When the story about Amy Cooper was just starting to break, there was a discussion about it in one of the Facebook groups I participate in. Someone tried to excuse her behavior by saying that she, as a woman alone in Central Park, must have felt threatened, and only reacted like she did because she was afraid in the heat of the moment. Many of us pointed out that she doesn’t act afraid but is, in fact, the one doing the threatening. As has already been pointed out, she turned her whiteness into a weapon, trying to build something painful with her knowledge of how black men are often treated by the police.

And then, of course, George Floyd was murdered by a white policeman, as if to prove the point.

Like most of our country, I am thinking about racism. I am wondering what our nation can do, how it can change—not just wondering, but trying to think of solutions. What can I do?

What can I do?

Let’s be honest: I live in a white state. I think when I graduated from high school there was one African American student. Utah is becoming more diverse, but is still 88 % white (as of the 2010 census). I was 47 years old before I could say I have a friend who is black. Not because I don’t want to be friends with black people, but because in my tiny circle, I haven’t had the opportunity. I am a middle-class white woman in a white state, with no influential relationships and without the wealth required to really have a voice in this world. How can I be a voice for change when I know so few people of color and don’t have much power?

Here’s another truth: I have taken pride in the idea that I am not a racist person. I want that to be part of my identity. I want people to know that I am not racist. I mean, look at me! I read books by Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and Tayari Jones and N. K. Jemisin, Zora Neal Hurston and Roxanne Gay and June Jordan. I have annotated my newest copy of Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider so much it’s like flipping through a pen explosion.

Doesn’t that prove I’m not racist?

I am outraged by the way people of color are treated in America. I watch the news and read the books and try to stay informed. I don’t only grieve for what is happening, but I try to read widely so I can try to understand how difficult it is to be a Black human being in America, knowing I cannot really know because I haven’t lived it, but hoping that learning will at least help me to be more empathetic.

Does that prove I’m not racist?

I get annoyed when I see fabric lines or scrapbook supplies with illustrations of people—sketches, stylized paintings, cartoonish images—that are only white. When someone’s fragile-white friend on Facebook says something like “all lives matter” or “not all white people!” or “just because some white people kill black people doesn’t mean everyone has to riot!” I try to write a calm, thoughtful, and pointed response in the hope that maybe my words will trickle in. I try to remember that images matter, metaphor matters, the way people speak matters. Words matter, so I try to learn what they mean outside of my own context.

See! I’m not racist!

When we first started practicing social distancing, I had no problem veering widely around white people in the grocery store, but I felt deeply uncomfortable going the wide way around black people. I had the words in my mouth, “I’m not doing this because of your skin color! I just have two people with heart conditions so I’m being extra careful!” Words I didn’t say because I would sound like a crazy person, right? Did I need to say it? I smiled, that’s enough, right?

Am I racist?

But I find myself thinking, over and over, of Amy Cooper in Central Park. A white, educated Democrat woman trying to use her whiteness to harm a black person. I find myself wondering: deep down, when push comes to shove, is there a part of me that is capable of using my whiteness like she did? Am I really a good person, or is there a situation I haven’t experienced yet that, in the heat of the moment, would cause me to act in racist ways?

I hope not, but honestly: I don’t really know. Maybe no one really knows until that situation happens.

What I do know, honestly, is that while I try to not be racist, while I abhor the inequality and while I want to weep (and have) at humanity’s seeming inability to love each other—while all of those things are true, I also am a white woman. Even though I came from a family that had some financial struggles, I still have benefitted from the way society is constructed. Even though as a woman I have less power than men, I still have been able to construct a life for myself, a life that includes food and a safe home and the luxury of my own trees and a bookshelf stacked fully with books and four pairs of running shoes.

I have accomplished my small, normal, everyday-life accomplishments because of work, true. No one gave me anything. Except—America did. Of course I would go to college, because that’s what people like me do. Of course I would build a house in a suburban neighborhood—it was the next step to take, so I took it. Of course I would have children without ever having to give them the “talk,” the one about how to act around police officers so you don’t get arrested or hurt.

I try not to be racist. I hope my anti-racism is deeper than whatever fear I might encounter. I believe without question that everyone should have equal opportunities.

But I know: I haven’t ever really been tested.

I know that I can believe whatever I want, but the reality between opportunities based on skin color is vast.

I know that my life has benefited because of racism.

I will likely never be a person with an amplified voice. I don’t have the power to change society.

