better answers prayers that many have prayed. Do Better offers a bold possibility for change and healing. Do Better offers a deeply sacred choice that we must all make at such a time as this.

Iyanla Vanzant, New York Times bestselling author and host of Iyanla, Fix My Life

Through love, rage, and humor, Rachel Ricketts both challenges and inspires us all (but especially us white cis women) to turn anti-racist work into a daily practice; to sit in the discomfort of the violence we have perpetrated, and turn that discomfort into action. This book is absolutely essential reading.

Zoe Lister-Jones, actress, producer, and director

Rachels book is a powerful and beautiful example of sharing herself from a deeply heart-centered place. If you, like me, are ready to stop talking and start listening and really take the time to understand, this is the book you MUST read. Thank you Rachel for taking the time to write this incredible book. It was life changing to read.

Rumer Willis, actress and singer

Do Better is a much-needed addition to any spiritual persons anti-racism toolkit. This book not only opens the door to anti-racism work, but gives you the tools to walk through it. Rachel has created an engaging, inspiring, and practical resource that you will return to time and again.

Jessica Lanyadoo, host of Ghost of a Podcast and author of Astrology for Real Relationships

This is the book weve been waiting for. Wow This is the book that will change lives, if you allow it. A must read and do!

Monique Melton, anti-racism educator

This is for my mother, Suzette, and Uncle Carlton.

For my ancestors, who so often went unheard with hearts unhealed.

And for every Black girl+ who has ever felt they didnt belong.

May we all find freedom.

INTRODUCTION My Love Includes Anger

What I hope to do all the time is to be so completely myself that my audiences and even people who meet me are confronted with what I am inside and out, as honest as I can be. And this way they have to see things about themselves

NINA SIMONE

W e are living in entirely uncertain times. Our politics are increasingly divided with no reassuring route for recourse. As I write this the world is in a standstill to combat the worst global pandemic since 1918. Cities are on fire in all fifty states and folx of all races have taken to the streets around the globe in an uprising led by Black folx in the quest for Black, and thus collective, liberation. The systems of inequity that have persisted and been protected for centuries are being exacerbated, and the stillness forced by global quarantine has meant many are no longer able to turn away. White people have finally awakened to white supremacy and anti-Blackness in a way they refused to before. The things many of you were privileged enough to once take for granted are slipping from your fingers and shit is scary. Our personal and collective grief is palpable. Things are and will continue to be chaotic, and increasingly so. But amidst all this chaos and uncertainty is an opportunity. The oppressive systems and institutions as we once knew them are slowly beginning to crumble. Everything is being burned to the ground so that we as a collective can rise renewed. We are being summoned to the inner, spiritual work that revolution requires. Some are calling it the end of everything that never worked right in the first placeand it is. Though these systems were created to work exactly as designed, because they benefit their creators. Those with the most power and privilege. To overthrow them we must all take a long look in the mirror to deal with the hard shit. And this is a book all about the hard shit! White supremacy, heteropatriarchy, grief, oppression, and more. This is also a book about my interactions with the hard shit. I write what I know best, which is my experienceboth personal and professional in equal measure.

My name is Rachel Ricketts (hayyy!), and my pronouns are she/her/hers. I am a Black, queer, cisgender, non-disabled, neurotypical, Canadian-born woman with ancestors of West African, Jamaican, Indian, Jewish, Portuguese, western European, and Tano descent. I grew up Black and financially insecure in mostly white and wealthy spaces, and have spent a lifetime navigating intersecting systems of oppression. Though I am a trained racial justice educator, attorney, grief coach, and spiritual activist by profession, this work is personal. Because the most grief I have ever endured, and will continue to, is at the hands of white supremacy. This grief has rooted within me an overflowing reservoir of love and gratitude as well as an unwavering fire of righteous rage deep inside my bones and belly. Love and anger. With good damn reason: white supremacy murdered my mother. It was after my mothers death that I rededicated my life to the work of fighting racial injustice. In her honor and mine.

Though I was born with my third eye open, my deep connection to Spirit intensified after helping my mother die, equipping me with the tools to help heal my heart and hold space for others to do the same. It led me to create my Spiritual Activism workshopspotent racial justice seminars that fuse spiritual-based soulcare with embodied anti-racism education so we can learn to tolerate the challenging emotions that arise when we address oppression. This book is an extension of my workshops blending my lifetime of personal experience navigating white supremacy with my soulful anti-racist teachings to create an accessible and relatable guide for all those ready to fight for a more equitable world in which everyone, most notably Black and Indigenous women+, can finally find freedom.

White supremacy is the status quo. It causes one of the greatest forms of systemic social trauma on the planet, inciting grief, guilt, loss, pain, anger, and shame. For everyone. Racism mires BI&PoC in emotional and physical violence, and, in order to perpetuate the oppression of others deemed less than, it robs white folx of inner peace and meaningful connection to themselves and others.