We Are Not the Same
We are not the same.
And that’s not an insult—it’s an invitation.
Oppression is not only about identity.
It is about power—who holds it, who protects it,
and who is harmed by its shadow.
Some harm is loud, obvious, easy to name.
But some harm wears the same language as liberation.
Some harm comes dressed in shared struggle, shared skin, shared survival stories.
Some harm is carried out by people who look like us, sound like us,
claim the same wounds we do.
You don’t need a title to hold power.
You don’t need wealth in your bank account to be wealthy in access.
You don’t have to own the door to hold the keys.
There are those who stand close to power—close enough to taste its safety,
close enough to see the resources stacked behind it—
and they choose who gets through.
They choose who gets heard, who gets hired, who gets funded, who gets safe.
And when you are the one deciding who is safe, who is heard, who is allowed in—
you are no longer the oppressed in that moment.
You are holding power. And power must be held with care.
Power doesn’t only sit in systems.
It lives in who gets to speak, who gets to interrupt,
who gets to define the terms of harm.
And sometimes, those doing the choosing have known harm themselves.
I say this with love, not judgment—because I, too, have held both harm and healing in my hands.
Sometimes, those of us who’ve been harmed
begin to believe that we could never harm.
That our pain gives us a pass.
That because we know what it’s like to be silenced,
we could never be the ones silencing others.
But that is how harm survives—through us, too.
When harm is denied, those on the receiving end are forced to carry it alone.
Silence becomes survival. And survival is not safety.
Power—whether inherited, earned, or borrowed—comes with weight.
And accountability is not cruelty;
it is love in action.
It is a pathway to safety, not a weapon.
Yet when we name that,
when we refuse to be erased,
when we call out the gatekeeping,
suddenly we are “angry.”
We are “harmful.”
We are “too much.”
But truth is not violence.
Integrity is not cruelty.
Justice is not oppression.
The call for reflection is not an attack.
It is a return—to wholeness, to humility, to healing.
Because what we are building is not punishment.
And it is not permissiveness.
We are not building power over one another—
we are building power with.
The kind that tells the truth.
The kind that heals, not hides.
We are building something else entirely—
a home for truth, care, and transformation.
We are not the same.
And that truth can be freeing.
It can free us to see the roles we play,
to choose courage over comfort,
to open the door instead of guarding it.
Accountability is not exile.
It is a call back to integrity.
We are all worthy of safety, dignity, and transformation—
no matter which side of harm we stand on.
Justice without love hardens into punishment.
Love without justice dissolves into enabling.
What we are building is neither.
It is a sanctuary of truth,
a place where power is named,
and transformation is possible for us all.
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With love and honor,
Chriseithia
Founder of Black Self Wellth™
This is sacred work, not open source.
Please honor the heart behind these words.
All rights reserved © Chriseithia Collins | Black Self Wellth™