But I have the same power that every white person in America has: to look at myself. To change myself. To continue working. To write letters to senators and make phone calls to governors. To vote—to vote in ways that benefit people other than myself. To speak up when I read racist comments on social media. To learn and to try to empathize. To put my own ego aside and to try to see the world from someone else’s perspective. To always push myself to continue learning and doing whatever I can.

What I can do is breathe. I can breathe. And I want to use my breath to help those who are being suffocated, even if my efforts are small. My voice alone is small—but many others are speaking out as well, and I am adding my voice to the chorus.

Back in January or February, the literary world was kind of buzzing about a book called American Dirt. It tells a story about a woman and her son who, after their husband and father is executed by a drug dealer, flee to America as immigrants. The controversy over the book is that it is written by a white woman, a first-time author who received a HUGE advance and tons of publicity. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am all for new writers receiving attention. And there are entire books written about the skill of writing from a perspective other than your own; men write female characters all the time, women write male characters, writers of all genders write from all sorts of perspectives. But writing through the lens of a different race is, I believe, more difficult, and also riskier. Before the controversy, the book sounded mildly interesting to me—I even put it on one of my lists of “books I’m anticipating” on my Instagram—but as I read both sides of the issue, I leaned more and more towards not reading it. What pushed me ultimately to “nope” was the fact that at the book-release party, the tables were decorated with barbed wire.

Critics called it “trauma porn,” a book written to allow readers to witness all the gory details of the immigrant experience with the point being voyeurism, not understanding, compassion, or the spark to make changes. They also pointed out that the Mexican voices telling these stories didn’t receive six-figure advances and fancy release-date parties.

I belong to a couple of book-themed Facebook groups, and in one in particular, this book came up many times as one people loved. There would usually be one or two dissenting voices, but mostly people enjoyed it. I wrote a very brief response on one of them, trying not to sound judgmental. As one of the things I have learned as a librarian is that there are books for every reader, and there shouldn’t be any shame in reading what you love, my intent wasn’t to criticize or belittle, but just to raise a few points to consider. The original poster got right back with me, letting me know that she thinks it’s a waste of time to spend so much emotional energy thinking about why you read a book, or why you like it. “Books are for entertainment,” she wrote. (I resisted writing back about the oddness of being “entertained” by immigrants struggling through miles of desert, being threatened by rapists and trying not to die.)

That is true for some readers, and that is fine. For me, though, the point of reading isn’t only to be entertained. I am passionate about books—even, like American Dirt, books I don’t read—because I want them to spark ideas, thoughts, and knowledge within me. I read so I can experience things I cannot otherwise, and so I can learn something from those experiences, not only be entertained by them. So, yes: I do spend emotional energy thinking about the books I read.

All of which is a very long introduction for the book I really want to write about, Girl by Edna O’Brien. It is nothing like American Dirt; it is a literary novel about a girl who was kidnapped by Boko Haram, written by an established Irish author who has written novels, essays, plays, poetry, and short stories, who Phillip Roth described as “the most gifted woman now writing in English.”

But Girl is, in a way, like American Dirt, in that it is a white woman taking the lens of a brown woman in order to tell her story.

Who gets to tell stories?

I noticed this during the same time as the A. D. controversy, via a review by Ann Beattie. “This is Auden’s Icarus story, though it happens at eye level, right on planet Earth, while everyone’s looking.” Any book that evokes one of my favorite poems is likely a book I will love. But the timing made me think: OK, if I struggle with an American woman writing about the Mexican immigrant experience, can I trust an Irish woman writing about the African experience?

So I confess: I read the acknowledgement at the back of the book before reading the story. It let me know that the author did a huge amount of research, talking to the girls themselves who were kidnapped. I didn’t get a sense of her wanting to sensationalize the experience, but to provide a platform for those girl’s voices. I also felt like I had to trust her, because the awfulness of the experience could become overwhelming. The acknowledgement and this interview on NPR helped me to trust O’Brien’s motivations: not exploiting someone else’s tragedy, but putting their experiences out in the world so we could also carry them.

Girl is narrated by a young Nigerian girl who is kidnapped from her school by Boko Haram. In their camp, she suffers many atrocities. I had to read this section in small sips rather than fast gulps. Nothing is described in excruciating detail, but as a woman reader I could imagine without the details. More, I read it slowly because it felt like a way of honoring those sufferers of atrocities; breezing through would’ve made it mean less. She ends up being given as a wife to one of the soldiers, who is not awful to her. She has a baby with her husband and, when a military strike occurs one night, she escapes (with the help of her husband) with her baby and another girl.

