Turmoil – My First Experience with Relate

The decade of the 1960’ was a time of turmoil. It had been 100 years since the civil war. Yet, there was aggressive oppression under Jim Crow Laws. The Antebellum South was a life many wanted to return to.

It was into this culture that my mother and father courageously took their family from Illinois to the heart of the Bible Belt in 1968, within miles of Billie Graham’s home.

Little did they know the toll it would take on our family. We never fully transitioned. We very quickly learned that folks, black and white, did not take kindly to our liberated way of thinking. What could I do?

My mother and father had been raised in the Western United States where a different party was the oppressive party. Similar things were done there as were done to the former slaves of the south. They were just cloaked in different dressings.

My mother’s ancestors were suffragettes. Suffragettes were bullied and threatened; shut out from civil or political positions, their lives were threatened; their families were torn apart and their property was confiscated.

So my mother had no fear of moving into the deep south where the party of the good guys in her home state, were in power. What could I do?

I tried campaigning for my friends to win in student body elections. I celebrated desegregation when it came. And I was a friend with every person in my school, no matter their class, race or religion. I had been raised to be generous and tolerant toward all.

What I saw outside my home in the school yard and in public forums was an oppression and a discrimination that went far beyond the stories told in the national media. Suppression crossed lines of gender, race, class and social status. What could I do?

I left that state in 1976, lived in 5 states around the country and realized the depth of oppression I had experienced. Time changes lives.

In spite of the efforts of many in the South, not much had changed below the surface in the heart of the Bible Belt. What could I do?

My only viable option was to ask my higher power for help understanding the social structure of my own life and how I could apply it to my relationships. I call the understanding I developed, the Relate Social Structure.

Follow links in this story to learn more about Relate.