LOVE & JUSTICE FOR ALL
PAIN, PATIENCE, & PRESENCE
BY OGUN HOLDER
WHEN IT COMES TO CHANGE, Agape International Spiritual Center founder Michael Bernard Beckwith had it right: We are pushed by pain until we are pulled by vision. Regardless of the catalyst, any major change to our lives comes with its own set of hurdles, and the ease of transition is often directly proportional to our privilege, whether it be racial, financial, gender, educational, career, or even just a strong passport.
By the time you read this, I’ll have been living in Lisbon full-time for about a year (unless the waking nightmare that is Portugal’s immigration bureaucracy has derailed me). While here, I have met more than a few folks who were pulled by their visions: warmer winters, picturesque retirements, European Union access, free healthcare, and better job opportunities. Or maybe they were pushed by the pain of harsh winters, isolated elder-care prospects, restricted travel, expensive medical care, and rising unemployment back home in the United States.
Recently, however, more and more Americans have moved here to escape a government they view as antidemocratic. Black Americans, prescient and prophetic as always, began their exodus as early as 2016. They sought to escape the increasing normalization of anti-Blackness and live free of daily systemic oppression, microaggressions, and a persistent fear for their lives at the hands of police officers. The white Americans moving here, on the other hand, have mostly been privileged: They face no persecution at home and have the resources to relocate at will—the property-buying golden visa crowd.
I never planned to leave the United States permanently. I relocated for love, which, I suppose, falls under the pulled-by-vision category. The move felt aligned with my intention to curate a life centered on authenticity, joy, and pleasure. The timing felt perfect after five years of cocreating community for spiritually grounded and embodied anti-racism education (project_SANCTUS), which saw a steady decrease in participation and support, like almost every other anti-racism and DEI initiative across the nation. Before that, I spent 10 years of my life in church ministry, which, as any clergy would attest, is never a walk in the park. I was tired, y’all.
Here’s the thing about guilt and shame: The pain can push us into further avoidance, disconnection, unworthiness, and bypassing.
My resettlement process also started before the 2024 election in which my hopes that we might have the first Black and Asian woman president were dashed. Last year, from across the Atlantic, I watched anti-immigrant sentiment and actions increase dramatically. As National Guard troops and ICE agents invaded cities, I felt new levels of outrage and overwhelm, of sorrow and suspicion. I felt relief that my adult daughter and I were not in the country and so were out of harm’s way—especially my daughter, since she is neither still nor silent.
But after nine people died because of direct and indirect ICE action during the first two months of 2026, I started to feel something else—a despondency I couldn’t name until a friend hit the nail on the head as I tried to articulate my feelings: survivor’s guilt. I felt it most acutely while reaching out to friends in Minneapolis during ICE’s incursion. Some of them were in the streets protesting, alerting their neighbors to approaching agents, and creating or contributing to community funds and food banks to help their too-scared-to-go-to-work immigrant neighbors survive. As a naturalized American citizen living in Lisbon, I escaped the fates of both the targeted and their allies, and I felt guilty about it.
Shortly after Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, Rob Hirschfeld, a New Hampshire Episcopal bishop, spoke at a vigil being held for Good, noting that he had warned his clergy to prepare for “a new era of martyrdom” and had urged them to “get their affairs in order to make sure they have their wills written because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.” I initially applauded the sentiment, believing that if I were stateside, I would be one of the clergy standing in the breach. But the more I sat with it, the more I had to admit to myself I probably wouldn’t be if my life were literally in danger, and I felt ashamed that I wasn’t as brave as I believed myself to be.
Here’s the thing about guilt and shame: The pain can push us into further avoidance, disconnection, unworthiness, and bypassing. They make us hide from each other and, worse, from ourselves. They made me forget to live in the both/and: It’s okay to stay and fight, and to escape if you’re tired from fighting; it’s okay to resist close up and to resist from a distance; it’s okay to put your life in harm’s way and not to want to die. It’s okay to embrace the principles of peace and harmony and to be motivated to action through righteous anger.
Guilt and shame are the antithesis of self-love, inner liberation, and spiritual awakening. We transcend them through loving ourselves more, extending more grace to ourselves, and showing ourselves to the world without fear of judgment. Those also happen to be great antidotes to oppression. &
OGUN HOLDER is an ordained Unity minister, certified spiritual coach, teacher, and podcaster. He is the author of Rants to Revelations and is also the cofounder of an online spiritual community called project_SANCTUS (projectsanctus.com). Visit revogunholder.com.
