Say Their Names

By Rebecca Patterson, MSMFT

All over social media posts and protest signs has been the call to #SayTheirNames. An iteration of the #SayHerName hashtag that originally began in Spring 2015 after the death of Sandra Bland while in police custody, and brings attention to the loss of Black Lives at the hands of law enforcement. The issue of police brutality against Black Women and Black Folks in general far predates the active call to #SayTheirNames that is alive in the current movement to end systemic racism, but this call in particular is something I feel inside my body every time I hear it!  

When looking through a clinical lens, it makes a lot of sense that this in particular has landed with so many. Names are incredibly important as they signify the concreteness and the individuality of what we are recognizing - in this case autonomous humans who lost their lives unnecessarily. One of the phrases that lingers with me the most from my training as a therapist is not everything that is named can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is named. It is a line I say to all my clients as they struggle to voice the pain, the fear, the shame that is hidden in the shadows but needs to be voiced into the therapy space in order to build the pathway to change. 

Whether it is naming those who have tragically died as a result of police brutality or naming the fear that holds you back from standing up for what you believe in, the starting point is being brave enough to name what you hold. #SayTheirNames is filled with both immense loss and hope that by never forgetting and singing their names in mass, that we collectively begin to build that pathway to change. Each time I write or come across the call to #SayHerName I find myself speaking into the space Breonna Taylor, and feel the impact of the loss of life and the injustice it represents. Their Names matter and as we say them we connect to something uniquely human - the power of a name.