The stories of her experience in the camp are only the first third of the book. The rest of the story is about her survival: her long trek through the jungle and, perhaps most traumatic, her return to her home and society. Some people fear her: “to them I am not a girl, I am not even a person, I am the portent of death, I am a decoy, sent to create a distraction before an attack.” Some can’t seem to see her, as if looking past her existence takes away the fact of her experiences. Her mother and aunt can’t seem to see her as anything other than a “bush wife”; she isn’t seen as a victim so much as a now-defective person.

In essence, this is not only a story about the narrator’s difficult experiences, but how they change her. How she learns to love and trust again, and what in this desolate world can bring her beauty and peace.

This was not an easy book, and it is not for everyone. But it was so well-written and moving, I am grateful I read it. The narrator will stay with me for many years.

I’ve always been a solitary runner. None of my neighbors or friends are runners, so when I picked up running (in the summer of 2000) I went out alone, and I’ve been doing it that way ever since. Mostly this doesn’t bother me, because I appreciate the solitude running solo brings me.

So when I became a Skirt Sports ambassador four years ago, what surprised me was how happy the camaraderie of the group made me. Except for the two retreats I went to, I never physically ran with any of these women; most of them I’ve never even met in real life. But they still made my runs better, in ways I couldn’t always explain. Why would knowing someone else was running in a cute skirt halfway across the country make any difference?

But it did.

Partly, it’s about the skirts themselves. Some people have teased me about this, but I don’t care: I think cute running clothes are motivational. Before I discovered Skirt, I was constantly on the lookout for clothes designed for women that were cute and functional. It felt like all of the women’s running clothes I found were designed for “real” runners—the tiny ones with thigh gaps. Who else could wear such short shorts? And why were there never any pockets? Did clothing designers think women don’t need to carry anything? What about keys, chapstick, tampons, nutrition, money, sunscreen, and/or ID? Did they think we were all just running with men by our sides (because men’s clothes always have pockets) to carry our stuff for us? Or we could just tie it all to our shoes?

So when I discovered my first Skirt Sports skirt, on a fortuitous day at Runner’s Corner, the skies opened with angels singing, because here it was: a skirt that was long enough to cover my Mary Lous (no thigh gap here!)! a pink running skirt! a pink running skirt with pockets.

It was so perfectly what I was searching for that I almost didn’t buy it, because what if it chafed anyway? But I took a chance (plus it was on sale), tried the skirt, fell in love.

I own a lot of Skirt Sports skirts now. I own zero shorts—I only run in skirts. I wear some of the longer skirts to work instead of to work out. I hike in Skirt Sports. I wear Skirt Sports capris and running tights under my dresses and paired with boots. Every spring and fall I have waited with anticipation to see the new colors and patterns. I have told friends and family members about Skirt.

Because there really is something about running in functional clothing that also happens to be cute. It lifts your spirits. Sometimes it is the thing that motivates you to take off your pajamas and go running. It’s that feeling when you’re sweating and your face is caked with salt and there’s a smear of dirt across your calf, but your skirt still makes you feel like you don’t look entirely disgusting.

It’s the fact that you can run like a badass and you don’t need black, sloppy men’s shorts to prove it.

But it’s not only the skirts.

When I became a Skirt Sports ambassador, I became a part of a community. And it’s not a community of mean girls. It’s not about who’s the fastest or skinniest or prettiest. It is welcoming and inclusive. It is a group of women who understand: the highs and lows of training, the way an injury is not just about your ankle or knee, the way just the memory of endorphins rushing your brain keeps you hitting the trail. Size doesn’t matter; age and race don’t matter. Your sport doesn’t matter—hike, run, bike, swim, paddleboard, yoga, weight lifting, whatever.

It is a community that embraces movement, that embraces each individual finding and then pursuing her passions and goals.

So today, the day that marks the beginning of the finish line, when Skirt Sports will likely be ending, I want to celebrate what this company and these women have brought me.

I’m still running by myself, but I’m doing it with pink on. (Or aqua or purple or bright floral prints or even, yes, black sometimes.)

I’m still running by myself, but I’m also running with the voices of so many women in my head, encouraging me with their stories, triumphs, defeats, restarts, accomplishments, kindness, generosity. Sisterhood.

My closet is full of running clothes.

My heart is full because I have felt loved and included and because I have been given the opportunity to love and support others as well.

Sure…there will be other cute running clothes. Partly because of Skirt Sports’ impact, the exercise-clothing industry has changed. Other companies have cute patterns and pockets.

But no other company has given me what skirt has.

Support.

Kinship.

Inspiration.

Respect.

Transformation.

I am celebrating.

But I am also grieving.