Community accountability is the idea that we all are responsible for the harm caused in our communities and are responsible for rectifying the harm and transforming the conditions that perpetuates the harm.

It is not about one individual or one actor because people do not cause harm isolated from the ways their communities uphold and perpetuate it. We also live in a world where abuse is normal and the ways we learn about love and relationships is rooted in abuse.

It is up to all of us to stop cycles of abuse and to create the conditions where people are safe and affirmed and do the personal, transformational work that is required to move through conflict and struggle amongst others

It is really easy to individualize abuse because it makes us feel better or feel like we are incapable of producing such harm. But we all are and we all have responsibility including myself. Self accountability is some of the hardest and most important work we can do.

It is truly scary to confront the ways we all have been complicit to abuse; the many gaps we have in confronting abuse, the ways we have internalize victim-blaming messaging, and the ways we have yet to confront the abuse we have endured from the people who are closest to us.

This too is the work. Making interventions into gendered violence and generational trauma in hopes to free future generations is the work. It is the hard messy work that forces us to confront ourselves. It is scary for me and I see my limitations and also the possibilities